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THE

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CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

VOL. XXXIV.
OCTOBER, 1881, TO MARCH, 1882.

NEW YORK :

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,

9 Barclay Street,

1882.

•

THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

A Christmas Tale of 76.— William Set on, . 541
Among the Hills of Morvand —M. P.

Thompson, . . 605, 819

A Portionless Girl.— Mary H, A. Allies, 16, 168,

314, 504, 640, 784

At Oka, Province of Quebec.— A . M. Pope, 630
A True Monk— the Venerable Bede.— The

Rev. J. J. Dougherty, . . . .558
Bishop John Dubois.— L. W. Reilly, . . 454
Bourdaloue.— The Rev. J. V. CC Conor, . . 220
Canada, A Scotch Catholic Settlement in.—

A. M. Pope, 70

Cardinal WoJsey and his Times.— S. Hubert

Burke, 359

Carthusians (The Last of the) and the Fate

of the Observant Fathers.—.?. Hubert

Burke, 250

Carthusian (The) Martyrs of England.— S.

Hubert Burke, 43

Catholic Musings on Tennyson's " In Memo-

riam."— *** 205

Celtic Languages, The Decay of the.— T. O.

Russell, 563

Chile and Peru, The late War between.— C.

M. WKeefe, 484

Christian Conquest (.The) of Africa.— .ff. F.

O'Connor, 102, 227

Christian Jerusalem.— The Rev. A . F. He^vit, 54,

235, 375
Christmas Play (A) in the Pyrenees.— M. P.

Thompson, 439

Church Livings in England and in Spain.— 7?.

F. Farrell, . 245

Church of Jerusalem (Tradition of the), Con-
cerning Sacrament and Sacrifice. — The

Rev. A . F. Hewit, .... 529, 619
Clement I.— A Pope of the First Century.—

The Rev. A. F. Hewit, .... 772
Cornwallis (How) Consolidated the British

Empire. — Margaret F. Sullivan, . . 298
Crime, Irish and English. — Henry Belling-

ham, ........ i

Decay (The) of the Celtic Languages.— T. O.

Russell, 563

Discovery (The) of the East Coast of the

U. 's.—Edmond Mallet, . . . .599
Dublin, Monastic. — William Dennehy, . . 339
Dublin, The English Prisons of.— R. F. Far-

rell, 433

Dubois, Bishop John.— L. W. Reilly, . . 454
Early Printing and Wood-Engraving. — Mi-
chael Scanlan, 803

End of the World, The.— The Rev. Geo. M.

Searle, 493

English Prisons (The) of Dublin.—^. F. Far-

rell, .433

English Radicalism, The Sentiment of.— A. F.

Marshall, 145

Evolution.— W. R. Thompson, . . . 683
Fall of Wolsey, The.— S. Hubert Burke, . 465
Fisher (John), Bishop of Rochester.— S. Hu-
bert Burke 585, 760

Franciscans, Joan of Arc and the. — D. A.

Casserly, no

Frequency (The) of Suicide.— The Rt. Rev.

F. S. Chatard, 577

German (The) Problem— The Rev. I. T.

Hecker, . . . . . . . 289

Holy Days and Holidays in England. — A . F.

Marshall, 665

How Cornwallis Consolidated the British Em-
pire.— Margaret F. Sullivan, . . 298
Impressions of Quebec — A nna T. Sadlier, . 402
In Arcady. — Agnes Repplier, .... 120

Ireland, Six Weeks in. — By an Englishman, 732
Irish and English Crime. — Henry Belling-

ham, ........ i

Is the United States Government a Nuisance

to be Abated ?— J. T., . . . .62

Jerusalem, Christian.— The Rev. A. F. Hewit, 54,

235, 375
Jesuit (A) in Disguise.— John R. G. Has-

sard, 155, 387

Joan of Arc and the Franciscans. — D. A . Cas-
serly, no

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.— 6". Hubert

Burke, 585, 760

Kelt and Teuton.—//. P. McElrone, . .212
Lally, The Brave. — Douglas Carlisle, . . 673
Last (The) of the Carthusians and the Fate
of the Observant Fathers. — S. Hubert

Burke, 250

Late (The) War between Chile and Peru.— C.

M. O^Keefe, . . . . .484

Literature, Moles and Warts in. — A . y. Faust, 747
Memorial (A) of the late Lady Blanche Mur-
phy.— Cardinal Manning, ... 40
Mexico, The United States and. — Santiago

Ainsa, 721

Mexico ? Was the Apostle St. Thomas in.—

The Rev. J. H. Defouri, . . . .420
Moles and Warts in Literature. — A . y. Faust, 747
Monastic Dublin. — William Dennehy, . . 339
Monte Vergine. — M. P. Thompson, . . 347
Murphy (the late Lady Blanche), A Memo-
rial of. — Cardinal Manning, ... 40
Napoleon III. and his Reign.— The Rev.H.

A. Brann, D.D., 261

Observant Fathers (and the Fate of the), The
last of the Carthusians. — S. Hubert

Burke, 250

Oka (At), Province of Quebec.— /i . M. Pope,. 630
Phase of Protestantism, A Singular.— The

Rev. Geo. M. Searle, . . . .835
Pope (A) of the First Century— Clement I.—

The Rev. A. F. Hewit, . . . - 772

iii

CONTENTS.

Pyrenees, A Christmas Play in the.— M, I\

Thompson ........ 439

Quebec, Impressions of. — Anna T. Sadlicr, . 402
Scotch (A) Catholic Settlement in Canada.—

A.M. Pope, ...... 7°

Sentiment (The) of English Radicalism.—^.

F. Marshall, ......

Singular (A) Phase of Protestantism.— The

Rev. Geo. M. Scarle, . . . .
Sires (The) of Chastellux. — M. P Thompson,

Six Weeks in Ireland. — By an Englishman, 732
Some Scottish Superstitions —The late Lady

Blanche Murphy, ..... 693
St. Thomas (the Apostle) Was, in Mexico ?—

The Rev. J. H. Defouri, . . . .
Suicide, The Frequency of.— The Rt. Rev.

F. S. Chaiard, ......

Tennyson's " In Memoriam," Catholic Mus-

ings on. — * * * . . . . .

The Brave Lally.— Douglas Carlisle, . .

420

577

205
673

Tradition of the Church of Jerusalem concern-
ing Sacrament and Sacrifice. — The Rev.
A.F.Heivit, 529,619

United States (The) and Mexico.— Santiago

A insa, ........ 721

Vaucluse. — M. P. Thompson. .... 91

145 Was the Apostle St. Thomas in Mexico ? —

The Rev. J. If. Defouri, . . . .420

835 What does the Public-School Question mean ?
194 —The Rev. I. T. Hecker, ... 84

Wolsey (Cardinal) and his Times.— S. Hubert

Burke, ....... 359

Wolsey, The Fall of.— S. Hubert Burke, . 465
Wood-Engraving and Early Printing. — Mi-

ckael Scanlan, ...... 803

World, The End of the.— The Rev. Geo. M.

Searle, 493

Yorktown (The) Centennial Celebration.— The

Rt. Rev. J. J. Keane, D.D., . . .274

POETRY.

A Christmas Card.— Edith W. Cook, . . 501
A Christian Legend.— Alice Wilmot Chet-

•wode, ....... 527

Allegoria Maritima. — Wm. Gibson, Com. U.

S.N. 7"

A Prayer of Doubt. — Margaret F. Sullivan. 771

Ireland — 1882. — Mary E. Manntx, . . 834
Purgatorio, Canto XXI.— T. IV. Parsons, 461
To the Blessed Giuseppe Labre. — The Rev.

J d. D. Lynch 426

Who Shall Say 1— Eliot Ryder, . . .453

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Ancient History ; Roman History ; History

of the Middle Ages; Modern History, 140

An Instruction on Mixed Marriages, . . 851

Campaigns of the Civil War, .... 718

Cathedra Petri, 856

Catholic Controversy, 285

Centennial Celebration of the First Mass in

Connecticut, 854

Crowned with Stars, 143

Decennial Souvenir of St. Francis Xavier's

Church 142

Household Science, 576

Institutiones Theologicse in Usum Scholarum 428

Ireland of To-day, ...... 852

Irish Faith in America, ..... 857

La Situation du Pape, 157

Leaves from the Annals of the Sisters of

Mercy, ' . . 428

Leaves of Grass, 719

Letters and Writings of Marie Lataste, . . 287
Letters, Speeches, and 1'racts on Irish Af-
fairs, 141

Madeleine de S. Pol, 857

Maidens of Hallowed Names, . . . .430

Manx Gaelic, 857

Nach Rom und Jerusalem, .... 288

Original, Short, and Practical Sermons, . . 858

Patron Saints, 14*

Protestantism and the Church, . . . 859

Picturesque Ireland, 855

Ranthorpe, 288

Rituale Romanum Pauli V., .
Safeguards of Divine r1 aith,
Sanctuary Boy's Illustrated Manual,
St. Bernard on the Love of God,
St. Mary Magdalen,
The Art of Thinking Well.
The Beauties of the Catholic Church,
The Bible and Science,
The Bloody Chasm,

• 859

• 574
136

• 574
. 856
. 427

• '43
. 576

The Criminal History of the British Empire, 575

The Emperor, 138

The History of the Primitive Yankees, .
The Household Library of Catholic Poets,
The Illustrated Catholic Family Annual for

575

140

The Life of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas

Aquinas, 855

The Life of the Rev. Mary John Baptist

Muard, 853

The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of

the Incarnation, 431

The Nature and Function of Art, more espe-
cially of Architecture, .... 717
The Poets and Poetry of Ireland, . . . 429

The Portrait of a Lady 716

The Practice of Interior Recollection, . . 576

The Problem of Religious Progress, . . 286

The Twit-T wats, 287

Tutti-Frutti, 432

Which is the True Church ? . . . .856

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIV. OCTOBER, 1881. No. 199.

IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME.

THE question as to the prevalence and character of crime in
Ireland as compared with that in England, Wales, and Scotland
has long formed an interesting subject for discussion. Those
who are imbued with the idea that Ireland is a nation composed
of assassins, thieves, and communists naturally refuse to take
note of the fact that crime in that country is of a peculiar cha-
racter and almost invariably connected with agrarian questions,
whilst social crime of the brutal nature that is unhappily so com-
mon in Great Britain is comparatively rare. Crimes of impur-
ity, for instance, though comparatively frequent in England and
extremely frequent in Scotland, are very rare in Ireland. The
modesty of Irishwomen has been proverbial for centuries, and
has been admitted by men of all classes who are strongly oppos-
ed to everything Irish and everything Catholic. The present con-
dition of Ireland, with her people paralyzed by a series of excep-
tionally bad seasons and their hopes strung to the highest pitch
of excitement by the land agitation of the past fifteen months, is
abnormal, and it is undoubtedly true that during this period
there has been an increase of crime, but not by any means to the
extent that has been frequently stated. In spite of the agitation
and distress, the murders have been fewer than in previous bad
years. Last year (1880), for instance, there were but five mur-
ders, whilst in 1849 there were two hundred and three.

An interesting article by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., in the
Contemporary Review a few months ago, showed that in the year
1833 there were 172 homicides, 460 robberies, 455 houghings of;

IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME.

[Oct.,

cattle, 2,095 illegal notices, 425 illegal meetings, 796 malicious
injuries to property, 753 attacks on houses, 3,156 serious as-
saults, the aggregate of crime being 9,000, and that in the year
1836 crime assumed even greater proportions. Comparing Eng-
land and Wales in this latter year with Ireland, the Irish aggre-
gate of crime was actually greater :*

Charges.

England and
Wales.

Ireland.

I Q^6

7*767

Against property, with violence

I 5 10

67T

without violence. .

16 167

U/l

6CQO

168

CO2

Forgery and coining .

O^Q

Not included in above classes

I O24

"2i4

g TAA

2I,l64

23,8gi

The following are the statistics of Irish crime in still later
years :

Offences.

1845.

1846.

Homicide

137

176

138

158

Conspiracy to murder ... .

To which adding various other crimes, we find the total of of-
fences against the person were, in 1845, 1*093, and in 1846, 1,923 ;
and for offences against the public peace, including arson, demands
or robbery of arms, riots, threatening notices, firing into dwell-
ings, and the like, 1845, 4*645 ; 1846, 4,766. The following table
shows a steady decrease of crime since the year 1850 :

Offences.

1850.

I8SI.

l8S2.

1853-

1854.

1855-

1856.

1857-

1858.

1859.

Murder

n-i

118

7-7

e-2

1^2

4.e

Attempts to murder. .
Shooting at, stabbing.
Solicitation to murder.
Conspiracy to murder.
Manslaughter

56
62

ICQ

I-5C

4
13

127

21
32
2
2O
128

35
37

IO2

31
65
2
II
80

59
4
8
80

2
I an

12^

3
1 02

During these years, which were years of progressive prosperity
and good seasons after the frightful famine of 1847 and the sub-

* Contemporary Review, December, 1880.

1 88 1.] IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. 3

sequent disturbed period of 1848 and 1849, tne crime of murder
declined by more than half, and attempts to murder almost alto-
gether. The fact that so few murders have been committed dur-
ing the past twelve months seems to indicate that the masses of
the people deem the Land League a better security against oppres-
sion than they could have in the landlord's dread of assassination.
A return was presented to the House of Commons, during the
last session of Parliament (1880), of the " agrarian outrages report-
ed to the constabulary between the ist of January, 1879, an<^ the
3 ist of January, 1880," the total oi crimes being 977 ; and when we
consider that the greater part of that period was a period when
crops had failed, when a third bad harvest had brought a great
many of the people to the verge of famine, and when many of
them had lived for months on the charity of the public, it will be
seen that the amount of crime is small. Mr. Gladstone himself
admitted, during the fervor of his Midlothian campaign in the
winter of 1879-80, that Ireland was in a most satisfactory condi-
tion, with little or no crime. Another return presented this ses-
sion, and ordered to be printed, by the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster,
Chief Secretary for Ireland, of all the agrarian outrages reported
by the Royal Irish Constabulary for the month of November,
1880, is instructive. It must be borne in mind that at that period
the land agitation was in full swing, that the government were
then undecided as to the wisdom of adopting a policy of coer-
cion, and that the law of the Land League practically reigned
supreme. This return * shows that in the province of Leinster
there were 58 crimes, in Munster 280, in Ulster 41, and in Con-
naught 182, making a grand total of 561 crimes, a very large pro-
portion of which were threatening notices only and intimidations
of a similar character, but which included also, i. Offences against
the person, such as assault and murder ; 2. Offences against pro-
perty, such as incendiary fires, and taking forcible posses-
sion, killing, cutting, and maiming cattle ; 3. Offences against
the public peace, such as riots and affrays, injury to property, fir-
ing into dwelhngs, and general intimidations. Much was made
of these returns, and the English public were loud in their denun-
ciations of such atrocious crimes ; but they must have forgotten
the beam in their own eye, for a perusal of even an imperfect list
of crimes committed in one week in England, taken hap-hazard
from the newspapers, is startling. The following are a few cases
selected in this way :

" At Crewe a man was committed for having set fire to his master's pre-
mises. At Manchester a man named Mayne was charged with having mur-

* Return to an order of the House of Commons dated 6th January, 1881.

4 * IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

dered his sweetheart. In London a blacksmith named Palmer was charged
with attacking his wife in a brutal way with a hammer. At Camberwell an
attempt by four men to drown a policeman. At Northampton [the consti-
tuency which has immortalized itself by twice returning a notorious atheist
as its representative] a man called Lichfield cut his wife's throat with a
razor. At Westminster a man called Clarke killed his wife by stabbing her
in the chest with a knife, while another in Battersea kicked his wife to
death. At Hammersmith and Scarborough mothers were charged with
having attempted to drown their daughters, at Norwich two soldiers with
an attempt to suffocate a comrade, and at Liverpool a watchman is alleged
to have beaten a boy to death. To crown all a man was charged with hav-
ing killed his wife by running a red-hot poker into her body when asleep."

The London Graphic of October, 1880, says:

" Burglaries around London are as numerous as ever, notwithstanding
the fact that extra police patrols and plain-clothes men have been placed on
duty in the various districts. The Home Secretary has offered a reward of
;£ioo for the conviction of the recent burglaries and attempted murders at
Lewisham and Blackheath, with a free pardon to any accomplices. It is
said that the announcement contains a special clause excluding policemen
from participation in reward. Robberies from churches and schools have
also been very frequent in the southern suburbs, and three young men have
been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in them."

No sensible person supposes for a moment that crime in Eng-
land excuses crime in Ireland ; but when extravagant charges
against Irishmen are made by Froude and other writers of ability
and distinction, and are repeated in the daily press, it is well that
the attention of the public should be directed to the fact that
Great Britain is not immaculate. The Pall Mall Gazette (May 2,
1881) contained the following reference to crime in England:

" No fewer than four murders are reported in the papers this morning.
A superannuated excise officer near Norwich quarrelled with his wife about
religious questions, kicked her senseless, and then hacked her head to
pieces with a hatchet. At Manchester a telegraph-clerk, provoked by his
wife's aggravating temper, stabbed his thirteen-months-old daughter six
times through the heart and lungs with a chisel. On Saturday two laborers
were committed for trial at Southwark police court for murdering their
paramours ; in both cases the victim of brutality.was kicked to death. To
this grim and ghastly record must be added the fact that* a laborer in
Wandsworth Road deliberately shot a passer-by with a revolver, wounding
him so seriously that it is feared his right arm will have to be amputated.
It must be admitted that the merry month of May has hardly opened auspi-
ciously for the genial optimists who are perpetually prattling about the
progress of humanity and the advancing civilization of the nineteenth
Century."

We mention such atrocities to show that England, which pro-
fesses to read a lecture on morality and virtue to her sister
country, does not come into court with clean hands.

1 88 1.] IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. 5

The greatest difference between English and Irish crime con-
sists in the fact that in England crime lacks the excuse of suffer-
ing, and springs from mere brutality, whilst in Ireland it is noto-
rious that by far the greater number of crimes can be distinctly
traced to the disastrous condition in which that country has been
placed by centuries of continuous bad legislation. . In Great Bri-
tain and Scotland men kick their wives to death, cut each other's
throats with razors, drown one another, and commit acts of im-
purity from mere wantonness and sensuality, whilst women, for
the same reason, ruthlessly murder their illegitimate offspring.
In Ireland, on the contrary, such things are almost unknown, and
those who commit crimes of this character are scouted by public
sentiment and held up to the reproach of the parish.

In nothing is the contrast between Great Britain and Ireland
so remarkable as in the matter of divorce. The revelations of
the Divorce Court disclose the unpleasant and alarming fact that
every class in English society is leavened with immorality. The
judges who have to try the cases in London are so overwhelmed
with a work which is perpetually increasing that it is deemed
necessary to appoint fresh ones in order to prevent a complete
block of business.

" In numberless divorce cases," says the London Standard, " not only
are the meanness and cowardice and dishonesty of the human race
brought out just as strongly as they are in ordinary litigation, but the
depths of grossness to which it is possible for human beings to sink are re-
vealed to us with hideous plainness. When a man goes to law he often be-,
trays that he is either a rogue or a very foolish person. When he is tried
for any crime of violence he is as often shown to be an utter brute. When
he is brought up before a magistrate for being drunk we sometimes see his
sensual and animal propensities exhibited in a strong light. But in many
divorce cases we find all three combined — knavery, cruelty, and profligacy.
How any kind of faith in human nature or in the purity of man or woman
can survive a long experience of such business it is difficult to compre-
hend."

In the period between the Michaelmas sittings of 1879 and the
Trinity sittings of 1880 there were no less than 643 cases disposed
of by Sir James Hannen, and yet the number that were obliged
to stand over was such as to cause general comment.

The last argument invariably made use of by those who are
prejudiced against Ireland is that, even granting crime in Ireland
is less than in England or Scotland, the criminal is not screened in
the latter countries, but invariably reaps the reward of his crime.
Now, we are not prepared to assert that crime in Ireland is not
frequently undetected, for in many cases, such as the assassina-

6 IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

tion of Lord Leitrim and Lord Montmorres, no clue to the perpe-
trators of the deed has been discovered ; but it is a mistake to sup-
pose that crime is always detected in England and the guilty per-
son punished. The following extract from the Pall Mall Gazette
(April, 1881) shows this clearly :

"Yesterday three charges of murder were tried in the English courts,
and in each case the trial resulted in a verdict of acquittal. If similar fail-
ures of justice had occurred in Ireland every one knows what would be
said, but as they only took place in England they escape attention. No
stress need be laid on the acquittal of the young woman charged with mur-
dering her child at Bromley. The evidence was slight, and the painful
scene in court might naturally incline the jury to mercy. George Richings,
at Aylesbury, was accused on his own confession of having burned his para-
mour to death in the middle of his room ; but as the poor woman, like Des-
demona, declared with her dying breath that her lover was innocent, he was
acquitted. In the case of the Slough murder, as the evidence against the
butcher-boy accused of killing his mistress consisted solely of an apparent
similarity between his handwriting and that of the murderer, it is not sur-
prising the jury refused to convict. But it is decidedly unpleasant to think
of the number of undiscovered murderers who are at large just now."

It would be well for those persons who imagine that the influ-
ence and teaching of the Catholic Church are injurious to the
Irish people to study the opinions of impartial writers as to the
power of Catholicity to check crime. Dr. Forbes, one of Queen
Victoria's physicians, in a work entitled Memorandums made in
Ireland in the Autumn 0/1852, writes :

"At any rate, the result of my inquiries is that, whether right or wrong
in a theological or rational point of view, this instrument of confession is,
among the Irish of the humbler classes, a direct preservative against certain
forms of immorality. . . . Amongst other charges preferred against confes-
sion in Ireland and elsewhere is the facility it affords for corrupting the fe-
male mind, and of its actually leading to such corruption. ... So far from
such corruption resulting from the confessional, the singular purity of fe-
male life among the lower classes is in a considerable degree dependent on
this very circumstance. . . . With a view of testing as far as was practicable
the truth of the theory respecting the influence of confession on this branch
of morals, I obtained through the courtesy of the Poor-Law Commissioners
a return of the number of legitimate and illegitimate children in the work-
houses of each of the four provinces of Ireland on a particular day — viz., 27th
November, 1852. It is curious to mark how strikingly the results there
conveyed correspond with the confession theory ; the proportion of ille-
gitimate children coinciding almost exactly with the relative proportions
of the two religions in each province, being large where the Protestant ele-
ment is large, and small where it is small."

A leading Presbyterian organ (the Scotsman) had the honesty
to admit some years ago that England was nearly twice as bad,
and Scotland nearly three times as bad, as Ireland, with re-

i88ij

IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME.

gard to crimes against morality, and that in Ireland itself even the
proportion of illegitimacy was very unequally distributed, for the
division showing the highest proportion was the northeastern,
which comprised the semi-English and Scotch plantation of
Ulster.

In the following tables * offences are divided into three classes:
i. Those which are in England and Ireland punishable after trial
by jury only, and in Scotland are usually so punished ; 2. Those
which are punishable either after trial by jury or after summary
conviction before justices or borough magistrates ; 3. Offences
punishable after summary conviction only. This division corre-
sponds to the mode of trial in Scotland as well as in England and
Ireland, and has the practical advantage of classing offences, in
the order of importance, into (i) more serious offences ; (2) less
serious offences; (3) minor offences. In these tables the more
serious offences in Ireland in the year 1878 are compared with
proportionate figures for an equal population calculated from
the English criminal statistics for 1877 by dividing the Eng-
lish figures by 4.5, and from the Scotch criminal statistics
for 1877 by multiplying the Scotch figures by 1.5. Suicide
is added, the figures being taken from those compiled by the
registrar-general of the three countries. The more serious of-
fences committed in Ireland in 1878 are compared with propor-
tional English and Scotch figures for 1877 for an equal popula-
tion:

CLASS I.

Classes of more serious
offences.

Irish.

English.

Scotch.

Difference be-
tween Irish
and English
figures.

Offences in
1878.

Proportionate
numbers in
1877 for same
population.

Irish
less.

English
less.

Irish numbers less than
English and Scotch total
of more serious offences. .

Offences against property,
without violence

2,886

4,189

5,925

1,303

700

458

93
69
90
142
15

1,774

1,014
291
195

157

200

1,065

3,175
163

108
162
281
27

1,074

556
234
126
67

58
18

Offences against property,
with violence

Suicide

Attempts to commit suicide.
Forgery, etc

Offences against purity
Periury.. .

* Judicial Statistics, Criminal Statistics, House of Commons, vol. Ixxvi.

8 • IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

The general result of this table is, therefore, favorable to Ire-
land as compared with both England and Scotland, the Irish
number of more serious offences being 2,886 — i.e., 1,303 less than
the English proportionate number (4,189) and 3,039 less than the
Scotch proportionate number (5,925).

The Scotch come out very unfavorably in offences against
purity, which are about double the number in Ireland — 281 as
compared with 142.

In Class II., of offences punishable either after trial by jury or
summary conviction, the unfavorable features of more serious of-
fences in Ireland are carried into the les.s serious, there being a
marked excess of malicious offences of a minor character — 6,936, as
compared with 5,165 in England and 4,709 in Scotland; and 618
of assault and inflicting bodily harm, as compared with 112 in
England. In morals, on the other hand, Ireland comes out favor-
ably, the aggravated assaults on women and children being only
337, as compared with 597 in England. In both assault and inflict-
ing bodily harm and in aggravated assaults on women the defi-
cient classification of the Scotch statistics is supplied by esti-
mates.

In Class III., of offences punishable by summary conviction
only, the Irish figures come out unfavorably, the number (212,903)
being more than the English (101,640) and the Scotch (85,709) fig-
ures added together (187,349). This great excess rests on three
figures: punishable drunkenness, which was 63,238 in excess of
the English figure ; road and way offences, which were 32,138, and
unclassed offences, which were 22,084, in excess of the English
figure. With a view to check the temptation to punishable
drunkenness, Parliament, in the session of 1878, extended to the
greater part of Ireland the Scotch law as to Sunday closing ;
and though the act was in operation for only the last three
months of the year 1878, the number of offences of punishable
drunkenness was reduced from 110,000 in 1877 to 107,000 in the
year 1878.

In a return * moved for in the House of Commons August
9, 1880 (by the writer of this article), of persons found guilty
of murder in England, Wales, and Ireland in each of the under-
mentioned years, it will be found that Ireland well bears the
test:

* These returns were made out by the kindness of the Secretary of State for the Home De-
partment, but have not been officially printed and presented to the House.

IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME.

Year.

England and

Wales.

Ireland.

1877

1878

l87Q. .

And in another return of the number of aggravated assaults on
women and children — that is to say, persons found guilty of such
assaults in England and Wales, and in Ireland, in each of the un-
dermentioned years — (also moved for by the writer of this article)
Ireland stands well :

Year.

England and
Wales.

Ireland.

1877

2 374

311

1878 .

2 243

282

1870. .

I Q8q

^33

The increase of these assaults in Ireland in the year 1879 may
be attributed to the crisis which the country was then beginning
to enter upon — a crisis' of such severity that it practically ended
in famine and was mitigated by the hand of charity only, admin-
istered through four funds.

Those who are loudest in denouncing Irish crime in general,
and those crimes in particular which have been committed with-
in the past twelve months, should not forget the state in which
Ireland found itself during the winter of 1879-80. The special
correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (a London Conservative
journal) wrote thus :

" What with smoke and the lack of openings the cabins of the poor are
almost dark even at midday. Such, ye gentlemen of England, is a Donegal
cabin in this present advanced year of grace, and in such a manner do
thousands live within two days' journey of the capital of your mighty em-
pire. The fact, you will admit, is not one to boast of. I verily believe that
Cetewayo would not have permitted his Zulus to be housed like these
wretched people. Uniformly miserable as are the cabins, the misery of
their inmates is a little diversified. In one place we find the mother pre-
paring— what do you think? — a dish of seaweed wherewith to flavor the
Indian meal obtained from the relief funds ! I am not joking — God forbid !
Her children have gone to the shore and gathered the stuff, and while I
look on she prepares it for cooking."

io IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

The English public are slow to realize the truth that Ireland
is a constant prey to famine, but they are ready and willing to
give ear to her misdemeanors. It is a remarkable fact that at the
very time English ministers were urging the necessity of strin-
gent coercion, and the English press were holding up Ireland
as an island of assassins, its own criminal records showed it to
be in a state comparatively satisfactory. The following are a
few cases in point : The chairman of the Cavan Quarter Sessions,
in addressing the grand jury in March, 1881, declared that there
had only been one year in the last eight or nine in which the
criminal business was so light. In the County Louth there were
but two cases at Quarter Sessions, and those both at the crown
side of the court. At Tralee, in the County Kerry, the report
states that there were only a few trivial cases and one of forcible
entry.

The summer assizes of 1880 are remarkable for the testimony
of judges in all parts of the country as to the absence of crime.
In Wexford there were only three cases to go before the grand
jury ; in Galway, a county situated in the centre of the poorest
and most disturbed districts, only four; in Derry, five ; in Wicklow,
one ; in Donegal, five ; in Louth, two ; in the city of Cork, none. At
Drogheda Judge Fitzgibbon declared that the complete absence
of crime was not in any way owing to the inability of the police
authorities to detect offences, for that ample supervision had been
exercised ; and in North Tipperary, a district long celebrated for
the excitable temper of its people, Judge O'Brien said that he was
happy to find there were no agrarian outrages at all.

The statement so frequently made in Parliament and on pub-
lic platforms during the discussion on the late Coercion Bill, that
agrarian crime was never so rife, is refuted by one single fact.
In the year 1870 the number of agrarian outrages was 1,329.
According to a return (No. 131) presented to the House of Com-
mons on the motion of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr.
J. Lowther), and already referred to, the number of agrarian
crimes from January i, 1879, to January 31, 1880, was 977, thus
showing that in the thirteen months during all of which the dis-
tress was most severe, and during part of which the land agita-
tion had begun, the number of outrages was far below the total
of 1870.

One of the charges most frequently made against the Irish,
especially since the commencement of the land agitation, has been
that of cruelty to dumb animals. Now, many brutal cases have
undoubtedly occurred in Ireland which no right-minded person

1 88 1.] IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. n

could condone ; but England is not immaculate on this score, and,
though cruelty in England to the brute creation does not, as we
have said before, excuse cruelty in Ireland, it is nevertheless some-
what punctilious of Englishmen to expend so much energy in
showing up the faults of their neighbors, when they are not free
of blame themselves. In the report of the Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals for the year 1876 it is stated that
there were altogether 2,468 convictions for cruelty to animals in
Great Britain, 953 of which were for cruelty to horses in England.
The same report states that the manager of the London General
Omnibus Co. acknowledges that of the 8,000 horses employed by
this company three out of every five have to be sold to knackers,
two out of every five to agriculturists, after fifty-four months, and
that this fact justly enough involves agony of terrible intensity.
In the year 1877 there were 2,726 convictions, and in the year
1878 there were 3,533 convictions, of which 2,156 were for
cruelty to horses, 148 to donkeys, 86 to dogs, and 64 to cats.
Sir Charles Dilke, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Af-
fairs, in a speech made in November, 1880, gave as one of the rea-
sons why the government might be obliged to adopt measures
of coercion for Ireland the fact that forty-seven cattle had been
killed or maimed in Ireland during the preceding ten months.
Whether or no this statement was accurate we do not know, but
as he founded his reasoning on the said forty-seven reported cases
of cruelty to animals, and as it is reasonable to suppose that few
cases of cruelty to large and valuable animals, such as cattle, horses,
or sheep, are likely to have passed unreported in Ireland, we may
assume that the number is correct. It is, therefore, instructive to
note the advertised return of convictions obtained in England by the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for one single
month (November, 1880):

Horses — working in an unfit state 167

beating kicking, stabbing, etc 28

overdriving and overloading 4

starving by withholding food i

Donkeys — working in an unfit state 7

beating, kicking, etc 9

Cattle — beating, kicking, etc 4

overstocking (distending udders) 2

cutting for identification I

improperly killing 2

Sheep — beating, kicking, stabbing, etc 3

Pigs— " " " i

Dogs— " " " , 7

" starving by withholding food. 2

12 IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

Cats— setting dogs to worry i

" cutting tails off 3

Fowls — beating, kicking, stabbing, etc I

' ' overcrowding in baskets 2

" allowing to remain in toothed trap. I

Geese — beating, kicking, etc I

Pigeons — improperly conveying 4

Hyenas — burning during menagerie performance I

A rgall— beating, kicking, etc I

Various — owners causing offences , 70

Total 323

In the year 1879 the convictions for cruelty to animals in Eng-
land reached the total of 3,725, which included such atrocities as
pulling the tongues out of horses, burning cats alive, and pouring
turpentine down dogs' throats.

It should never be forgotten that crime in Ireland is of a pe-
culiar and indigenous character, and that circumstances rather
than inclination have made it. The Howard Association recently
published a pamphlet on the subject in connection with Irish
prisons, which, amongst a great deal of interesting matter, con-
tained the following passage : " The remedy may be ultimately
proved to consist not so much in either penal or parliamentary
as in religious, moral, and scientific agencies." This may or may
not be true, but our belief has always been that if the causes that
now engender agrarian crime in Ireland were removed crime itself
would soon dwindle to insignificant proportions.

The following table, compiled by Mr. Sexton, member for
Sligo, from the Annual Statistics published by Dr. Hancock, is
significant as indicating what we have endeavored to point out
— viz., that agrarian crime (and there is comparatively little other
crime] in Ireland depends upon the pressure of distress and pov-
erty.

Crime in England marches onward and every day brings new
developments. One of the latest is the sale of wives. Not many
years ago a woman was sold in Runcorn by her husband for a
mere trifle. Wigan and Bolton have witnessed similar scenes.
Bury owned a woman who was sold in the market-place, whither
her husband had brought her with her neck in a rope, imagining
that there was some law which required that form to make the
transaction legal. In Prescota man who became the purchaser of
a spouse from a friend actually tried to get an advertisement into
the local papers formally announcing the fact, believing that such
publication would place the validity of the contract beyond cavil.

i88i.J

IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME.

At Bedford Leigh a fireman gave away his wife, child, and fur-
niture to a friend, and the woman accepted the change as com-
placently as if she were some slave to be disposed of at pleasure
— a transaction which was reported in a respectable daily paper as
" an amusing affair."

Year.

Number of agrarian
crimes specially _ re-
ported by the police.

Remarks of the official statistician.

*l862
*i863
*i864

363

349
304

/ Years of pressure through distress. — Report
f fot 1868.

1865

178

1866

1867

123

Greater pressure of distress. — Report for

1867.

1868

160

The number of offences against property,

with violence, seems to vary in each year

with the extent of distress prevailing in

the country. — Report for 1868.

*i869

767

*i87o

1,329

1871

368

1872

256

x 1873

254

1874

213

1875

136

*i876

2OI

*i877

236

The winter of 1877 and spring of 1878 have

been periods of exceptional pressure on

the poor. — Report for 1878.

*i873

280

*i879

870

The last year when there was a similar in-

crease of crime was 1862. In the report for 1863 the observation is made

that the change from decrease to increase was owing to the amount of dis-

tress in these two years. The special measures which became necessary to

relieve distress in 1879 indicated that the pressure was greater than in 1862,

and more nearly approached in some districts the famine of 1847. These

figures indicate the effect of the pressure of distress in producing crime. —

Report for 1879.

We do not give these cases simply as items of news, but be-
cause they reveal an ominous state of society, and because the
Pharisees of the British press are perpetually dilating on the sins
of their neighbors whilst they gloss over their own.

An article appeared in the Friend of India (of November,
1880) which may be taken as typical of the general feeling ex-
pressed by those who look at Ireland from a distance. Having
stated that the terrorism and outrages attributed to the action of
the Land League were not to be compared with the crimes in
vogue in Sheffield and elsewhere, where trades-unions were out-
side the pale of the law, it proceeded as follows :

* Years of distress.

14 IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. [Oct.,

" In Ireland every amelioration in the condition of her people has had
to be extracted out of England almost by physical force, and has only then
been conceded when there seemed no alternative but civil war. It is all
very well for Englishmen to declare they will not be bullied into yielding to
the desires of the Irish people. The Irish know better; they know that if
bullied sufficiently they are certain to yield, and that without bullying they
would do nothing. These methods may be lawless, but English law has
been to Ireland for centuries the negation of justice, an organized system
of lawlessness."

Language of this character is very significant and illustrates
forcibly the theory we have always held — that if Ireland were gov-
erned in a manner more just and more in harmony with the wishes
of her people the amount of crime would be but small.

Many persons are firmly persuaded that the Irish, as being a
Celtic race, are, by some perverse ordinance of nature, prone to
violence and disorder. We would draw the attention of such to
the following : Mr. Gladstone asked the House of Commons in
the year 1870 to investigate where in Ireland the ratio of agrarian
crime to the number of evictions was highest and where it was
the lowest, and they would find that in Connaught, where the
Celtic race largely preponderated, the ratio of agrarian crime to
evictions was far less than in Ulster, where, as is well known, there
is the largest infusion of non-Celtic blood.

In an essay on crime in England and Ireland it is only right
to note the wide prominence given by the English press to ac-
counts of Irish outrages and crime — accounts which editors have
not hesitated to insert, whilst they have refused to publish the
contradictions that have been sent them. Not once or twice but
many times during the past twelve months the writer of this ar-
ticle felt it his duty to call attention to gross exaggerations and
actual misstatements that appeared in English papers regard-
ing Irish crime, but, with very few exceptions, insertion was not
given to his letters. It frequently happens, moreover, that when
denials are inserted leading articles appear neutralizing the de-
nial ; thus, an Irish landlord who wrote to a " society " paper to
contradict a report that he was in bodily fear of his life, and who
said he had always lived most happily with his tenants, was told
that he was an exception, not to the general rule, but to the inva-
riable rule ; and it was added,* with a sneer of contempt, that
such tenants were not to be found in all Ireland. The writer of
the article had probably never visited Ireland, or, if he had, knew

* The Case of Ireland Stated. By M. F. Cusack, the Nun of Kenmare.

1 88 1.] IRISH AND ENGLISH CRIME. 15

nothing whatever of the relations between Irish landlords and
tenants.

Happily for Ireland, however, there have always been a few
noble exceptions — men who have not hesitated to attribute the
faults of Irishmen more to bad legislation and bad government
than to any inherent viciousness of the people. Sydney Smith,
in an article in the Edinburgh Review in the year 1820, nine years
before Catholic Emancipation had been granted, wrote as follows :

"The consequence of the long mismanagement and oppression of Ire-
land, and of the singular circumstances in which it is placed, is that it is a
semi-barbarous country — more shame to those who have thus ill-treated a
fine country and fine people ; but it is part of the present case of Ireland.
. . . Want of unity in feeling and interest among the people, irritability, vio-
lence, and revenge, habitual disobedience to the law, want of confidence in
magistrates, corruption, venality, etc., etc., all carry back the observer to
that remote and early condition of mankind which an Englishman can
learn only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw
this picture for censure but for truth. We admire the Irish, feel the most
sincere pity for the state of Ireland, and think the conduct of the English
to that country to have been a system of atrocious cruelty and contempti-
ble meanness."

And in another essay in the same Review, written in the year
1827, he says :

"The Irish were quiet under the severe code of Queen Anne ; so the
half-murdered man left on the ground bleeding by thieves is quiet, and he
only moans and cries for help as he recovers."

We give these quotations, not because we are prepared to
substantiate them, but to point out how an unprejudiced Eng-
lishman regarded the question of crime in Ireland, and to
strengthen our argument that the amount of crime is largely and
principally due to misgovernment. It is scarcely an exaggera-
tion to say that for two hundred years each successive ministry
sought to rival its predecessor in cruelty and brutality to the
Irish people, and thus gave a direct impetus to the existence of
those characteristics of crime which a sentimental public at the
present day so loudly condemn. The history of the last fifty
years has been to reverse such a disastrous policy, and we trust
that Ireland may yet receive her just reward.

16 » THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hahn-Hakn, by Mary H. A. Allies.

PART I.— EARLY YOUTH.

CHAPTER I.

THE THIRTEENTH OF OCTOBER, 1858.

TEN o'clock struck. It was a stormy night. The wind sighed
and moaned, the rain fell in loud and heavy drops from the dark
sky above, but the noisy whistle which announced the arrival of
a train overpowered the voice of the raging elements, and the
train rolled slowly into the brilliantly-lighted station. The guards
opened the carriages ; out tumbled the travellers, and then be-
gan the thickly-packed crowd, the pushing, squeezing, searching,
calling, and moving- about which always follow upon the arrival
at its destination of a train from a distance, and which are ex-
ceedingly aggravated when its destination is the capital and the
hour of its arrival the evening. In the midst of a general con-
fusion, in which people have no eyes for their neighbors, except
it be to seek out their own party or acquaintances in the crowd,
a young person suitably but quietly dressed escaped observation.
She was standing on the platform and calling out from time to
time into the busy hum the words " Miss Sylvia." No notice
was vouchsafed to her appeal, till at last a guard came up to her
and said in a grumbling tone :

" Now, then, miss, what's all this noise about ? Stand out of
the way."

" Don't, Mr. Guard," she replied in a tone which asked for
sufferance. " I am here to meet a lady whom I don't know at
all, and who doesn't know me, for she is coming from a dis-
tance."

" So you stand there and make that noise? There's no sense
in it."

" Very much, Mr. Guard ; for who is likely to be called * Syl-
via ' here ? Nobody. So I call out Miss Sylvia and think that
she will hear me in the end."

" As the lady comes from a distance, she will have luggage

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 17

and be over there where it is taken out. If you go there you
will be sure to find her."

" Thank you," she replied, and she hurried in the given di-
rection till she came upon a compact mass of people who were
eagerly trying to secure their boxes, trunks, portmanteaus, band-
boxes, and travelling-bags.

Again she called out " Miss Sylvia," and this time she fol-
lowed up the words by an exclamation of joyful surprise, for she
discovered a young lady who was looking about her in bewilder-
ment. She was dressed entirely in black and seemed tired and
done up, as if she had had a hard day's journey.

" I wonder whether you are ' Miss Sylvia,' niece to Mr.
Privy Counsellor Prost ? If you are I am here to fetch you. "

" I am," rejoined the young lady.

" Quick with your luggage ticket. What have you ? Two
boxes. Wait here and look after your purse, bag, and umbrella.
There are all kinds of people about."

A few minutes later Sylvia was sitting next to her active com-
panion in the carriage which had been waiting, and driving
through the bright and dazzling streets to Herr Prost's house.

" Are you my aunt's maid ? " she asked timidly.

" Not maid," was the answer. " Mile. Victoire is your aunt's
maid, and Mile. Josephine, a real Parisian, is maid to the two
young ladies. I am the wardrobe-keeper, or, if you like, third
lady's maid."

" And what is your name ? "

" My name is Bertha, if you please — Bertha Lindner — -and I
belong to this place."

" I am very much obliged to you, Bertha, for taking so much
trouble for me. How glad I was when you found me out ! It
is so horrid to arrive at a crowded station late in the evening."

" To be sure, such business does not belong to my work," an-
swered Bertha somewhat condescendingly. " On an ordinary
day a servant in livery would have gone to fetch you. But to-
day there is a grand dinner in honor of Miss Valentine's engage-
ment, so no servant could leave home."

" Grand dinner ! Oh ! dear, and must I go into that ? " asked
Sylvia in a fright.

" Make yourself easy, miss," replied Bertha in a patronizing
tone. " Your aunt gave orders that you should be taken direct-
ly to your room and go to bed, if you like."

" Whom is my cousin engaged to ? " asked Sylvia, set at ease
by this information.

VOL. XXXIV.— 2

1 8 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

" To an immensely rich Herr Goldisch, from Hamburg."

" Goldisch ? Doesn't that sound like a Jewish name ? " said
Sylvia simply.

" I beg your pardon, miss ; it sounds English. Herr Gold-
isch is really English by birth, and Miss Valentine has al-
ready said that she will always write Goldish without the c ;
then nobody can doubt about its being English. For the matter
of that, Jews are human beings, and often very rich ones."

Sylvia had nothing to say to this. " But I am surprised,"
she remarked, " at a grand dinner on a Friday."

" Do you, then, look upon Friday as an unlucky day, like Jose-
phine ?" asked Bertha with some compassion. "/ don't. But I
must say that I think the number 13 is unlucky, and it makes us
very unhappy that the engagement is kept to-day ; Josephine dis-
likes it because it is Friday, and I because it is the I3th of Octo-
ber. Yes, indeed, miss, I must tell you that I felt quite a turn
when I saw ' No. 13' on your boxes. You come to the house
with 'No. 13'; that is very unfortunate for you and means
nothing good. Date and luggage agree."

Before Sylvia had time to give a reassuring answer the car-
riage drew up before a large house whose entrance and first
story were brilliantly lighted up. The concierge in livery receiv-
ed Sylvia with a majestical respect ; men were at hand to carry
the luggage, and Bertha led the young girl up a back staircase to
the room prepared for her.

" Oh ! how pretty," Sylvia cried out in joyful surprise as she
walked in and set herself down comfortably on the luxurious chaise-
longue. And certainly the room deserved her exclamation. It was
rather low, being on the entresol, but, combined with the hospita-
ble lamp, the cheerful fire, the delicate perfume of vanilla suffused
by pastilles, this served rather to increase the feeling of comfort.
Besides comfort an atmosphere of elegant cosiness was furthered by
white portieres set off with small bouquets of roses, rich curtains,
lined with corresponding pink calico, to windows and alcove, a
downy carpet, a large mirror, and costly furniture. The con-
trast between the raw, gray, damp journey and the room hence-
forth to be hers, where all was light, warm, and downy, acted so
powerfully on Sylvia that, after the first impulse of pleased sur-
prise, she fell to weeping.

In the meantime Bertha had drawn back the curtains from
the alcove, put some wood on the fire, and looked to see if the
windows were fast closed behind their curtains. At last she said
consolingly : " Don't cry, miss. It is indeed very sad to be an

iSSi.j THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 19

orphan, but look how pretty everything is here, all white and pink.
Isn't the border of the dressing-table beautiful ? And just look
how comfortable these two cupboards in the alcove are. But
now you must be hungry. I will go and fetch you some roast
meat, or cutlet, or whatever else the cook has, in no time."

" I only want some tea," said Sylvia, struggling to steady her
voice.

" No, miss, that won't do. You must eat some meat after
your long journey, or you will be tired out."

" No, thank you, Bertha. On Friday Catholics mayn't eat
meat."

" My goodness, miss ! you are just such a Catholic as Mile.
Victoire," rejoined Bertha, quite perturbed. "I didn't know it.
I will see about the tea."

She went off busily, and Sylvia remained alone. Alone she
was in the bustling town, in the large house, in her pretty room
— quite alone. The consciousness of her lonely position pressed
upon her heart like a dead weight, and she was torn by sharp
homesickness.

But whither would her homesickness have led her? What
could her native place offer her ? What had she in the small
town where she was born and where her parents had lived?
Five graves — nothing more. She had no home. But there were
her childhood's playmates, her guardian, well-known faces — alto-
gether a dear spot ; and Sylvia wished for a pair of wings to fly
out of the charming pink and white room to the very ordinary
apartment she had lately been sharing with her guardian's three
daughters. Above her on the first floor she heard the hum of
voices, the coming and going of people, the scraping of chairs,
suggestive of a large party. Everywhere there was movement,
everywhere people — in the courtyard, in the streets, in the house
— and she, as it were between the inner and outer world, was
alone. If she might only have seen her aunt for a minute and
been allowed to kiss her, or if her aunt had only come to her or
sent for her to give her a quiet welcome ! Her heart beat as the
door opened, poor child ! It was Bertha.

" Here, miss, I bring you something to eat: tea, boiled eggs,
preserved fruits, cream, and pastry. Now try to enjoy it," said
Bertha, as she spread the things out in their nice order. " I am
sure you must be dreadfully tired, coming from the other side of
the Rhine at one stroke. But it must be fearfully dull to live so
very far from our beautiful capital."

" I have not found it so," replied Sylvia.

20 ' THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

" But were there a theatre, and opera, and ballet there, and
gas-lights and wonderful shops, and such things inside, too ? "

Sylvia was obliged to own that there was no one of these
things in her native place.

" Then, indeed, miss, you will see wonderful things here and
learn to enjoy your life," said Bertha with deep conviction.

But her loquacity did not prevent her from attending to
Sylvia, who said, quite comforted : " Many thanks, Bertha. I give
you too much trouble. I can do this very well myself. But do
.tell me who is next door."

" Miss Isidora. Then comes Miss Wilmot with little Harry,
then Frau Roll, the housekeeper, then we ladies' maids, then there
are bath and wash-rooms. That takes up the entresol. On the
ground floor there are your uncle's rooms and office ; on the
first floor there are your aunt's rooms and reception-rooms ; on
the second floor there are the young gentlemen and spare rooms.
Miss Valentine used to sleep in this room, but now she has got
one next to her mamma, because she thought Mr. Goldisch's bride
ought to have silk furniture and hangings, and not remain on the
entresol any longer. And Miss Valentine always gets her way."

When Sylvia was alone she took a prayer-book out of her
bag and ran her eyes along the room and alcoves. However,
she did not find what she sought. There were no signs of cruci-
fix, religious picture, or holy-water stoup. She took out a small
silver crucifix which her mother had always worn, put the tea-tray
on one side of the dressing-table, and her prayer-book and crucifix
on the other, and said to herself, quite pleased, " This will do for
a little altar." Then she knelt down devoutly to say her night
prayers.

CHAPTER II.

A FORLORN ORPHAN.

THE young girl who arrived so quietly at Herr Frost's stir-
ring house was called Sylvia von Neheirn. Frau Frost was her
mother's sister. These two sisters had had a very different lot, and
their paths had led far apart from each other. Both were yery
beautiful, but looks were their only dowry, as the former renown
of an ancient lineage had long since died out and given way to the
most modest circumstances. After an eight years' engagement
the elder sister married Herr von Neheim, who, as poor as she

1 88 ij THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 21

herself, had only then succeeded in finding a government ap-
pointment with a salary sufficient to marry upon. As it was it
was scanty enough, and it became still further reduced by debts
which had to be discharged. He had gone through all his
studies and the dreary years which aspirants to state service
without a fortune have to encounter. Had it not been for Frau
von Neheim's extraordinary frugality and activity the little
household would soon have fallen into the greatest confusion ;
but, energetic as she was, with sound heart and head, she kept the
fragile boat which carried her life's happiness above water, and
bore with her hypochondriacal, fitful, yet worthy husband with a
persevering tenderness astonishing to all the world, and which
furnished another proof of the insoluble problem how it not un-
frequently happens that in marriage the most lovable part loves
more than it is loved. Sylvia was the first child of this marriage.
Five years before Sylvia's birth Frau von Neheim's young-
est sister had already married Herr Prost, who at thirty-two,
dazzled and charmed by her beauty, for the first time in his
life forbore to make a profitable speculation. He met her and
her mother by chance as he was staying with some friends in the
country, with whom he had purposed to spend only one day.
But he remained eight days, and at the end of that time he was
engaged. Four weeks later he was married and on the way to
Paris with his young wife. There he spent some years in com-
munication with the largest business houses. He had a wonder-
ful talent at once for seizing favorable conjunctures and for turn-
ing the largest penny by them. On going to Paris he owned a
considerable inherited fortune, and there his speculations, always
fortunate, were sometimes brilliant. In this way he increased it
notably, and by degrees he became a very rich man, then a mil-
lionaire. As yet he had not lived up to his wealth. He was of
opinion that he must increase his principal before he could play
tricks with it. Then came the year 1848. The revolutions which
were the order of the day in Europe generally, and which dis-
placed so many of its great people, so far from affecting him pre-
judicially, brought him an advantageous change. He got a letter
from his native town, the capital, telling him of the bankruptcy
of one of the largest firms, that a beautiful house was to be sold
for a mere song, that the expectations of the liberal party were
high, and that the time was favorable for a return to his own
country. As soon as Herr Prost had ascertained the truth of
this information he took his wife and children to Ems and went
to the capital to .see about his house. His wife had wished for

22 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

the stay at Ems because Herr and Frau von Neheim were there
for the waters.

The sisters had not seen each other for thirteen years. Dur-
ing all that time the one had not left Paris and its neighborhood,
and the other had not moved from her small town on the hazel
banks of the Moselle. The one, with her four children and as
many servants, abounded in Parisian elegance and English com-
fort ; the other was single-handed at Ems with her husband and
little girl of eight, and had been obliged to leave her three little
boys behind her at home under the charge of a trustworthy
nurse. One was so pretty, so fresh, and so blooming that nobody
would have thought her thirty-two, whilst the other sister was
taken to be ten years older than she really was. The one had
never been aroused from her apathy by any disturbing or un-
comfortable occurrence; the other, with her heroic spirit, had
lived in the midst of a thousand cares for the present and the fu-
ture. But in spite of all outward and inward want of resem-
blance the sisters were fond of each other and were pleased to be
together. Not so Herr von Neheim and Herr Prost. The two
brothers-in-law took entirely opposite views in politics. Herr
von Neheim was one of those conservatives who see the saving
of the world in leaving respected dust on respected deeds. Herr
Prost was a liberal of the stamp described by Eulenspiegel's say-
ing : " Give me yours ; I mean to keep what is mine." As long
as Herr Prost stayed at Ems Herr von Neheim used to tell his
wife that he must give up the Cur, as it did him harm on account
of the unceasing worry of his brother-in-law's arguments ; but
when he was gone the hypochondriacal and peevish man began
to complain of his sister-in-law. He called her purse-proud and
ostentatious, and, whilst Frau von Neheim's unselfishness did not
grudge her sister one of the comforts of her riches, he could not
resist many little innuendoes on the uneven division of temporal
goods. His wife had so accustomed him to be the central figure,
the pivot, that when Frau Prost, without making any secret of
it, laid claim to the same position he took mortal offence and
thought her preposterously selfish. Herr Prost left his wife free
as to the children, the household, the daily life with its require-
ments and amusements ; she was entire mistress, and she de-
manded to be such. She did not care to be initiated into his
speculations and combinations, or even to cast a furtive glance
at his money concerns. It would have appealed to her power
of endurance, and she was no friend to endurance of any kind.
With her things must be smoothly and leisurely done. Like a

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 23

ball wrapped up in velvet and silk she rolled over the soft
carpet of her life's course. That such a woman should have
neither the inclination nor the habit of thinking of others ought
to have estranged no one, except, indeed, a brother-in-law of
Herr von Neheim's character. Every day discord was at
work, though, to be sure, it preyed upon nothing more serious
than a drive one day or a donkey party the next — small things
which simply aroused much astonishment in Frau Frost's mind.
But they were quite enough to upset Herr von Neheim, and he
was glad when his stay at Ems came to an end. Frau Prost,
who had gone to Ems only for her sister's sake, betook herself
to a rented country-house in Rheingau for the late summer, and
invited Frau von Neheim to visit her there.

" And what is to become of our children ? " asked Herr von
Neheim peevishly.

" Why, Clara will bring them," said Frau Prost.

"And what am I to do?" he exclaimed in the same tone.

" Well, you will come with Clara, I imagine."

" And my deeds?" he said with increasing impetuosity.

" You can bring them with you, too," she said peaceably.

" And my sessions, too? No, this won't do," he blurted out.

" You won't let me put a word in," said Frau von Neheim,
laughing, " or I should have declined your kind invitation at once,
dear Teresa, as we are not easily moved."

Thereupon Frau Prost was satisfied, and the sisters parted
never to meet again.

Frau Prost went from her villeggiatura at Eltville to her
beautiful town-residence, and Frau von Neheim returned to her
modest housekeeping. A life of luxury, expenditure, and enter-
tainment on the largest scale began for Frau Prost, but sorrow
followed upon sorrow for Frau von Neheim, who lost her three
sons in the course of time. Then she herself began to ail, and
when Sylvia was scarcely seventeen years old the poor mother
died. This was too much for Herr von Neheim. Only then he
found out what he had lost in her and how much he had loved her.
His fancifulnes's had clouded over his affection ; but now that this
crowning grief, following upon his earlier bereavements, absorbed
his whims and caprices, he realized for the first time what his
love had been. He was inconsolable, and in his selfishness he
chose to be inconsolable.

Sylvia had a dreary life all alone with her father, whom, on
account of his uncertain temper, she had always rather feared
than lovecL Frau von Neheim would say to her children :

24 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

" Poor papa has a headache and is tired with his work, so
you mustn't bother him on any account. When you see him you
mustn't squabble, or call out, or talk so much." The children
would obey their kind and loving mother, feeling- very sorry for
" poor papa," and they would hush their talk when he came in,
and be shy before him. They were glad to break loose from him,
because he frightened away their childish pleasure. Although
as Sylvia grew older, and her mother encouraged her to more
freedom, she got a little more accustomed to him, yet she never
felt quite herself with her father. And when, after her mother's
death, she saw how he shut himself up in his grief, she fell back
again into the old shyness, which at times became an overpower-
ing constraint. But even in his sorrow he wras faithful to his
methodical habits, so that Sylvia saw him only at meal-time and
during the walk which she had been used to take with him for
several years. Generally his conversation with her then amounted
to two or three remarks about the weather or some household
matter, but sometimes he would bitterly complain of his disappoint-
ed life, of his toiling, poverty-stricken youth, of the long years
during which his promised bride had waited for him in her
bloom, of his small means, of the ill-health which had hindered
him from getting on in his career, and of the consequent cares
which had been so many nails, perhaps, in his dear wife's coffin.
What could Sylvia answer ? God rules over such circumstances,
and she felt it, but she never even dreamed of saying it in so
many words. Sometimes she would cry over her poor father's
troubles, and sometimes she would answer that this and that had
not seemed so very hard to her mother.

" Yes, your mother was an angel," Herr von Neheim would
say ; " but, I repeat it, she would be living now if her life had
been less hard and troubled."

" Let us hope that she is now in heaven," Sylvia would an-
swer softly.

" And that I may soon be with her," Herr von Neheim would
add, not considering the poor child's feelings ; for although he
was a Catholic in belief, he wanted that spirit of faith which puts
us on our guard against self-seeking. Suffice it to say that his
health went from bad to worse, and ten months after his wife's
death he was laid beside her in the peaceful churchyard, and
Sylvia was an orphan in the midst of five green mounds of earth.
What was to become of her ? She did not know. An old col-
lege friend of her father's, Herr von Lehrbach, was her guardian,
and he undertook to ask Frau Prost if she had any wish about

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 25

Fraulein von Neheim, or whether she were disposed to do any-
thing for her. There could be no question of provision, as all his
ward's fortune consisted in the sale of furniture and household
goods. Frau Prost answered that she would be very much pleas-
ed to have her niece to live with her, but that she would not
be at home before October, on account of taking the waters, and
that till then she begged Herr von Lehrbach to provide for
Sylvia at her expense. He was quite relieved to have thus se-
cured her future, and took her into his own house for the time,
where she was treated like a sister by his daughters, formerly her
childhood's playmates, now her friends. In the meantime he saw
after Herr von Neheim's affairs, and thought himself fortunate
to be able to scrape together about two thousand guilders for
Sylvia.

Although in mourning for her father, Sylvia could not help,
feeling quite at home in her guardian's house. It was a pleasant,
simple, cheerful family life, composed of father and mother, three
grown-up daughters, and two sons, one the eldest and one the
youngest. From a home always quiet, but which had become a
dreary solitude since her mother's death, Sylvia found herself all
at once in the midst of a freshness and youth altogether sympathetic
to her age. She wondered at her own spirits, but she could not
keep them under control. At times she was still cast down, and
then she would cry about her father and mother and her orphan-
hood ; but Frau von Lehrbach's tender and earnest words of con-
solation dried her tears, though she knew not how. She would
have been only too well pleased to stay in the happy home, and
Herr and Frau von Lehrbach would have been glad to keep her
there ; but out of regard for Sylvia's future they felt that her go-
ing to her aunt was absolutely necessary. Sylvia knew her aunt
only through the visit to Ems ten years back, and her memory
was somewhat hazy on the subject. On the other hand, she had
a lively remembrance of her continual bickerings with her cousin
Valentine, who, a year older than she, had much nicer clothes
and spoke French with more ease than German, and thought her-
self thereby authorized to order Sylvia about, which Sylvia much
objected to, so that the two cousins were on much the same
terms as Herr von Neheim and Herr Prost. This made her a
little anxious, and the impression was fostered by her father's
never having mentioned Herr and Frau Prost without a touch of
bitterness. Herr Prost's influence and importance grew with his
riches : he became Geheime-Commerzienrath ; half a dozen orders
decorated his breast ; as the possessor of money and lands he sat

26 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

in the Pairskammer in a double capacity ; and if he was not raised
to the rank of a nobleman it was his own fault. In case of his
death he foresaw that his children would be " poor beggars of
barons," as he expressed it ; when he should have provided a
millionaire's portion for each, and thus ensured the feathers for
their nests, then he might think about a title. Herr von Neheim
had great contempt for this rise due to money-making. To his
mind the incomparable parchment was the only way to honors
and dignity, and sterling qualities were depreciated in the dis-
tinctions apt to be bestowed by princes on lucky speculators, and
which are due to merit alone. If he was not wrong as to the
latter point he was much mistaken in making merit and a paper
pedigree all one. In short, he felt his family and position, and
indirectly his own person, aggrieved by Herr Prost, and all his
wife's efforts to bring him to a charitable state of mind had been
useless.

Sylvia had overheard similar conversations too often not to
be influenced by them, and, as it happened that her father's view
corresponded with her own impression of Valentine, she was
more disposed to side with him than with her mother in the mat-
ter. And now she was to go to these very people as a poor,
almost friendless, orphan. For a whole week before her departure
she cried all night long, and looked so pale and wretched that
Frau von Lehrbach, in great anxiety, expressed her fears to her
husband that Sylvia's homesickness would be too much for her.
But he answered : " She positively must go to her aunt's. If she
can't bear it when she gets there, and they will let us have her
back, then let her come by all means ; I have nothing against it.
But she must try it, because these people don't know us, and they
might think we wanted to keep Sylvia on account of the money
they pay for her."

Thus it was that with bitter tears Sylvia went off as soon as
October came and a fitting opportunity could be found in the
shape of a lady who was going as far as the station before the
capital. Frau Prost was apprised by telegram of the day and
hour of Sylvia's arrival, and on Friday, the i$th of October, 1858,
a date which Bertha Lindner considered doubly unlucky, Sylvia,
quiet and unnoticed, took up her abode in her aunt's house.

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 27

CHAPTER III.

DIAMONDS AND RELATIVES.

WHEN, on the following morning, Bertha noiselessly entered
Sylvia's room, she exclaimed in amazement: " What ! already up,
miss, and dressed and unpacked ? Why, I thought you would
have slept till twelve o'clock."

" No," said Sylvia, " I am not accustomed to that. And now
I should like to go to Mass."

" You really can't, miss. Mile. Victoire has been back from
Mass some time, and no one else goes to church of a week-day.
On Sunday they all drive there at eleven, and to-morrow is Sun-
day. What can I bring you now ? What will you have — cocoa,
coffee, tea, or chocolate?"

" Couldn't I breakfast with my cousins ? " asked Sylvia.

" It isn't the custom here, miss," said Bertha in the tone
of one who gives information. " The master and mistress and
young ladies and gentlemen all meet at twelve o'clock for the
second breakfast, which they take together. But the first thing
in the morning everybody takes whatever they like whenever
they like."

Sylvia gave way to the established custom and thought with a
heavy heart of the comfortable round breakfast-table in the Lehr-
bachs' house. Somehow then her beautiful room charmed her
less than on the previous evening. She went on with her unpack-
ing, putting the things away in the drawers and wardrobes, whilst
Bertha lent her a helpful hand. At last Bertha asked : " Is that
all ? "

" Yes," answered Sylvia, somewhat ashamed. " I have been a
year in mourning for my mother, and shall be nearly another for
my father ; and in mourning you don't want many clothes."

" Two whole years in black !" exclaimed Bertha, disgusted.
"We have no such custom here. Mourning is worn for six
weeks. What would the shop people do with all their pretty
things, if people wore mourning for years ? "

" Pretty things belong to gay, happy people," answered Syl-
via, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks.

"O miss ! you will be so happy and so gay here," said Ber-
tha consolingly. Then she flew away, and soon came back with
Sylvia's breakfast.

" Isn't this a lovely service, miss ? " she began. " It matches

28 9 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

your room and is of little roses. Wherever you look here you
see roses." But in spite of the roses on hangings, papering, and
china, Sylvia was sad.

Then a knock was heard at the door, and scarcely had Sylvia
time to say, " Come in," when a girl ran into the room, gave Syl-
via a hug, and said :

" So here you are ! I am so glad, and so glad, too, that you
are going to stay. I am Isidora. We are going to be very, very
great friends, aren't we ? "

" Indeed we are," said Sylvia warmly.

" How do you like your room ? Isn't it too pretty ? Can you
understand Valentine's not finding it elegant enough ? But your
blotting-book there is very old ; it spoils the look of the nice writ-
ing-table. I will give you another one."

" No, please don't," exclaimed Sylvia. " It was my poor
mother's blotting-book, so I like to use it on her account."

" Well, at least put it inside, so that it mayn't be seen," replied
Isidora, who carried out her own advice before Sylvia could stop
her.

Another knock was heard at the door. Mile. Victoire appear-
ed. She came to inquire after Sylvia and to fetch her- to her
aunt. But as Mile. Victoire spoke French with her soft, short,
Parisian accent, whereas Sylvia was accustomed only to the hard
French of the Rhine, she was obliged to think twice if she had
understood correctly, and Isidora had time to ask laughingly,
" Can't you speak French ? "

" It seems I can't," said Sylvia somewhat impatiently, whilst
Isidora took her by the arm upstairs to Frau Prost.

Sylvia had never before been in a really large and fashionable
house. Everything seemed to her regal in its magnificence, from
the carpet on the stairs, the waxed floors, the large panes of glass,
to the luxurious furniture, pictures, and mirrors in massive gold
frames. She felt that she was a stranger in the midst of all these
splendors, and she was frightened and constrained as she entered
her aunt's room.

Frau Geheime-Commerzienrath Prost — or, as she styled her-
self for short, Frau Geheimrathin* — was still a very pretty woman,
with delicately carved features, rich flaxen hair, and a dazzling
complexion. Except for the departed freshness of early youth,
and a portliness which does not generally belong to it, she might
well have held her own among youthful beauties. Her face ex-
pressed a kindly repose. She looked as if she were preserved in

* We shall drop this Germanism in the narrative.

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 29

easy-goingness, and as if nothing by any possibility could act
upon her as a disturbing element. You would have said that she
was perfectly satisfied with herself and with everything and
everybody belonging to her, and that she would allow absolutely
nothing to come between her and her comfortable equilibrium of
mind.

" Come here, my love," she said kindly, and drew Sylvia
towards her on the chaise-longue. " Sit down by me. Don't cry.
You shall be like my own child — quite my third daughter. What
would you like to do best ? Would you like to see my dia-
monds ? It will amuse you, won't it? It kills time very plea-
santly. Afterwards we will talk about your dress. Of course
your poor father never troubled himself about it. We will see
about it, won't we, love ? Isidora, go and call your sister. Val-
entine and Sylvia must renew each other's acquaintance."

Frau Prost got up, opened the double lock of a magnificent
case of vieux lacque, pressed a secret door, and took out a crystal
drawer lined with dark crimson velvet. Rows of pearls of various
sizes and a mass of ornaments stood out beautifully on the vel-
vet, but vanished like stars before the sun as she opened a sec-
ond drawer in which lay her diamonds and precious stones on
black velvet. As she displayed her treasures she told Sylvia
when her husband had given them to her and upon what festive
occasions she had worn them. Sylvia was so taken up in admir-
ing that she was positively glad when Isidora appeared, saying :

" Valentine cannot possibly come now, for she is writing to
Goldisch."

" Very well," said Frau Prost abstractedly, whilst she went on
to tell her niece the names of the different stones and their his-
tory. Isidora betook herself to her own concerns, but Mile. Vic-
toire came in, and Frau Prost roused herself, saying to Sylvia :

" Keep to my jewels, love."

Then she went back to her chaise-longue and began to busy
herself with dress matters till Mile. Victoire was relieved by that
equally important individual, the housekeeper, and the house-
keeper in her turn by the butl'er, after whom appeared the super-
lative degree of importance, the chef. Frau Prost had something
to say to each of them, and something particular. She was an
intelligent mistress, well versed in the machinery of her house.
She saw to its daily regularity, and consequently had daily inter-
views with its four pillars. She had her say either in praise or
blame ; she ordered this or that, and decided things herself —
duties which she discharged coolly enough, but not without

30 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

shrewdness and determination. Her natural turn and her home-
ly education gave her much cleverness in this department — a
talent which no one appreciated more than her husband. He
boasted that his household was excellently, nay, perfectly man-
aged, and that he was not bothered with its details.

Time went by. Sylvia was still sitting before the diamonds.
One quarter of an hour passed after the other. Her aunt paid
no attention to her ; her cousins kept away. She began to find it
very stupid, and then she grew very sad. What was it to her to
sit before jewels which were laid on crimson damask, or to let
her feet sink on a Smyrna carpet ? She was alone, and the feel-
ing of loneliness pressed on her heart. She stared at the dia-
monds without seeing them, and her thoughts flew away to her
far-off home.

" Sylvia, my love, are you still there ? " said her aunt all at
once when the chef had gone. " That is just what I want. You
shall be my little secretary. Valentine used to be, but now that
she is engaged she spends all the morning writing to Goldisch,
although she sees him every evening. Now, you shall take her
place. Sit down at the table, love, and write what I dictate."

Sylvia obeyed, quite pleased to have something to do, and her
aunt told her how to word a note, in which she made over her
box at the opera that evening to a fashionable lady.

" We are not going to the theatre to-night," said Frau Prost
to Sylvia, " for Valentine thinks we have seen the piece already
about fifty times. I have been so immensely to the theatre in my
life that one thing is the same as the other to me. It seems to
me always a farce, only in one there is singing, in another danc-
ing, in a third talking. One is as stupid as the other."

" Stupid ! " cried out Sylvia in utter amazement. " Why, Aunt
Teresa, I thought it was something quite wonderful."

" Oh ! yes, that is what all young people think," said her aunt
kindly. " It is one of their favorite pleasures, and I don't grudge
it to them. But when one has been to the theatre for twenty
years one begins to be a little weary of it."

It struck twelve, and hardly had the last stroke died away
when the doors opened right and left and all the family came in :
Herr Prost with Aurel, the eldest son ; the two daughters ; the
tutor with Edgar, his pupil of eleven ; and Miss Wilmot with
little Harry, who was only five. Thus it was at long intervals',
that Frau Prost, who never hurried or tired herself, had had her
children.

" Why, here is Sylvia," said Herr Prost, surveying his shy

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 31

niece with his dark, shrewd eye, and kissing her on the fore-
head. " You ought to have been called fairy."

Then he kissed his daughters, who wished him good-morning,
and Aurel, in shaking Sylvia's hand, asked her if she remembered
him from ten years ago. She said warmly that she did. Valen-
tine's greeting was cold and constrained ; Edgar took small no-
tice of her, and Harry none at all. They all went into the din-
ing-room. The talk was of all manner of things and people.
Sylvia found herself in quite a strange world which offered no
point of sympathy with her past. Suddenly Herr Prost exclaim-
ed : " Sylvia, my little fairy, mark what I say. You must put
aside your mourning. You may wear a black silk gown for a
fortnight, but longer I will not have that frightful black before
my eyes. At the end of the fortnight you must put on colors
like your cousins. It shall not be said that you are our Cinde-
rella."

He did not mean to be unkind, but his voice had a harshness
about it which said plainly that he was accustomed to blind obe-
dience. His very features and expression denoted the same hard-
and-fast determination, and his whole being was imperious. The
.stern expression disappeared only when he was in a particularly
good temper, and even then it did not give way to anything more
attractive. Sylvia did not dream of opposition, but she blushed
because she was conscious of wounded feelings.

" You need not mind about your clothes, my love," said her
aunt, upon whom the blush was not lost, but who saw in it a dif-
ferent cause. " I will undertake everything."

This was meant kindly, but it did not in the least lessen the
sense of humiliation which pressed upon Sylvia. She sat there,
silent and quiet, wishing herself away, if only it might have been
under the Lehrbachs' homely roof instead of with strange peo-
ple who had no right to order things of her that wounded her
feelings.

Luncheon was over in half an hour. Herr Prost went back
to his office with Aurel. Edgar with his tutor, and Harry with
Miss Wilmot, betook themselves to their daily constitutional.
Valentine and Isidora followed Frau Prost, and so did Sylvia.
Then began an interminable chatter between mother and daugh-
ters. First of all they talked of the dresses which they were to
wear at their three-o'clock drive, and from that they turned to
their 'evening toilets, and then matters appertaining to Valentine's
trousseau were discussed.

Frau Prost's good looks had descended to her sons. The

32 * THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

daughters were like their father, with his dark hair and eyes, but
without his penetrating expression. Valentine had that sort of
indolent mannerism which belongs to young people who are vain
or have not much sense ; their pretensions are too great for their
nature, therefore they are simply silly. Development might
still do much for Isidora, who was only sixteen and had not
made her appearance in society ; but as yet; with her sharp fea-
tures and her hard expression, she was even less good-looking
than Valentine. Neither of them had managed to learn much,
.still less had they any desire to learn. They spoke English and
French perfectly, and that was quite enough for them. Any sort
of mental effort implied discomfort, and, as true daughters of their
mother, they made a point of avoiding discomfort. Any fancy
work which was fashionable at the time supplied the sisters with
a chief and favorite occupation during their home hours. Valen-
tine was allowed to read novels — a privilege not as yet extended
to Isidora, who made up for it by quietly taking off to her room
and studying the pages of numberless newspapers which she
found lying about in the drawing-room or in her mother's rooms.
This was the only reading she had ever taken to kindly. Frau
Prost did not observe her daughters' want of education. Could
they not write her notes in three languages, and, when
they felt so inclined, read books in three languages ? That
was enough for her and for them. Their father had never
troubled himself about their bringing-up. He thought deep
study exceedingly unnecessary for girls. If they knew how
to behave themselves and how to converse in a drawing-
room, and if they could ride and dance well, they did not need
other qualifications, in his opinion, for he would never have
thought of discussing serious topics with a woman. If in society
he ever happened to address his small talk to one who showed
signs of culture, he condemned her as pretentious and tiresome.
But although he contented himself with the three-language sys-
tem as representing his daughters' intellectual acquirements, he
could have wished them to have musical talents, because music is
a drawing-room accomplishment. However, Valentine's strum-
ming was out of the question, and Isidora had quite given up the
piano.. But he took consolation over their shortcomings. His
money had a far more delicious ring in his ears than the music-
making of all the virtuosi in Europe, and he knew that other
people's ears were similarly constituted. He would much rather
his daughters had their mother's domestic turn, for that is of
practical use under the most favorable circumstances. Order,

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 33

regularity, and the well-measured swing of a large establishment,
both in detail and as a whole, are produced by such a taste. Un-
fortunately, his daughters showed no aptitude in this direction.
Once he said impatiently to Valentine : " Do you suppose life is
a kind of fairy-land, where you have nothing to do but open your
mouth to catch roast pigeons ? "

" Up till now, papa, this has been very much the case, and I
don't see why it shouldn't be/' she answered.

" I only hope her husband will teach her what she ought to
know in his interests," muttered Herr Prost to himself. " My wife
herself has learnt a great deal in this matter." He forgot to reckon
his wife's bringing-up in very narrow circumstances, and her small
pretensions and modest, or at least unextravagant, habits in con-
sequence, and that his daughters had his very luxury to thank for
their indolence. In any matter which touched her vanity Valen-
tine showed the liveliest interest, and this was apparent in the
talk with her mother, to which Sylvia listened in silence, and to
which Isidora contributed her word. As Frau Prost went to
work in a very leisurely manner, and took time to consider every-
thing she did, she spent hours in deciding what might have been
settled in a few minutes. She was very punctual in duties which
were part of family life, but between whiles she was altogether
wasteful of time. Consequently she never got through the day's
programme, and, being thus always behindhand, she fancied her-
self overpowered with business, without for that reason ever
allowing herself to be hurried beyond her leisurely pace.

A servant came in with an enormous bouquet of beautiful
flowers for Valentine from Herr Goldisch, who sent to ask after
her. Valentine flew to her room, brought back a note already
written, and gave it to the servant as her answer.

" Very nice, isn't it, for a girl to get a bouquet every day from
her intended, especially at this time of year, when flowers are
so rare? " said Isidora. " It is a very pretty attention. But it is
uncommonly hard upon the bride to be obliged to write a note of
thanks every day."

" It is no hardship to me," said Valentine. " I write because
I wish to make my future husband understand me as I really
am."

" So you may ; but haven't you got a nice long life before you
to do it in? "

" How many marriages there are where neither husband nor
wife know or understand each other ! " exclaimed Valentine sen-
timentally.

VOL. xxxiv. — 3

34 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.

" Perhaps there are," replied Isidora. "/only know that this
perpetual writing would bore me extremely. Wouldn't it you,
Sylvia?"

" I have never thought about it," said Sylvia indifferently.

" Mamma, Sylvia finds it very stupid with us," said Isidora ;
" just see how tired she looks."

" It is yesterday's journey," said Frau Prost.

" And doing nothing," added Sylvia with determination. " I
am not accustomed to sit like this with my hands before me. I
used always to be doing something."

" What ? " asked Isidora curiously.

" Oh ! housekeeping or needlework. I can make dresses and
linen, and I know how to knit and embroider. That made a
change. Then I had to keep the accounts."

" There I see your dear mother's hand," interrupted Frau
Prost with much emotion.

" But can you also speak and write English and French ?" ask-
ed Isidora.

" I have learnt, but the accent is what I lack, and I have no
practice in writing."

" We will see about that, love," said her aunt kindly. " Miss
Wilmot shall give you an English lesson every day, and you can
chatter away in French to your heart's content with Mile. Vic-
toire, who is a very respectable, well-educated person with a
Parisian accent."

Sylvia expressed her thanks by a kiss.

" You forget, mamma, that Sylvia would also like some sewing
and some knitting," said Isidora scornfully.

" Yes, I should like something to do with my fingers," said
Sylvia simply. " I never find time long when they are busy."

" You have only to apply to Mile. Victoire, love. She will
find you some work. She is industry itself. She works for the
church in her free time — at her own expense, of course, not at
mine ; for I have such enormous sums to spend in dress, and the
demands made upon my purse by daily increasing distress are so
great, that I can't allow myself to think of poor churches."

Again the servant appeared, this time to announce the car-
riage.

" What ! three o'clock already ? " said Frau Prost in astonish-
ment. " Go and get your things on, children. But you, Sylvia,
would rather stay at home, I am sure, on account of your mourn-
ing. I will send Mile. Victoire to you."

Sylvia was very much pleased at this proposition and at the

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 3$

thought of having something to do. Life and the world were
new to her. She was all alive, ready to work, anxious to learn,
and not without sufficient vanity to make her rebel at being left
entirely in the background. However, she herself was not con-
scious of this motive. As she gave her pretty room another look
she thought to herself that she only wanted settled occupation
to make her feel at home, as her aunt was really kind. In this
frame of mind she sat down at her elegant writing-table, took out
the blotting-book which Isidora had put away, and began a long
letter to Frau von Lehrbach.

CHAPTER IV.

A GOLD COIN AND THREE HUNDRED FRANCS.

MLLE. VICTOIRE was a person who was respected to a certain
extent, both up and down stairs, for her extreme goodness and
conscientiousness. Frau Prost had never heard or made a com-
plaint about her during all the seven years she had lived with
them. Her peaceful nature and wonderful cleverness with her
fingers, her readiness to serve, which was never at fault, made
her a perfect treasure. But, treasure as she was. she had a shady
side, fortunately one which elicited respect even from those who
made fun of it. Mile. Victoire was an excellent Catholic, and the
Prost family were only nominal Catholics.

Herr Prost was a free-thinker, who took something from va-
rious systems. Thus, he was an Epicurean in his zest for the
world, a Stoic in his indifference to everything which did not put
him out, a sceptic in all those things which baffled the reason-
ing of the five senses. He had passed many years in Paris un-
der Louis Philippe, the citizen-king, who was pleased to fancy
that indifference in religious things, combined with care for ma-
terial matters, were the most enduring supports of the throne.
The revolution of 1848 opened his eyes. But Herr Prost, who
had made his fortune at this particular time without suffering de-
thronement, took his household gods and his views back to his
native town, and found that he was as comfortable there as he
had previously been in Paris. There was, therefore, not the
least necessity for altering his philosophical notions of human life
and of the end of man. His allowing his children to be baptized
as Catholics was the only token to the world that he had once
upon a time been baptized as one himself ; and even this was a

36 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

concession to his wife, who, out of a lingering regard for the
pious practices of her early youth, kept within the church, and
that was all. She did the very least that was necessary in order
to remain within its pale. She went to the sacraments at Easter
and to Mass on Sundays — when it suited her ; and of course upon
occasions it did not suit her — in travelling, for instance, or in very
cold weather, or during the summer in the country, where their
property happened to be in a Protestant neighborhood. It was
also a matter of course that she took useful people where she
found them. Edgar's tutor was a Lutheran, and Miss Wilmot
was a Calvinist. The tutor hated Miss Wilmot's creed, and she
his. But both were of one mind in their horror of Popery, and
each made the same unmistakably clear to the pupil. It was
only to be expected that children reared in a similar atmosphere
should display a thorough indifference to doctrine ; nor was it
very extraordinary, under the circumstances, that Valentine had
engaged herself to Herr Goldisch without bestowing a moment's
attention on the fact of his being a Protestant. But Aurel Prost,
the eldest son, was quite different to the others, whose lukewarm
superficiality he did not share. Who could have explained how
it was so, or even how it could be so? Nature and grace have
their favorites. If he had been true to his education Aurel at
two-and-twenty must have been a worn-out, vain, and heartless
fop. He was just the contrary. He had a loving nature, an un-
derstanding of higher things, and a need of religion. Pie did not
find money-making its own reward. Dreams of purer happiness
floated before him, though they were somewhat vague, for he
wanted energy and could not lay claim to a strong character.
The drowsy influence of daily comfort and constant prosperity
asserted itself even in him, and prevented him from getting to
that strong effort which fears no weariness in pursuing the wish-
ed-for end clearly seen and loved. Aurel was an ardent Catholic.
He knew his religion and honored the church's commandments,
though human respect at times might prevent him from fulfilling
them — a pusillanimity also in keeping with his character. He
feared his tyrannical father's wrath and his easy-going mother's
tongue, not without a prick of conscience at his own cowardice.
Aurel was the only one of the family who did not think himself
perfect and did not look upon material comfort as happiness.

These were the details which Sylvia heard when Mile. Vic-
toire came to her room, commissioned by Frau Prost to see
about her clothes. In a fortnight she was to be abundantly pro-
vided with morning and evening, walking and ball, dresses, and

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 37

Mile, Victoire was to take her orders. Sylvia interrupted Vic-
toire by saying : " Before we talk about this I must ask you to
take me to Mass every morning. From a child I have always
been accustomed to go, and I should like to keep to it."

Victoire was by no means pretty, but when Sylvia said this
an expression of surprise so joyful lit up her face that it made her
look beautiful.

" How pleased I should be to do it! " she answered. " I am
only afraid that it will be impossible, because you would be
obliged to get up at six, as I have to be back at half-past seven."

" I am always up at six, because at home they used to be,"
said Sylvia. " Then we breakfasted and went to Mass. It was
part of the day."

" But then I'm sure that you used not to go to bed at mid-
night and at two and three o'clock in the morning, as they often
do here in the season."

" Two or three o'clock in the morning ! " exclaimed Sylvia
with secret dismay. " No, indeed. I never went to bed so late
in my life, unless it was when I had to sit up with my father and
mother," she added sadly.

" So, miss, you see it won't do," said Victoire compassionately.

" But you can do it, and you have to wait up for my aunt,"
argued Sylvia.

" That's true, miss ; but then I must tell you that Mass is not
only part of my day : it makes my life."

" And what does my aunt say to that? " asked Sylvia eagerly.

" She has got accustomed to my peculiar ways, as they don't
in the least hinder my service to her."

" Is my uncle a Catholic? " asked Sylvia simply.

" Yes," answered Victoire with constraint, " but I think — that
is, it seems hard for a great many people, and in particular cir-
cumstances, to live up to their belief in a Protestant town."

Sylvia opened her eyes wide.

" Yes," continued Victoire, " fasting and abstinence days are
supposed to put company out, and people think they must do as
they see others do in society. You will hear many things of this
kind, miss. But please tell me how many morning-dresses you
would like. Your aunt is going to buy the material. She likes
doing it, but I have to reckon the quantity, as it would bother
her."

Sylvia felt that in this all-important matter Victoire needed
to be doubly careful in speaking of a master and mistress whose
views were so different from her own, and so she had turned to

38 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Oct.,

the dress topic. But it so happened that Sylvia had several in-
dications of the general tone of the house. Victoire let them
drop with much discretion, so that it should not come upon her
by surprise. In this way she discovered that Herr Goldisch was
a Protestant.

" But, except for that, I believe he is an excellent gentleman,'*
said Mile. Victoire.

" But Valentine might have married an excellent Catholic/*
suggested Sylvia.

To this Victoire made no reply. She contented herself with
stating facts. They ended by settling that Sylvia should go
with Victoire to Mass, and that she should embroider an altar-
cloth.

On coming in from her drive Frau Prost went into Sylvia's
room and threw herself exhausted upon the chaise-longue.

" How fortunate you are, love, to sit there quietly at your
writing-table, whilst I am quite worn out ! "

" Haven't you been out driving, auntie ? " asked Sylvia.

" Out driving ! " sighed Frau Prost. " I had not even time
to get some fresh air in the Park. Just listen. Happily three
ladies were not at home, so I got off with cards. But Frau von
A. saw me, because she was ill, and I found Frau von B. at her
house. Frau von B. asked me if I shouldn't like to go with her
to see Herr C.'s studio. He is a famous sculptor. Of course
I didn't want to go at all. I can't see anything to rave about in
these marble figures ; but Valentine was dying to go, and fancied
Herr C. was a celebrity ^ every : one ought to know. So off we
drove to him. Before we£\v$i$t .into the studio Herr von D.
came out to tell us there::wa^«h*othing;worth seeing in it, and that
we had better drive to - tljeVjGortuguese who has arrived with
some beautiful monkeys apcT serpents. Isidora immediately be-
gan to be enthusiastic about monkeys, and Valentine gave way.
So then we went there. Herr von D. got into the carriage with
us. We left Frau von B. in the lurch, and drove to the Portu-
guese, who really has a quantity of pretty birds and monkeys.
There was a crowd of people there, amongst them the Belgian
ambassadress with all her children. I always get into a fright
when I see her, because she is continually at me for her good
works. It was just as I thought. She came up to me and said :
' How glad I am to see you ! I shall take possession of you to
show you the house we have got for the Visitation nuns, that you
may see how many things are still wanting.' And without more
ado she sends her children home in the carriage, hardly leaves

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 39

me time to buy two beautiful monkeys, finds them atrociously
dear — just fancy, monkeys from a virgin forest in another hemi-
sphere, Brazil, atrociously dear at twelve pounds each ! Why,
they are as cheap as dirt— and, in short, she gets into my carriage,
leaves Herr von D., poor man, to do as he may, and takes me to
the world's end to see a house which is going to be a convent.
Then, going up and down stairs, she pesters me for money, which
of course I cannot refuse the Belgian ambassadress. But who
wants her to bring nuns to this Protestant country ? Let her be
content with Belgium. Well, I had to give her a piece of gold,
take her home, give up my drive, and now, though I am dead
tired, I must go to dress and make myself pleasant, as we have
twenty people coming to dinner."

" Dear Aunt Teresa," said Sylvia quickly, " I am sure you
will allow me not to appear at dinner till I have left off my
mourning. My uncle can't bear black, and I don't want to vex
him."

" Very well, my love, that is thoughtful of you. For the
next fortnight you may have your dinner with Harry. But
after that you must dine with us, and from now you must appear
regularly at luncheon."

Frau Prost went away to discharge her heavy duties, and
Sylvia congratulated herself on her aunt's great kindness.

TO BE CONTINUED.

40 A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF [Oct.,

A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF LADY BLANCHE

MURPHY.

LADY BLANCHE NOEL, eldest daughter of the Earl of Gains-
borough, after her marriage with Mr. Murphy, it is well known
to our readers, came to the United States with her husband, and
during the last ten years has been a constant contributor to THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. Several of her articles which were still un-
published at the time of her death have been since that time pub-
lished in our recent numbers. She was also a frequent contri-
butor to other magazines, and her literary industry and success
as a writer were certainly remarkable. The general esteem and
high reputation which she had won for herself were shown by
the unanimous tribute paid to her memory by the press on the
occasion of her sudden death within the present year. She had
purchased a cottage and a small farm in a country village in
Maine with the proceeds of her literary labor, and was just be-
ginning to enjoy the quiet and simple life of independence which
suited her peculiar character and tastes, when a cold that she
had taken developed into an acute and fatal malady which in a
few days terminated her life. It is scarcely necessary to say that
she lived and died as a faithful and practical Catholic. The
funeral obsequies were performed with all due solemnity in the
cathedral of Portland, and her remains were conveyed, by the de-
sire of her father, to England, where they were deposited in the
family vault at Exton.

A selection from Lady Blanche's published articles, accom-
panied by a biographical sketch, will be shortly published under
the direction of the Earl of Gainsborough, from whom the fol-
lowing interesting letter of Cardinal Manning has been received,
containing his reminiscences of the early life of this gifted lady —
a letter which will be read with equal pleasure by Lady Blanche's
numerous friends and admirers in England and in America :

" MY DEAR LORD GAINSBOROUGH :

•' When you asked me to put in writing my recollections of your dear
child Blanche I at once promised to do so ; for I had then, and I still have,
so clear and vivid a memory of her in her childhood and youth that I be-
lieved it would be an easy task. But since, in trying to fix what I remember
in a definite form, I find it difficult to put in words what I still seem to see

1 88 1.] LADY BLANCHE MURPHY. 41

before me. Nevertheless I will do my best, though the result will be less
than I thought.

" I can remember her in 1849, when she was about four years old; but
that is only a shadow of a memory. Next I remember her in 1858 or 1859,
when she and her mother used toxome to me at Bayswater. She was then
about thirteen or fourteen years old. But neither can I fix anything de-
finite at that date, except that she was a good and intelligent child. After
that I next saw her when you were in Rome, in 1863. She was then about
eighteen ; and I for the first time began to perceive how much intelligence
and how distinct a character she had. And yet I did not in those days
at all discern the intellectual capacity and ability which I now see in her
writings. I thought her quick, observant, and thoughtful, and in character
decided and independent beyond her years. In truth, I thought I could see
more of this than I could have wished in any one so young, for I did not then
know that her mind had balance and strength enough as a counterpoise to
a certain self-reliance. She had mixed in the Roman society, and had there
met with men of the Italian politics. I was surprised to see how far she
had advanced in their way of thinking, and I remember being half amused
and half anxious at her talk about Garibaldi. Still, I thought it to be no
more than a local or transient enthusiasm. And so, in its anti-Catholic sense,
it was ; for she did not detect the consequences of the Italian movement.
She thought it only a work of political and popular freedom tending to the
welfare of the people at large. She was too truly Christian and Catholic to
sympathize in anything opposed either to the faith orto the Holy See. This
gave me the first insight into her character, which was very simple, unaffect-
ed, and outspoken. Though she had been born and brought up with all
the surroundings of the world, and with all the relations and associations
which draw other minds under its influence, she seemed to me not only to
be unattracted by such influences but to be repelled by them. I thought I
saw a reaction against them, and a decided tendency to break through the
conventionalities of her life. Still, I never fully understood this at that
time ; but in what I have since known of her, and in what I have now
before me, I seem to see that there has been a consistent following-out of
the thoughts and the promptings of her mind as it was then forming itself.
In the years that followed from 1863 to 1870 I saw her often, but only at
intervals and in brief visits or under circumstances which made any more
intimate knowledge of her character impossible. All that I knew of her
was the true devotion and fidelity with which, in the midst of the world,
she persevered in a life of faith and piety. The love of the people at Exton
towards her expresses what I mean in saying that her heart and sympathies
were always with the poor, with their homes and with their state.

" Then came her marriage, the circumstances of which I then partly
knew, and now know fully. It seems to me to have been the working-out
of the same turn of character. Your conduct at that time must be to you
a great consolation now ; for you showed signally a father's prudence till
you were assured of what her happiness required, and a father's love in
sanctioning her marriage, with your consent, from your residence. The
loving and close correspondence which still united her to you and you to
her when she left you was worthy of both.

"And here my memories end. But the writings you have entrusted to

42 LADY BLANCHE MURPHY. [Oct.,

me give me more to say. I have read the articles in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD with an increased feeling of surprise and regret that I did not in
days past know what her intelligence really was. Perhaps the last eleven
years, and the experience of life, and wider knowledge of the world and of men
and of events may have called out into activity the thoughtfulness which
before 1870 was reserved and latent. Her very youthful appearance and
unobtrusive, or rather retiring, manners gave no indication of what she
really was even then. I must, however, believe that her life in America
has been the second, self-made education, which is always the most valuable
part of life. The articles are truly remarkable not only for the great variety
of the subjects but for the range of reading implied in them. The style of
writing is like herself. It is simple and real throughout. I do not detect
the least desire for ornament or effect, but a great truthfulness in using
very pure English to express her thoughts as clearly and closely as possible.
She evidently thought first and used the words which came with the
thoughts. If her character had not been real, simple, and, to use an old
word, ' downright,' she would never have been able to write as she did. The
articles are samples of clear, unstudied English. Interesting as they all are,
especially those on the ' Ecclesiastical Press ' and on the ' Mediaeval Female
Education in Germany,' there are two that revive in my memory the turn of
thought which I remember in 1863 in Rome. They are the articles on ' Tech-
nical Education ' and on ' Socialism in America.' In the former the sympa-
thy with the people which made me afraid that she would become an innocent
Garibaldian in Rome is seen throughout. It was this that made the villagers
at Exton and Campden love her, and her many friends in America welcome
her so warmly. The article is a minute and thoughtful paper, full of sugges-
tions for the opening of paths of intelligence and industry to every class*
even the poorest in birth and state. In the latter article her own character
comes out unconsciously in her own words. Commenting upon a book
before her which spoke of the dangers of socialism in America, she says :
' This touches one of the points on which he [the author] repeatedly
insists — the duty of the better-educated (the policy, he more than hints)
to be beforehand with the budding socialism of this country, and, by
frank and friendly contact with the less fortunate and less cultured
classes, to reaffirm the old spirit of brotherhood and a common patriotism.'
'The broader view of brotherhood with all one's fellow-beings, and of the
necessary connection of religion with every blameless and natural human
act, with the natural affections, the legitimate amusements, and the social
relations of each Christian, is one which the popular [i.e., narrow] idea of
" religion " entirely excludes.' ' Social influence, the unobtrusive, unaffect-
ed example of a person whose life is ordered on high principles, and espe-
cially on a rigid regard for truth — such is at present the strongest weapon
for good.' These words were written last year, and seem to me to be the
laying open of the inmost thoughts of her mind and to bequeath to you
the best likeness of herself.

" Believe me, my dear Lord Gainsborough,

" Yours affectionately,

" HENRY E.,
" Card. : Archbishop of Westminster.

"ST. EDMUND'S COLLEGE, July 7, 1881."

1 88 1.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 43

THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND.

THE " religious world," as the varied denominations of the
English state church egotistically designate themselves, are now
exercised by what they call the " Romanizing tendencies " of the
Ritualist clerics of the present Establishment, and several of the
journals opposed to the latter wish to know, Do those Ritualists
desire to bring back to England the " sanguinary doings " of
Rome ? Now, as a reply per contra, permit me to give one in-
stance of the bloodless proceedings of the men who established the
church of this " religious world " in England.

With what emotion can the Catholic reader peruse the calen-
dared records of the judicial murders committed by Henry VIII.
and his council against the Carthusian fathers of the Charter-
house ? In this narrative of the sufferings of the Carthusian
community I quote Protestant historians, many of whom make
marvellous admissions as to the conduct of the monarch and
his advisers in relation to the Carthusians. Mr. Froude ob-
serves : " In general the Charter-house was the best conducted in
England. The hospitality of the Carthusian fathers was well
sustained ; the charities were profuse. . . . The monks were
true to their vows, and true to their duty as far as they compre-
hended what duty meant. Amongst many good monks the prior,
John Haughton, was the best. He was of an old English family
and had been educated at Cambridge, where he must have been
the contemporary of Hugh Latimer. At the age of eight-and-
tweuty he took the vows of a monk, and had been twenty years
a Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation.
John Haughton is described as small in stature, in figure grace-
ful, in countenance dignified. In manner he was modest ; in elo-
quence most sweet; in chastity without a stain. We may
readily imagine his appearance, with that feminine austerity of
expression which has been well said belongs so peculiarly to the
features of the mediaeval ecclesiastics." *

The Carthusians had made themselves specially obnoxious to
King Henry and the Boleyn party during the long litigation of
the divorce question. They boldly espoused the cause of the

* The reader must recollect that this partial commendation comes from Mr. Froude> the bit-
ter enemy of the glorious religious orders of England.

44 THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. [Oct.,

much-wronged Queen Katharine in the " pulpit and on the plat-
form." Both the concealed and avowed Reformers felt self-abased
by the high reputation which those humble monks held in the
eyes of the country ; they rejoiced at the fact that the monks
" crossed the king in his particular desire to become the husband
of Nan de Bouleyn." Such men as Drs. London and Layton *
were glad that the outspoken honesty of the Carthusians had
placed them within the range of danger. Lord Crumwell and
his followers coveted their property, and Archbishop Cranmer,
Poynet, Bale, and Coverdale were their deadly enemies, whilst
the malice was artfully concealed. Cranmer could not under-
stand their high sense of principle ; Coverdale's aversion arose
from an envy of their blameless character; and Poynet scoffed at
their humility and questioned their chastity — a virtue which the
grossness of his nature could but little comprehend. Such was a
portion of the elements united in 1535 for the immolation of the
Carthusian fathers. The Oath of Supremacy was now about to
be tendered to the clergy, and a large number of the secular
clerics, who were influenced by the court prelates, readily com-
plied with the royal command. The regular clergy were the
noble exception, for they cowered not before the storm. The
dungeon or the scaffold had no terrors for them. The bishops,
with the exception of one or two, were on the side of the Crown.
The Bishop of Durham (Tunstal) declaimed from the pulpit
against the pope's spiritual authority ; Dr. Kyte, Bishop of Car-
lisle, adopted the same policy ; and Gardyner was the king's po-
litical agent from the beginning of the divorce controversy to
its conclusion. He took the Oath of Supremacy to the king, and
was created bishop of Winchester. Dr. Bonner was advanced to
the see of London. Bonner's insolent language to Clement VII.
drew from King Henry a severe rebuke ; but nevertheless the
flexible bishop continued to enjoy the royal confidence to the close
of Henry's life. Every day the clergy and laity acted more sub-
serviently to the Crown. " The king's ministers had all taken
the Oath of Supremacy " ; and " why," said Sir Thomas Aud-
ley, " should the good fathers of the Charter-house refuse to do
as all honest men did ? "

The Royal Commissioners appeared at the Charter-house to

* Dr. London was Dean of Wallingford, and Layton held a similar cure at York. Those
bad men were the chief commissioners appointed by Lord Crumwell to investigate the charges
preferred against the religious houses of England. The proceedings of London and Layton
towards monks and nuns stand forth without a parallel in the history of the wicked deeds of
Henry's reign. For particulars concerning the monastic inquisition I refer the reader to vol. ii.
p. So of the Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty.

1 88 1.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 45

give notice to the prior and his brethren that the Oath of Su-
premacy should be taken by " every loyal subject and pious Catho-
lic" It was a nice thing to ascertain or define what was " a
pious Catholic," according to the teaching of men like Audley
and Crumwell. The prior of the Charter-house replied to the
Commissioners most respectfully. He said " he knew nothing of
the matters mentioned. He was unacquainted with the world
without; his office 'was to minister to God and to save 'poor
souls from hell's fire and Satan's snares." The prior's explana-
tion was rejected. He was committed to the Tower for five
weeks, where he was treated with indignity and insult. At the
suggestion of Dr. Bonner the prior agreed to take the oath with
" certain reservations." He was discharged from custody on
these conditions. Returning to the Charter-house, the conscien-
tious prior assembled his brethren and told them the promise he
had made to Lord Crumwell. He was dissatisfied with what he
had done. It looked like deceit. He wished to save the Carthu-
sians from being dispersed and cast upon the world ; but, above
all, he hoped to preserve the principles and vows by which they
were so long bound together. They dreaded the future, but none
of them could imagine that the hour of catastrophe was so near.
The Royal Commissioners came again, with the Chief Magis-
trate of London, to tender the oath. It was rejected. Imprison-
ment and the rack were menaced ; they were told that Crumwell
was " dreadful in his wrath ; that he had sworn he would imme-
diately quarter them on the highways." A panic now seized the
community, for the very name of Thomas Crumwell affrighted
every one, young and old. The Carthusians gave way — but for
a while.

Maurice Chauncy, one of the few who subsequently escaped
his brethren's fate, describes what occurred :

"We all swore," he says, "as we were required, making one condition,
that we submitted only so far as it was lawful for us so to do. Thus, like
Jonah, we were delivered from the belly of this monster, this immanis ceta,
and began again to rejoice, like him, under the shadow of the gourd of our
own houses. But it is far better to trust in the Almighty God than in
princes, in whom is no salvation. God hath prepared a worm * that smote
our gourd and made it to perish."

In a short time the Carthusians received notice that their ac-
ceptance of the oath in the " form and feeling " they adopted it

* By the phrase "worm "is meant the Supremacy statute, with high treason as its pen-
alty.

46 THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. [Oct.,

was an evasion of a legal obligation. As the friends of Queen
Katharine they would now bear the full weight of Anna Boleyn's
resentment; her influence was all-powerful at this period, and
she exercised it for the destruction or the disgrace of those who
had crossed the path of her " unlawful ambition." Such were
the words of Bishop Fisher.

The Carthusian fathers were impeached for treason, although
the law did not bring them within its range. But that was a
matter of small account in those times. Every, day brought
fresh troubles to the Carthusian community, and the prior began
to think that their case was hopeless. One morning the zealous
prior summoned all the monks before him, when he addressed
them in these words :

" ' Brothers, very sorry am I, and my heart is heavy, especially for you,
my younger friends, of whom I see so many around me. Here you are
living in your innocence. The yoke will not be laid on your necks, nor the
rod of persecution ; but if you are taken hence, and mingle among the
Gentiles, you may learn the works of them, and, having begun in the spirit,
you may be consumed in the flesh. And there may be others among us
whose hearts are still infirm. If these mix again with the world, I fear how
it may be with them ; and what shall I say, and what shall I do, if I cannot
save those whom God has trusted to my charge ? '

"Then all who were present burst into tears, and cried out with one
voice : ' Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and earth shall wit-
ness for us how unjustly we are cut off'

" The prior answered sadly : ' Would indeed that it might be so ; that
so dying we might live, as living we die ; but they will not do to us so
great a kindness, nor to themselves so great an injury. Many of you
are of noble blood, and what I think they will do is this : Me and the elder
brethren they will kill, and they will dismiss you that are young into a
world which is not for you. If, therefore, it depend on me alone — if my
oath will suffice for the community — I will throw myself for your sakes on
the mercy of God ; I will make myself anathema ; and to preserve you
from these dangers I will consent to the king's will. If, however, they
have determined otherwise — if they choose to have the consent of us
all — the will of God be done. If one death will not avail, we will all die —
die together for God's Truth and his eternal glory.' "

Maurice Chauncy continues his narrative :

" So then, bidding us prepare for the worst, that the Lord when he
knocketh might find us ready, he desired us to choose each our confessor,
and to confess our sins one to another, giving us power to grant each other
absolution."

Mr. Froude remarks upon this scene: "Thus, with an unob-
trusive nobleness, did these poor monks prepare themselves for

i88i.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 47

their end. I will not regret their cause ; yet there is no cause
for which any man can more nobly suffer than to witness that it
is better for him to die than to speak words which he does not
mean."

The Carthusians received a further respite until the fate of
other monks was decided by Lord Crumwell. Webster, Law-
rence, and Hampton, Carthusian fathers, had been summoned
before Lord Crumwell. They are described by Richard Crum-
well as " still obstinate in their opinions." They were com-
mitted to the Fleet Prison. Reynolds also, a learned monk of
Sion, was arrested. These four clerics, men of extensive learn-
ing and personal worth, were brought on the 26th of April,
1535, before the Privy Council, of which Lord Crumwell was
the leading spirit. The Oath of Supremacy was again tendered
to them, but they respectfully declined taking it. Three days
later they were placed at the bar before a special commission,
and indicted for high treason. They pleaded not guilty, con-
tending that the statute itself was unlawful. What they had
spoken in the Tower and before the Privy Council was adduced
in evidence against them. One of the judges asked Haugh-
ton, the prior, " not to show so little wisdom as to maintain his
own opinion against the consent of the king." Haughton re-
plied that " he had originally resolved to imitate the example of
his Divine Master before Herod, and be silent."

" But," he continued, " since you urge me, that I may satisfy my own
conscience and the consciences of those who are present, I will say that if
our opinion of the Supremacy statute might go by the suffrage of men, it
should have more witnesses than yours. You can produce, on your side,
but the Parliament of a single kingdom ; I, on mine, have the whole
Christian world except this realm. Nor have you all even of your own
people. The lesser part is with you. The majority who seem to be with
you do but dissemble to gain favor with the king, or for fear they should
lose their honors and their dignities."

Lord Crumwell inquired of whom the prior was speaking.
Haughton replied : " Of all the good men in the realm ; and
when his highness the king knoweth the real truth, I know he
will be beyond measure offended with those of his bishops and
priests who have given this bad advice." "Why," remarked
another of the judges, "have you, Maister Prior, contrary to
the king's authority within this realm, persuaded so many per-
sons, as you have done, to disobey the king and the Parliament
of this kingdom ? Your crime is dreadful." " I have declared
my opinion," replied Haughton, " to no man living but to those

48 THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND., [Oct.,

who came to me in confession, which, in the discharge of my
conscience, I would not refuse. But if I did not declare it then
I will declare it now, because I am thereto obliged to God." *

About this period Crumwell had recourse to the most detes-
table schemes to procure 'evidence against priests as to their
opinions on the Supremacy question ; but the most infamous of
all the plans devised by him was that of sending persons
of abandoned character to confession to " certain priests, and
there and then asking the confessor's opinion on the Supremacy
law then proposed, declaring that they had conscientious scruples
against it." These persons elicited the secret opinion of the con-
fessor, and in a few hours later placed a statement, based upon
information obtained by their sacrilege, in the hands of Lord
Crumwell! This device led to the arrest and imprisonment
of many priests, of whose sufferings there is no record now.
Amongst the state papers (Domestic) of Henry's reign are to be
seen certain declarations, said to be " confessions " made by in-
formers in the interest of Crumwell, who was justly dreaded by
the community, lay and clerical — in fact, hate'd by all parties in
the state.

A priest in a "doubtful state of conscience" had, in 1534,
an interview with Archbishop Cranmer on the Supremacy
statute. " I told," he says, " the archbishop I would pray for the
pope as the chief and papal head of Christ's church. And his
grace of Canterbury told me it was the king's pleasure I should
not do so. I said unto him I would continue to do it; and
though I did it not openly, yet would I do it secretly. And then
Archbishop Cranmer said I might pray for the pope secretly, but in
any wise do it not openly." f This is quite in keeping with Cran-
mer's course of action in Henry's reign — a constant practice of
servile deception.

To return to the Carthusian fathers. They were again con-
signed to the Tower, and on the following day their case was
submitted to the mockery of trial by a jury — for the accused
were indulged with the semblance of legality — a grim and cruel
farce. Five of them were charged with high treason. The evi-
dence was of the usual character, and was prepared in the Star-
Chamber fashion. Feron and Hale threw themselves on the
mercy of the court. The jury, in this case, hesitated for nearly
two hours. " It was bruited in the Justice Hall," writes Thorn-

* State papers (Domestic) of Henry VIII. 's reign. See also John Strype's Memorials, vol. i.
P- 3°5«

t Rolls House MSS. Concerning the Conscience of a Popish Priest.

1 88 1.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 49

dale, who was present, that " Lord Crumwell visited the jury,
and between threats and rewards induced them to record a ver-
dict of guilty against four of the fathers. Feron was acquitted,
but sent to the Fleet to await the rack, in order to extort the con-
fession of some matters of which most probably he knew nothing/'

It has been asserted by the Puritan admirers of Crumwell
that he did not visit the jury on this occasion. But Thorndale
was a contemporary and well known to Crumwell. It is far
easier in such cases to deny than to prove ; but the weight of as-
sertion at least, and the unwonted hesitation of the jury, go far
in evidence of the " visitation." It is an undoubted fact that
Crumwell in the beginning treated with juries, and even men-
aced them with death ; but as he gained experience he adopted
the readier mode of having juries chosen who could " make a
quick return without any compunctious hesitation." The ex-
ample has not since been lost and the practice was extended to
Ireland, where, during long years, juries were compelled to find
verdicts at the command of the viceroys. Lord Strafford, for in-
stance, threatened to "cut out the tongues of a Galway jury" for not
finding a verdict for the crown. But Crumwell effected his pur-
poses through the agency of bribery or the threats of the terri-
ble rack, which affrighted all classes.

Father Hale and the Carthusian fathers were not permitted
to die together. When Father Haughton was put forward to re-
ceive sentence the judge addressed him as a great criminal ; for
he " dared to deny the right of the king to be the supreme head of
the church of Christ on earth." Haughton replied that the sen-
tence had no terrors for him. He was merely doing his duty to
his Divine Master, Jesus Christ. He told the judge that his sen-
tence was nothing more than the judgment of the king and his
ministers. The other fathers briefly addressed the court. They
all appeared happy, and rejoiced, they said, that they had an
opportunity of dying for the Catholic faith. The learned and
observant Thorndale, who accompanied his friend, Father
Haughton, to the scaffold at Tyburn, declares that such a scene as
hanging priests in their habits " was never before known to Eng-
lishmen." Haughton ascended the scaffold first. The sheriff
and Thorndale were much affected. One of the executioners
fell on his knees and besought the good father's forgiveness.
"I forgive you and all who have taken part in my trial and
condemnation," were the words uttered by Haughton. A few
minutes of profound silence ensued, when Father Haughton, with
the sheriff on his right and the devoted Thorndale on his left,,

VOL. XXXIV. — 4

50 ' THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. [Oct.,

advanced to the front of the scaffold. A murmur burst from the
crowd, followed by the screams and fainting of women. The
sheriff told the people that the prior desired to address a few
words to them on behalf of himself and of those who were to die
with him. Thorndale held up a crucifix to the crowd : the wo-
men cried aloud or sobbed in deepest grief. When order was re-
stored Father Haughton addressed the populace at some length.
I extract the following passage :

" My good people, I call to witness the Almighty God and all true
Christians, and I beseech you all here present to bear witness for me at
the day of judgment, that, being here to die, I declare that it is from no ob-
stinate, rebellious pretext that I do not obey the king, but because I fear
to offend the Majesty of God. Our Holy Mother the Church has declared
otherwise than the king and his Parliament have decreed ; and, therefore,
rather than disobey the church I am ready to suffer. Pray for me, and
have mercy on my poor brethren, of whom I have been the unworthy
prior."

The prior next addressed a few words to the crowd of mothers
who were weeping in front of the scaffold. His voice was now
becoming faint, but Thorndale took down his remarks accurately.
" Good mothers and true Englishwomen," said he, " I ask it as
a dying request that you will endeavor to keep the spirit of
Catholicity alive in the hearts of your children." The good mo-
thers exclaimed aloud : " We will, we will !" They fell a-weep-
ing again, and the men, and even the guard of soldiers, were in
tears, for every one loved the Carthusian fathers. Kneeling down,
Father Haughton repeated aloud the fifty -first Psalm ; then,
making the sign of the cross with great devotion, he informed the
executioners that he was ready for them. The remainder of the
proceedings were brief. The prior was " thrown off amidst a
thrill of horror." Thorndale states that one of the executioners
refused to act, exclaiming, "I will not hang my old confessor."
And he adds, " Wilfred Jennings was sent to the rere of the scaf-
fold, and expired with horror and grief within one hour." When
the surgeon declared Haughton dead his brethren followed on
the same death-road, reciting a hymn, undaunted and firm in ap-
pearance. They died in a manner worthy of the primitive mar-
tyrs of the church. The faces of these holy men did not grow
pale ; their voices did not choke ; they declared themselves liege
subjects of the king and obedient children of holy church, giving
thanks that they were held worthy to suffer for the truth. All
died without a murmur. The horrible work was ended with quar-
tering the bodies, and the arm of Father Haughton — covered with

i88i.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 51

blood — was hung up as a dismal sign over the archway of the Char-
ter-house to awe the remaining brethren into submission. But
the spirit of the departed martyrs was caught up and fired the feel-
ings of the young monks. One of them, like the Theban sister,
bore away the holy and honored relic and buried it. All that re-
mained of the community resolved to resist to the death. An-
other warning was sent to them, but of no avail. In six weeks
three more of the fathers went through the form of a trial. Hall,
the historian, alleges that they " behaved sulky and insolent to
Lord Crumwell." Their unbending virtue naturally would seem
to assume the shape of insolence to a man like Hall. As a body
they were educated, well-bred men, and, in the words of Prior
Haughton, " many of them of noble families." Edward Hall,
whose servile adulation of King Henry was conspicuous even in
that reign of servility and terrorism, consulted his own stupendous
notions of obedience to kingly caprice in describing facts which,
to judge from other statements made by him, would have been
more justly presented if left to his unbiassed judgment and natural
sense of justice.* But the more accurate description of the scene
was that the fathers became indifferent to the deceptive formali-
ties of the trial, and proclaimed their adhesion to all the tenets of
the Catholic Church, denouncing the king as " a spiritual impos-
tor." These words undoubtedly sealed their doom ; but they
cared not — they rejoiced in having an opportunity of dying for
the olden creed of Christendom. The jury in this case had no
hesitation. They were prompt in returning a verdict for high
treason. Three days after the verdict to which I have just allud-
ed three more of the fathers were hanged, drawn, and quarter-
ed. They ascended the scaffold singing hymns of joy to the Lord
Jesus. Thorndale says : " They died grandly, shaking hands with
one another and awaiting their turn."

Some few of the brethren fled to France, and others to Ire-
land, where a hospitable home always awaited the proscribed
priests of England in those penal times. The greater number of
the Carthusians remained in the priory to await their doom ; but
Crumwell and the king hesitated to proceed further against
them. Did they fear public opinion ? Not likely. Two secular
priests — mere creatures of Crumwell — were sent to take charge
of what remained of the Charter-house community. Mau-
rice Chauncy states that these priests " starved himself and his
companions." Friends and relatives were sent to the Car-
thusians to " advise and remonstrate on their conduct "; they

* Edward Hall filled the office of judge in a very ancient court called the " Sheriff's Court,"
which is still in existence. He was one of the personal friends of Henry VIII.

52 ' THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. [Oct.,

were " coaxed and threatened " alternately, but with no effect.
Four of them were brought to Westminster Abbey to hear Bish-
op Tunstal and Dr. Gardyner preaching against the pope, and
in favor of the king's supremacy in the church. The sermons
of these court prelates did not change the Carthusian fathers.
To use the phrase of their persecutors, they were " still most
obstinate." A number of them were then dispersed amongst
other religious communities, with secular priests as guardians.
The secular clerics could make " no change in those obstinate
monks." The supposed worldly aspirations of the young, and
the talent and ambition of maturer age, were in turn tempted by
seductive promises of a future career, but with no effect. Gold
could not purchase even the semblance of an agreement to the
king's views of religion ; and the scaffold, with its reeking hor-
rors of strangling, decapitation, and quartering, brought no fear
—none whatever. Two of the brotherhood who escaped joined
the Pilgrims of Grace ; a reward was offered for their heads ;
they were taken prisoners, and on the following day hanged in
chains near the city of York. They died bravely, exciting the
sympathy and admiration of the multitude. Almost at the last
moment Father Gabriel exclaimed, " My good friends, never de-
sert Peter s ship." The heroic Father Gabriel's name in the world
was Heber MacMahon, and he was a native of the County Ty-
rone, where his family had large possessions at one time.

The whole of the Charter-house fathers were now cut off from
their house and property. Lord Crumwell laid his hands upon
all they possessed ; even family memorials, which many of them
wished to preserve, were carried away. Shame, decency, all the
elements of honest feeling, were cast aside on this occasion. The
indignation of the people was intense, but they were unable to
resist, for the spy, the informer, and the executioner were con-
stantly at hand, ready to perform any action demanded by the
crown.

The tragic history of the Carthusians does not end in the
narratives above detailed. The ten remaining fathers were sent
to the then hideous dungeons of Newgate, where nine of them died
from prison fever produced by bad air, bad food, and disease.
The survivor of the ten was hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Maurice Chauncy, whose chronicle relates their glorious story,
escaped to France. His narrative is borne out by many of the
records and state papers of the time, and its truth is reluctantly
admitted by hostile historians.

An official named Bedyll announced to Lord Crumwell the
death of the nine Carthusians in Newgate in these words :

i88i.] THE CARTHUSIAN MARTYRS OF ENGLAND. 53

" By the hand of God, my very good lord, after my most hearty com-
mendations, it shall please your lordship to understand that the monks of
the Charter-house, here in London, who- were committed to Newgate for
their traitorous behavior a long time continued against the king's highness,
be almost now despatched by the hand of the Almighty God himself, as may
appear to you by this bill enclosed ; whereof, considering their behavior
and the whole matter, / am not sorry, but would that all such as love not the
king's highness, and his worldly honor, were in a like case." *

Did Bedyll believe in what he wrote ? The conduct of this
apostate monk, whilst attached to Dr. London's inquisition
amongst the convents, was simply atrocious ; but as he was doing
the work of the future Reformers, historians are silent as to his
merits. He was, however, quickly superseded by his friend
Lord Crumwell for his conduct at Shaftesbury Convent to a
lady of the ancient house of Fortescue — a name long honored in
Devonshire. Crumwell had no desire to offer any personal in-
sult to the nuns, for he had several relatives in convents ; and
there are letters of his still extant to the abbess of Godstow, and
other noted establishments, written in a very friendly tone, and
always seeking the prayers of the sisterhoods "for his sowl's
health." Avarice was, perhaps, one of Crumwell's leading
crimes, and, as many of the convents were wealthy, he could not
resist the temptation of plundering them ; and he did so without
pity or limit, seeming to forget that the nuns were merely the
guardians of the " heritage of the poor." Crumwell's clerical
commissioners were far worse than himself, for he sometimes
hesitated, having struggled with conscience till his golden dream
triumphed ; but London and Layton were not afflicted by a
troubled conscience during their monastic inquisition : that terri-
ble spectre was reserved for a death-bed surrounded with despair
and horror.

Very few of the monastic houses of England suffered a more
signal injustice than the Charter-house. The Royal Commission-
ers did their work thoroughly ; and whilst seizing the property
which the Carthusian fathers held in trust for the poor, they
cleared off the trustees by the gibbet, the rack, and the dungeon.
Such was one hideous phase of an epoch when the passions of a
cruel and licentious monarch, abetted by unscrupulously wicked
and servile subordinates, overruled all the ordinances of law,
order, and justice.f

* State papers and despatches to Lord Crumwell.

t Maurice Chauncy's account of the sufferings of his brethren, from which the above is in
part extracted, was written in Latin, and printed in France, about 1550, in a work entitled
Historia Martyrum Anglics^ by Ritus Dulken, prior of St. Michael, near Metz.

54 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Oct.,

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART IV. — A.D. 137-335.

THE GENTILE LINE OF BISHOPS — POSITION OF THE CHURCH OF JELIA. CAPITOLINA FROM
ADRIAN TO CONSTANTINE— ORIGIN OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF JERUSALEM— ACCOUNT
OF THE BUILDING OF CHURCHES AT THE HOLY PLACES BY CONSTANTINE, FROM
EUSEBIUS.

AFTER the complete ruin and dispersion of the Jewish nation
under Adrian, Palestine sunk into the condition of an insignifi-
cant province of the Roman Empire. It was peopled by a mix-
ed multitude of Gentiles ; and the Christian Church, composed
mostly of converts from paganism and their offspring, became a
Gentile community. The Bishop of Caesarea was the metropoli-
tan, and the church of JElia Capitolina, the new town which arose
on the site of Jerusalem, was for a long time insignificant in all
respects except the sanctity of its location and its traditions.
On account of these a certain honor and dignity were attached
to the see of James, and it seems not to have been ever suffragan
to the see of Caesarea in the strict sense of the word, but rather
to have enjoyed an honorary precedence by virtue of which the
Bishop of JElia presided in provincial synods together with the
Bishop of Cassarea. These privileges of honor were recognized
and sanctioned by the Council of Nicaea. The following is a
translation of the seventh canon of that council, the exact sense
of which cannot with certainty be determined, but has been a
subject of much dispute among canonists :

" Since the custom and ancient tradition has prevailed that
the Bishop of JElia should be honored, let him possess the suc-
cession of honor, the proper dignity of the metropolis being pre-
served."

The assertion of these inherited privileges by the Bishops of
Jerusalem, and their recognition by the church at large, issued
at last in the formal decree of the Council of Chalcedon, which
conferred upon the Bishops of Jerusalem the rank of patriarch,
and assigned to them the fifth place in the hierarchy, with me-
tropolitan jurisdiction over the three provinces of Palestine.

During fifty years, counting from A.D. 137, fourteen bishops
succeeded one another in the see of James. Their names have
been preserved by Eusebius, and that is all. The name of the

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 5 5

Holy City Jerusalem had gone entirely out of use, and was not
revived until the time of Constantine. The very memory of the
past greatness of the city and of the history of the Jews had be-
come so far obliterated, except among the despised and perse-
cuted Jews and Christians, that in the year 309 the Roman gov-
ernor of Csesarea replied to a Christian on trial before his tri-
bunal, who declared that his residence was in Jerusalem, that
he had never heard of such a place. Between the year 195 and
the beginning of the fourth century some facts, events, and
personages are known to us through historical records, chiefly
those of Eusebius, who was himself for many years Bishop
of Csesarea. Nevertheless, the entire amount of this histori-
cal information is but scanty. The first of the line of Gen-
tile bishops at Jerusalem who gained great celebrit}^, and of
whose life fuller details have been preserved, was Narcissus,
who took possession of the see some time before the year 195,
and retained it until some years after the year 211. The gift of
miracles is ascribed to St. Narcissus by Eusebius, and all accounts
agree in testifying to his extraordinary sanctity. In the year
195 the bishops of Palestine, to the number of nearly thirty, as-
sembled, either in two separate councils, one at Jerusalem under
Narcissus, and another at Csesarea under Theophilus, according
to the Libellus Synodicus ; or in one synod at Caesarea under the
joint presidency of these two prelates, as Eusebius, who seems to
be the best authority in this case, relates. The principal matter
discussed in this council was the question of Easter, and the
judgment of the bishops of Palestine sustained the decision
of Pope Victor, that Easter should always be celebrated on a
Sunday.

St. Narcissus was calumniated by certain malicious persons,
and he withdrew secretly to the desert, where he remained un-
known for a long period of time, living the life of a hermit.
Three bishops in succession, Dius, Germanion, and Gordius, gov-
erned his church during his absence. At length, in the year 211,
Narcissus, who was supposed to be dead, and who was above
one hundred years old, suddenly reappeared in Jerusalem and
resumed the government of his see. Alexander, a disciple of
Clement of Alexandria, and who was a bishop in Cappadocia, be-
came his coadjutor and succeeded to his place at his death. St.
Alexander was one of the most enlightened bishops of his age.
He gathered the first Christian library of which there is any
mention in history, and this collection was still extant in the time
of Eusebius. He was a great friend and protector of Origen,

56 * CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Oct.,

who took refuge in Palestine in the year 216. About ten years
later Origen came again to Csesarea on his way from Alexan-
dria to Athens, and by the authority of Theoctistus of Cassarea
and Alexander of Jerusalem he was ordained priest; an act
which Demetrius of Alexandria resented to such a degree that
Origen was obliged to remain for a long time at Csesarea and
Jerusalem under the protection of the two bishops, who defended
their own conduct and warmly espoused the cause of Origen.
The latter opened a school of philosophy and theology at Cassa-
rea, and was always honored and listened to with avidity by the
Christians of Palestine. St. Alexander finally died in prison
during the persecution of Decius, after having ruled over the
church of Jerusalem thirty-nine years. Mazabanus succeeded
him and ruled nine years. The next bishop, Hymenaeus, took
an active part in the councils of Antioch against the heretic
Paul of Samosata. His episcopate extended from about the
year 250 to about 262. His next successor was Zambda, and
the one who followed him was Hermon. This brings us to the
epoch of Diocletian's dreadful persecution in the beginning
of the fourth century, which raged with equal fury in Palestine
to that which elsewhere devastated and threatened to exter-
minate the church of Christ. Hundreds of bishops, thousands
of priests, and millions of the faithful had perished in Diocletian's
persecution. Great numbers had also fallen away from the faith.
Yet all the cruelty and power of imperial Rome had not sufficed
to destroy more than one-third of the steadfast Christians of that
heroic age. There were still remaining hundreds of bishops,
thousands of priests, and probably at least twenty millions of the
faithful within the limits of the Roman Empire. The glorious
epoch of Constantine came, and the cross had triumphed. The
sun broke forth from the clouds and tempests of three centuries
upon the church of Jerusalem, and its era of prosperity began,
which lasted for three more centuries, while Palestine remained a
province of the Christian empire of the East, whose capital was
the city of Constantine. The restoration of Jerusalem, Judea,
and Galilee was very different from that of which the Jews and
Judaizing Christians of the first and second centuries had dream-
ed. Judaism was wiped out, and the national, political glory and
importance of the Holy Land had passed away for ever. Jerusa-
lem and the Holy Land were henceforth only important because
of their memories, and especially because they were the scene of
the birth, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
the Redeemer of the world.

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 57

The Emperor Constantine fully appreciated the moral gran-
deur of the history of God's chosen people as set forth in their
Sacred Scriptures, of which he was a diligent reader. He was a
Christian in belief from enlightened and intelligent conviction,
having enlarged views, noble intentions, and a truly imperial mag-
nanimity in carrying them into execution. Jerusalem and the
Holy Land were objects of the greatest interest for him, and the
piety of his mother, Helena, inspired her with an equal or superior
enthusiasm to his own for rescuing the Holy Places from heathen
desecration and adorning them with architectural monuments
worthy of the great events which had been transacted on that
sacred soil. Happily for the church of that period and of all
succeeding times, Palestine possessed a metropolitan in the per-
son of Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who was thoroughly versed
in historical lore, especially in the sacred history of Judaism and
Christianity. His learning and virtues made him worthy to be the
intimate friend of Constantine, his studious tastes and religious
zeal impelled him to devote himself to those literary labors which
have proved so invaluable to all ecclesiastical historians since his
time, to collect a library, to search for the records and the writ-
ings of the three centuries of toil and suffering just completed,
and to bequeath to us those works in which he has comprised
the greatest part of what we know concerning fiis own age and
those which preceded it. Translations of the historical works of
Eusebius are not in very general circulation or much read. We
may quote his own narrative of that part of the history of Chris-
tian Jerusalem which we have now to recount, with a confident
expectation that our readers will be best satisfied with it as the
most authentic, and will also find it as novel and interesting as
any description in modern form and style could be made :

"After these affairs had been completed [/>., after the close of the Coun-
cil of Nicaea, A.D. 325], the emperor dear to God began another most me-
morable undertaking in Palestine. He considered it, namely, to be his
duty to make that spot in Jerusalem where the resurrection of the Lord
took place illustrious and venerable to all men. Therefore he immediately
commanded that an oratory should be erected in that place, God directing
and the Saviour inspiring his mind to the execution of this work,

" Impious men, or rather the entire band of the demons through the in-
strumentality of impious men, had formerly endeavored to involve that
venerable monument of immortality in darkness and oblivion : that monu-
ment, I say, at which once an angel, descending from heaven, radiant with
wonderful light, had rolled away the stone from the minds of those who were
truly as hard as rocks, and who thought that the living Christ was still lying
among the dead; bringing joyful news to the women, and rolling away the

58 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Oct.,

stone of unbelief from their minds, that he might convince them that he
whom they were seeking was alive. This saving cave, therefore, certain
impious and profane men had determined to abolish entirely, foolishly
thinking that in this way they could hide the truth. So then, with very
great labor, they had brought from elsewhere a great quantity of earth and
other materials, with which they filled up the whole place, raising a heap
of moderate height, which they covered over with stones, concealing en-
tirely under this mass the sacred cave. Then, as if sure of accomplishing
their purpose, they constructed upon that ill-omened soil a sepulchre for
souls ; building a dark cavern of dead images in honor of that lascivious de-
mon whom they call Venus. There they used to offer execrable sacrifices
on profane and impure altars ; for they thought to accomplish the design
which they had in mind completely, when they had buried the saving cave
under this heap of vile impurities. For those miserable men could not un-
derstand that it was altogether impossible that He who had conquered death
should suffer their crime to remain hidden : just as much impossible as that
the sun, shining upon all lands and making his wonted course in heaven,
should escape the notice of the whole human race. Indeed, the power of
our Saviour, resplendent with a far more excellent light, not shining like
the sun upon bodies, but upon the minds of men, was now filling the whole
world with his rays. Yet, notwithstanding, those things which impious and
profane men had contrived against the truth remained for a long space of
time. Nor was there any one among the presidents or generals, or even the
emperors, who was worthy to overturn this criminal work, except that one
prince most acceptable to God, the sovereign over all ; who, being animated
by an influence from the Divine Spirit, was grieved that the place already
mentioned should be covered up and forgotten under the abominations
which the adversaries had heaped upon it, and, being determined not to give
place to their wickedness, commanded, under the invocation of the holy
name of God, that it should be purified ; for he thought that the spot which
had been defiled by adversaries was the one most worthy to be dedicated to
the divine service by his own efforts and ministry in a magnificent manner.
The orders of the emperor were carried out without delay, the mound
erected by those fraudulent men was levelled with the earth, and the
structures they had erected for the deception of men were destroyed
and scattered together with their statues, to the discomfiture of the de-
mons.

" The zeal of the emperor did not rest here, but moved him also to have
all the rubbish removed to a distance from the spot, which was immediately
done in obedience to his order. Having proceeded thus far, the emperor
was not yet satisfied ; but, impelled by a divine ardor, he commanded that
they should dig down deeply into the soil and carry it all far away, as con-
taminated by the profane rites of demons. This was done immediately.
And when the lowest stratum had been laid bare, then, beyond the hope of
all, the august and most holy monument of the Lord's resurrection was dis-
covered ; and that cave, which may truly be called the holy of holies, pre-
sented a kind of similitude of the resurrection of our Saviour, since after
having been buried and concealed it was again brought to light, and, bearing
witness by facts speaking more clearly than any words, exhibited in the
most obvious manner to all those who had gathered together to see what

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 59

had occurred the history of the miracles which had formerly been wrought
in that place.

" These things having in this manner been accomplished, the emperor
immediately took measures, by issuing the necessary orders and providing
ample funds, for constructing with royal magnificence a temple worthy of
God around that saving cave : a work which he had, in the zeal with which!
God inspired him, long before projected and resolved to execute. He
commanded the rulers of the Eastern provinces to furnish abundant sums
of money for the fulfilment of this grand and magnificent undertaking.
Moreover, to the bishop who at that time governed the church of Jerusalem
he sent the following letter, in which he set forth in the clearest language
the saving doctrine of faith, writing to him in these words :

"'VICTOR CONSTANTINUS MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS TO MACARIUS I

" ' So great is the grace of our Saviour that no abundance of speech can
seem sufficient for narrating the wonderful thing which has lately hap-
pened. For the monument of his most sacred passion, which had remained
hidden under the earth for the space of so many years, until, the common
enemy of all having been overthrown, it shone forth upon his liberated
servants, truly surpasses all admiration. Indeed, it seems to me that if all
the wise men of the world collected together should undertake to compose
something suitable to the dignity of this matter, they would not be able to
aspire to even the least part of it ; since the faith of this miracle exceeds
every nature capable of human reason as much as divine things excel those
which are human. In regard to these things, my one chief object is that,
while the truth of the faith is daily becoming more evident by new won-
ders, all our minds should be stirred up to the observance of our most holy
law, with1 modesty and harmonious alacrity. I think all are perfectly well
aware of that of which I wish you in particular to be fully persuaded, that
nothing is more ardently desired by me than that we should adorn with
beautiful fabrics that sacred place which by the commandment of God I
have purified from the sacrilegious structure which had been piled up over
it, which was holy from the beginning in the judgment of God, but was
made much more holy after the faith of the Lord's passion had been made
manifest.

" ' Therefore, it becomes your prudence so to provide all things necessary
for the work that not only the basilica itself may be the most beautiful of
all which can be seen in any place, but that all parts of the edifice may far
surpass the finest fabrics which can be found in any of the cities of the
world. I desire you to know that I have committed to our mutual friend,
Dracilianusthe pro-praetor, and to the president of the province, the charge
of superintending the laying of the foundations and erecting the walls in
an elegant style. We have ordered that the artificers and workmen, and all
things which in your prudence you may judge necessary for this work,
should be provided and directed by their care after receiving, as is fitting,
all requisite information from you. But as regards columns and marbles,
and other more precious things which you may judge suitable for decora-
tion, take care to communicate directly with us, so that when we know
from your letters the number and quality of such things as are requisite
we may provide for their transportation from the places where they can

60 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Oct.,

be obtained. For it is proper that the place which is most admirable among
all localities of the world should be adorned in a manner befitting its
dignity.

" ' Moreover, I could wish that you would inform me whether you think
the grand hall of the basilica should be adorned with fret-work or in what
other style, for if it is fretted it may be also decorated with gilding. I
know nothing more to add, except to request your holiness to make known
to the above-mentioned magistrates as soon as possible how many work-
men and artificers and how much money will be necessary; and that you
will speedily report to me not only in reference to marbles and columns,
but also fretted panels, if you think that style of decoration the most ele-
gant. May the Divinity preserve you, dearest brother.'

" These are the words written by the emperor. Their effect imme-
diately followed ; and in the place of our Saviour's martyrdom a New Jeru-
salem was built opposite to the ancient and celebrated sanctuary and city,
which had already endured the punishment of the wickedness of its inhabi-
tants by the total destruction which laid it waste after the nefarious murder
of the Lord. So over against this old city the emperor in his religious zeal
erected the trophy of the victory which our Saviour had won over death.
And perhaps this was that modern and new Jerusalem, foretold in the
oracles of the prophets, concerning which so many eulogiums pronounced
by the Holy Spirit are read in the sacred books. First, therefore, he
adorned that sacred cave, as the chief part of the whole work : namely, the
divine monument near which, formerly, an angel radiant with celestial
light had announced the regeneration which was made manifest to all by
the Saviour.

" This monument, I say, as the head of the whole work, the magnifi-
cence of the emperor, first of all, decorated with elegant columns, in the
most beautiful style, and with all manner of ornaments. Then he passed
on to the work of inclosing a large space of the ground surrounding the sep-
ulchre and open to the sky, laying down a splendid pavement of stones and
building long porticoes on every side of the enclosure. The basilica was
erected on that side of the sepulchre which looks toward the rising sun :
an admirable structure of grand dimensions in height, length, and width.
Its interior surfaces were encrusted with variegated marbles ; its outer sur-
face veneered with closely jointed dressed stones equally beautiful with
marble. The summit and chambers were covered with a leaden roofing
secure against the storms of winter. The interior was ceiled with panelling
which appeared like a vast sea, and was extended through the entire basili-
ca, supported by mortised rafters all covered with the purest gold, which
made the basilica throughout radiant with splendor. On each side double
porticoes, partly below and partly above the surface, extended along the
whole length of the building, having adjacent rooms which were covered
with gilding. Those which were exterior to the walls of the basilica were
supported by great columns, the interior ones by pillars richly decorated on
their surfaces. Three gates on the eastern side gave entrance to the crowd
of visitors. Near these gates, as the culminating point of the whole edifice,
was a hemisphere extending to the summit of the basilica. It was sur-
rounded by twelve columns, according to the number of the twelve apostles

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 61

of our Saviour. The capitals of these columns were of silver in the form of
large goblets : a costly offering which the emperor dedicated to his God.

" An area was made before the entrances to the temple. First there
was an atrium, then porticoes on each side, and lastly the gates of the
atrium. After these were the vestibules of the whole structure, in the mid-
dle of the open market-place, where the venders of various articles had their-
stations, and these were built in a very Ornate style, so that the passers-
by, looking on them with admiration, could form some idea of what was to
be seen within.

" Thus, then, the emperor constructed this temple as a testimony of the
resurrection which brings salvation, and adorned it with royal and magnifi-
cent furniture. The number and value of the gifts and ornaments, precious
articles of gold, silver, and gems, with which he beautified it, are indescrib-
able ; and I cannot attempt to specify in detail all the grandeur, the elabo-
rate works of art, and other numerous and various features which render
this work so remarkable.

" He also undertook to adorn with reverential honor two other places
of that region which were ennobled by sacred caves. The emperor hon-
ored in a befitting manner that grotto in which our Saviour first manifest-
ed his divine presence and condescended to be born in the flesh. In the
other grotto he honored the memory of the ascension of the Lord, which
had formerly taken place on the summit of the mountain. And by adorn-
ing these places in a magnificent manner he also consecrated with them the
name of his mother, by whose work and instrumentality he was accomplish-
ing so much good for the benefit of the human race, to the eternal remem-
brance of future generations.

" For when this woman of singular prudence had determined to pay the
debt of pious gratitude which she owed to God, the universal sovereign, in
behalf of her son the great emperor, and his sons the Caesars dear to God,
her grandchildren, although she was advanced in years, she hastened with
youthful ardor to traverse that land which was so worthy of veneration, and
to visit the cities and peoples of the East, making them the object of a
truly royal solicitude and providence. And after she had venerated the
footsteps of our Saviour with due respect, as of old the prophetic word had
foretold, Let us worship in the place where his feet have trodden (Ps. cxxxi. 7)>
she left behind for posterity the fruit of her piety. For she immediately
dedicated to God, whom she adored, two temples, one at the cave in which
the Lord was born, the other on that mountain from which he ascended
into heaven : for Emmanuel (this name signifies God with us) submitted to
be born in a place under ground for our sake ; and the place of his nativity
was called by the Hebrews Bethlehem. And therefore the Augusta, filled
with the love of God, honored the child-bearing of the Virgin Mother of
God with splendid monuments, adorning that sacred cave with the most
pious devotion. Moreover, the emperor soon afterwards honored the same
nativity of the Lord with royal gifts, with various monuments of gold and
silver, and embroidered veils, adding to the magnificence of his mother.
The mother of the emperor also erected some lofty structures in memory of
the ascension of Christ, the Saviour of all men, on the Mount of Olives, plac-
ing a sacred building with a temple on the very summit of the mountain.
Veracious history narrates that in this place and in this very cave Christ, the

62 fs THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT [Oct.,

Saviour of all men, initiated his disciples into secret mysteries. The empe-
ror, moreover, testified his veneration for the sovereign King of all men by
endowing this place also with various ornaments and gifts. . . .

" Helena Augusta was mindful also even of the chapels of the smallest
cities, decorating the sacred edifices everywhere with valuable orna-
ments" (De Vita Constantini, lib. iii. cc. 25-45).

TO BE CONTINUED.

IS THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT A NUI-
SANCE TO BE ABATED?

" THE history of the United States Government's repeated violations
of faith with the Indians thus convicts us, as a Nation, not only of having
outraged the principles of justice, which are the basis of international law,
and of having made ourselves liable to all punishments which follow upon
such sins — to arbitrary punishment at the hands of any civilized nation who
might see Jit to call us to account, and to that more certain natural punish-
ment which sooner or later as surely comes from evil-doing as harvests
come from sown seed." *

This is a terrible sentence pronounced upon our country.
How sad a result of our first hundred years of popular govern-
ment ! What a pity that the amiable Georges were interfered
with, by those pestilent colonists who achieved American inde-
pendence, in the prosecution of those measures of improvement
and elevation which they invariably employed in their transac-
tions with the heathen ! We are a nuisance among the nations,
to be justly abated by whatever power, or powers, may feel
strong enough to undertake our destruction. There can be no
hesitancy about throwing the first stone. And we may imagine
the amiable authoress of A Century of Dishonor hoping, like the
Camilla of Corneille, that she may with her own eyes see the
thunderbolt strike us — our monuments in ashes and our laurels in
the dust !

Let us cast a rapid glance backward over the record of these
hundred years and see if that record sustains the charge that the
Republic of the West — the light of whose ensign anywhere
throughout the wide world stirs up feelings of hope and faith in
human progress — is, as a nation, cruel and perfidious, a liar and
a thief.

* A Century of Dishonor. A sketch of the United States Government's dealings with
some of the Indian tribes. By H. H. New York : Harper & Bros.

1 88 1.] A NUISANCE TO BE ABATED? 63

What was the right of the Indian tribes to the lands they
occupied at the time of the settlement? The right of con-
quest.

Not an Indian tribe at that time was occupying land which be-
longed to it by any other title.

The Six Nations crushed the people of their own race from the
Hudson to the Father of Waters. They conquered or expelled
the tribes of the Algonquin race, the Wyandottes, the Eries, the
Shawnees, the Illinois, the Delawares. They took the Delaware
lands and sold them. The country claimed by the Cherokees be-
longed tb the Euchees, whom the Cherokees exterminated, and
whose land they took by the law of the strong hand. The Creeks
had taken the country they claimed from the Natches, the Savan-
nahs, and the Ogeechees, whom they had conquered. The Sioux
took the country of the lowas and that of the Cheyennes, be-
cause buffalo were plenty therein. A war to the knife of three
hundred years between the Chippewas and the Sioux resulted in
the expulsion of the latter from the lands they had seized. The
Chippewas drove out the Sacs and Foxes. Every foot of ground
claimed by this tribe was wrested by them from weaker tribes of
their own race. The Sioux took the Pawnee country, murdered
and outraged the Winnebagoes, the Omahas, the Ottoes, and the
Missouris. And in our own day the much-vexed question of
the removal of the Poncas was initiated by themselves when
driven by the incessant attacks and outrages of the Sioux to ask
for a change of location.

The claimants to the regions of North America by right of
discovery recognized in the Indians only a very limited proprie-
torship in the lands they actually occupied. They refused to
concede that wandering tribes of savage hunters could claim as
their property vast districts over which they occasionally hunted.
Even of the portions on which they actually lived the Euro-
pean governments considered them only as tenants-at-will, re-
movable at the pleasure or convenience of the power possessing
the right of eminent domain, which was held to grow out of the
right of discovery. A usufructuary interest only was conceded
to them, and this interest they could only dispose of to the power
claiming by right of discovery, or, by its permission, to its sub-
jects. The " right of occupancy," which the writer of A Century
of Dishonor inflates to an all-comprehensive extent — excluding
any right of participancy in occupation — amounted simply to this
and nothing more. The " heathen " were not viewed as men
having rights, but as children to be held in a state of pupilage.

64 Is THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT [Oct.,

This was the accepted view of the Indians' status up to the strug-
gle for independence.

What was the attitude of the Indian tribes toward the United
Colonies in the struggle for independence ? At first dilatory and
deceitful, it finally developed into almost universal hostility —
perfidious, bloody, merciless, barbarous. From the Six Nations
in the North to the Creeks in the South the frontier settlements
were deluged with the blood of women and children by the
noble red allies of his Majesty George III. For seven years
after the peace the Western Indians continued to plunder,
burn, and destroy. Up to 1795 they still hoped tfrat Great
Britain, from whose emissaries they had been receiving am-
munition, would renew hostilities. Commissioners sent to ar-
range a peace with them were massacred. At length, when tho-
roughly whipped by Gen. Wayne, they made peace. Their posi-
tion then before the United States was that of subjugated ene-
mies. No mention was made of Great Britain's red allies in the
treaty of peace. She quietly and silently abandoned them to
their fate, or rather to the magnanimity of the young republic.
She coldly ceded the country of her devoted friends, the Six
Nations. What could the tribes claim in justice from the United
States ? Nothing. They had forfeited every right. But mercy
took the place of justice, and the United States pardoned their
hostility, their butcheries and atrocities, conceded to them a lim-
ited sovereignty, a qualified nationality, a power to treat and be
treated with. They admitted the Indians to a proprietorship of
the land, which could not be afterwards taken from them without
satisfactory consideration and their consent. A higher title was
ROW given the Indians by the United States than had ever been
recognized in them by any European government. This was
magnanimity, but it was mistaken. The new government treated
its late enemies not wisely but too well.

Only a few years later we find the tribes in the North, the
South, and the West organizing under Tecumseh and the Pro-
phet to make war upon the government and exterminate the
whites. Breaking a truce, the Indians made a sudden and un-
expected night attack upon Gen. Harrison. Notwithstanding a
heavy American loss, the Indians met with a severe defeat which
made memorable Tippecanoe. And they made peace again.

But not for long. The declaration of war in 1812 brought
them to their feet again as hostile as ever — Sioux, Shawnees, Win-
nebagoes, Chippewas, Delawares, Wyandottes, Pottawatomies,
Miamis, Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees. Another

1 88 1.] A NUISANCE TO BE ABATED? 65

bloody collection of tales of horror was furnished every infant
settlement on the frontiers. In accordance with the provisions of
the treaty of Ghent the tribes were notified by commissioners that
on ceasing hostilities their status ante bellum should be restored.
The Rock River Sacs refused to stop hostilities and continued
to burn, rob, and outrage. Surely they forfeited their rights
under that treaty also. Yet on suing for peace afterwards they
were accorded all the rights they could have claimed had they
availed themselves of the treaty stipulations. The United States
preferred a liberal and humane policy toward the tribes to their
punishment by the employment of force. The United States
government even fed those who at the close of hostilities
were without the necessaries of life. Yet the Sacs again raised
the tomahawk against the government in the war under their
noted chief, Black Hawk. The old story was repeated. Sud-
denly they began burning settlements, butchered and outraged
women and children, until an organized force was sent against
them ; then they succumbed, sued for peace, and were pardoned
once more. Their descendants are living to-day on annuities
paid them by the government of the United States. These facts
should not in justice be omitted from the record of " a century
of dishonor."

The author of A Century of Dishonor does not state the case
of the Creeks and Cherokees versus the States of Georgia and Ala-
bama with fairness. The portions of those tribes opposed to the
emigration plan — proposed by other portions — claimed sove-
reignty and denied the power of the States to extend the opera-
tion of their laws over them. They were offered the choice be-
tween submission to the laws, citizenship, a fee-simple title to a
sufficiency of land, and joining their emigrated brethren, getting
portions of land equal to their cessions, compensation for their
improvements, transportation free, and one year's subsistence after
arrival in the colony. There were bloody feuds between the re-
presentatives of the two factions. Each was willing to make the
treaty if negotiated with its side. One immediately opposed it
when made with the other. The followers of the rival chiefs had
recourse to bloody crimes and assassinations. After their arri-
val in their new country the feud continued bloodier and more
vengeful, and the leaders of the emigration party were assassi-
nated by their rivals with every concomitant of savage cruelty.

Thus far we have seen the Indian tribes quick to spring up,
tomahawk in hand, whenever an enemy arose against the govern-
ment of the United States. What was their attitude in 1861 ?

VOL. xxxiv.— 5

66 Is THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT [Oct.,

With insignificant exceptions, it was the traditional one. They
were on the enemy's side. Canadian traders and half-breeds
were busy among the Northern Indians, spreading the news of an
imminent and inevitable war between the United States and
Great Britain. The Chippewas and Winnebagoes, the Sioux,
the Indians between the Missouri and the British line, were get-
ting ready for the war-path. The Minnesota massacre of 1862,
in which the Sioux killed nearly a thousand women, children, and
old men, destroyed property to the value of millions, and reduced
several thousand people from comparative comfort to destitution,
was the result of the premature explosion of the mine. What do
the so-called semi-civilized tribes of the Indian Territory at this
critical juncture in the nation's life ? They neither hesitate nor
delay. In October, 1861, they formally renounced their allegi-
ance to the government and transferred it to the Confederate
States. They raised troops for the Confederate government,
drove out all neutrals, attacked defenceless settlements and In-
dians supposed to be neutral or friendly. When it dawned upon
them that they had joined the losing side they were quick peti-
tioners for permission to retransfer their allegiance, and they were
allowed to do so. The fact sounds strangely in the record of
"a century of dishonor." The author's attempted defence of the
treason of the Cherokees is weaker than childish. She evidently
felt that it was when writing it, but then they must be defended
quand meme.

With what claim to land were the Indians armed who came
under the jurisdiction of the United States by cession from Mexico
or by the annexation of Texas ?

Mexico recognized no Indian right to soil within her jurisdic-
tion, unless by special grant.

Texas, by express provision, reserved the right to, and exclu-
sive jurisdiction over, all vacant lands within her limits.

These Mexican Indians, therefore, came to us without any
claim to land. They made continual war for nearly twenty years
after the cession, and broke every treaty made with them from
1847 to 1865. Yet the government made no distinction between
them and other Indians, but gave them reservations, food, and
clothing, and recognized in them the treaty-making power. This
is another fact which should not have been omitted from the
record of the century.

Of course the full score of massacres of Indians by whites is
given in this book, and the massacres of whites by Indians passed
over in silence. This is the way to write history when you

1 88 1 ] A NUISANCE TO BE ABATED? 67

want to make a case. When in 1860 white settlers on the Chero-
kee lands were driven away by government forces, our author
tells us that the officer sent to dislodge them was obliged to burn
their cabins over their heads before they would stir. But she
drops no word of sympathy for these people. They were com-
mon white working people. This is philanthropy.

On page 146 the author says that the annuities of the Sioux
were in arrears, but " this was almost a blessing, since both money,
goods, and provisions were so soon squandered for whiskey."
The next line tells us that "in 1842 several of the bands were
reduced to a state of semi-starvation by the failure of the corn
crops and the failure of the Senate to ratify a treaty they had
made with Gov. Doty in 1841. Depending on the annuity pro-
mised in this treaty, they had neglected to make their usual provi-
sions for the winter." Of course the perfidious Senate was to
blame for the trusting Sioux' neglect. Then she tells us that
frosts in June and drought in July combined to ruin the crops.
The water had been drying up for years ; the musk-rat ponds
were dried up, and the perfidious musk-rats had gone " nobody
knew where," says the writer. The beaver, otter, and other
furred animals had been hunted until they were hard to find. The
buffalo had been driven far away ; but even if they were near
enough the Indians had no horses to hunt with. They were
hundreds of miles from any place where corn could be obtained,
" even if they had money to pay for it," the author naively adds.
And she winds up this catalogue of misfortunes with an en-pas-
sant remark that, " except for some assistance from the government,
they would have died by hundreds in the winter of this year " This
interesting item for the record of "a century of dishonor" must'
have crept in by accident.

Sympathy with the wronged is an attribute of noble and gen-
erous hearts. But even noble and generous hearts sometimes
allow their sympathy to run away with their judgment. By
nursing their hatred of wrong they work themselves into such
an excess of zeal that they can see nothing but total depravity in
those they consider to be wrong-doers, and naught but angelic
virtue in those of whom they are the self-constituted champions.
From partisans they become fanatics. Their end being a humane
and noble one, they are blind to the injustice done by themselves.
They read history, law, theology in the light of their fanaticism.
The suggestio falsi ceases to have any terrors for them, and the
suppressio veri becomes a part of their system. All the wrong is
on one side and all the right on the other.

68 ' Is THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT [Oct.,

Right and justice, as understood by the writer of A Century of
Dishonor, would show us a solitary Indian standing on a lofty
eminence within his ten-thousand-acre hunting-park, warning off
the pioneer who begs outside his boundaries for land enough
for a house for his family and for crops for their support. Rail-
roads must not be built, the precious metals must not be digged
out of the useless earth, water-power must not be utilized, be-
cause the Indian will not sell, though he will not cultivate. His
" right " must be respected. The Indian's park is within the
limits of a sovereign State. He claims that he, too, is a sovereign.
He refuses to submit to the laws of the State. It would be
" unjust " to remove him. What will she do with him ?

No doubt money appropriated for Indian uses has been
squandered or misapplied. Dishonest officials have been in
every time and clime and under every form of government.
Even the iron Spartan was not proof against a bribe. The thirst
for gold is not confined to any race or people. In known in-
stances not more than ten per centum of sums paid the Indian
chiefs reached the humble members of the tribe.

That the government has pursued a short-sighted policy with
regard to the Indian tribes any man of ordinary intelligence can
see to-day. But the vision of even the most far-sighted of our
great statesmen of the past fell far short of the future. When
the Indian tribes were colonized beyond the Mississippi, who sup-
posed the development of the country would be so vast, so rapid
as it is ? The expansion has been so marvellous that not even
the wildest believer of forty years ago in our " manifest des-
tiny " had an imagination rich enough to suggest a dream of its
possibility.

The scheme of the colony beyond the Mississippi originated
with that portion of the Cherokees who preferred living Indian
fashion by the chase to the practice of agriculture. Their object
was not civilization but the preservation of their old habits, cus-
toms, and mode of life. They wanted to be placed beyond possi-
bility of contact with white men, and they thought the emigra-
tion would effect their design. Neither Indian nor white man
then dreamed of pioneers crowding around the Indian Territory
and galling the kibes of the big chiefs.

This colonization scheme, devised by the Indians, as I have
said, to escape civilization in the first place, and then adopted by
the government as a civilizing scheme, has been a double failure,
both for the Indians and the government. If in the present
stage of our development isolation were much longer possible, it

1 88 1.] A NUISANCE TO BE ABATED? 69

is not by isolation that savages can be civilized, and the Indians
know it. The reservation system is merely the colony in petto.
Tribal title to land is merely the basis of an oligarchy. The first
step toward the civilization of the Indian is the solution of the
tribal bond. Blood will yet be spilled before it is loosed. The
chiefs, head-men, and medicine-men will fight for it to the last.

In guaranteeing vast tracts of land to Indian tribes " for
ever" the government contracted unfortunately, though in good
faith, to do what was beyond its power — beyond any human
power. You might as well give an Indian a reservation on the
sands at low water, and expect to prevent the high tide from
sweeping over him. It is only a question of time. It will come
in the Indian Territory as well as elsewhere. The tide of settle-
ment will draw closer and closer until the Indian is hemmed in
to the quantity of land he will cultivate. His only safety is to
get that in severalty which no man can take from him, and bring
up his children in the ways and habits of the whites who will
settle around him. The game is gone, and the Indian was its
most reckless destroyer. The hunting-park of 10,000 acres nec-
essary to support one Indian by the chase the crush of settle-
ment will no longer permit.

Like all conquered peoples, the Indian's future is assimilation,
absorption, or extinction. He cannot be civilized by isolation or
preserved as an ethnological curiosity. The sooner the great
reservations are cut up and sold the better. Give the Indian a
liberal share of land in fee, inalienable for a term of years. Make
him amenable to the laws of the State or Territory he lives in, and
extend to him their protection. Help him in his first efforts at
self-support ; supplement the result of these efforts by what is
necessary to his subsistence. Give him industrial schools for his
children ; let him be free to worship God in his own way, and do
not, with cold indifferentism or cynical scepticism, parcel him out
among jarring sects, so many head to each.

While history shows that the Indian tribes in their transac-
tions with each other were remorseless tyrants and perfidious
enemies, that the stronger despoiled, decimated, exterminated
the weaker ; while the annals of their inter-tribal relations are an
unparalleled record of cruelty, outrage, robbery, and blood, the
history of our hundred years bears upon its closing page the not
dishonorable record that no Indian tribes which were in existence at
the time of the Declaration of Independence have become extinct. And
the protecting power that saved them from extinction is the gov-
ernment of the United States.

70 'A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA.

" You will hear more Gaelic spoken in Canada in one week
than you would hear during a month's sojourn in the High-
lands !" Such was the astounding assertion made some time ago
at a Montreal dinner-table by a Scottish laird, himself of Cana-
dian birth, and an extensive landowner in Ontario as well as in
North Britain. And such is indeed the case. Along the shore of
Lake St. Francis, and beyond, where the broad blue ribbon of the
St. Lawrence is dotted with tiny verdant islets, among which
loyal Canadians peep shyly across to the State of New York,
dwell a sturdy race of men as truly Highland in heart and
speech as when they left their beloved hills a hundred years ago.
A nature, if loyal to one attachment, will be loyal to all. These
Highlanders in Canada have preserved their faith and have ad-
hered to their language and traditions.

To visit the Gael in the home of his adoption you leave Mon-
treal, going by railroad westward for about two hours and a half,
and arrive at Lancaster, the county town of Glengarry, the home
of the Chlanadh nan Gael. Glengarry is the most easterly county of
Ontario, and is one of those into which the district of Lunenbourg
was divided in 1792. It is bounded on the east by County Sou-
langes, on the north by Prescott, west by County Storm ont — also
largely peopled with Scotch settlers — and on the south by the
St. Lawrence.

The county comprises four townships : Charlottenburg, Lan-
caster, Lochiel, and Kenyon. These are again subdivided into
" concessions," and the concessions into lots. Lancaster, the
county town, is in the township of Charlottenburg and lies on
the banks of the Riviere-aux-Raisins. It is the outlet for pro-
duce from the inland villages, and the place of starting for stage-
coaches to different points. The roads here are atrocious, and
the coaches " rattle your bones over the stones " while taking
you through a country so magnificent that you wonder why
the dwellers therein do not mend their ways. In Charlotten-
burg are also the parishes of St. Raphael's, Martintown, and
Williamstown. The township of Lancaster lies east of Charlot-
tenburg, and was called the " sunken township " on account
of the first French settlers having considered it too swampy
for habitation. Lochiel lies to the north and boasts of quite

i88i.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 71

a rising town, Alexandria, containing seven hundred inhabitants,
a high-school, and a convent under the Sisters of the Holy
Cross. Kenyon is north of Charlottenburg, and is, like the
others, a country of magnificent agricultural development.

The counties of Stormont and Dundas are, if we except a few
Germans, entirely Scotch, but are not Catholic, as is Glengarry.
The pioneer settlers were from the valley of the Mohawk,
whither many had emigrated from Scotland and from Germany
before the Revolution. When the proclamation of peace in 1783
deprived the Scottish soldiers who formed the Royal New York
Regiment, under Sir John Johnson, of their occupation, noth-
ing was left for them but to accept the offer of the British gov-
ernment and settle on lands granted them in Canada West. Loy-
alty came more natural to their mountain instincts than policy,
and they were in those days much more conscientious than prac-
tical* Each soldier received a grant of a hundred acres fronting
on the river, and two hundred within the county on which he
settled. That these people were for the main part Protestant is
easily seen by the names which they bestowed on their villages,
such as Matilda, Williamstown, Charlotte, and Mariatown, which
latter was, we are told, " called after Captain Duncan's daughter
Maria." There were many Catholics also in Sir John Johnson's
regiment, and they probably turned the first sod in what is now
Glengarry ; but the real influx of Catholic Highlanders did not
take place until 1786 and 1802.

Throughout the last century religious persecution prevailed
in the Highlands of Scotland, not in actual strife or bloodshed,
but in the merciless bigotry and continued obstruction that
comes so readily to those " children of this world, who are wiser
in their generation than the children of light." The old chief-
tains who had clung to their God and their sovereign were at-
tainted, incarcerated in Edinburgh Castle or in the Tower of
London, and their sons of tender age, removed from the influence
of early associations, were the helpless pupils of the sanctimonious
dominies, who banished from their young minds every ray of
Catholic hope and joy, and sent them back to their country as
strangers and sojourners — sometimes as fierce denouncers of the
faith in which they were born.

Strong in loyalty and conservative to the heart's core, for
years the powerful clan of MacDonald escaped unscathed. De-
scended from the mighty Somerled, Thane of Argyle, by his
marriage with the daughter of Olaf, surnamed the Red, the Nor-

* The writer of this article, it is well to note, is a loyal Canadian. — ED. C. W.

72 A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

wegian King of the Isles, this branch of Siol Cuin (the race of
Conn) had accepted the faith of St. Columba, the " royal O'Neil,"
and never wavered from his teachings. For centuries they had
lived and died Catholics, and the. bones of their chieftains had
been

" Carried to Colme's Kill, the
Sacred storehouse of their predecessors,
And guardian of their bones."

In rugged Inverness, where the mighty houses of Clanranald
and Glengarry, divided by Loch Nevish, held watch and ward
over the heather-clad mountains and deep and dangerous arms
of the sea ; back through the braes of Lochaber to where the
McDonells of Keppoch dwelt under the shadow of Ben Nevis ;
over the Sound of Sleat, by whose waters MacDonald of that ilk
kept his enemies at bay, and westward to the wild rocks of the
Hebrides, the clan Donald practised their faith. By dint of much
caution, and with great labor, these faithful mountaineers were
fed with the sacraments of their church. Priests' heads were
then as valuable as were those of wolves in the days of Alfred,
and if a saggarth was caught by " the Reformed " woe to him !
In spite of these dangers, young men escaped to the Continent,
and in the Scots' College, Rome, and at Valladolid, in Spain,
studied for the priesthood. After their ordination they would
return to their beloved hills to brave death and save souls.
Jesuits and Irish secular priests, outlawed, and with a price set
upon them dead or alive, sought this remote field for their devot-
ed labors.

Across the rough gray waters of the Gulf of Hebrides, in
many a cave and sheltered nook of the island of South Uist, the
clansmen, in their belted tartans, assisted at the Holy Sacrifice
and received the Bread of Heaven. Like the Israelites, they "ate
it with their loins girt, and standing," for the morning mist roll-
ing off Benbecula might disclose to them a watchful foe, and the
waves of Minch, now trembling in the dawn of day, might, ere
the sun climbed beyond the mountains' crest, bear on their bosom
the boat of the Sassenach spy. If the spy were not well attended
and strongly armed it would be worse for him, for meekness and
gentleness were Christian characteristics not strongly marked in
this race, and they acted literally on St. Paul's injunction to be
"first pure and then peaceable." Their precept was, Luathic do
liambh agus cruadhich do Chuille — " Quicken thy hand and harden
thy blows." An amusing specimen of this spirit is handed down

1 88 1.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 73

from the prayer of a clansman before the battle of Sheriffmuir ;
" O Lord ! be thou with us ; but, if thou be not with us, be not
against us, but leave it between the red-coats and us ! "

At last some among this chosen people of God fell, lured by
the inducements of the supporters of the Elector of Hanover, as
they had persistently called his Britannic majesty. Not content
with embracing Calvinism themselves, they endeavored to inocu-
late their people. One, indeed, tried an untoward application by
means of severe blows from his Bati-bui — or yellow walking-stick —
with which he hoped to induce his tenantry to repair to the Protes-
tant meeting-house. To this day Calvinism is spoken of by the
descendants of those people as Credible a bhati-bui — the religion of
the yellow stick. The tyranny of these foes of their own house-
hold, combined with the poverty and wretchedness prevailing
throughout the Highlands, caused many of the MacDonalds and
their Catholic neighbors to turn their thoughts to America,
whence came alluring stories of plenty and peace. At home the
country had been drained to provide means for the insurrection
which they hoped would put their exiled prince on the throne
of the Stuarts. The ravages of war had laid their lands waste,
the more progressive Lowlanders and the absentee nobles
were turning the tenant-holdings into sheep-walks, inch by
inch their birthright was leaving them, their dress was forbid-
den, their arms seized, their very language was made contra-
band ; so, facing the difficulty like brave men, they determined
to emigrate. In the year 1786 two ships sailed from Scot-
land to Canada filled with emigrants. The first left early in
the season, but sprang a leak and was obliged to put into Bel-
fast for repairs ; resuming her voyage, she reached the American
coast too late to attempt making Quebec harbor, and therefore
landed her passengers at Philadelphia. The emigrants were lodged
in a barracks evacuated by the troops after the proclamation
of peace, but in the course of the winter a third misfortune befell
them : the barracks took fire and burned to the ground, consuming
in the flames their worldly all. These poor pilgrims then went
through to Lake Champlain in boats, and were met at Ile-aux-
Noix by their friends who had already established themselves in
Ontario. Who but Highland hearts would undertake such a
journey for friends ? At a bad season of the year, over slushy
roads, when time was precious and horseflesh valuable, they
started in capacious sleighs for their old friends and kindred,
and drove them to the forest that was to be their home, housing
.and feeding them until their own log-houses were erected.

74 ^ SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

The second band of emigrants before referred to had a much
more prosperous voyage. They were from Knoydart, and
were under the leadership of the Rev. Alexander MacDon-
ald, of the family of Scothouse, a cousin of the chief of Glengarry.
He was a man of courage and strong will, and marshalled his
flock with prudence and discretion. As the good ship MacDon-
ald glided out of the harbor of Greenock the priest addressed
his flock and put them under the protection of St. Raphael, the
guide of the wanderer. A few moments later there was a wail
of terror : the ship was aground. " Sios air er glunean, agusdianibh
urnaigh " — " Down on your knees and pray ! " — thundered the
priest ; St. Raphael interceded, the ship slid off, and in the Que-
bec Gazette, 1786, is this entry :

" Arrived, ship MacDonald, from Greenock, with emigrants, nearly the
whole of a parish in the north of Scotland, who emigrated with their priest
and nineteen cabin passengers, together with five hundred and twenty
steerage passengers, to better their case, up to Cataraqui."

Cataraqui was the ancient name for Kingston ; there, how-
ever, they did not go, but to what is now known as St. Raphael's
parish, some miles north of Lancaster. Here they fell to work, in
spite of numerous hardships, to construct their houses, and also
to build the pioneer church, called " Blue Chapel." Of course
church and parish were dedicated to their archangel guardian.
In the year 1802 another very large party of emigrants arrived
from Glengarry, Inverness-shire, who, settling near the earlier
comers, gave the name of their native glen to the whole district.
During the winter of 1803 the good priest of St. Raphael's fell ill
far away from any comfort or from medical aid to soothe or assuage
his malady ; he was deprived, too, of the services of a brother
priest to administer the consolations of religion. His people rallied
round him, and the strongest men came forward ; they construct-
ed a leabaith ghulain, and carried him upon it through the for-
est paths and over the snow mountains to Williamstown. Hence,
when the ice broke up, he was taken in a canoe down Riviere-
aux-Raisins to the mission at Lachine, where he died on the igth
of May, 1803. He was succeeded in St. Raphael's by a Father
Fitzsimmons.

The chronicle of the emigrants of 1802 introduces one of the
grandest figures in Canadian history — the Rev. Alexander (Alla-
stair) MacDonald, or MacDonell, later the first bishop of Upper
Canada. He was of the House of Glengarry, a branch of clan Don-
ald now generally recognized as inheriting the chieftainship of the

i88i.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 75

whole clan. For services rendered to the royal house of Stuart
they were rewarded by Charles II. with a peerage under the title
of Lord MacDonell and Arross. The Rev. Alexander MacDon-
ald was born at Innishalaggan in 1760, and studied at Valladolid.
About the year 1790 trade between the river Clyde and the
North American colonies had been greatly injured by the procla-
mation of peace and the independence of those colonies, and the
merchants of Glasgow and Greenock turned their attention to the
importation and manufacture of cotton. This branch of industry
grew rapidly, and in 1793 over eighty thousand people were em-
ployed in it. The great demand for labor drained the agricul-
tural districts and sent up the price of all kinds of provisions.
The lairds, finding they could obtain so ready a market, deter-
mined that it would be more to their advantage to turn their
mountain estates into sheep-walks than to allow them to be occu-
pied by the numerous and poor clansmen, who were indifferent
farmers and could scarcely obtain from the soil sufficient for
their own maintenance. Accordingly the tenants were turned
adrift ; sometimes two hundred gave place to one south-country
shepherd, or, as the local phraseology expressed it, " Two hun-
dred smokes went through one chimney." These poor people
were destitute and helpless ; they had never been beyond the gray
line of ocean that washes the rocks of the Hebrides and runs
into the deep indentures of the Inverness-shire coast. The south-
ern language was to them an unknown tongue ; to make or to take
care of money was beyond their ken. The means of emigration
were denied them. British cruisers had orders from the Admi-
ralty to prevent the departure of emigrants from the Highlands of
Scotland, and to press such able-bodied men as they found on
board of emigrant-ships. It was when affairs were in this pitiable
state that the Rev. Dr. MacDonald came to the rescue. Leaving
the scene of his missionary labors on the borders of Perth, he re-
paired to Glasgow, where he obtained an introduction to the
principal manufacturers. He proposed to them that they should
give employment to his destitute countrymen. This they were
willing enough to do, but reminded the priest of two obstacles :
one, their ignorance of the English language ; the other, their
profession of the Catholic faith. At that time the prejudice
against Catholics was so strong in Glasgow that they were always
in danger of insult and abuse. It was hardly safe for a priest
to reside among them ; he would be subject to annoyance and as-
sault, and, as the penal laws were still in force, he would also be
liable to be brought before a court of justice. Dr. MacDonald

76 A9 SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.r

expressed his conviction that " although the letter of the law was
in force, the spirit of it was greatly mitigated," and declared that
if the manufacturers would take the Highlanders under their pro-
tection he would run his chances of safety and take up his resi-
dence among them as interpreter and clergyman. This was
agreed to, and from 1792 to 1794 the plan worked admirably.
Then came the war with France. The manufacturers received a
sudden check ; many failed, and others were almost at a stand.
The pooi Highlanders were again out of employment and again
destitute. Dr. MacDonald then conceived the plan of getting
them embodied in a Highland corps under his kinsman called Al-
lastair Ruagh (the red), the young chief of Glengarry. He assem-
bled a meeting of Catholics at Fort Augustus in February, 1794,
when an address was drawn up to the king, offering to raise a
Catholic corps under the command of the young chieftain, who
with Fletcher, the laird of Dunens, proceeded to London to lay
it before the king. It was most graciously received ; the manu-
facturers of Glasgow warmly seconded it, furnishing cordial re-
commendations of the Highlanders, and in August letters of ser-
vice were issued to Alexander MacDonell, of Glengarry, to raise
the Glengarry Fencible Regiment as a Catholic corps, of which
he was appointed colonel. The Rev. Dr. MacDonald was gazet-
ted chaplain to this regiment, which did service in Guernsey and
afterwards in Ireland.

An anecdote is told of them at Waterford which shows the
honest simplicity of their nature and their ignorance of worldly
wisdom. When they entered the town billet-money was dis-
tributed among them. Before night the order was countermand-
ed ; they were ordered to New Ross. Being told of this, each
honest Scot returned his billet-money ! While they were quar-
tered in Connemara two young men named Stewart were
brought by the commanding officer before a drum-head court-
martial, whereupon a private stepped out of the ranks, recov-
ered his arms, saluted his colonel, and said :

" Ma dhoirtear diar di fhuil nan Stuibhartich an a sho a noc,
bi stri s'anchuis" — " If there will be a drop of the Stewart blood
spilt here to-night there will be trouble." " Go back to the ranks,
you old rebel," was the answer ; but the Stewarts escaped scot-
free. The colonel at this time was not Glengarry, but his cousin
Donald MacDonell, who was afterwards killed at Badajos at the
head of the " forlorn hope."

The regiment was disbanded in 1802, and the men were again
as destitute as ever. Their chaplain then set out for Lon-

iSSi.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 77

don, and entered into a negotiation with the government in the
hope of obtaining assistance to further their emigration to Upper
Canada. This plan was opposed, and the government offered to
settle them in Trinidad. Dr. MacDonald, however, persevered,
and at length procured from Mr. Addington, the premier, an order
to grant two hundred acres of land to every Highlander who
should arrive in the province. After enduring extreme opposi-
tion from Highland landlords, governors, and members of Parlia-
ment— even from the Prince of Wales, who offered them land in
Cornwall — the devoted priest obtained the desire of his heart and
saw his beloved people sail for Canada in 1802. As has been
before said, they named their new home after their native glen,
and every head of a family called his plantation after the farm he
had possessed among the grand old hills of Inverness-shire.

It must not be thought that all the Catholic settlers were
MacDonells (or MacDonalds). Among those of 1784 we find the
name of Fraser, McLennan, Hay, Rose, Glasford, and others ;
among the bands of 1786 were Grants, Mclntoshes, McWilliamses,
McDougalls, McPhees, McGillises, McGillivrays, McCuaigs,
and Campbells. Those of 1802 were more than half MacDon-
alds.

In 1804 Dr. MacDonald followed his people to Canada. He
-proceeded first to visit the Rev. Roderick *(Rory) MacDonald
at the Indian mission of St. Regis, then went to Kingston.
^During this time the people of St. Raphael's had taken a dislike
to Father Fitzsimmons and clamored to have him removed, pro-
bably because they saw a chance of having his place filled by their
beloved pastor of old days. Father Roderick, from St. Regis,
reasoned with them by letter, but in vain. At last a sturdy
clansman, John MacDonald, surnamed " Bonaparte," pushed his
way from St. Raphael's to Quebec in midwinter, 1805, and laid
his petition before Bishop du Plessis, who came to Glengarry in
the summer of the same year and appointed Dr. MacDonald par-
ish priest of St. Raphael's.

The people's joy was very great at having their beloved priest
with them once more. They gathered from near and far to bid
him welcome. The little " Blue Chapel " was filled to overflowing ;
devout worshippers knelt along the aisles, on the doorsteps, and
out on the short, crisp grass of the woodland meadows. When
the notes of the Tantum Ergo rose on the air they pictured the
Benediction service in their former home, where they had knelt
on the heather of the beloved glen, through whose mountains
their clear, wild music had so often sounded that hymn of adora-

78 A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

tion, borne along the rippling waves of the Garry to float over
the waters of dark Loch Ness and echo amid the wild hills of
Glen More. The " Blue Chapel " was soon too small for the
parishioners, and Dr. MacDonald went home to Scotland in 1819
to procure assistance toward the erection of a larger church.
During his absence he was elected bishop of Upper Canada.
He returned in 1820, bringing with him from Glasgow a stone-
mason, who set about building the present parish church of St.
Raphael's. The bishop was consecrated in Montreal in 1820, and
was received in Glengarry with a great display of rejoicing.
After remaining there for two years he removed to Kingston,
which place became his home, the diocese having been divided
and Bishop Power appointed bishop of Toronto. Bishop Gau-
lin, coadjutor to Bishop MacDonald, was assistant priest at St.
Raphael's after 1812, as the bishop was constantly travelling.
Bishop MacDonald organized his immense diocese, bought land,
built convents and churches, also founded at St. Raphael's the
College of lona, a portion of which was built in 1818 for a public
school ; the western part was added for ecclesiastics in 1826.
Here he taught himself, aided by professors whom he obtained
from Montreal. Fourteen ecclesiastics were ordained from this
primitive seat of learning. The bishop's house, built in 1808, is a
spacious stone mansion capable of accommodating many persons,
and fronting on a large garden laid out in 1826 by a gardener
whom he brought out from Scotland. The bishop seems here to
have found rest and solace among his flowers. He founded the
Highland Society and encouraged among the people the preser-
vation of their nationality. In a pastoral still extant he expresses
himself very strongly against "those radicals who aim at the
destruction of our holy religion/' and strives to inculcate on his
people a spirit of moderation and gratitude to the government,
who had certainly befriended them better than had their own
natural chieftains at home. When he crossed the Atlantic in
1819 the bishop endeavored to interest Cardinal Wilde in his
Glengarry colony, and, it is said, wanted him to visit Upper
Canada, his eminence being then not even a priest, simply a very
wealthy widower.

In 1840 the venerable prelate went home to Scotland for the
last time, and visited an old friend, Father Gardiner, in Dum-
fries, in whose arms he died. Mortal illness seized him before \
he reached the end of his journey, and his first words of greeting
were : " Dear old friend, I've come to die with you." His re-
mains were brought to St. Raphael's, then removed to Kingston

1 88 i.J A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 79

in 1860. Thus passed away one of the grandest men whom God
ever sent to hew for his people a path through the wilder-
ness.

Among those who came out in the ship MacDonald were
one John MacDonald, of the MacDonalds of Loupe, and Anna
McGillis, his wife, with three, children. The three multiplied to
nine before many years passed, and of these two sons entered the
church ; the eldest, ^Eneas (Angus), joined the Sulpicians and
passed forty years as a professor in the Montreal seminary. He
then retired to Glengarry, where, at the age of eighty, he died
universally beloved. Two brothers and two sisters died, aged
respectively ninety-eight, eighty-two, seventy-three, and sixty-
seven years ; there are now living in Cornwall two brothers and
one sister, aged eighty-eight, eighty-one, and seventy-eight years.
The second son, John, studied for the priesthood, and soon after
his ordination was an assistant at St. Raphael's ; thence he was
removed to Perth, where he suffered many hardships for ten
years. He was vicar-general of Kingston and parish priest of
St. Raphael's for many years, and died at Lancaster on the i6th
of March, 1879, in the ninety-seventh year of his age.

This latter was a man of very determined character and
somewhat stern in his treatment of his flock, who one and all
obeyed him as little children. It was no uncommon thing in
those days to see a man with a sheep-skin on his head or a
wooden gag in his mouth — a penance awarded by Father John.
A pulpit was a conventionality that he scorned ; he always ad-
dressed his people while walking to and fro behind the Commu-
nion railing. If any luckless wight incurred his displeasure he
was pitilessly and publicly rebuked, though sometimes the worm
turned. For instance :

" John Roy MacDonald, leave this church." Dead silence.
"John Roy MacDonald, I say leave this church." John Roy
MacDonald rises and goes slowly and solemnly out, stepping
carefully over the far-apart logs that did duty for a floor.

Father John proceeds with his sermon, when creak, creak,
creak, back over the logs comes John Roy MacDonald and
calmly resumes his seat.

"John Roy MacDonald, did I not tell you to leave this
church?"

" Yes, Maister Ian, and I will be for to go out of the church
for to pleass you, and now I wass come pack for to pleass my-
self ! " It was not the ancient Scotch custom to call priests father ;
hence Father John was always spoken to and of as Maister Ian.

*
So A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

Through great and manifold hardships have these people
worked their way to comfort and ease. Coming from a life of
freedom, and in many instances careless idleness, in a sea-girt
home where a wealth of fresh fish was always to be had for very
slight exertion, agricultural labor was almost unknown to them.
In Canada they found themselves obliged to work hard and
in the face of disheartening obstacles. Their new home was in
many parts either swamp-land or else sandy and full of stones ;
the stones had to be picked up and made into walls to divide the
farms, and the swamp-land drained and reclaimed. Often they
had to lay roads of logs across the marshes and jump from one
log to another, carrying on their backs bags of grain to be
ground at Williamstown, where Sir John Johnson had erected
a mill. Williamstown is to-day a thriving place, with a fine con-
vent and as pretty a church as there is to be found in Canada.
All these obstacles they surmounted as became the hardy moun-
taineers they were, and from their ranks came some of the cele-
brated characters of Canadian history, such as the first Speaker of
the Upper Canadian Parliament, which met at Niagara, Septem-
ber 17, 1792 — Colonel John MacDonell, of Greenfield, for many
years member for Glengarry and attorney-general. He was
colonel of the Glengarry Fencibles raised for the War of 1812,
and was killed while serving under Brock at Queenstown
Heights.

Simon Fraser, of the house of Lovat, descended from Mrs.
Fraser, of Kilbrocky (the best female [Scotch] Gaelic scholar of her
time, who instructed the Jesuit Farquarson in that language and
was one of the means of keeping the faith from extinction in the
Highlands), was born in Glengarry ; he became a partner in the
Northwest Company, and on one of his exploring expeditions dis-
covered the Fraser River.

From St. Raphael's came the family of Sandfield MacDonald,
of which the late Hon. John Sandfield MacDonald was the eldest
son. He was one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, and
premier of the Canadian government. His brother, the Hon. D.
A. MacDonald, one of the crown ministers of the late Liberal or
Grit government, was lieutenant-governor of Ontario for five
years.*

Among the " places of interest " to a Catholic stranger in
Canada West there is none more delightful than St. Raphael's,
where so many historic memories meet and touch, and, inter-

* Mother St. Xavier, for years the respected superior of the Ursuline Convent in Quebec,
also was born in Glengarry.

1 88 1.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 81

weaved with the faith that is in them, live on in the hearts of the
people. It is difficult of access ; so are most poetic places nowa-
days. You leave Lancaster in a " Black Maria " that groans
and creaks and bounces over the road in a way that will test
your nerves. Your driver is a yellow-haired Gael with a ten-
dency to moralize on the evils of intemperance ; but as he speaks
the wind wafts over his shoulder his breath, tainted with an un-
mistakable odor of John Barleycorn. As you leave Lancaster
a wayside workshop strikes your eye, neat, white, and dapper.
From its eave depends a sign ; you expect at the most an intima-
tion that festive buggies and neat jaunting-sleighs are made
within ; but no : "A large supply of elegant coffins always on hand T*
This singular memento mori sets you thinking until you come
to the end of your seven-mile drive and dismount at " Sandfield's
Corner," your oscillating conveyance going jolting on to Alexan-
dria. You follow in the wake of a barefooted small boy whose
merry black eyes proclaim him an interloper and a Frenchman.
Along the side of the old " military road " you go under elm-trees
of giant height until you reach the quaint old hamlet dedicated to
" Raphael the healer, Raphael the guide." Village there is none;
only a post-office and store, an inn, a school-house, two cottages,
with the church, presbytery, and college. The former stands on
the brow of a hill and is remarkably large and lofty for a country
church. On a chiselled slab over the door you read :

TEAG DE. *
IIIDCCXXI.

Entering you are struck by the bareness of the vast roof, un-
supported by pillars or galleries. The sanctuary is formed by a
rood-screen dividing it from the passage that connects the sanc-
tuaries. Behind this screen is a white marble slab bearing the
inscription :

On the 1 8th of June, 1843,

the Highland Society of Canada

erected this tablet to the memory of

the Honorable and Right Reverend

ALEXANDER MACDONELL,

Bishop of Kingston,

Born 1760 — Died 1840.

Though dead he still lives

in the hearts of his countrymen.

* House of God.
VOL. XXXIV.— 6

82 A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. [Oct.,

Under the floor at the gospel side of the sanctuary lie the
mortal remains of the good and revered Father John. Upon the
main altar a statue of the patron of the church, St. Raphael,
the "human-hearted seraph" — imported from Munich by the
present parish priest, Father Masterson — looks as full of beauty
and compassion as even Faber has portrayed him.

The side altars have also fine statues of the Blessed Virgin
and St. Joseph, and the church throughout gives evidence of
tasteful care. In the graveyard there are many old tombs, of
which the inscriptions are defaced by time. One of the oldest
bears the date of 1828, and on it the passer-by is requested, " in
the name of God," to pray for the soul of Mary Watson, spouse
of Lieutenant Angus McDonell, Glengarry Light Infantry.
Near the church there was a building called a convent, but the
bishop never succeeded in obtaining nuns for the mission. The
enclosure across the road is occupied by the presbytery and col-
lege, now used as a chapel in which Mass is said daily, and in
which, when the writer first saw it, the descendants of the moun-
taineers were repeating the rosary on a golden May evening.
The building is small, and has, of course, been greatly altered, all
the partitions having been removed to render it fit for use as a
chapel. The garden of the bishop is still a mass of bloom, and in
its centre walk stands a moss-grown sun-dial, whereon we trace :

"R. J. McD. 1827"

— a relic of Maister Ian. From the wall of one of the rooms in
which he lived the grand old bishop's portrait looks down on his
people. It shows a man of commanding figure and noble and
benign aspect, withal bearing a striking resemblance to the pic-
tures of Sir Walter Scott. The church, house, college, and gar-
den have been much improved by Father Masterson, who suc-
ceeded Father John, after being his assistant for many years.

The people of Glengarry seem to live on very good terms with
their Protestant neighbors, and tell with pleasure of Father John's
custom of reading the Bible aloud to those of them who wished
him to do so. The bishop was revered by all sects, and when he
received visitors of state in Kingston the wife of the Protestant
minister used to go over to do the honors of his house. All
through the country the farms are equal, if not superior, to any
others of the Dominion, and are graced by magnificent trees.
The roads are bordered with beech, ash, birch, tamarack, maple,
butternut, spruce, willow, and pine, while the elms in every direc-

1 88 1.] A SCOTCH CATHOLIC SETTLEMENT IN CANADA. 83

tion offer studies for an artist in their rugged and graceful curves.
These elms were the staple commodity for export, and the year
in which the people found no market for their wood was one in
which their sufferings were extreme ; they still speak of it as "the
year of elms." A small river called the Beaudette winds through
the country. On each side of it are marsh-lands, covered in
places with low-sized bushes ; water scenery is certainly want-
ing to Glengarry.

The Highlanders are grave and serious, clannish as of old,
standing by each other "guaillean ri guaillean " (shoulder to
shoulder) in all disputes. The old antipathy between the clans is
still in some instances cherished. It is a well-known fact that a
young lawyer of Glengarry, who is, in the opinion of many, heir
to the title and chieftainship, actually refused, some time ago, to
accept an invitation to dine with the Marquis of Lome, declaring
that a MacDonell could not and would not be the guest of a
Campbell of Argyle !

The national dress is rare now and only comes out, like the
bagpipes, on state occasions. The girls, in spite of Father John's
penances, have cultivated their decided talent for dancing, but
there is generally none of the gayety and careless amusement so
common among the French-Canadians. Hospitality is a predomi-
nant characteristic of the Highlanders — a hospitality so generous,
sincere, and hearty that, having experienced it, you will be ready
to say with Burns :

" When death's dark stream I ferry o'er —

A time that surely shall come —
In heaven itself I'll ask no more
Than just a Highland welcome."

'
84 WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL Q UESTION MEAN ? [Oct.,

WHAT DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL QUESTION

MEAN?

WE give place willingly to the following remarks of Prof.
Lyman, of the Rush Medical College of Chicago, on an article
published in the pages of this magazine entitled " Catholics
and Protestants agreeing on the Public-School Question." Every
one will be convinced, on the perusal of his criticism, that he is a
man of candor, honestly seeks to find a satisfactory solution to
the much-vexed school problem, and wishes to deal fairly with
Catholics. Let us hope that in his fair-mindedness he does not
stand alone, but represents the great body of our fellow-country-
men :

"To THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD :

" DEAR SIR : My attention has been recently directed to an admirable
paper on the school question, published by the Rev. Isaac T. Hecker in
THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1881. After setting forth the true
position of our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens towards the public-school
system of our country, the reverend gentleman, as a remedy for the injus-
tice which now mars our method of popular education, proposes a division
of the school fund among the different denominational schools and the
public schools. ' Let all schools,' he writes, ' whether secular or denomi-
national, stand, as they should do in this free country, equally before the
state. . . . Every school would receive, whether Christian, Jew, or Gentile,
that quota from the state, and no more, which would be both legitimate
and just under our form of political government. . . . The public schools
under such a plan would continue to exist for those who prefer them, and
receive their fair share of payment from the state. Denominational
schools would be founded by those who prefer them, and receive also their
quota from the state.'

'' Such a plan as this certainly has, to commend it, the merit of simpli-
city. If all men could also agree as to the kind of schools which should
thus be created and supported, there could arise no serious objection to a
division of the taxes among different educational bodies. Unfortunately,
however, this plan would not enable us to dispense with one of the greatest
objections to our present system of popular education. It would not emanci-
pate our common schools from the control of the politician. Our denomi-
national schools, which now are free, would then all be finally brought
under the blighting influence of the practical politician ; for the holder of
the purse would inevitably insist upon the control, in some shape, of its
contents. My worthy Roman Catholic friends who now support their
parochial schools with funds which are contributed by the faithful members
of their own communion — funds which are honestly raised in response to
appeals addressed to the higher motives of the human soul — would then
find themselves embarrassed by the degrading necessity for continual mani-
pulation of the selfish men who absorb the political power of the country.

r 88 1 .] WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL Q UESTION MEAN ? 85

Nor would the denominational schools, thus supported, be left free to their
own course of development. There would be constant insistence upon the
right of public inspection and public control of schools which were sup-
ported with public money. This would lead to constant irritation and an-
noyance. Denominational jealousies would at once spring into renew-
ed life. The smaller sects would continually complain that the larger de-
nominations were securing the lion's share of the fund. There would also
be a continual outcry against misuse of public money, if one denomination
should choose to use its share for the support of schools based upon a
plan which differed essentially from the regulation pattern. Thus we should
find the last end worse than the first.

" My objection to the support of denominational schools by the state
rests, however, upon grounds which lie deeper than those above indicated.
I object to such support of a denominational school for the same reason
that I object to state support for any high-school, college, or university.*
Such support cannot be contributed by the state without injustice to its
citizens. No government has any moral right to take from its subjects any
more than it returns to them. This great maxim is continually disregard-
ed, but it is not the less true. It is unjust to tax the whole people for the
support of anything in which they have not a common interest. A tax for
the support of a high-school which can only be useful to a limited portion
of the community is unjust. A tax for the support of a university which
can never be of use to any but the smallest fraction of the population is
still worse. A tax for the training-up of Congregationalists, or Episcopa-
lians, or Roman Catholics is just as bad. The state cannot engage in the
work of giving anything but the rudiments of common education without
at once invading the rights of the community for the benefit of certain
privileged classes in the community. To give a college education, or any
other kind of special education, at the expense of the state is as unjust as
it would be to present the sons of our wealthier citizens with horses or
watches at the expense of the commonwealth. In like manner it would
be unjust to raise taxes for the support of church schools. A church
school must necessarily be something different from and better than a
common public school. It is a special institution, for the benefit of a spe-
cial class. It therefore cannot be justly supported by the taxation of
those who owe no allegiance to the church— who very likely condemn its
methods and its results.

"Denominational teaching and the apparatus for special education
must, therefore, be entirely divorced from all connection with the state, if
justice is to be maintained and liberty of education is to be preserved.
But it is obviously unjust to tax people for the support of one set of
schools when they are educating their children in another. Our present
system does this, and even worse — it taxes citizens even when their chil-
dren cannot be received in the over-crowded public school-houses. The
great want in connection with our present organization is a method by
which public-school taxes shall be raised only from those who choose to avail
themselves of the public provision for instruction. The man who prefers
or is obliged to educate his children in a private or denominational school
should not be compelled to pay for the maintenance of a public school.
In this respect we are now as badly off as were our forefathers, who were

86 WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL Q UESTION MEAN ? [Oct.,

compelled to pay tithes for the support of an established church which they
despised. They found out a way of relief from this imposition. Surely
their descendants should be equally competent to deal with this new form
of an old difficulty. Of course all politicians of the tax-eating class will
vigorously oppose every reform which tends to diminish the amount of the
funds and the patronage at their disposal ; but every true patriot should
seek to emancipate his country from a form of tyranny which is none the
less real because it is ostensibly exercised for the benefit of mankind.

" Unfortunately, the majority of the Protestant denominations appear
to have committed themselves to the work of upholding the present system
without any attempt to remove its faults ; thus illustrating anew the old
fact that it is much easier and more popular to cry out for justice in behalf
of Indians and negroes at a distance than it is to do justice to our own
people near by. It seems likely, therefore, that it is from the Catholic
^Church that we may expect the next decisive movement for the advance-
ment of liberty in this country.

" Very respectfully yours,

" HENRY M. LYMAN."

These views of Professor Lyman afford us the opportunity of
adding a few more words explanatory of the position of Catholics
on the school question, and at the same time we shall correct
some misapprehensions into which he has fallen in regard to what
we wrote on this subject in the February number of THE CATHO-
LIC WORLD.

Men differ rarely on first principles, sometimes on the secon-
dary, but often on the more remote consequences drawn from
first principles. Hence frequent recourse to first principles, in a
community where there exists a great divergency of convic-
tions and opinions, is most salutary. If the laying of these
bare does not always produce agreement, it at least promotes a
better understanding, and increases good feeling among all intel-
ligent and unbiassed minds. For man is essentially a rational
creature, and the inherent and constitutional inclinations of his
nature are always in accordance with the dictates of right reason.

Now, Catholics and Protestants agree in maintaining that it is
not possible for men to attain the destiny for which God created
them without the light of a revelation above that of reason and an
aid beyond that given to them by nature. They equally hold and
maintain that Christianity is the completion of this necessary reve-
lation and aid to mankind.

But their divergency begins as soon as the question is asked :
What is Christianity ? or what are the truths or doctrines which
this divine revelation teaches?

Catholics hold that Christ instituted a church to preserve
and teach unerringly the truths and doctrines of his revelation,

1 88 1 .] WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL Q UESTION MEAN ? 87

and to enable his church to accomplish this divine work he
abides with and animates his church always. Some Protestants
hold the same belief and regard their church in the same light.
But the great body of Protestants hold that Christianity is dis-
covered with the aid of divine grace by reading the Holy Scrip-
tures diligently, and hence, in their view, the church is nothing
else than a voluntary association of Christians.

It is clear that it would be utterly in vain to strive to make
these Christians agree on the educational question. The first two
classes hold that it is of the highest importance that children
should receive instruction in the truths of the Christian religion
from their earliest childhood. The latter class would leave the
child until it reached the age of reason and could read the Bible,
to determine its belief for itself. The instruction which the«for-
mer would consider as one of the most imperative of duties the
latter would look upon as a most culpable intrusion. To ask either
of these to give up the education of his children to the ideas of
the other would be equivalent to asking him to yield up his most
sacred convictions. Such a concession would be the abdication
of one's manhood, for religion is, or ought to be, the highest and
most rational form of its assertion.

This clears the way to the definition of the point under dis-
cussion, namely : What is education ? Education may be de-
fined, in its most general meaning, to be the fitting of man to at-
tain his destiny, whatever that may be. The matter of education,
therefore, resolves itself into a more radical one, to wit : What is
man's destiny, or what is man's true aim in life ? Until a satisfac-
tory answer is given to this question a man cannot live a rational
life. For a rational life can only be conceived of as the direction
of one's thoughts, affections, and actions to the attainment of the
great purpose of his existence.

From these general principles the following corollary on edu-
cation may be deduced : As education is the fitting of man to at-
tain his destiny, it follows that its character depends on the end
or purpose for which man exists. In a word, means should be
fitting and adequate to the end proposed.

But as education is a practical matter, it is necessary to reach
a more explicit answer to the radical question : What is the des-
tiny of the man-child ? the meaning of man ?

How shall we make this discovery? Who will solve this
problem of problems ? Where shall we find the Light, the Teach-
er, the Guide ? The state, society, philosophy, science, art, po-
etry have been in existence many thousand years, and thus far

88 WHAT DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL QUESTION MEAN ? [Oct.,

they have not made this discovery or solved this problem of
problems. This is not said in their disparagement ; for the solu-
tion of this problem was not their aim or within their province.
Theirs is to second and facilitate man to attain his true destiny,
and not to teach him what it is. The solution of the problem of
man's supreme destiny is the special province of religion.

This brings us one step nearer to the end of our course, and
justifies the following statement : As the character of education
should be in accordance with the true destiny of man, and as
this destiny is made known by religion, it follows that as a man's
religion is so should be his education. That means, if you wish
a child to be a Christian when he grows up to manhood, then
you should give him a Christian education in his childhood. If
you wish him to be a Buddhist, or Mohammedan, or pagan, why,
then, give him a Buddhistic, Mohammedan, or pagan education ;
if a Catholic, or a Protestant, or a rationalist, or a positivist, or
an atheist, why, then, educate him accordingly. Train up a child
in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
from it, is a general rule, confirmed alike by common sense and
by the inspiration of Holy Writ. When men differ in regard to
what is Christianity or what is the true religion, and differ
widely, it follows that their ideas of education will differ, and dif-
fer widely.

There is no denying the fact that the religious problem sums
up all other problems, and in the last analysis it is religion which
shapes, and by right ought to shape, among intelligent men all
institutions, and none more so than that of the education of the
youth.

Therefore what lies at the bottom between Catholics and
Protestants in their difference concerning the public-school ques-
tion is not, as some fancy, a thing of secondary importance, but
one of the highest and most weighty ; and to insist that either
party can or should accommodate itself to the other, or both
should compromise, is an evidence of indifference in religious
matters or of unreasonableness.

The educational question, properly understood, is a religious
question. It is a question of enlightened religious convictions
— convictions the most sacred of the rational soul ; and neither
party, Catholic or Protestant, if intelligent and conscientious, can
accept the views or convictions of the other. To expect that
these can be accommodated or adjusted, or compromised on a
common basis, is to ignore what is at stake. And all attempts
to impose upon a minority of a community the religious convic-

1 88 1 .] WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL Q UESTION MEAN ? 89

tions of a majority by the force of the ballot-box, or by legisla-
tion or any other force than that of persuasion, is a gross viola-
tion of the fundamental ideas of our free institutions, contrary to
all reason, and a tyrannical act of religious bigotry.

Protestants differ from Catholics, and Catholics differ from
Protestants, whether they be Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Armin-
ians, concerning God and the character of his dealing with
man ; the nature of the church ; the sacraments, what they are
and their number ; the divine precepts, counsels, and worship ;
the meaning of the marriage tie ; the relations of men with the
spiritual world ; the importance and value that that world holds
to this — on these and many other similar subjects Catholics and
Protestants differ, and these differences mould their views not
only in matters purely religious, but in artistic, scientific, philo-
sophical, historical, social, and other matters which necessarily
enter more or less into the instructions of every system of educa-
tion. It is useless to deny this fact or to attempt to blink it ; and
the sooner both parties agree to recognize it, and admit it, and
act accordingly in good faith, fairly and in good feeling, the bet-
ter for religion, the good of society, and the peace and prosperity
of the state.

The Protestant ideal of education is one thing, the Catholic
ideal is quite another, and neither desiderates that of the other.
Let us understand this and each work in his own sphere, respect-
ing each other's religious convictions.

But how this can be best brought about is a practical matter,
to be dealt with in the spirit of wisdom, with prudence and jus-
tice. This calls up the animadversions made by Dr. Lyman on
our former article, the purpose of which was to meet this difficulty.
In speaking of the plan proposed he says : " It would not eman-
cipate our common schools from the control of the politician."
Very true ; the plan proposed did not pretend even to touch our
common schools, much less reform them. Its purpose was rea-
sonably to satisfy the different religious convictions of the Ameri-
can people in connection with education, consistently with the
cherished principle of liberty of conscience. If Dr. Lyman
wishes to take our common schools out of the control of politi-
cians, that is quite another thing, and he is welcome to try his
hand at it. His second objection is : " Our denominational schools,
which now are free, would then all be finally brought under the
blighting influence of the practical politician ; for the holder of
the purse would inevitably insist upon the control, in some shape,
of its contents." We confess that we do not participate in the

go WHA T DOES THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL QUESTION MEAN ? [Oct.,

fears of Prof. Lyman of the blighting influence of politicians. It
has not been felt in Catholic Austria or in Protestant England,
nor in Protestant Prussia or Catholic France until recently, when
these countries changed the plan that hitherto had worked satis-
factorily into an infidel or irreligious system. All that the state
has for its duty is to see that such instructions are imparted to
children as are necessary to good citizenship, itself being the
judge of this, and to remunerate for this education accordingly,
and for nothing else. It is a. matter of indifference, as for the rest,
to the state whether the school be denominational or a common
public school. The suggestions of interference on the part of
politicians to the free development of denominational schools, or
jealousies among them, or complaints of the smaller sects against
the larger sects securing the lion's share of the fund — these ob-
jections are all based, in our opinion, on misconceptions or on
fears without foundation in reason.

But the doctor's main objection surprises us, because we did
not anticipate such a clear-headed man falling into so great aeon-
fusion. " I object," he says, " to such support of a denomina-
tional school for the same reason that I object to state support
for any high-school, college, or university." He then lays down
this correct general principle : " It is unjust to tax the whole peo-
ple for the support of anything in which they have not a common
interest." This is precisely the ground on which Catholics base
their objection to the so-called common schools, which are not
common schools at all. And if the plan proposed involves a re-
muneration from the state, it is distinctly stated over and over
again, it is only for those instru9tions imparted to children which
the state considers necessary in order to make them, when grown
up to manhood, good citizens.

Is not this distinction sufficiently clear? How, then, can it be
said consistently that the state supports denominational schools
or raises taxes for the support of church schools ? Does the pro-
fessor hold that no education is necessary to make good citizens,
or that good citizens are not a " common interest " ? If so his
objection is well taken ; otherwise it falls to the ground.

The American people may rest assured that whenever a ques-
tion arises involving fundamental principles Catholics will always
be found, as a body, on the side of liberty, fair play, and equal
rights. Such an issue happens now to take shape in the public-
schooUquestion ; and it is a test-question of the sincerity of the
American people in their profession of liberty of conscience in
religious matters. This is what the public-school question means.

1 88 1.] VAUCLUSE. 91

VAUCLUSE.

VAUCLUSE is one of the places to be visited from Avignon.
The country most of the way is flat and uninteresting, but it is
covered with olives, vines, and the white mulberry-tree, and the
novelty of their foliage to one fresh from the north gives a cer-
tain charm to the landscape. We left the railway at Isle, a busy
little town on an island formed by the Sorgue, and took a car-
riage to Vaucluse. The road lies along the river, bordered with
plane-trees forming a long, shady avenue, through which we
drove for an hour. Then we came in sight of an enormous cliff
about six hundred feet high, ash-colored, utterly devoid of vege-
tation, and so precipitous that it can only be ascended at one
point. In the heart of this immense rock is the celebrated foun-
tain of Vaucluse, the source of the river Sorgue, and at its base
stands the small but ancient village of the same name, where
Petrarch resided fifteen years and composed the greater part of
his works. We stopped at the Hotel de Petrarque et Laure, but,
what was not so poetical, we found the village given up to petty
industries, and the waters of the fountain sung by the great poet
now utilized in turning small silk and woollen mills. Every pre-
vious conception of the place was suddenly put to flight. Vau-
cluse, as its name and poetic associations would lead one to ex-
pect,, is no secluded, umbrageous valley, no sylvan solitude where
it is delightful to wander along the verdant banks of the Sorgue
under the green roof of trees. There is nothing whatever of that
which constitutes our ideal of all that is pastoral and romantic.
In Petrarch's time, however, the valley and hillsides were covered
with oaks, the people were engaged in rural pursuits, and the
Sorgue was unpolluted by sordid uses. Now, it is true, some
olives grow around the base of the mount, but their foliage is as
sad as the ashen rocks, and there are odorous plants, and scat-
tered fig and almond trees, which may sound pleasingly to the
ear, but to the unbiassed eye the desolate aspect of the naked
cliff, the rough and arid banks of the Sorgue, and the unattrac-
tive village, with nothing to screen you from the blazing sun, no-
thing to gently woo you to communion with nature or to rouse
the " divine afflatus " in the very place of all others where it
should most be felt, is a grievous disappointment/ The imagi-
nation is nevertheless struck by the majestic cliff, honey-combed

92 VAUCLUSE. [Oct.,

with grottoes, and still more so by the mysterious abyss in its
very depths, whence issues the fountain from a vast subterranean
lake fed by waters that descend from Mt. Ventoux and the hills
of the Basses- Alpes. This fountain should be seen at two differ-
ent seasons — when it has attained its greatest height and comes
pouring out of the cave at the rate of about three thousand litres
a second, dashing over the rocky bed with a roar in foaming cas-
cades ; and again when its waters have died away and the great
cavern can be entered, enabling you to look down into the black,
unfathomable gulf.

This fountain was well known to the ancients. Pliny speaks
of it as celebrated under the name of Fons Orgiae, wrhence that
of Sorgia, or the Soigue. Strabo calls it Sulga. Some ancient
remains show that the Romans erected a temple here to the
nymphs of the fountain. At Avignon is a marble torso of Greek
workmanship that adorned it; and in the church at Vaucluse
are two fluted columns, as well as many old Roman bricks and
bits of sculpture, encrusted here and there in the walls, which
came from the old pagan temple. This church, one of the most
interesting things to be seen at Vaucluse, stands at the entrance
of the village, grave and severe, but captivating to the eye of the
archaeologist. Petrarch himself frequented it and prayed before
its altars. Bare, gaunt, and grim as it is, its impress of antiquity
gives it an attractiveness that all the elegance of modern times
would fail to impart. Its history comprises the history of Vau-
cluse. It is an edifice of the Romanesque style, partly of the ninth
and partly of the eleventh century, and it encloses an ancient cha-
pel of the sixth. Great stone buttresses support the massive walls.
And there is a gray square tower with its bell of St. Antoine,
where you have a good view of the valley. The interior is cave-
like, and the thick walls are pierced with narrow apertures admit-
ting a scant light that vainly struggles with the gloom. The chan-
cel, where stand the ancient fluted columns like trophies of pagan-
ism, is only lighted by a small arched pane with our Saviour painted
on it, and over the main entrance is another with St. Veran and
the dragon. St. Veran is the great saint of Vaucluse, and if you
explore the church you will find a grated door that opens into a
small cell-like oratory, dark and vaulted, where, by the light of
a flickering candle, you see in a cubiculum, or recess, the ancient
stone sarcophagus in which the saint was entombed, covered
with the drippings of the tapers that surround it on his festival,
the 1 3th of November. This curious little chapel, a Gallo-Ro-
man monument of the sixth century, was regarded with great

1 88 1,] VAUCLUSE. 93

veneration in the middle ages. It was built by St. VeVan him-
self on his own land — in prcedio suo, say the old documents — and
consecrated to Our Lady.

St. Veran, whose father is believed to have been King Theodo-
ric's intendant in Liguria, made his escape from the world in his
very youth, and came to the secluded valley of Vaucluse to live as
a hermit. Some suppose it to have been his native place. At least
his family owned an estate here on which stood the ancient ddu-
brum that he consecrated to the true God. At that time north-
ern France was convulsed by sanguinary contests between Fre-
degonde^ and Brunehaut, and the southern was ravaged by the'
Arian Visigoths. Paganism was not yet wholly rooted out of
the land, and the old Roman deities still received many offerings
and sacrifices. St. Veran found Vaucluse infested by an enormous
dragon, known as the Coulobr^ which was the terror of the whole
neighborhood and threatened to make it uninhabitable. Its den
was in the side of the cliff, and is still pointed out as the Trou
du Coulobre — a gaping cave overshadowed by a vigorous olive.
This monster used to come forth when least expected, and fall
upon the cattle on the hills and the workmen in the fields.
The very sight of it was terrible. Its huge body was cov-
ered with scales that defied every species of arrow. Its
gleaming red eyes looked like two breathing-holes in a fiery
furnace. When it opened its mouth its smoking breath poured
out as if it were vomiting flames. And it had two wings which
enabled it to move with wonderful celerity. The people,
looking upon St. Veran as a man of supernatural powers, be-
sought him to deliver the valley from this monster. He went
fearlessly to the cave, and the dragon, at his command, came forth
and crouched submissively at his feet. St. V6ran then raised his
eyes and cried : " O Almighty God ! engendering, engendered,
and proceeding from, listen to thy servant, I beseech thee, and
deliver the people from the ravages of this serpent, that they may
acknowledge thee, O God ! to be three in person and one in sub-
stance, who alone reignest for ever " — a prayer whose peculiar
wording is an act of faith in protest, as it were, against the great
heresy of that day. Then, fastening a chain around the neck of
the dragon, he led it to the mountain of Luberon, three leagues
distant, where, loosing the chain, he made the sign of the cross
over the animal and commanded it to do no injury henceforth to
any one whomsoever created in the image of God, but to betake
itself to some inaccessible wilderness far from the dwelling of-
mankind. There is still a little rural village at the foot of the

94 VA UCL USB. [Oct.,

Luberon called St. V6ran in memory of the spot where thirteen
hundred years ago the hermit of Vaucluse unchained the dragon
and sent it forth into the wilderness. A tradition of this region
asserts that the dragon at length came down from the fastnesses
of the mountain and died at the entrance of the village. It was
after this victory that St. Veran built the chapel at Vaucluse, and
that of St. Victor on the top of the cliff.

The significant legend of the dragon is told of many early
saints in France as well as other countries, but St. Veran is noted
among them for overcoming two of these monsters. For in those
days, as the lover of the symbolic would say, expiring paganism
had withdrawn to secret places, but still devoured many a victim,
while Arianism boldly devastated the fair lands of the church.
Or it might be some fever or pestilence that sprang from mias-
matic fens and marshes like a wild beast from its lair, as perhaps
was the case at Albenga, a town on the Riviera still noted for its
unhealthiness, where St. Veran overcame the second dragon on
his way to Rome. The people of that place had been in the habit
of paying the animal a kind of worship or tribute, in order to ap-
pease its voracity, but at the command of the saint it came down
to the shore and cast itself into the Ligurian sea, which eagerly
swallowed it up. The cathedral of Albenga long preserved a
memorial of this deliverance in the form of a wooden dragon sus-
pended from the arches, and St. Veran is to this day regarded as
one of the protecting saints of the town, which celebrates his feast
on the 1 2th of November and preserves a portion of his relics in
an urn beneath one of its altars. In the cathedral is also a paint-
ing of St. Veran and the dragon, with a number of votaries look-
ing upwards with awe. The dragon naturally became the saint's
distinguishing symbol in art. He is depicted on the old banner
of Vaucluse with a dragon sinople on a field azure. A painting over
the high altar of the church in this village represents the dragon
as an enormous reptile with the head of a hog ; but in a series of
old engravings giving the legendary history of St. Veran it has
the head and body of a tiger, with sharp fins and a bristling tail.
In an old document at Cavaillon of the year 1222 is a seal, on one
side of which is St. Veran seated in an episcopal chair, wearing a
low mitre, after the fashion of those days, and a vestment ending
in a point. On the other side is the winged coulobr^ with a dan-
gerous-looking twist in its tail, and a head with sharp, thorny
crests.

It was on his way to Rome that St. Veran stopped at Em-
brun, where he wrought so many wonders that his memory has

1 88 1.] VAUCLUSE. 95

been preserved there by a small village that still bears his name.
Arriving at Rome, his first desire was to visit the subterranean
chapel which contained the tomb of the apostles. He was re-
fused entrance, but the iron doors flew open at his approach.
This created such a sensation that Pope Vigilius sent for the
wonderful pilgrim and gave him a relic of the holy apostles.

St. Veran lived at so remote a period that a great part of his
life has a legendary aspect, but all the marvellous incidents re-
lated of him have a truth of their own. It is certain, moreover,
that from the time of his appointment to the see of Cavaillon in
568 he took part in all the great events of the province, and
greatly contributed to the rooting-out of remaining idolatrous
superstitions and softening the manners of the people. King
Gontran, of Burgundy, made him his ambassador. In 587 he was
chosen godfather for the son of King Childebert, of Austrasia, to
whom he gave the name of Theodoric. And he was one of the
forty-three bishops at the second council of Macon — a council
that promulgated so many decrees tending to soften the ferocity
of the age. Bishops were charged to defend the liberty of freed-
men and to exercise hospitality. Churches were to be regarded
as inviolate asylums. Judges were not to make any decrees con-
cerning widows and orphans without the knowledge of the
bishop, their natural protector. Among the canons was one con-
cerning the observance of the Lord's day, ordering severe penal-
ties to be inflicted on all who violated it. If a monk or cleric, he
was to be separated from communion with his brethren six
months. " Let us pass in holy vigils," adds the council, " the
night before Sunday and sleep not, as do the pretended believers
who are only Christians in name." We have only retained the
custom of keeping a similar vigil at Christmas.

St. Gregory of Tours speaks of St. Veran as one of the most
saintly bishops of the time, and says he often healed the sick by
merely making the sign of the cross. Among other works he
accomplished was the building of the cathedral at Cavaillon, that
afterwards took his name. One day while the work was actively
progressing a wolf issued from the forest and killed one of the
oxen drawing stones for the edifice. Whereupon the bishop or-
dered it in Christ's name to take the place of the ox it had killed.
The wolf obeyed with docility and worked until the building
was completed. This legend was afterwards sculptured on the
walls. A similar one is told of several other ancient bishops. St.
Veran did not consecrate the church, but foretold that this would
be done at some future time by the vicar of Christ and a great

96 VA UCL USE. [Oct.,

number of prelates ; which prediction was not accomplished till
more than six hundred years after, when Pope Innocent IV.
came from Lyons with a great number of cardinals and bishops
to perform the ceremony.

St. V6ran died while attending- the Council of Aries in 588,
and his body was taken to Vaucluse to be buried, the waters of
the Durance and the Sorgue dividing to allow it to pass through.
It was placed, amid the singing of hymns and sacred canticles, in
a new sepulchre in the little chapel of the Virgin he had built.

Petrarch was familiar with all these old traditions, and thus
alludes to them in his treatise on the solitary life addressed to his
friend Cardinal de Cabassole, Bishop of Cavaillon : " Come and
taste the delicious repose to be had at this wonderful fountain.
Here is the Sorgue, the queen of running streams, to the music
of which I write these lines, and the beautiful retreat of Vaucluse,
which the popular voice has named in accordance with Nature.
One has only to see this deep, narrow valley, secluded among the
hills and steep cliffs, to acknowledge its right to the name of the
Valley Enclosed. . . . This is the place loved and chosen as a resi-
dence by the great and holy personage to whom you pay special
devotion. For here it was, you know, that Veranus, the illustri-
ous confessor of Christ whose episcopal chair you occupy, came
to live in retirement, and, after banishing a monstrous dragon,
led so holy a life here in this solitude that his fame spread
abroad, making the place so renowned that great numbers come
to visit it. How much more should you who invoke him daily,
and often visit his sanctuary * and give of your substance to
adorn his sacred relics ! Here in this region won by him to
Christ, by whose name and sign he gained so glorious a victory,
he dwelt before his sublime virtues raised him to the episcopate,
and here he erected a monument in honor of the Virgin that has
become celebrated — a small temple, it is true, but substantial and
richly adorned. According to tradition, he pierced the very
mountain with his own hands — a prodigious work that zeal alone
could have accomplished. On this bank he had a cell where he
lived content with the mere produce of his garden and the fish of
the stream, but abounding in Christ. Finally, having breathed his
last at a distance, it was here he wished to be brought by the
most astonishing of miracles, as you know. What Moses' rod
did to effect a passage through the Red Sea the mortuary chest
of Veranus did to the streams it passed through."

The tomb of St. Veran became noted. Among the distin-

*The church of St. V6ran at Cavaillon.

1 8 8 1 .] VA UCL USE. 97

guished pilgrims of ancient times was Aldana, daughter of
Charles Martel, who, after the victory of her son, Guillaume-au-
Cornet, over the Saracens, came here to make an offering of
thanksgiving. Petrarch makes mention of this : " Not far from
the fountain, amid pleasant verdure, is the holy chapel, sur-
rounded by olives and a forest of oaks. It was hither a lady
of royal name and blood brought the golden orange. Rejoic-
ing at the defeat of the enemy, this illustrious mother brought
to the temple of Veranus her offering of golden fruit in an
osier basket."

Some monks from the isles of Lerins established themselves
at Vaucluse soon after St. Veran's death. They enlarged the
church in the eighth or ninth century, but seem to have aban-
doned the place in the tenth, perhaps owing to the insecu-
rity of the country. Then it was given to the abbey of St.
Victor at Marseilles, together with a mill, some vineyards and
arable lands, and certain tithes. The body of St. V6ran re-
mained at Vaucluse till 1311, when the bishop of Cavaillon, fear-
ing it might be carried off by some of the bands of lawless
men then overrunning the country, decided to transport it to
Cavaillon. He came hither himself and unsealed the tomb in
the presence of a great multitude. The body of the saint was
found wrapped up in a winding-sheet of dazzling whiteness, and
at his side was the relic of the holy apostles given him by Pope
Vigilius. There were other sainted remains here also. They
were all put into separate shrines and borne away with holy
chants to Cavaillon. Petrarch makes Laura, under the name of
Daphne, speak of this removal : " I remember seeing the sacred
remains of Veranus brought forth. They were placed in a car
white as the snow, adorned with flowers and green branches.
I was then a child, but I took pleasure in looking at the pas-
tor surrounded by his flock, old and young, accompanying
these venerable remains across the hills to the solemn sound of
instruments of brass ringing through the air."

A relic of St. Ve"ran was, however, deposited under the high
altar at Vaucluse, and another seems to have been given at some
period to the diocese of Orleans, where it was put in a silver
shrine in the church at Jargeau, but was lost in the time of the
Huguenots. St. Veran is still honored in that town under the
name of. St. Vrain, and in the church are two paintings — one re-
presenting the saint unchaining the dragon at the foot of Mt. Lu-
beron, surrounded by the clergy heartily chanting ; the other a
procession around the walls of Jargeau bearing his shrine, ap-

VOL. XXXIV. — 7

98 VAUCLUSE. [Oct.,

parently to allay the swollen waters of the Loire. In one cor-
ner is St. Veran holding the dragon enchained, and in the
clouds appear the Virgin and Child, smiling propitiously.

St. Veran is invoked at Vaucluse likewise at any disturbance
of the elements. In a drought processions are formed all through
this region, bearing a relic of the saint with great pomp and sol-
emn invocation. This special power of St. Veran is alluded to
in the hymns of the church, always the expression of popular be-
lief:

"Imber optatus fluitat repente."*

Vaucluse and Cavaillon were in the twelfth century depen-
dencies of the counts of Toulouse. In 1171 Count Raymond V.,
having been cured of an infirmity at the tomb of St. Veran, gave
the castle of Vaucluse with its lands to the bishop of Cavaillon
and his successors as an offering of gratitude. This castle stood
high up on a ledge of the cliff, and was considered almost impreg-
nable. It was there Petrarch spent so much time with Cardinal
de Cabassole. It is related that they used to wander forth on the
mount, or in the oak forests beneath, and, absorbed in religious
and philosophical discussions, forget the flight of time and the
gathering darkness till the servants came out with torches at the
dinner-hour to find them. " Do you remember our villeggiature
at Vaucluse ? " wrote he to the cardinal at a later period — " the
days spent in the woods without eating, and whole nights passed
in delightful converse amid our books till the dawn came to sur-
prise us ? " The ruins of this castle are interesting to visit, but
the ascent should only be undertaken by those who are stout of
limb and sound of lung. The remains of a draw-bridge and a
round-arched portal are still to be seen, and there is a magnificent
view from Avignon to the Alps. After the sun has passed the
meridian even the Mediterranean may be seen, flooded with light.
On the highest point of the cliff is the ruined chapel of St. Vic-
tor, and on the southern side may be traced the precipitous path
by which the bold saint ascended, leaving the impress of his
horse's feet graven on the very rocks.

The tunnel to which Petrarch refers in the passage already
given is still to be seen. It is cut through a spur of the cliff,
and in the middle ages was regarded as the work of St. V6ran,
but the enlightened savants of our day prefer to think it done by
the Romans. We passed through it to visit the house of Pe-
trarch— by no means a place of poetic aspect now, whatever it

* Office of St. Veran.

i88i.] VAUCLUSE. 99

might have been in his day. At his death he bequeathed it to the
hospital of the town, which no longer exists. In the garden so
often washed over by the inundations of the Sorgue — or, as Pe-
trarch expresses it, disputed by the nymphs of the fountain — is an
offshoot of one of the numerous laurels the poet planted more
than five hundred years ago, from which every one plujks a leaf.
" Do you remember the land covered with stones you aided me
in clearing?" wrote he to a friend. " It is now a garden ena-
melled with flowers, bounded on one side by the Sorgue, and on
the other by a lofty cliff which, being at the west, screens it from
the sun the greater part of the day. It is here I have established
my Muse." And again he writes : " Wherever there is a gushing
forth of a stream, says Seneca, there should be erected an altar.
Long ago I made a vow before Christ to set up an altar in my
garden, between the river and cliff, should my means permit,
not to the nymphs or divinities Seneca wished honored, but to
the Virgin Mary, whose ineffable maternity has overthrown the
altars and temples of all false gods."

When Petrarch lived here the priory and church of Vaucluse
still belonged to the monks of St. Victor. The members of their
order had the unique privilege of administering the Holy Eucha-
rist on Good Friday — a day when it is not customary in the Ca-
tholic Church to receive Communion. The singularity of this
privilege always drew an immense crowd to the churches served
by these monks. At Vaucluse the people of the vicinity were in
the pious habit of spending the night of Maundy Thursday at
the chapel of St. Veran, remaining till after the solemn function
of Good Friday. It was after one of these holy vigils, we are
sorry to say, that Laura, daughter of the neighboring lord of
Cabrieres, is said by some to have made so deep an impression
on the heart of Petrarch. For in these investigating days, when
so many ancient traditions are set aside, and even what were
once considered indisputable facts in history, it is not surprising
to be told that the object of the poet's Platonic affection was not,
after all, the Laura an emperor once kissed and over whose tomb
a king broke forth in song. It is pleasanter to believe it was
not, as she was a married woman and the mother of eight chil-
dren. No, let those who have shed so many sentimental tears
over the matron of Avignon prepare to shed more legitimate
•ones over the genuine Laura.

About three miles south of Vaucluse is an ancient chateau on
an eminence overlooking the valley of the Sorgue. Around it is
gathered the small village of Lagnes in the midst of vines, olives,

ioo VA UCL USE. [Oct.,

and fig-trees. The chiteau itself is somewhat imposing. Its
ramparts, towers, and portals have for. the most part been pre-
served intact. There are Gothic portals, a donjon keep, a spa-
cious interior court, an ancient chapel dedicated to St. Antoine,
some old halls of the twelfth century, and four round towers that
formed part of a second rampart. In this mediaeval castle lived,
in Petrarch's time, a family whose name of Cabrieres indicates
the source of their wealth to have been vast flocks of sheep and
goats. Lagnes still preserves the memory of the festival that
used to end the great shearings of the flocks by a joyful pilgrim-
age every year on the I2th of May to the rural chapel of St.
Pancras. This castle was Laura's birth-place, or, to use the
poet's own words, where she put on her mortal frame. Lagnes
was the picciol borgo at the foot of the hill

" Onde un si bella donna el mondo nacque "

— where so fair a lady into the world was born. " I can see the
window from which she looks out on the valley whence comes
the rude Boreas, and the rock on which she so often sits to muse.
How often do I turn my eyes to the sweet declivities of the pic-
turesque hills among which she was born who holds my heart in
her hand ! " All this corresponds with the site of the castle of
Cabrieres with its terrace looking to the north, affording a fine
view up the valley of the Sorgue.

It was, according to our new authority, on Good Friday,
1331, that Laura de Cabrieres attended the grand services at
Vaucluse with her parents, and first saw Petrarch. She was
then only seventeen or eighteen years of age, and in all the
freshness of her maidenly beauty, with blonde locks and a
child-like but expressive face, looking, as Petrarch says, like a
tender flower — un tenero fiore — in her calyx-like green corsage.
In the crowd of other ladies she seemed like a rose among flow-
ers of inferior beauty. It was on her account the poet left Avi-
gnon to live in this secluded spot. Here he could see her from
time to time, or at least catch a glimpse of her as she passed
through the valley. It was on one of these occasions he doubt-
less wrote the sonnet : " O joyful, happy flowers ! fortunate to
have sprung up on the spot which my lady in passing has pressed
with her footsteps ; meadows that have heard her sweet voice and
kept the imprint of her beautiful feet ; shrubs and fresh green
foliage, pale, loving violets, umbrageous woods, smiling land-
scape, and limpid stream that refreshes her celestial vision and

1 88 1.] VAUCLUSE. 101

often laves her beauteous face and eyes, how much I envy you ! "
Henceforth Petrarch attached himself to this valley. It is always
Vaucluse, always Laura, that become the subjects of his cantos.
His is a love that resists time, absence — death itself. Whatever be
thought of this love from a religious point of view, it was certainly
a sentiment that could only have been engendered by Christianity,
as a French author has well remarked. There is an elevation of
feeling and a certain chasteness of language in his sonnets that are
very different from the verses of Anacreon, for instance. " It is
not the love of a Bacchante with bare limbs and dishevelled
locks, but timid, half veiled in its passion. It is a love that
is reserved, grave, fond of solitude, and fed by melancholy. His
cantos breathe the sadness of a soul that struggles with itself and
makes it superior to the expression of a burning passion."
Laura loved the poet in return :

" II tuo cuor chiuso a tutto il mondo apristi "

— to me thou openest thy heart, closed to all the world beside.
The obstacles to their marriage are believed to have shortened
her days. Like the white flowers of the almond-tree overtaken
by the frost, she early descended to the tomb, leaving the poet
full of melancholy regret. Everywhere on these hills along the
Sorgue he wandered, seeking Laura, calling to her. Everywhere
he planted the laurel, the leaves of which whispered to him of
her. " The rustling, the perfume and shade of the sweet laurel,
its mere view, constitute the charm and repose of my sad life,"
says he.

And when he left Vaucluse for Italy it was, he wrote, as a
stag, wounded by an arrow, that flies, carrying the envenomed
dart in its side, and suffering the more the swifter its flight :

" And as a stag, sore struck by hunter's dart, •
Whose poisoned iron rankles in his breast,
Flies and more grieves the more the chase is pressed,
So I, with Love's keen arrow in my heart,
Endure at once my death and my delight,
Racked with long grief, and weary with vain flight."

Reason had he to cry : " Lord of my life and my death, before
my bark is dashed to pieces amid these treacherous reefs, guide
my riven sail to a safe port ! " —

" Signer della mia fine e' della vita,

Prima ch' i' fiacchi il legno tragli scogli,
Drizza a buon porto 1' affanata vela !"

102 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Oct.,,

THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA.

PURSUING her career with a deep conviction of ultimate suc-
cess grounded upon an unfaltering faith in the promises of her
Founder, the church is now sending her envoys into the very
heart of that dark continent on the verge of which still linger
some accents of the olden Punic language that was the mother-
tongue of her Cyprians and her Augustines, and where the name
and the creed of Rome are still known and revered, while

" Kings in dusty darkness hid
Have left a nameless pyramid."

" The whole world," said Archbishop Lavigerie in the cathedral of Algiers
on the occasion of the departure of a band of missionaries — " the whole
world had heard the glad tidings ; the barbarous regions of Africa alone
had not. But, lo ! all the Christian nations are banded together, emulously
eager to open the doors of barbarism hitherto unfortunately closed. Ame-
rica is in the van — America, that for three centuries has been the cause of so
many woes to the blacks. England, Germany, Italy, Belgium are treading
the same road. On all sides daring conquerors are penetrating into un-
known depths where the riches of nature only serve to reveal the deeper
depths of human misery. Shall the church alone lag behind ? No ! Al-
ready its apostles have besieged the African coasts ; Gaboon, Guinea, the
Cape, the shores of Zanguebar, the Zambesi, have received the envoys of
God, but the interior still remains inaccessible. See ! the conquering
heroes are coming. Already Egypt is preparing a way for them over
the mysterious course of the Nile. But who are those who are fleeting
along like clouds borne by rapid winds ? Zanguebar, thou hast seen them
plunge into thy scorching plains, cross the inhospitable mountains that rise
in view of thy shores ; thou hast seen them, too, with no arms but the
cross, no ambition but to be the bearers of life into that empire of death."

Facing dangers and difficulties as the apostles did, hungering-
and thirsting, buffeted, with no fixed abode, laboring with their
own hands, undismayed by the seemingly insurmountable obsta-
cles thickening around them at every step, the intrepid pioneers
of Christian civilization are effecting by their self-sacrifice the
spiritual conquest of Africa.

"A field has been opened to the Gospel," writes Father Weld,* "such
as the church had not seen since the mariners of Portugal first sailed into

* Mission of the Zambesi, by the Rev. A. Weld, S.J., p. 5.

1 88 i.J THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 103

the Eastern seas. Once more we have before us a virgin soil, and many
millions of souls lost indeed in heathenism, but having this to raise our
hopes : that they have never rejected the light of faith. For them it is in
some sense the day of Pentecost which is dawning, and we know not why
God may not grant to us to see a primitive church in the heart of this land
of malediction, where the image of God is most of all disfigured and where
human blood is set at the cheapest rate, as he did when the nations first
came to the church, and when, in later times, the forests of America echoed
the name of Jesus Christ."

" In spite of our insufficiency and our unworthiness," records
one of Mgr. Lavigerie's missionaries to the lake district in his
journal, " we are the first since the foundation of Christianity to
proceed as representatives of our Lord and his church to this
barbarous and unknown region. Perhaps two hundred millions
of souls are invisibly stretching forth their arms towards us,
like the infidels of Macedonia whom St. Paul saw in a dream."
Speaking in general of the whole country between the Limpopo
and the Zambesi, Mgr. Jolivet says : " The natives are to be
counted by millions ; it is one of the richest, most fertile, and
most populous regions of Africa."

Some crude idea of the teeming population of this half-ex-
plored continent may be formed from these data and from the
fact, vouched for by Mgr. Lavigerie, that Mohammedanism, over-
thrown and almost expiring in Europe, is still making such for-
midable progress there, creating provinces and kingdoms, that in
a hundred years it has brought under its iron yoke no less than
50,000,000 souls ; while 400,000 negroes annually fall victims to
the abominable and inhuman slave-trade, which in twenty-five
years — the average African life — amounts to 10,000,000 : ten mil-
lions of defenceless men, women, and children doomed to such a
life and such a death as Mgr. Lavigerie has touchingly described
in a series of eloquent letters * revealing the horrors of slavery.
Hundreds of thousands of Kafirs dwell in or close to Cape
Colony, while millions of human beings are spread throughout
the vast regions of the interior, extending to the Zambesi and be-
yond to the lakes. An approximate estimate of the populations
of the southern states gives the number of whites in Cape Colo-
ny (including the western, central, and eastern vicariates) as
270,000 to 450,000 colored, there being in Kaffraria proper only
500 whites to 500,000 colored; the population in Natal being
20,000 to 300,000; Basutoland, 1,000 to 80,000; Diamond Fields,

* Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, May, 1881. See also Les Missions Catholiques,
Mars 4, 1881, et seq.

104 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Oct.,

10,000 to 40,000 ; Orange Free State, 20,000 to 10,000 ; Transvaal
40,000 to 500,000 ; and in the countries between the Limpopo and
the Zambesi, only 100 to 1,000,000.

" It cannot be denied," comments Father Weld, " that there are signs
of a special interposition of divine mercy drawing the eyes of the church
to the African races, and we feel no less sure that many who desire no-
thing better than to give all for God will feel a response in their breasts
pointing to those regions peopled with millions of redeemed souls not 'only
naked and loathsome to the human eye, but stripped of all that could
make them objects of beauty and love in the sight of God." * " It seems,"
writes Father Carre, superior of the Congo mission, referring to the scien-
tific, industrial, and commercial expedition organized under the auspices of
the king of the Belgians — " it seems that in the designs of Providence the
hour of light and civilization for these barbarous countries has struck.
Why do we not see the apostles of the cross — that luminous cross which
dissipated the darkness of paganism — marching at the head of this crusade
against savagery and fetichism ? Formerly, when the Portuguese discov-
ered these countries and explored them for the first time, they were pre-
ceded by the cross, and it was by it and in its name they colonized there
and for a time dispelled the shades of death. But now what is religion
going to do, I do not say in advance of science and commerce, but only
in their wake, along the road they are opening ? "t

The reader has here the key to the origin, organization, and
aims of the missionary enterprise conceived at Rome, and of
which the illustrious archbishop of Algiers is the chief executive.
It was, in fact, not to let itself be outstripped by lay organiza-
tions that the Holy See directed its special attention to all
that concerns these missions. The field of action it has traced
out for them is exactly the same as that selected by the Interna-
tional African Association of Brussels, founded in 1876 by the
king of the Belgians with the main design of giving a definitive
and practical direction to the efforts of isolated individual travel-
lers like Burton, Cameron, Speke, Nachtigal, Schweinfurt, Liv-
ingstone, and Stanley, and that passion for exploration which the
stirring record of their daring and adventurous journeys into the
interior has inspired, bringing into contact with European civi-
lization the only portion of our globe into which it has not yet
penetrated, piercing the darkness that envelops whole popula-
tions— in a word, to enlist the concurrence of all civilized nations
in a crusade against barbarism worthy of this age of progress.^:
This field is limited on the east and west by the two seas, on the
south by the basin of the Zambesi, and on the north by the con-

* Op. cit. , p. 54. f Missions Catholiqucs.

1 Speech of the '-in- of the Belgians at the first conference of the association.

i88i.] THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 105

quests of the new Egyptian territory and independent Soudan —
a region extending from the tenth degree of north to the fif-
teenth degree of south latitude. The centres of exploration
which the Belgian association has established, or is establishing,
to serve as bases of operations, are the very points the Algerian
missionaries are directed to occupy.

An uninterrupted line of stations is being formed on the east
from Zanguebar to Tanganyika, where the central establishment
of Karema is situated, while Stanley is ascending the course of
the Congo, making roads and founding settlements on its banks.
The day is, therefore, near when the representatives of the Bel-
gian International Association, coming, the one party from the
Atlantic, the other from the Indian Ocean, will meet on the
higher table-lands where the two great African rivers, the Nile
and the Congo, take their rise.

" It cannot be denied," observes Mgr. Lavigerie, " that this is a grand
enterprise, for whole peoples buried in death will be summoned to light
and life. But the Brussels Conference can only accomplish half this work,
or, to put it better, only pave the way for it. In opening routes to equa-
torial Africa for merchants and explorers it opens them to the Gospel,
which, without its seeking it, will redound to its immortal glory. The As-
sociation does not give itself any concern about religion ; it has solemnly
declared itself of none. Without opposing the preaching of Christianity,
while even declaring that they will accord their protection and material
succor to its envoys, they completely exclude it from their projects and
announce that they will confine their efforts to science, commerce, and in-
dustry. Such was the aspect the question of equatorial Africa presented
in 1877 before the Christian world and the Holy See."*

The whole African coast and portions of the continent in-
land are, for missionary purposes, mapped out into districts call-
ed prefectures or vicariates. Starting from the point nearest to
Europe, we encounter at Morocco, where the Seraphic order
first gathered the martyr's palm, the Spanish Franciscans, who
have charge of this prefecture. We next reach Algiers, erected
into an ecclesiastical province shortly after the French occupa-
tion, Algiers being constituted an archbishopric with Gran and
Constantine as suffragan sees. Mgrs. Lavigerie, Dupuch, and
Pavy are contributing by their zeal to the reconstruction of that
once famous African church which for centuries had ceased to
exist. The archbishop has enriched his diocese with a nume-
rous clergy, teaching communities, agricultural congregations,
Arab orphanages, and every organization capable of forming new

* Les Missions Catholiques, Mars 4, iSSi.

io6 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Oct.r

generations of Christians ; while, as apostolic delegate of Sahara
and the Soudan, he has formed and directed at Algiers (where
there are now 185,100 Catholics scattered over the province)
a society of missionaries destined for Central Africa. These
missionaries, adopting the costume, language, usages, and mode
of life of the Arabs and Kabyles, have succeeded, in ten years,
in establishing nineteen missions — ten among the infidels in the
Grand Kabyle and nearly as many among the Arabs of the
Sahara and Tunis. The sphere of their operations has been since
greatly extended, and the fathers of Algiers are to be found in
the vicariatesof the Nyanza and Tanganyika, created in 1878, and
those of the northern and southern Congo, constituted in 1881.
The first missionaries set out hardly a month after receiving
their appointment from the Holy See, five for Lake Nyanza and
five for Lake Tanganyika, the former reaching their destination at
the close of January, 1879, and the latter on the ipth of June
following, one of them, Father Pascal, superior of the latter mis-
sion, having succumbed on the i8th of August, 1879, two months
after leaving Zanguebar, where they had been obliged to enlist an
armed escort of five hundred negroes to protect their caravan
from the bands of Rougas-Rougas, or armed brigands, who in-
fest the forests. Finally established in Urundi, to the north of
Ujiji, these missionaries began their apostolic work by purchasing
and educating young infidel children, who in the course of a few
years will be able to assist in forming Christian villages ; while
the fathers at Nyanza, having obtained full liberty from Mtesa,
King of Uganda, so celebrated in Stanley's narratives, to preach
the Gospel in his states, have founded an orphanage, and are en-
deavoring to extend their influence and establish around them
new centres of apostolic work and charity.

In less than three years the missionaries have gained a firm
footing in the interior, and have solved the problem as to
whether the climate of equatorial Africa would not be an insur-
mountable obstacle to their mere existence. They are still send-
ing out new missionaries, so that the work already begun may be
continued and extended. Towards the end of June, 1879 — fifteen
months, therefore, after the departure of the first band — eighteen
others, including six ex- Papal Zouaves who had volunteered as an
auxiliary escort, set out. Eight of them died before they could
reach their destination ; nevertheless they were followed by fifteen
others in November, 1880. In fine, within the last two years and
a half this society has sent forty-three missionaries into equa-
torial Africa. Central stations have been established in the mis-

1 88 1.] THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 107

sions of Tanganyika and Nyanza, which have been recently erect-
ed by the Holy See into pro-vicariates apostolic, as well as those
of the northern and southern Congo ; and it is expected the states
of Muata-Yamvo will also be so before long.

To ensure the safe transit of these few missionaries it needed
a small army of natives, some to serve 2&pagazis> or carriers — as
it is impossible to use beasts of burden,' which are stung to death
by the tzetse fly, and as there are no roads — and others to serve
as askaris, and form an armed escort to protect the caravan against
the attacks of bands of robbers and certain savage tribes.

" Imagine," writes one of the fathers from Algiers, " missionaries
charged with governing and keeping in order and respect this barbarous
multitude ! It will be readily understood that this is not their vocation.
It needs habits of command, if one wishes to be obeyed, which have nothing
in common with evangelical patience ; and' there are cases in which ex-
amples of severity are necessary, otherwise the blacks would be divided,
would revolt, kill each other, or take to flight. Still, the negroes after all are
governable and have an innate respect for authority. What we need
with us and by our side are some determined men accustomed to military
command. They would have the absolute control of the camp, and we
would have no need to interfere. It would be much better for the future
success of our mission that the Unyanyembese saw in us men of prayer, sac-
rifice, and charity only, and not military commandants. We thought there
might be found in France, Belgium, and Holland some old Pontifical Zou-
aves, determined and Christian men, with sufficient self-sacrifice and eleva-
tion of heart and mind to devote themselves to a magnificent work like that
of the mission of equatorial Africa, and, for the love of God and souls, do
what geographers are doing for the mere love of science. It is, I think, a
practical thought and suggestive of great things in the future. In this Af-
rican world, where violence reigns supreme, but where means of attack and
defence are still primitive, it would certainly be possible for some deter-
mined men to rapidly create a great centre of action and power and hasten
the hour of civilization."*

This admirable suggestion has, as the reader perceives, been
already acted upon. Two of the volunteers have already fallen
victims to their faith and courage ; but, as the blood of martyrs
is the seed of confessors, the noble self-sacrifice of this little hand-
ful of heroes may, with God's blessing and the good- will of the
people, be the beginning of a new kind of lay apostolate in Africa,
where the courage and faith of the Christian soldier will add a
new lustre to the Catholic missions.

Following on by the Mediterranean coast, we find at classic
Tunis — the ancient Carthage and proconsular Africa of the Ro-

* Les Missions Catholiques, n. 512.

1 68 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Oct.,

mans, with its estimated area of 60,000 square miles and its
population of about 1,000,000— the Capuchins who, under the ju-
risdiction of Mgr. Jutter, vicar-apostolic, minister to a Catholic
population of 16,000. The principal missionary stations here are
Soliman, Nebel, Hammamet, Sousse, Monastir, Mehedia, Sfax,
Gerba, Bizerta, and Porto-Farina. The bey of Tunis is very
favorable to the Catholic missions, and not long- ago, when the
vicar-apostolic, to whom he had sent a state carriage, four guards
of honor, and a numerous personnel of domestics, was making his
pastoral visitation, he directed the Mussulman authorities to pay
him all the respect due to his dignity. This venerable ecclesias-
tic, who has reached the patriarchal age of ninety, has been re-
placed by the archbishop of Algiers pending the appointment of
a successor, who will probably be selected from one of the French
Capuchin provinces.

In sterile, sandy Tripoli and the Barbary States, with their
mixed population of Berbers, Moors, Arabs, and Turks, and which
form a distinct prefecture, are the Italian Franciscans, while other
Franciscans — Minor Observants — minister to thirteen thousand
Catholics in the vicariate of Egypt. The African Missionary
College of Verona has an establishment at Cairo, where the
priests and nuns remain for some time to habituate themselves to
the climate, besides houses for negroes of both sexes at Khar-
tum, capital of the Soudan, at El Obeid, capital of Kordofan, and
a Catholic colony at Malbes and at Delen Gebel-nuba. The pa-
rent-house of this mission, the Missionary College of Nigritia, of
which Father Joseph Tembianti is rector, is at Verona, in Italy,
where, besides a seminary for forming priests, catechists, and ar-
tisans, there is a convent for sisters called the Pious Mothers of
Nigritia. The seminary at Cairo is directed by Father Rolleri,
who, while deploring the numerous deaths that thin their ranks,
thanks God that the number of aspirants continues to augment.
Central Africa, for which these missionaries are destined, was
erected into a vicariate on March 30, 1846, by Gregory XVI.,
who gave the first impulse to the evangelization of the interior.
On the ist of August, 1868, Pius IX. divided into two missions
this vast district, which took in the entire space between the Bar-
bary States, Nubia, Abyssinia, Dahomey, and Senegambia — a sea
of sandy waste dotted with oases. The eastern division was con-
fided to the Abbate Comboni, of Verona, pro-vicar apostolic of
Cairo and Alexandria ; and the western, comprising the western
Sahara, where there is no post or station, the Soudan, and a
large portion of Central Africa, to the archbishop of Algiers.

i88i.] THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. - 109

The inhabitants of this prefecture are the descendants of the
early Christians, driven backward by the conquering Arabs, by
whom they are called to this day Tuaregs, or "abandoned of
God/' because they never heartily accepted, and often abjured,
Mohammedanism. Although experience has shown that Euro-
peans cannot long endure this deadly climate, the mortality is
comparatively decreased by the precautions taken against the
ravages of fever, which used to make great havoc of the poor
missionaries. The forty missionaries sent thither in 1878 perished
in the desert, the station at Khartum alone subsisting to bear
witness to their self-sacrificing zeal.

Mgr. Comboni is at present at Delen, with the intention of
penetrating into the interior as far as Golf an to found a new mis-
sion, and, profiting by the good-will of the ruling powers, which
he has been so fortunate as to secure, to further extend the reign
of the cross. This mission, which, besides the climatic difficulties
already adverted to, is very poor, entailing many privations on
the missionaries and hindering them from gathering more fruit,
suffered severely from the famine, drought, and epidemic of 1878-
79, which almost depopulated the district to the east and west of
Khartum. " I have passed through more than a hundred vil-
lages on the Berber coast to distribute relief," wrote Mgr. Com-
boni at the time, " and these villages, formerly populous, were al-
most completely deserted. The few survivors resembled corpses,
and had been for a long time living on grass and hay." Several
of the priests succumbed, and in the October of that year Mgr.
Comboni was the only missionary at Khartum who was not ill.
Signer Pelegrino Mateucci, an Italian explorer, in a letter to the
Osservatore Romano, wrote :

" From Cairo to Massuah each stage of my journey was marked by
the news of some new misfortune which had just stricken the missions of
Central Africa. I have before me a letter from Mgr. Comboni, dated No-
vember 28. This letter bears the impress of profound sadness. It can be
seen that it is written by an energetic man almost overwhelmed by the
weight of his tribulations. He is struggling and resisting ; but twenty
years passed in Africa wrestling with enormous difficulties have worn out
his youthful vigor. Last October his episcopal dignity only enabled him
to be the infirmarian, physician, and grave-digger not only of his missiona-
ries but of all those who expired under the shadow of the cross. In conse-
quence of the loss of almost all his missionaries, Mgr. Comboni has post-
poned the accomplishment of his vast projects. He had lately inaugu-
rated at Gederef, on the way to the Blue River, an agricultural station
which had a great future before it. He had prepared the formation of a
station at Fascioda, or Denab, the capital of the Chillouks, one of the most

no . JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. [Oct.,

barbarous and unwholesome countries of Central Africa. He had recently
everything arranged for an expedition to the equatorial lakes, which would
have been one of his most important undertakings. The necessary per-
sonnel, and perhaps also the means, are now needed for these grand projects.
New recruits will arrive, but they will have to make their way slowly along
this death-strewn route. The Soudan has been ravaged by a terrible
famine. The negroes fell exhausted, or, dying with hunger, crawled to the
mission to implore a handful of durah, which they were never refused.
At this time water was sold at Kordofan dearer than wine in Paris ; and
yet Mgr. Comboni in my presence rejoiced to find himself penniless and to
have contracted debts to relieve the extreme distress of the famishing. . . .
Poor missionaries ! ... If these missionaries had been simple travellers
the newspapers and learned societies would have spoken of them ; but
neither the value of an African missionary nor the importance of his mission
is appreciated in Europe. They know all about the explorers ; we trav-
ellers know the moral and material influence of the presence of the priest
in the midst of savages. Stanley, the greatest living explorer, affirms, in
the story of his magnificent exploit, that to prepare the people from the
equator to the Congo for civilization would need a long succession of mis-
sion stations, because the missionaries are the most skilful and patient
pioneers of civilization. Mgr. Comboni has conned these words of Stanley's,
and I am sure meditates their accomplishment and purposes sending new
missionaries to establish a station at the equator. I hope this noble design
will be carried out to the honor of the Italian name, which, gloriously
borne by the missionaries, will be regarded as the propagator of civilization
in the last retreat of African barbarism."

JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS.

M. BASTIEN LEPAGE'S notable picture of "Joan of Arc lis-
tening- to her Voices," first shown at the Paris Salon of 1880, and
afterwards at the exhibition here of the Society of American
Artists, seems to have given a fresh stimulus on both sides of the
Atlantic to the interest which must always attach, in all gene-
rous minds, to the high-hearted, heroic, and ill-fated Maid of Or-
leans. At least there is no other apparent motive for the sudden
prominence given to her in magazine literature, that unfailing
barometer of popular taste. Quite recently and almost simul-
taneously in three of our leading contemporaries articles have
appeared bearing directly or^ndirectly on her career. The June
Scribner gave a sketch of the painter's life, with engravings of
his picture ; to Harper s for the same month Mr. James Parton
contributed an account of Joan's trial and condemnation ; and in
an elaborate paper published in the Revue des Deux Mondes for

1 88 1.] JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. in

May i, under the title of ''Jeanne d'Arc et les Freres Men-
dians," M. Simeon Luce undertook to show how large a share
the Franciscan Friars had in giving to Joan's mind the impulse
and direction which made her the liberator of France and one
of the foremost and most pathetic figures in the history of the
fifteenth century.

The view taken by M. Luce is sufficiently novel and, to Ca-
tholic readers in particular, of sufficient interest to justify a
brief review of his argument. Two influences, he asserts, had
their share in fashioning Joan's career. One, a martial impulse,
the only one hitherto dwelt on or perceived, arose from the immi-
nence of France's peril through the siege of Orleans ; the other, a
religious motive, which he claims the merit of first pointing out,
came from the faith of the pious young maiden of Domremy in
the special graces granted to France through the interposition
of Our Lady of Puy and the Jubilee of the Great Friday * of
1429. M. Luce's claim of entire originality in this latter theory
may perhaps be disputed ; for that religious enthusiasm had a
prominent, if not the chief, part in inducing Joan's action has
never been doubted by any who have read attentively and under-
standingly the story of her life. Nor have previous writers failed
to touch upon her early predilection for the teaching and peculiar
doctrines of the Franciscans, and the influence they probably
had in inspiring her resolution and moulding her destiny.f But
in connecting Joan's immediate taking-up of arms with the great
religious revival which stirred Catholic France to its depths in
the beginning of the year 1429, M. Luce may fairly lay claim to
the honors of a first discoverer, and he enforces his position
with felicity of illustration and ingenuity of argument worthy of
remark.

To understand the scope of his thesis it is necessary to glance
at the position occupied in France by the two great religious
orders of the middle ages, the Dominicans and the Franciscans,
at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The former, or Friars
Preachers, as they were sometimes called, superior in the graces
of learning and theological profundity, were yet less close to the
real' heart of the people than the Franciscans, or Friars Minor,
whose vow of absolute poverty imposed on them by their founder,
St. Francis of Assisi, and renewed in its utmost rigidity by the

* A Great Friday was so called when the Feast of the Annunciation fell upon Good Friday,
-and was made the occasion of a special jubilee in France.

t See especially Le Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, etc., par M. Vallet de Viriville.
.Firmin Didot Freres et Cie. 1867.

ii2 JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS, [Oct.,

great reformer of the order, St. Bernardin of Siena, brought them
necessarily in more intimate contact with the poor and humble
of all lands. The literature of the time teems with evidences
that the Cordeliers, as the Franciscans were called in France,
from the cord with which their habit was girded, were essen-
tially a popular order; the Dominicans were in closer alliance
with the nobility and the court.

Moreover, in the long and bloody feud between the Arma-
gnacs and Burgundians, which for half a century had deluged
France with blood and came within a hair's- breadth of making
her an English province (nay, but for Joan would in all probabil-
ity have left her an appanage of the English crown), circumstances
brought it about that the two orders were arrayed on opposite
sides. The Dominicans, whose opposition to the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, which the Franciscans had always zeal-
ously upheld, had drawn down the solemn condemnation of the
University of Paris and exclusion for ten years from its fellowship,
had likewise been expelled from the court. Charles VI. and
Louis, the Duke of Orleans, had abandoned their Dominican con-
fessors, and, alone of all the princes of the blood, John the Fearless,
of Burgundy, yet gave them protection and countenance. It was
not unnatural, then, that their sympathies should go with the Eng-
lish-Burgundian faction.

The alliance of the Franciscans with the Armagnacs, and
through them with the French or patriotic party, had a remoter
origin. Almost from the foundation of the order the princes of
the houses of Anjou and Sicily had shown for it a manifest pre-
dilection ; it was in some sense a tradition of either dynasty. It
was long their pious fashion to be buried in the habit of the
order, like St. Louis of Marseilles, of the royal house of Sicilyr
canonized by Pope John XXII. in 1317. Many of the princes of
both houses are so represented on their monuments. Some even
took the vows. Yolande, a cousin of her namesake, the Duchess
of Anjou, at the beginning of the fifteenth century was head of
the convent of Reformed Clares of Valence. It is worthy of re-
mark also, as further indicating which way the respective sym-
pathies of the two orders were supposed to incline, that wnen
the church began an orgamzed^movement for the suppression of
heresy in France that duty, so fa?tis the Anglo-Burgundian pro-
vinces were concerned, was delegated to the Dominicans, while
to the Franciscans were entrusted those parts of France that
owned allegiance to Charles VII., or more properly, at the time
we speak of, to his devout and able stepmother and guardian,

i88i.] JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. 113

Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Sicily and Duchess of Anjou. This
lady, like her brother-in-law, Jean, Due de Berri, whose death had
made her the chief of the Armagnac party, always showed a
marked preference for the Franciscans, chose her confessors
among them, and lent every aid to increase the number of their
foundations.

The identification of the Franciscans with the patriotic cause,
their great influence and popularity with the common people, and
Joan's well-known piety would almost of themselves suggest the
part which M. Luce boldly asserts they exercised in awakening
and directing her patriotic enthusiasm. Not content with in-
ference, however, M. Luce essays to furnish more direct proof.
He points out that those pious practices which the Franciscans
especially favored were also adopted by Joan, from whose mind
the notion of a divine commission was never absent, and who
fought, as she always contended, under the direct inspiration of
Heaven. As every student of hagiology knows, one of the dis-
tinctive doctrines of the Franciscans was the devotion to the
Holy Name of Jesus, introduced by their great reformer, St. Ber-
nardin of Siena, about the year 1425, as a means to allay the agita-
tion and terror aroused throughout Italy by the missionary labors
of St. Vincent Ferrer and his disciples, who were preaching the
coming of Antichrist. St. Bernardin carried with him an image
presenting the word " Jesus " in the midst of a gloria, which at
the end of his sermon he presented to the faithful to adore upon
their knees. Sometimes the words " Jesus-Mary " were joined.
Cited before the pope for idolatrous practices by his enemies,
St. Bernardin was triumphantly vindicated and the cult formally
recognized in a bull of Martin V.

Now, all through her life Joan seems to have practised faith-
fully this devotion. On the standard borne before her on the
march to Orleans the words " Jhesus-Mary " were inscribed by
her express orders.* Her summons to the English to evacuate
France was " in the name of the King of Heaven and the Blessed
Mary." When, before Compiegne, she fell into the hands of the
Burgundians, they took from her finger a ring, probably a keep-
sake from her parents, bearing the inscription " Jhesus-Maria.""

* According to the clerk of the court of La Rochelle, "she caused a banner to be made,
whereon was a white pigeon on a blue shield, holding in his beak a scroll on which was written
' By order of the King of Heaven.' " This was the device adopted, in allusion to their founder's
name, by the Jesuates, an order founded by St. John Columbin of Siena, and approved by Mar-
tin V. in a bull dated October 21, 1428, just prior to the vindication of St. Bernardin. M. Val-
let adds : " The monogram or name of Jesus seems to have been put about 1458, by order of
Charles, Duke of Orleans, on the banner commemorating Joan of Arc " (Le Prects, etc.)
VOL. XXXIV.— 8

ii4 JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. [Oct.,

Her letters begin and end with the same. Asked upon her trial
the reason of this, she said she had acted conformably to the coun-
sels of her party, and that, moreover, her secretaries had fallen into
the habit of so signing themselves. The use of these holy names
in a lay and profane correspondence was then deemed a suspicious
innovation, not to say a downright sacrilege, and formed one of
the twelve heads of accusation against Joan. It was otherwise in
religious writings. Many years before Joan, St. Colette of Cor-
bie, one of the most remarkable women of her time, the reformer
of the Franciscan convents of France, had adopted the word
" Jhesus " as the distinctive sign and device of her reform.
Some rare specimens of her voluminous correspondence have
come down to us, all marked " Jhesus " or " Jhesus-Maria," some-
times in addition " Franciscus et Clara," meaning, of course, St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Clare.

Another element which undoubtedly had its share in awaken-
ing or confirming Joan's resolution was the preaching of the
celebrated Franciscan friar, Richard. Immediately upon the
approval of the devotion to the Holy Name a general council of
the order was convened at Vercelli, in the diocese of Casale, and
a propaganda resolved on. Among the missionaries despatched
to France was Friar Richard. The effect of his preaching is said
to have been prodigious. Gifted with stentorian lungs and an
iron physique, he could speak a whole morning in the open air
without any sign of fatigue. After one of his energetic fulmina-
tions against gaming and luxury it was a common sight to see
the citizens of Paris and their wives lighting fires in every direc-
tion on the plain, into which they cast, the one their cards and
dice, the others their fripperies and furbelows of all sorts.

But Friar Richard had to preach a political as well as a reli-
gious crusade. Under his impassioned appeals to the people to
free themselves from the bondage of sin he contrived to instil
into their hearts the hope of a secular liberator. Joan had
not met Richard before her arrival at Troyes on the march from
Chalons, but she had probably heard of his preaching, which, in-
deed, was the talk of all the country-side. Domremy lay on the
confines of the bishopric of Chalons, where Richard chiefly la-
bored, and a constant intercourse was kept up between the two
by the pork-raisers and charcoal-burners who in large numbers
inhabited the forests of the Meuse and sought their markets in
Troyes and Chalons, and the pilgrims who, in those days of a
more primitive piety, thronged every road of France.

The meeting between the Franciscan and the Maid is histori-

1 88 1.] JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. 115

cal and need not be dwelt on here. Suffice it to say that Friar
Richard at once espoused Joan's cause with characteristic ardor,
and, returning to Troyes, preached it so effectively that the cry of
" Vive le roi ! " was raised, and, headed by the friar, a procession
of notables sallied forth to carry to the king the expression of
their devotion and to Joan the testimony of the grateful admira-
tion of the city. Upon leaving Troyes Friar Richard accompa-
nied Joan and became her confessor, preaching everywhere that
God had sent her to expel the English.

How far St. Colette of Corbie may have similarly influenced
Joan's action our author leaves a little in doubt. He is of opin-
ion, however, that the two met in 1429, when Joan laid siege to
St. Pierre-le-Moutier and La Charite-sur-Loire. After taking
the former she repaired to Moulins, where St. Colette then was
in a convent of Reformed Clares which she had founded. As one
of Joan's most prominent supporters at the time was the Comte
de Montpensier, son of Marie de Berry, Duchess of Bourbon, of
whom in some sort, as of many other of the most notable per-
sonages of France, St. Colette was the spiritual directress, it
seems not improbable that the two heroines — the heroine of pa-
triotism and the heroine of piety — met. However this may be,
it is not at all unlikely that St. Colette's example and teachings,
far-reaching as they were in their effects, her efforts persistently
put forth to heal the wounds of France, directly or indirectly
exerted an influence on Joan.

For St. Colette was not only a reformer and founder of con-
vents.* She was always a most judicious and potent mediatrix
between the two warring factions that then rent France asunder.
Scarce two years after the murder of John of Burgundy at the
bridge of Montereau, Colette had established an indirect corre-
spondence between Marguerite of Bavaria, his widow, and Marie
de Berry, Duchess of Bourbon, of the party of the Armagnacs,
who murdered him. Indeed, so efficient was her interposition
and so profound the veneration she inspired in all parties (for al-
though, in her deep humility and rigid interpretation of the rules
of her order, she went always in rags and on foot, duchesses
and princesses contended for her company) that M. Luce traces
to her efforts the marriage of Charles de Bourbon, eldest son of
John L, and Agnes of Burgundy, youngest daughter of John

* In thirty- five years she founded eighteen convents besides those she reformed, and, ac-
cording to Olivier de la Marche, was instrumental in building three hundred and eighty churches.
It is worthy of note that she founded no convents in English France, though the near friend and
spiritual directress of the Duchess of Burgundy.

n6 JOAN OF ARC AN-D THE FRANCISCANS. [Oct.,

the Fearless. The marriage was celebrated at Autun in Sep-
tember, 1425, while St. Colette was sojourning at Moulins.

M. Luce draws an interesting parallel between these two fa-
mous women, who, each in her own way, were perhaps the chief
agents in the liberation of France. Both are described by their
contemporaries as of unusual beauty, but exalted by so much
purity as at once to abash desire. Both were so fervidly devout
that they were melted to tears at confession, yet both had the
practical and organizing faculty to a remarkable degree. They
had the same favorite feasts and fasts : Good Friday, the An-
nunciation, the feast of All Saints. They vied in their adoration
of Jesus. To Joan, indeed, he was not only God, but the true
King of France, whose sole lawful lieutenant was Charles VII.
From the first she indicates that her expedition is a holy war.
Her first summons to the English at Orleans is dated Holy
Thursday, and is couched in the name of the King of Heaven.
Her soldiers are obliged to confess and receive absolution be-
fore she will lead them in the campaign, and then she sets out pre-
ceded by priests singing hymns and marching under the banner
of the crucified Redeemer.

Nor was her devotion to the Blessed Virgin less fervent or
Franciscan. From infancy it was remarkable. Every Sunday it
was her custom to hang garlands on the altar of the little chapel
of Our Lady of Bermont. During the three weeks of her stay at
Vaucouleurs, before her departure for Chinon to begin her great
and self-imposed labor, she would pass whole days in a subterra-
nean chapel, prostrate before Mary's image. With these disposi-
tions it is easy to perceive what strong sympathy must have ex-
isted between these two women, alike in personal charm, alike in
the fervor of their piety and the direction of their devotion, alike
in their single-minded love for France. Though Joan and Colette
never met, it is difficult to believe that their minds were not in
conscious unison.

The last point made by M. Luce in behalf of his argument is
full of interest, and, as we have said, may fairly claim the merit
of novelty. In the early part of the fifteenth century the teach-
ings of the Franciscans had made the devotion to the Blessed
Virgin universal through France, and the pilgrimage to the ca-
thedral of Puy, dedicated to the^ Annunciation, was at its greatest
vogue. In 1429 it assumed the importance of a national event.
This was due to a variety of causes, but chiefly to the develop-
ment, in all classes, of the Third or secular Order of St. Francis.
The sole conditions of membership in this were the profession of

1 88 1.] JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. 117

the Catholic faith and obedience to the church. Parents could
enroll their children, of whom a certain number were educated
at the expense of the order until the age of fourteen to fifteen
for boys and twelve to thirteen for girls, when, if they did not
elect to embrace a religious life, they were discharged with a
dowry. With these petits enfans des mendians, as they were
called, it was Joan's chief delight to receive the sacrament. The
Observantines — or Franciscans of the Observance* — had always
a particular veneration for the Annunciation from the time that
Paul di Foligno began his reform by building a small church on
Monte Cesi (1368) in honor of the same, as the Italian order of
knighthood of the Annunciata, founded November 7 of that year
by Amadeus VIII., Duke of Savoy, the spiritual son of St. Co-
lette, commemorates to this day.

When the Annunciation chanced to fall on Good Friday — called
then the Great Friday of the Annunciation — the church had to
celebrate at once the commencement of the work of redemption
and its consummation upon Calvary. So to the church of Our
Lady of Puy, in Velay, was granted a grand jubilee every time
Good Friday fell on March 25. The usage still exists, and the
last grand jubilee took place in 1867. From 1400 to 1430 this
event occurred three times — in 1407, in 1418, and 1429. In the
two former years such vast crowds attended that many persons
were suffocated — two hundred the first year and thirty-three the
second — despite all the precautions taken by the bishop of Puy
and a continuance of the indulgence to the third day after Easter
by Martin V.

In May, 1420, Henry V. of England, who married Catherine,
sister of Charles VII., and Isabelle of Bavaria, the latter's un-
natural mother, signed the treaty of Troyes, depriving the Dau-
phin of his rights to the kingdom. Charles had just stopped at
Puy after a successful expedition to the south. The poor young
prince, thus cruelly betrayed, turned for consolation to religion.
Only the hand of the Patroness of Puy, Our Lady of Victories of
southern France, was powerful enough, he thought, to tear the
treaty of Troyes asunder. He had himself received a canon
of the cathedral, and on Tuesday, May 16, at a grand Pon-
tifical Mass, he received communion in his canonical vestments
from the hands of the bishop of Puy. Afterwards, to mark the
official and religious character of the ceremony, he conferred
knighthood on several nobles. Thereafter all pilgrims were

* So called after the reform from their stricter observance of the rule of St. Francis.

ii8 JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. [Oct.,

shown his stole, so that popular opinion was led to look upon
Charles VII. as having an especial claim on the favor of Our
Lady of Puy.

In 1425 St. Colette, in concert with Claude de Roussillon,
Vicomtesse de Polignac, founded there a convent of Reformed
Clares. Her presence, devoted as she was alike to the Annun-
ciation and the Passion (that feast which the Franciscans had
made their own from the time that their founder had received
the signal favor of the stigmata), contributed to the mystic
exaltation which seized all hearts at the approach of the Great
Friday of 1429.

It was a popular superstition that a Great Friday was the
forerunner of great events. Nicole de Savigny, writing about
the time of the murder of Jean d'Armagnac by the followers of
John of Burgundy, says : " Every time Great Friday falls mar-
vellous things are sure to happen." Twenty-five years later a
marginal annotator on the Missal of Chalons — a man evidently of
superior culture from his Ciceronian Latin, and probably a mem-
ber of the chapter — quoting this remark, adds : " It was so in 1429,
when, immediately after Easter, La Pucelle took up arms, raised
her banner against the English, chased them from Orleans, and
routed them at Beauce."

After the defeat of Verneuil, seeing no hope of human succor,
Charles and his partisans must have placed their last despair-
ing trust on high. In popular belief two supernatural influences
above all personified this protection : the Archangel of Mount
St. Michael and the Virgin of Puy. At the end of June, 1425,
the Archangel had destroyed the English who laid siege to his
sanctuary, and Joan had perhaps got the first inkling of her mis-
sion upon the news of it. On the approach of the Great Friday
of 1429 people were persuaded that the Virgin of Puy had cho-
sen this solemn conjuncture to make the invader feel by a crush-
ing demonstration the weight of her arm. So towards the end
of 1428 all that part of France which owned the Dauphin's sway
lived in fevered expectation of this great event.

It was easy to foresee that under such conditions the pilgrim-
age to Puy would be unparalleled. The indulgence was extend-
ed from Holy Week to Sunday, April 3. Lent began on Febru-
ary 9, when the English at Orleans had already won many im-
portant advantages. Never had the danger been more pressing.
With mingled anxiety and joy all patriotic France awaited the
coming of the fated day.

In the middle ages Lent, especially preceding a solemn jubilee.

1 88 1.] JOAN OF ARC AND THE FRANCISCANS. 119

was a term of incessant prayer, penance, and mortification, and the
Lent of 1429, for the reasons already given, was especially so in
France. It was just eight months before, towards the feast of
the Ascension, 1428, that Joan had sent to Robert de Baudri-
court " to bid him tell the Dauphin, on the part of her Lord, to
be of good cheer and not to give battle to his enemies, for that
the Lord would bring him help before mid-Lent." What won-
der that so devout a spirit, placing all her reliance on Heaven
in her self-appointed task of freeing her native land, should have
chosen for her great effort the moment when general mortifica-
tion, extraordinary practices of devotion, and the plenary indul-
gences attached to the jubilee would all be fighting on her
side to wrest divine aid to the benefit of her down-trodden
countrymen ? That consideration was certainly held in view
by Charles' counsellors in advising him not to reject Joan's
overtures : " Le roi, firent remarquer ces conseillers, en consid-
eration de sa propre detresse, et de celle de son royaume, et ayant
tgard a la penitence assidue, et aux prtires de son peuple & Dieuy ne
doit pas renvoyer ni rebuter cette jeune fille." *

Joan left Vaucouleurs February 25, and reached Chinon
March 6. With her eyes and hopes, her heart and soul, intent on
Orleans, she does not go to Puy herself, but sends several of her
escort, as appears by the deposition of Friar Jean Pasquerel
" that the first time he heard of Joan was at Puy, where he met
her mother and some of those who had brought her to the king.
Acquaintance made, they insisted he should see the Maid, and
so he went with them to Chinon and afterward to Tours."

The subsequent history of Joan of Arc is known to the world.
It must be admitted that M. Luce has made out at least a plausi-
ble case in support of his theory that Franciscan influence had
much to do with Joan's heroic enterprise and marvellous success.
And it is certainly at this moment a singular reflection that
France, at the most critical period of her history, should have
been indebted for her salvation so largely to the efforts and the
patriotic zeal of one of those religious orders which modern
France proscribes and banishes, and to the vitalizing spirit of
that religion which France's rulers despise, and, so far as in them
lies, would fain suppress.

* " The king," said these counsellors, "in consideration of his own and his kingdom's sorry
plight, and regard had to the assiduous penance of his people and their prayers to God, ought
not to send away or repulse this young girl."

120 IN ARCADY. . [Oct.,

IN ARCADY.

Do you remember, O my soul ! that one October month, so
long since past, that we spent idling in Arcady? Have the re-
volving years ever brought round another such October, so rich
in golden wealth, so flushed with happy life, when I, a worn-
out worker sick of city cares and city toil, sought to regain my
strength in the country, and found myself in Arcady, carried
there through no effort of my own, and blindly ignorant of my
destination ?

How wearying was that few hours' ride through dismantled
fields and ripening orchards ! Tired and cramped, dispirited
with travel, and wretched with the misery of an invalid in
strange quarters, I turned disconsolately from the farm-house,
with its homely comforts, to look still more disconsolately at the
flat, tame fields around. My doctor's orders were explicit : a
month of perfect rest, no books, no work, no excitement of any
kind ; but with what weariness of spirit was I destined to buy
back my promised health ! As I surveyed the four weeks' pros-
pect I wished myself right heartily in any other place — back in
my old den, or even at the hated sea-shore, staring at the tiresome
crowd of unknown faces or listening with dull ears to the mono-
tonous and ever-complaining sea.

But when, rested and refreshed, I strolled out in the mellow
afternoon, I felt a little more resigned to my hard fate and
walked with a new vigor born of the pure country air. Think-
ing I heard the sound of voices to my left, I lazily turned my
steps in that direction. Yes, there beneath a clump of trees were
a group of children at play, piling up the fallen leaves into great
heaps and laughing shrilly at their pastime. They never noticed
me as I approached, and at last I began to vaguely understand
that this was Arcady I had reached. Where else could children
be as free and wild and happy as these children were — hatless and
shoeless, as became their sylvan state, yet with no touch of
poverty about them? In frantic haste they were heaping up
great armfuls of grass and leaves upon some prostrate figure,
burying it, I thought, completely, and raising over it a huge and
tumbled mound. Curious to see more, I went nearer. Suddenly
they all stopped and gazed at me with the half-startled look of

i88i.] • IN ARCADY. 121

woodland creatures caught at their hidden play, and the some-
thing on the ground, whose head at least was not concealed,
opened a pair of astonished brown eyes and led me straight into
Arcady.

The girl who lay so buried up did not seem in the least em-
barrassed by her singular position, but I must own I was. I
raised my hat, feeling deeply conscious of the absurdity in taking
it off to an individual who lay stretched at my feet and whose
head alone was visible. She smiled slightly, and then without a
word thrust out a little brown hand from under her grassy mound
and gently extended it towards me. Could it be that she ex-
pected me to get down on my knees and take it ? I felt myself
growing quite hot at the prospect, and was greatly relieved to
see that she had no such intention. At a little distance stood one
of the children, a sturdy, sunburnt boy of five. Fully occupied
with staring at me, he never noticed the hand that crept stealth-
ily towards him until it had caught him by the ankle and with
one dextrous jerk thrown him to the ground. He uttered a
howl of alarm, but it was too late. In another instant the girl
had jumped to her feet, neatly turning the pile of leaves over upon
her prostrate victim. The children, like all other mobs, were
ready and eager for a new antagonist, especially when he was
already down ; and in spite of his kicks and yells they flew at him
and covered him up so completely that I really feared he would
suffocate. In the meantime the author of this skilful manoeuvre
shook off the grass that still clung to her gown, and came for-
ward without a particle of hesitation or shyness.

" You are Mr. Beven, I suppose," she said with a slightly for-
eign accent. " We had not expected you until a later train, but
I am glad you have arrived safely. Were you much tired by the
trip ? " looking at me kindly, yet without any of that half-pitying,
half-scrutinizing interest that most won^en think proper to be-
stow on invalids, and which is apt to be so irritating to the suf-
ferer.

" Not very," I said ; "and I am completely rested now. Mrs.
Oakes has given me most comfortable quarters. But tell me, I
beg, are all these children your brothers and sisters ? "

" None of them," she answered ; " they are all my cousins,
though. I am Mrs. Oakes' niece, and my name is Natalie Har-
rison." Then, turning to a tall girl of ten with great, sombre eyes
and a mop of short brown curls, she said with decision : " I am
going home now, Snap, and I want you to see that all the chil-
dren are back by tea-time."

122 IN ARCADY. - [Oct.,

" I sha'n't ! " was the terse rejoinder.

" But you must ! " with equal emphasis. " Mind ! I leave
them in your care, and I shall hold you responsible for them all."

" Natalie, Natalie, don't go home ! Stay and play with us,
please ! " shrieked the youngsters in a chorus, rushing up to her ;
but she settled matters by shaking them all off and walking
sedately away, while I ventured to accompany her homewards.

" You see," she explained to me, " I waste so much of my
time with them, and Aunt Jane has always plenty for me to do.
Besides, Snap can bring them home quite as well as I could."

" Only Snap does not seem altogether willing to undertake
the task," I suggested.

" Oh ! yes, she is," rejoined Natalie with easy assurance.
" She merely says she won't by way of showing me that she does
not recognize my authority, while in her heart she knows she is
going to do exactly what I tell her. Now, if I had asked Mar-
gery she would have said sweetly, * Yes, Cousin Natalie,' and then
never have given another thought to the matter. But Snap is to
be trusted."

" Why," I asked idly, " is she called Snap ? "

" It is short for Snap-dragon," Natalie kindly explained.

" But she could hardly have been baptized Snap-dragon
either," I persisted ; " can that be short for something else ? "

" Oh ! dear, no," laughed Natalie. " I called her that because
she is a dragon and snaps dreadfully. Aunt Jane's taste in names
is very peculiar," she went on gravely. " Now, Snap's real one
is Abigail, and it does not seem to suit her at all. Margery I
don't mind so much, but Jonathan and Jeremy are dreadful, and
Deborah is not much better. Even the poor Gosling is called
Samuel."

" The Gosling ! " I repeated vaguely.

" Yes, that is the youngest of them all — the one I pulled over
so neatly. He was quite a tiny boy when I first came."

" And how long ago was that? " I asked.

" Nearly two years," she said with a faint sigh, as if the time
had dragged but slowly.

" And from what part of France did you come?"

She raised her brown eyes full into mine. " Who told you I
was French at all ? " she askeeL-^

" I saw it easily for myself."

" And yet I do not speak English very badly, do I ? "

" On the contrary, you speak it very well ; but for all that it is
not hard to guess your nationality."

1 88 i.J IN ARCADY. 123

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, but seemed, I thought,
rather pleased than otherwise. " I was born near St. Etienne,"
she said, " and went to school there ; but my father always talked
to me in English, so I ought to know it very well indeed. And
there were two American girls at the convent, who were so glad
to have some one they could speak to in their own tongue. It
was a pity they were so stupid," she added musingly ; " but then
the charity in talking to them was all the greater. Oh ! there is
Aunt Jane beckoning me from the kitchen-door. How long I
must have kept her waiting ! " And with another impatient little
shrug she was gone.

And I was in Arcady. I wandered aimlessly around until tea-
time, languid and tired with my unusual exertion, yet vaguely
satisfied and happy to have left my daily cares behind me in the
city. Then, as Natalie had foretold, home came Snap, bearing
the crowd of children in her train ; hurrying them along, boys
and girls, with a sharpness of tongue and a steadiness of purpose
that in no way belied her name. Like a flock of geese she drove
them all in the narrow door-way, and then, with her bare round
arms akimbo, stood staring solemnly at me as I sat out on the
shady lawn. I stood it as long as I could, and then, feeling that I
must either speak to her or get up and escape from such pr6-
longed scrutiny, I hazarded some random remark about the chil-
dren. It was enough. At the first sound of my voice Snap had
vanished, and I saw no more of her that night.

The next day was rainy, and, feeling rather dull in consequence,
I was making up my mind to go down to breakfast when there
came an odd little scratching, thumping noise on the outside of
my door that suggested forcibly to me the morning visits of my
favorite pointer, then luxuriating in Western prairies. 1 opened
it, and saw a pair of round blue eyes under a hanging fringe of
flaxen hair. It was the youngest-born — the Gosling.

" Mother says," he began in a rapid monotone, as if fearful of
forgetting his message, " will you have your breakfast up here or
down-stairs, and are you ready for it now ? "

" Down-stairs, of course," I answered ; " only sick people ought
to want their breakfast in their bed-rooms. Don't you think so ? "

The Gosling, being a heavy child, pondered over my question
for a moment in a solemn manner, with his head a little on one
side, as if considering the matter in all its lights. Unable, how-
ever, to come to any final decision, he concluded, like Talleyrand,
to " reserve his judgment," and waived the subject for the pre-
sent. " It's raining," he .said gravely, and, having imparted this

IN ARCADY. [Oct.,

piece of information, he began to clamber down the stairs in front
of me, waddling in a manner that fully justified his title and
gave me a high opinion of Natalie's sense of the ludicrous.

After breakfast I wrote a couple of letters, and then, driven to
my wits' end for occupation, fell into examining every print and
every china ornament in Mrs. Oakes' painfully uninteresting
parlor. Especially was I struck with the one oil-painting which
decorated her walls — a full-length portrait of a little boy with
round red cheeks, and round black eyes, and a vivid blue jacket,
who held his straw hat carefully with one nand and rested the
other stiffly on a dog's head by his side. I say dog's head advis-
edly, because the singular part of this picture was that the head
alone was visible, and, protruding from one corner, plainly in or-
der to give the little boy something picturesque to lay his hand
on, was far more suggestive of a stretched-out alligator than
any honest dog. After carefully inspecting this masterpiece I
turned my attention to the windows and watched the driving
rain beating against the panes, and wondered where Natalie and
the children were, and what they found to do on such a desperate
day. Finally, setting my doctor's orders at defiance, I sought
refuge in my room, and, taking out one of the forbidden volumes
that lay so temptingly in my trunk, I read on for several hours,
until, glancing out of the window, I saw Natalie hurrying through
the rain, an old shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders.
Tossing my book aside, I sauntered down the stairs and encoun-
tered her in the hall, flushed, panting, and most thoroughly wet;
and to this hour I can recall the odd sensation of feeling sud-
denly old and wilted alongside of her vigorous young beauty.

" How could you be so imprudent ? " I said reproachfully ;
but Natalie only laughed as she threw back her heavy hair and
shook the rain-drops from her dripping shawl.

" I came from the barn," she explained, " and I hurried all I
could ; but rain will wet you somewhat." And with this truism,
which I was hardly prepared to deny, she ran lightly up the
stairs, leaving me standing in rather a disconsolate fashion at
their foot. Then, moved, I am sure, by a genuine pity for my for-
lorn and solitary condition, she called out from the upper story :
" I am going back to the barn after dinner, Mr. Beven. Would
you like to go along, if it clears ? The children are all there."

" I will go whether it clears or not," I made haste to say ;
and so off we started as soon as dinner was over, in the pouring
rain and through the soaked and treacherous grass ; sheltered
this time, however, by the huge family umbrella, brown with

i88i.] IN ARCADY. 125

age and weighing- about half a ton. When I learned that this
was the only one at the farm I no longer wondered at Natalie's
preferring the less ponderous protection of her shawl.

Arrived at the barn, we found the children comfortably es-
tablished in the loft, with plenty of provisions and a sprinkling of
dishes and forks, holding high ^carnival, and, it must be admitted,
none too pleased to see an interloper like myself admitted into
their especial fortress. The instinct of hospitality, however, al-
ways strongest in country children, prevented their showing
their displeasure ; an*d after half an hour of such close quarters I
succeeded in breaking through their wall of shyness and estab-
lishing myself on the easy footing of a friend. That is to say,
with all but Snap. She alone seemed to regard me with positive
distrust, rejecting all my advances and glowering at me with her
great eyes, as if she fully expected me to do something desperate
and was determined to be on her guard. Her sister Margery
was rather a pretty child, plump and fair, with a gentle, winning
manner that effectually hid the imperious little will beneath.
Snap generally lost her point by fighting for it, while Margery
always gained hers by seeming to give way. Deborah and
Jeremy, otherwise known as Deb and Jem, were twins of eight,
and Jonathan, a really handsome boy of twelve, the best-looking
and best-tempered of the party.

Over this merry and somewhat turbulent little crowd Natalie
reigned supreme, seconded always by Jonathan and, in her re-
luctant, half-sullen fashion, by Snap. But shall I forget the un-
fortunate Gosling ? Ah ! no, for he it was who supplied the far-
cical element to the family group ; always phlegmatic, yet al-
ways in hot water, being continually led astray by his more viva-
cious brothers and sisters. Especially was he victimized by Jem,
to whom he clung with a desperate trust and affection which
repeated experience of his brother's falsity could not completely
shake. Was it not Jem who decoyed him into climbing the big
apple-tree, and, having established him on the highest available
branch, did he not slip deftly down and leave the unhappy Gos-
ling perched aloft for two hours before he was discovered, a
stolid and tear-drenched little image of despair? For which
craven act I did myself see Natalie box the young scamp's ears
until I, though fully approving of the punishment, fairly winced
at the vigor with which it was applied.

Again, was it not Jem, aided and abetted by Deb, who ter-
rified his little brother with appalling ghost-stories, varied by
lowing sounds which Deb executed in the closet with such en-

i26 IN ARCADY. [Oct.,

tire success that the Gosling, his flaxen hair standing on end, his
blue eyes shining with terror, rushed from his haunted bed-room
into the light and safety of the parlor? Even on this rainy after-
noon in the barn it required all Natalie's authority to keep this
volatile Jem in order ; but it must be owned that he contributed
largely to our entertainment, giving us a circus performance of
varied scope and of no little merit, in which he appeared as
everything in turn — clown, horses, acrobat, and all.

So completely was the ice broken on this occasion between
the children and myself that afterwards it became a difficult
matter to keep my room free from the boys, who invaded it at
all times in the true spirit of sociality ; spending hours there un-
less positively dismissed, and then only moving as far as the hall
outside in case I should relent and readmit them, or to give me
the pleasure of their company as soon as I emerged. Margery
fluctuated between demonstrative affection and shy avoidance, as
her variable fancy inclined her. Snap alone continued obdurate,
until I actually began to look about for some means to bribe her
liking ; for was she not, this sullen, passionate, taciturn child —
was she not Natalie's acknowledged favorite ?

I had little with me, unfortunately, that ran any chance of
pleasing her — a row of books, to be sure, but Snap hated read-
ing ; and a few articles of jewelry, but none that I could give a
little girl. At last, in rummaging through my writing-desk, I
was lucky enough to find there a photograph — how obtained I
do not know — and I determined to try if Snap had any taste for
art, and if her favor, like that of her sex generally, was a purchas-
able article. The picture was a scene in the Roman Amphi-
theatre ; a crowded mass of people looking on, and two young
martyrs kneeling on the bloody sand, clasped in each other's
arms ; to the right a lion creeping stealthily towards them,
while nearer still a glutted tiger turns savagely away. It was
not of any high order of artistic merit, but I had no reason to
think that Snap \vould be critical, so the next time I heard her
on the stairs I opened my door and called her in.

" Snap," I said without any preamble, " here is a little picture
that I found among my papers. Would you like to have it ? "

She stood for a moment uncertain ; but, desire getting the
better of prejudice, she slowly"came into the middle of the room
and took the photograph from my hands. I expected her to dis-
appear with it at once, but I was mistaken. Leaning her elbows
on my window-sill, she looked long and earnestly at her prize.
Her face was turned away from me, but as I watched her closely

1 88 1.] IN ARCADY. 127

I saw her gather herself up shrinkingly and shiver slightly as if
in fear. The child's vigorous young fancy placed her at once by
the side of those two Romans girls, and she trembled at a peril
whose strange sweetness she could not understand. For a minute
she stood thus wrapped in a pleasure which was half a pain ; then,
taking up the picture, she turned to me and raised her great eyes,
with a friendly light in them, to my face.

" You are welcome to it, if it pleases you," I said, " and when
I go back to the city I will send you some others."

She actually smiled, showing a line of white teeth seldom
visible, and then went swiftly away, with no other thanks than
those which had for a minute lit up her sombre eyes; but
from that day forth it was understood that Snap and I were
friends.

Mrs. Oakes had long before this taken me into her confidence —
as I believe she would have taken any other boarder in my place —
and had told me most of her own concerns and all about Natalie.
I heard that her father had been Mrs. Oakes' only brother, and
her mother a Frenchwoman, who had striven hard against pov-
erty and a thriftless husband (my hostess openly acknowledged
this fact), and had tried to educate her daughter and place her
above want. But she died, poor woman, worn out by the heavi-
ness of her task ; her husband had followed her to the grave, and
their child, now utterly homeless, had left her convent school and
crossed the ocean to her only relatives.

" And a blessing she has been to us from the first moment she
came," wound up the good woman, " as I tell my husband many
and many a time. What we would do without her now I cannot
think. Why, as for the children, one would suppose they be-
longed to her ! " One would indeed, I thought acquiescently, re-
calling to mind Jem and the apple-tree. " Nearly every stitch the
girls wear she makes, and her own clothes into the bargain. I
am sure," with a sigh, " I don't know where she gets her handy
ways from. Not from her father, anyhow. Many's the time I've
pitied his wife, poor thing, before she gave up and died. Natalie
must favor her, I reckon. And the children's manners so im-
proved, too." What could they have been like before ? I wonder-
ed. " And all winter long she teaches them, and they learn more
with her in a month than they did in that trumpery school in a
year, though one of the directors did come here the other day
and say we ought to send them back instead of trusting them to
a foreigner and a Papist. But perhaps you did not know that
Natalie was a Romanist ? " she said hesitatingly, and with that

128 IN ARCADY. [Oct.,

fluency of synonyms which always accompanies an unwillingness
to use the correct term.

I signified that I did know it, but that I was scarcely stanch
enough in my own lines to be particular about the wanderings of
others ; an idea that seemed to impress her by its very novelty.

" Of course the child is not altogether to blame," she said
apologetically, "being brought up that way and among that
kind, and she is as good as gold in her own fashion, and I dare
say does no harm ; though it is a sin and a shame to my brother
that he ever permitted it. But that was Lawrence all over. If
he had married a Hottentot his daughter might have worshipped
according ! " And Mrs. Oakes flung herself out of the room in a
torrent of indignation against her happily deceased .kinsman.

Poor little Natalie ! Poor little Papist ! — exiled from her
country and from her fellow-Papists, more gay and congenial, I
feared, than any friends she was likely to make in this unattrac-
tively orthodox spot. Such a stanch little daughter of Rome as
she was, too ! Every Sunday, rain or shine, saw her bravely walk-
ing a long three miles to church ; while her uncle, to whom the
Sabbath was exclusively a day of rest, alternately smoked and
slumbered in his chair, and her aunt, with a stricter sense of obli-
gation upon her, took down a Bible from the shelf and, honestly
I am sure, tried to nourish her own soul from its pages. But the
unaccustomed repose of her surroundings acted like an opiate on
her overworked system ; and this woman, who toiled unceasingly
from Monday morning until Saturday night, succumbed before
the lulling influence of rest, and dozed gently off with her specta-
cles on her nose and the open book upon her knee.

As for the children, they were sent with great regularity to
Sunday-school, whence they returned enriched with a generous
supply of literature of a mildly religious type, which, I am bound
to say, I never saw one of them read. In fact, a large bundle of
it, neatly done up and labelled, had been saved by Natalie to
return to the school. " Because," said this practical little French-
woman, with perhaps a faint grain of malice mingling with her
solicitude, "they are really never read, and it seems a pity to
waste them."

But the duty of church-goiijg rested entirely on Natalie's
shoulders, and once I accompanied her. It was a rough little
edifice and a rougher congregation, made up principally of
Irish farm-hands and their families. I never went again — not,
however, from undue fastidiousness, but because there seemed
something irreverent in coming merely as an idle spectator

i88i.] IN ARCADY. 129

among people who were all so tremendously in earnest, and
bound together, as these people were, by the tie of a common
faith. I looked at Natalie kneeling with her rosary in her hands,
and tried to picture her amid the solemn grandeur of Notre
Dame, which she had never even seen ; though she was loath to
believe that it could be more beautiful than the parish church at
St. Chamond, where she had lived as a little child, and which, in
her eyes, far surpassed anything that smoky, bustling, prosperous
St. Etienne had to offer.

Poor little Natalie ! Well might her aunt praise her willing
hands ; but by this time I had learned that the girl's light-heart-
edness, the happy birthright of her race, could not always stifle
a homesick longing for France and the friends she had left there,
or keep her from sometimes wondering if life held for her no
gayer page than the one she looked at now. Not that she ever
complained, or even appeared sad, but there was a wistful eager-
ness in the way she questioned me about all the countries I had
seen, and above all about France, and Paris the wonderful, where
her mother had been when a girl, and where she had promised
to take her as soon as they should be rich enough.

" It takes a great deal of money to travel, does it not ? " she
said sorrowfully, as we sat one day under the self-same apple-tree
which had been the Gosling's involuntary perch. The children
on the grass beside us were playing some game, whirling round
in a ring and singing loudly to Deb, who stood disconsolately in
their midst. Natalie was knitting, and as she asked the question
she raised her eyes from her work, while a quaint little pucker
seamed her pretty, low forehead.

" Not so very much," I answered carelessly. " I am not exact-
ly a millionaire, but I am still rich enough to have the whole
world open to me, if I choose to go."

" And yet you stay here ! " she said with a frank amazement
that was anything but complimentary to my native land.

" And yet I stay here, as you see, and am tolerably contented
with my situation ; but if you were rich to-morrow where would
you go to spend your wealth ? "

".Oh! to France, of course," was the eager answer; "and I
should build myself a most beautiful chateau near St. Chamond.
And I would take all the children with me, and send the girls to
the convent ; only I don't know what the nuns would think of
Snap. And the boys should go to St. Cyr and learn to be sol-
diers instead of farmers. How handsome Jonathan would look in
his uniform !"

VOL. xxxiv. — 9

130 IN ARCADY. [Get,

" And the Gosling, too ? " I suggested softly.

" Don't laugh at the Gosling, if you please/' she said petu-
lantly. " He is a very fine boy, and should stay with me in my
chateau, and wear wonderful little coats of blue velvet all trim-
med with lace or fur, and big hats with long, drooping feathers,
and then he would be handsome too." ,

I looked at the unconscious Gosling dancing unconcernedly
in his ragged calico dress, with bare brown legs, and yellow hair
hanging over his eyes in lieu of the drooping feather, and tried
to picture him in this gorgeous array ; but, failing completely, re-
turned to the conversation.

"And where," I asked with some" hesitation, " shall I be?"

Natalie glanced at me in surprise. " You ? Oh ! you will be
at home," she said at last, " and will have forgotten all about us
by that time."

" But I will not," I persisted. " Can't you find some room for
me, too, in your ' castle in Spain ' ? "

" Chateau in France," corrected my companion gently. Then
after a pause, " No, there would be no room for you, because you
would find it all as stupid there as I am sure you must do here."

"And pray who told you I found it stupid here?" I retort-
ed. "Why, I never was better satisfied in my life. I only wish
this month could lengthen itself into a dozen."

The brown eyes looked incredulous for a minute, then a won-
dering glance came into them, and then, as some faint suspicion
of my meaning dawned on Natalie's mind, she rose quickly to
go. "You would not like it at all," she said quietly, "when the
winter came." And she left me to join the children at their
games.

" When the winter came ! " The words had an ominous
sound about them that I remembered only too well when it had
come.

But, lying among the fallen apples that afternoon, I built my-
self an air-castle of my own as brilliant and as unstable, alas ! as
Natalie's had been. They were somewhat alike, too, strange to
say, these aerial palaces ; but in one particular they differ widely.
The children were attractive undoubtedly as children, but my
castle halls were not for them. y

How quickly time passes in Arcady ! Was it possible that I
had spent five long weeks in happy idleness, and that the day
was drawing near when the duties and burdens of life must once
more be shjfted upon my unwilling shoulders ? I asked myself
this question as we started together for the woods, but weakly

i88i.] IN ARCADY. 131

forbore to answer. By our sides and in front of us trooped the
children, bearing baskets to hold the nuts which they proposed
to gather, and which, I found, they confidently expected me to
shake down for them.

" We are lucky in having you along with us," said Snap in a
friendly fashion, " for Cousin Natalie says she is getting too old
to climb trees, and you can take her place."

" And do you mean to tell me," I said, " that you are auda-
cious enough to hope that I will risk my neck for the sake of fill-
ing your baskets ? "

Snap looked disappointed. " I don't believe you are thinking
of your neck at all," she answered sharply ; " only you would
rather sit and talk to Natalie. I wonder how you can be so
lazy ! "

" I wonder, too," was my contented response ; " but this is a
lazy place, I fear. I never spent so much time doing nothing in
my life before."

" You are doing something now in walking to the woods with
us," said Snap, whose mind was eminently practical ; " but it's
nothing useful to anybody, unless you climb the trees when you
get there. You might just as well have stayed at home."

" Snap ! " began Natalie in a warning tone, when Jem cheer-
fully interrupted her. " Mr. Beven and Cousin Natalie can pick
up the nuts," he kindly arranged, " while we shake them down.
I guess they won't be mean and keep them all, like Margery did
last time."

" I didn't, either ! " cried Margery, turning scarlet.

" You did ! You know you did ! " rapidly retorted Jem.

" So did Deb, too, then," said the injured Margery, "for we
put them all in the same basket."

" Yes, and Jem stole two handfuls out. I saw him myself,"
declared Snap, the impartial.

" Children," said Natalie impressively, " if jou squabble in
this disgraceful way any longer I will turn right back, and
where will your nuts be then ? "

" On their trees, I reckon," promptly answered Jem as if he
were guessing a conundrum ; but Natalie's threat had its effect in
quieting the others, and for a few minutes they marched soberly
along, until at last the sight of their destination scattered their
decorum to the winds and sent them forward with a tumultuous
rush to gain the first spoils.

How still and sombre the woods lay until we entered, filling
them with a shrill confusion of sounds ! Here and there a squir-

132 IN ARCADY. [Oct.,

rel, startled at our approach, scrambled half way up the nearest
tree and then turned to look at us curiously, yet reproachfully
too, as if in mute remonstrance at this wholesale robbery of his
winter stores. The dead leaves rustled crisply beneath our feet,
a few crows cawed complainingly overhead. A narrow brown
streamlet ran by our side with a merry air of companionship and
good feeling in its eager efforts to keep up with our advance.
Now and then a gentle movement in the long grasses that over-
hung its banks suggested the harmless water-snake that glided
fearfully away from our unwelcome presence. The fleet, chili
winds shook the half-stripped branches of the close-standing
trees, and showered down on us fresh supplies of leaves, golden
brown and red. The spirit of Autumn seemed to be walking
through the woods, flaunting her brilliant colors and her eager
existence in our dazzled eyes, as though in defiance of the winter
desolation that was to come. The gladness that precedes a sor-
row, the triumph that goes before a fall, the full life that must
soon give place to death, filled the air and stirred our unthinking
hearts.

On a branch before us sat a bird with a long, sharp beak, and
a tuft of crimson feathers on its head, as if it had stolen a bit of
the changeful coloring around. It peered at us with bright,
watchful eyes, but did not offer to stir.

" How tame it is ! " said Natalie, and stepped softly forward ;
but the bird, as though he had caught the whispered word, took
wing and flew away, uttering a long whistle that sounded in the
distance like No ! no ! no !

The children, eager to begin, sought their favorite trees, and
shrieked with delight as the nuts fell pattering to the ground :
chestnuts, lying in their prickly nests and glowing with rich
color as they peeped from their silken beds ; surely Autumn's
favorite is the chestnut, for she has given it her warm brown
tints and has guarded it as a miser guards his jewels ; walnuts,
harsh and ugly when stripped of their favorite covering, and giv-
ing but little promise of the good that lurks beneath ; stony
shellbarks, pale and profitless, hard to break and yielding their
meagre store with grim reluctance — an inhospitable nut, the
shellbark, and its smooth, pointed surface seems to warn us
against wasting our time in fruitless labor for its scanty kernel :
a Puritan nut, colorless, severe, unyielding. We will leave it
and seek more genial spoils.

Nimble and sure-footed, the children climb the trees and
lightly swing themselves from branch to branch. Their laugh-

iSSi.J IN ARCADY. 133

ter, sweet and shrill, scares from their nests the forest birds, who
loudly chirp their wonder and discontent. And Natalie, wide-
eyed and radiant, seems like a Dryad escaped from her oak-tree
prison and happy in her subtle sympathy with the happy world
around. I live in an enchanted land, and she is the guardian
spirit of its beauties. The children's voices sound thinner and
finer as they wander further and further off ; when suddenly a
long-drawn, dismal cry rings in my ears and puts my teeming fan-
cies to flight, bringing me back in one swift leap from fairyland
and elfin company to earth and suffering humanity.

Natalie started as the sound struck her ears. " The Gos-
ling ! " she cried with a frightened look, and hurried in the direc-
tion whence it came, while I rapidly followed. Unhappy Gos-
ling ! Could you not leave us in peace on this one day, and why
must you desert the safe and open beauty of the woods to dabble
in the cold and treacherous water ? Did you not know that wa-
tery things are never to be trusted, or have you learned it now ?
Poor child ! He knelt by the side of the pretty, innocent brown
stream, down on the damp and marshy ground, and lifted up his
voice with good cause ; for, clinging to his fat and dimpled fin-
ger hung one of those little monsters, a cross between the most
deformed of crabs and the tiniest of miniature lobsters. I knew
the creatures well. Many a time when a boy had I seen them in
small fresh-water streams, and wondered if they ever grew big-
ger or lost a portion of their wicked temper. Well might the
Gosling scream, for the little pest hung on with fierce tenacity,
and between the pain and fright his scanty wits had all deserted
him. Before I could reach the spot Snap flung herself down
from a tree on the other side of the water, and her eyes blazed
with excitement and delight as she took in the situation at a
glance.

" Hold it tight ! Don't let it go for your life ! " she screamed,
rather oblivious, I thought, to the fact that it was the crab that
was holding on, and not the Gosling ; and she began to scramble
down the bank with frantic haste. But now I had reached the
frightened child, and forced the little, clinging thing from off the
poor pinched finger. It dropped into the clear water and was
lost to sight just as Snap, with a flying leap, landed at our side.

" You don't mean to say," she cried, aghast, "that you let it
get away ! "

" I think he would gladly have parted with it some time ago,"
I answered mildly, as I wrapped the little hand in my hand-
kerchief.

134 IN ARCADY. [Oct.,

The Gosling glanced at her in a deprecating fashion between
his sobs, but attempted no defence. Snap eyed us both in wither-
ing scorn. She was one who would have let the fox rend until
she dropped dead, as did the thievish Spartan boy ; but the Gos-
ling was made of different stuff, and Snap's red lip curled con-
temptuously as she brooded over the cowardice and stupidity
that had lost her such a much-coveted treasure. But Natalie,
laughing yet sympathetic, took the little boy on her lap and com-
forted him, dropping a sage word now and then on the advisa-
bility of letting the water alone another time. Gradually he fell
asleep, his heavy head resting on her shoulder, the tear-drops
standing on his chubby cheeks. Snap had wandered off to relate
her grievances to the other children. Natalie and I were alone.

A sudden stillness seemed to brood upon the woods as I sat
watching the graceful head lowered a little over the sleeping
child. Neither of us spoke for a minute, during which I heard
the murmur of the water with a strange distinctness, and
caught the scream of a far-distant hawk sailing fleetly over the
meadows to our right. Natalie held in her hand a branch laden
with scarlet berries. She sighed softly as though in the fulness
of her content. " After all," she said, " what are the beauties of
spring compared with those of autumn ? "

" Don't say that," I remonstrated. " We are always so forget-
ful of the good that is past and gone. Spring comes too, welcomed
by young and old, and we are ready to swear that the fairest
thing on earth is the first bunch of anemones we find nestling in
the grass at our feet. And now when she is laid in her grave,
and this brilliant, flaunting Autumn fills her place, we are dazzled
out of all our old allegiance and think of her past loveliness as
something pale and vapid. I often fancy the dead Spring looks
at us reproachfully with sweet, faded eyes as we exult in the
triumph of her supplanter."

Natalie smiled indulgently at a weakness she could not share.
" I did not think men were ever so faithful to their lost loves,"
she said, idly stripping the berries from the branch she held ;
" but if we so readily forget the Spring it is only because she has
given place to something better. She was the promise, and now
we have had the fulfilment. But when the Autumn dies nature
dies with her. There is nothing left to take her place."

" And when the winter comes what do you do then ? " I
asked.

" I freeze, teach the children, and wait for spring," she an-
swered.

i88i.] IN ARCADY. 135

" Under which cheering circumstances you must be glad in-
deed when it comes. And yet winter has its attractions, too ;
only a solitary farm-house is not the place to most enjoy them."

" I suppose not/' she said carelessly ; " but it is not altogether
bad, only so very cold. Last year I nearly perished, while none
of the rest seemed to mind it at all."

" You are not yet accustomed to the severity of our cli-
mate."

" I never shall be," she sighed disconsolately ; " and, what is
more, I never want to be accustomed to anything so very dis-
agreeable."

" You should try half a dozen seasons in Russia," I suggested.

" I would rather," she answered softly, " spend one more in
France."

Another silence fell upon us at these words. Natalie sat lost
in thought, her brown eyes looking out into an unseen land, a
half-smile parting her curved lips.

" Natalie," I said, and she slowly turned towards me, " if you
will marry me I will take you to France and wherever else in
this world you want to go."

She started slightly and a sudden flush of scarlet dyed her
cheek, while her eyes drooped to the ground ; but she gave no
other token of surprise and made no answer.

" If I have been too hasty," I went on, " wait a little while
before you answer me, but do not be afraid to trust your future
to my care. I will try hard to make you happy, and there is so
much sweet in life that you have never tasted."

Mechanically she arose, putting the sleeping child on the grass
beside her. The day was fast dying, and the late sunlight, stealing
through a gap in the branches, lit up her hair's dark gold. As if
obeying some hidden impulse, she turned quickly from me and
passed through a clump of trees to a clearing, where she stood for
a minute looking at the glowing sky. I followed and took her
unresisting hand. There was no need for her to speak, for her
frank young eyes met mine with a look of perfect love and confi-
dence. She was ready indeed to trust her precious future in my
hands, but the surrender was made without one single word to
ratify it. Blind with happiness, when I looked again at the
setting sun a heavy band of gray, sullen and lowering, had
swallowed up its glories, and the crimson and gold were lost
in the sombre shadows of approaching night.

How many years, O my soul! how many years since that

136 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

past October in Arcady ? The chill November winds were blow-
ing over the stripped and desolate fields when I left the farm-
house with Natalie's last kiss warm on my happy lips ; and when
the first soft snow of winter came it fell lightly on my darling's
grave — my pretty, brown-eyed Natalie, who lay calmly sleeping
in the little Catholic churchyard, with the white and feathery
snow-drifts for a pall.

One day my dust shall crumble there with hers, for the right
to lay my head in consecrated earth is the one and only legacy
left me by my dead love ; the precious mantle of faith which
dropped, as did of old the mantle of prophecy, from her pure
hands upon my unworthy shoulders ; the link, strong yet light,
which binds me to her for ever.

It is October now. The fruit hangs ripening on the tree ; the
red leaves deck the brown and wearied earth ; the setting sun
flares crimson in the west; but the golden gates of Arcady have
closed upon me, and in this world I shall enter them no more.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ST. BERNARD ON THE LOVE OF GOD. Translated by Marianne Caroline
and Coventry Patmore. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.

Catholic authors who have written on spiritual things in modern times
have for the most part given their special attention to elementary instruc-
tions, lest the faithful should be led astray. This danger has not been a
slight one, and, though less at present than formerly, it has not altogether
passed away. This is manifest by conspicuous examples, particularly
among those who are impatient of discipline and reject the divine criterion
of the authentic action of the Holy Spirit in the soul — the unerring au-
thority of the Catholic Church.

One of the chief errors of these persons consists in their pretence of
reaching the highest Christian perfection at a single bound. They are fond
of fastening their attention on the example of St. Paul, who, they fancy,
became all of a sudden from a bitter^jjersecutor of Christians the great
apostle of Christianity. They forget not only that his conversion was
miraculous, but also the schooling which he received at the moment of this
great event. They forget that when he inquired, " Lord, what wilt thou
have me to do ? " Christ did not deign to give him the answer, but sent
him to the city of Damascus to learn his will from his servant Ananias.
They seem to forget that Paul spent three years and a half in Arabia in
seclusion before he entered upon his apostolate. Not a slight or short
preparatory discipline ! They appear to forget that even then Paul did not

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 137

judge it prudent to enter upon his great mission, but went up to Jerusalem
to confer with the supreme authority of the church, represented by the
Apostle Peter, " lest he should go astray." These pregnant facts are re-
corded in Holy Scriptures, yet, strange to say, they are overlooked. Men
keep on dreaming that, with St. Paul's example against them, the
heights of spiritual perfection may be reached by one leap and by every
one indiscriminately ! Hence the wild extravagances found in the history
of sects ; the shameful teachings into which they fall about spiritual per-
fection, such as those of Pearsall Smith ; and the heinous crimes which
some are led to commit, like the Pawtucket murder. These people talk of
the glorious vision of Paul when he was rapt into heaven, while they walk
in the darkness of spiritual pride, and assume to be teachers of a "higher
life " of holiness while wallowing in the mire of sin.

The following passage is so pointedly aimed against these errors that
one would scarcely imagine that it was written seven centuries ago :

" ' Our bed is covered with flowers. The beams of our house are of
cedar, our rafters of cypress-trees/ You that hear these words of the Holy
Spirit, do you recognize nothing in yourselves of the felicity of the Bride
which is chanted in the canticle of love by that Spirit ; or do you hear his
voice, not knowing whence it coineth or whither it goeth ? Perhaps you
also desire the repose of contemplation which is herein spoken of. This
desire is praiseworthy, if you do not forget the flowers of good works with
which the Bride decks her bed. The exercise of virtues precedes this holy
repose, as flowers precede fruit. Think not to obtain this sweet rest of
contemplation until you have earned it. Those who will not labor, as the
apostle says, shall not eat. 'The keeping of thy commandments has given
me understanding,' writes the prophet, in order to teach us that the taste
of contemplation only comes from the practice of obedience. In vain will
you expect the visit of the Bridegroom, if you have not prepared for him a
couch covered with the flowers of good works. How can you expect him to
give himself to a rebel, who was himself obedient unto death ? Will he not
rather say to you, in a voice of thunder : ' I cannot abide your Sabbaths
and your solemn feast-days ' ?

" I am astonished at the impudence of some among us who, after troub-
ling us with their singularity, impatience, obstinacy, and rebellion, dare to
invite the Lord of all purity into souls thus stained. The centurion, the
perfume of whose sanctity is spread throughout Israel, besought him not
to enter into his house because of his unworthiness ; the prince of the
apostles cried : ' Depart from me, O Lord ! for I am a sinful man.' But you
say : ' Come unto me, O Lord ! for I am holy.'

"The beams of the house — which house you are, if you walk not after
the flesh but the spirit — must be of cedar, an incorruptible wood ; lest,
when you have begun to build, it should fall again to ruins. Let these
beams be patience, for ' the patience of the poor shall never perish ' ; longa-
nimity, for ' he who shall persevere to the end shall be saved ' ; but princi-
pally love, which ' never fails, and is stronger than death ' " (pp. 114, 115).

As Catholic spiritual literature abounds in books of sound elementary
instructions which guard the faithful sufficiently against such extrava-
gances, there is a growing need felt of spiritual books which present to the
mind the purpose or end of spiritual life in such a light as to move the will

138 NEW PUBLICA TIONS. [Oct.,

to strive after its attainment. With this aim there are no writings more
attractive and at the same time more safe than those which St. Philip
Neri recommended, whose authors' names begin with an S — the writings of
the Saints, Every such book we welcome with unmixed delight, and read
with special care and attention. And when done into good English, as in
the case of the little volume at the head of this notice, we feel like giving
to its translator unstinted thanks for his gift.

Who among the saints even has written on Christian perfection with
such sweetness and light — qualities much in vogue with certain authors of
our day — as St. Bernard, who so well earned the title of the Mellifluous
Doctor ? That our readers may judge for themselves we extract one of the
many spiritual gems which abound in this little volume, as in all the pro-
ductions from this saint's pen :

"The fulness of the Divinity was poured forth on earth when the Word
of God took a mortal body, that we in our bodies of death might partake of
his fulness and cry out, 'Thy name is as oil poured forth.' His pouring-
forth is as oil, because oil enlightens, nourishes, and heals. From whence
was that great, sudden light that illuminated the world but from the
preaching of the name of Jesus? It is in 'thy light that we see light.'
Oil also is food and nourishment. Herein is it like the name of Jesus !
How dry and worthless is everything without it ! A book has no interest
for me, if I find not there the word Jesus. Conversation has no charm if
Jesus forms no part of it. That name is as honey to the mouth, as melody
to the ears, a song of gladness to the heart " (p. 79).

THE EMPEROR : A Romance. By Georg Ebers, author of Uarda. From
the German by Clara Bell. Two vols. New York : William S. Gotts-
berger. 1881.

The scene of this novel is laid in Egypt, and the time is that of the
Emperor Hadrian — that is to say, about A.D. 129. The author has in-
dulged the modern reader by allowing himself some minor anachronisms.
For instance, his Romans count the days of the month and the hours of the
day in our method. The true place for the book in one's library — and we
consider this great but not undeserved praise — is alongside of Cardinal
Wiseman's Fabzola. Cardinal Wiseman, indeed, has the lofty merit of hav-
ing written a highly readable -novel without (if we recollect rightly) the
meretricious attraction of a single love-scene. Georg Ebers, on the other
hand, has married most of his men and women very handsomely.

It is a true saying that " he that would bring back the wealth of the
Indies must take the wealth of the,:Indies out with him." And it is well
illustrated in this novel. For a full appreciation of all the merits of the
book the reader should be equipped with almost as much knowledge as
the author. Lest, however, we may alarm some humble disciple of learn-
ing, let us add that any one who can read at all will find enough in the
story to repay him.

Strangely enough, the character that impressed us most was not the
Emperor Hadrian, not the Empress Sabina, not Titianus. the prefect, but
quite a subordinate personage, the palace steward — fat, self-indulgent old
Keraunus. And this because he is drawn with a terrific and remorseless

1 88 1 .] NEW PUBLICA TIONS. 1 39

adherence to unregenerate human nature. To our eyes he is as real as
Falstaff, and, in fact, is typical of all that is proud, mean, and selfish in
every one of us — the not too hateful antitype of the very essence of Ca-
tholicity : self-sacrifice. Next to the character of Keraunus the complex
one of the politician Verus seems best sustained ; and the dramatic justice
by which his criminal effort to subserve his own ends is made the inciden-
tal cause of their virtual defeat is most happy. Oddly enough, the archi-
tect Pontius appears in his best light (despite the involuntary pun) at the
fire.

The history of the Catholic Church in Egypt in the second century is
the golden thread on which the pearls of this story are strung, but this
thread is not seen clearly till page 195 of the first volume is reached.

At page 281 of the second volume the blind child Helios, when his
sister is ordered to adore the statue of Hadrian, says the Lord's Prayer
aloud in the presence of pagans. This was not permitted in the early ages
of the church. It is, however, a minor slip. At page 126 of the first vol-
ume Gabinius, a picture-dealer, says : " I know the law; it pronounces that
everything which has remained in undisputed possession in one family for
a hundred years becomes their property." It may not be out of place to
remark that, while the law relied upon by Gabinius is probably correctly
stated, its application by him was at once roguish and erroneous. The
palace steward was what in the English law would be called a bailiff ; and a
bailiff in contemplation of law has no possession. The possession is that
of the master or owner. As the equitable principles of the English com-
mon law are mainly derived from those three great store-houses of human
wftdom, the Roman Institutes, the Pandects, and the Code, the point we
make would doubtless be as good law in Alexandria in Egypt in the
second century as it is to-day in England and America in the nineteenth.

The Emperor Hadrian, as depicted by our author, aspired to be one bf
those rare gems that shine with equal brilliancy from every one of a count-
less number of facets. The prerogative of having the greatest genius al-
lied to the greatest fortune could alone fix the bounds of his ambition. He
would fain be emperor, artist, physician, and astrologer, and excel in all.
The weakness of such a desire has beset other men. Napoleon I. was not
free from it. Not content with conquering nations and establishing a code
of laws, he desired to look just as sharply after his wife's last purchase of a
necklace, and to be at once, so to speak, omniscient and omnipotent. Poor
Maximilian, of Mexican memory, was a many-sided man, but without par-
ticularly striving to be so, and knew as much about a butterfly as he might
reasonably be supposed to know about a kingdom. But then he made his
unusual intellectual aptitude tolerable by his evident weakness of character.
Julius Caesar, whom Montaigne calls "the foremost man of all the world,"
fought battles, built bridges, and wrote commentaries. He could dictate
letters to eleven different secretaries simultaneously. This last was a sort
of Paul Morphy feat.

Dr. Brownson, speaking of the wholesale way in which English litera-
ture has been given over to Protestantism since the time of Henry VIIL,
says somewhere, in substance, that there is no broader or better field in
the whole domain of literature than is at present afforded to the English-
speaking Catholic writer. If a similar statement may be truly predicated

140 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

of German belles-lettres, then Mr. Georg Ebers owes in part to Miss, or
Mrs., Clara Bell his exceptional privilege of occupying in each of two great
fields a coigne of vantage from which none but a very great writer of fiction
can dislodge him. The translation is excellent.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL for 1882. New York : The
Catholic Publication Society Co.

It is each year a pleasure to record the appearance of this annual and
almanac. It is the only one of the kind published in English, yet, in spite
of the fact that it has no competitor, it each year shows a decided improve-
ment on its preceding issues. Its one hundred and twenty pages of read-
ing-matter are a little repertory of current Catholic history and are an-
other evidence of the real catholicity of the Catholic Church. Among the
subjects treated some are American, others are Irish, German, French, Eng-
lish, Spanish, Italian, etc., and all are Catholic subjects of importance.

A specialty of this annual has always been its biographical notices, in-
cluding obituary sketches of prominent Catholics who have passed to their
reward within the year. The first of the biographical sketches in order is
that of the venerable Archbishop Blanchet, of Oregon, who last February,
after forty-three years of arduous missionary labor on the Pacific coast,
and worn out with old age, resigned his episcopal see. Then comes the
Irish poet, Aubrey de Vere ; Father Olier, the founder of the Sulpicians ;
that delightful old Dominican friar, Father Nicholas Dominic Young, whose
death three years ago called out so many reminiscences of his earlier days
in Maryland, Kentucky, and Ohio ; the learned historian of the State of
New York, the late Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan ; the late Canon Oakeley, famous
in the Tractarian movement, and still later well known to American readers
by his useful manuals on Catholic ceremonials ; Kenelm Henry Digby, the
author of The Broadstone of Honor and Mores Catholict, neither of which, by
the way, is as well known to Catholic readers as it should be; Catherine
McAuley, the founder of the Sisters of Mercy ; Calderon, the Spanish poet-
priest; Hermann von Mallinckrodt, along with Windhorst and the Reich-
enspergers, the organizer of the gallant little party of the Centre in
the German Reichstag, and whose death in 1874 was a sad blow to the Ca-
tholics of Germany; and Pauline von Mallinckrodt, a sister of the states-
man, and the founder of the Sisters of Christian Charity. These are only
some of the biographical notices, and they are all accompanied with excel-
lent portraits. The rest of the matter is very good, and most of the en-
gravings are admirable. /T^

ANCIENT HISTORY; ROMAN HISTORY; HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES;
MODERN HISTORY. Adapted from the French of Father Gazeau, S.J.
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

The department of literature known as Outlines of the world's history
has recently attracted the attention of writers whose works have crowded
out of existence many compilations which were at one time popular simply
because of their abuse of the Catholic Church.

The new writers, however, have not gained their popularity by restor-

1 88 1 .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 141

ing the church to her true place. They have moulded their works into
epochs, so that modern history appears in a succession of volumes having no
connection save in the name of the editor-in-chief.

History written in this way can be made, and is often made, injurious to
the prestige of the Catholic faith, since the times depicted are those in
which the passions of men were worked up to the highest pitch, and the
church is made to bear the sins and mistakes of her children, while her
zealous work done in the silence of quiet times is passed unnoticed.

To place the church in its proper relation to the peoples and nations of
Europe, has ever been the aim of Catholic writers. Perhaps no one suc-
ceeded so well in his object as Father Gazeau. Besides times of warfare,
he found that there were times of progress, during which the wastes of war
and passion were repaired, of far greater moment to the people who suffered
from the rivalry of princes than the trying times of strife and desolation.

In these intervals the church did her most effective work. The faithful
now listened to her voice, and the miserable victims of the struggle for
power found in her their only consolation.

These times mark the rise of the power of the people, and by giving
them their just share of notice Father Gazeau is enabled to sustain inter-
est throughout and unite the successive epochs of modern history into a
work of exceptional merit.

Gazeau writes of every age with a vividness which makes us almost
feel that he was a part of it. He deals with the actors in each scene on the
principle of individual responsibility for their acts. When these acts are
contrary to justice and morality he condemns them, be the agent Catholic
or Protestant.

Holding the agent responsible instead of reviling the church for the sins
and shortcomings of her children is not the popular method of dealing with
the Catholic Church, but it is simple justice, and it enables us to study
some of the saddest scenes in the world's drama without provoking that
storm of prejudice which turns a discussion of St. Bartholomew's massacre
into a war of words. The American editors of Gazeau have entirely re-writ-
ten the chapters on the French Revolution and the First Empire. Their
masterly treatment of the subject will repay a reading even by those who
have made this period of French history a study. In addition, they have
remodelled many chapters, added others, notably those on Ireland, and
carried the narrative down to the present time, thus making it the most
serviceable work of its kind within the reach of Catholic schools and col-
leges.

LETTERS, SPEECHES, AND TRACTS ON IRISH AFFAIRS. By Edmund Burke.
Collected and arranged by Matthew Arnold. With a preface. Lon-
don : Macmillan & Co. 1881.

" Burke," says Mr. Arnold in his preface, which, by the way, is a model
of what prefaces ought to be — " Burke greatly needs to be re-edited ; indeed,
he has never yet been properly edited at all." In this volume Mr. Arnold
has brought together Burke's writings and speeches on Irish affairs, the
earliest of them, Tracts on the Popery Laws, published while the monstrous
penal code was still in force — a code, says Mr. Arnold, " not half known to

I42 NE W PUBLICA TIONS. [Oct.,

Englishmen." It is high time they knew it thoroughly and set to work to
make generous amends for the religious, political, and economical injustice
which their horrible system inflicted upon a Christian nation. The rest of
the world knows it at last and is beginning to discuss it warmly.

In a letter to Thomas Burgh written from England in 1780 Burke de-
fends himself to his friend from some false accusations. A short extract
from the letter will show that the Irish party in the British Parliament
have all along had the same difficulties: "They caused it to be indus-
triously circulated through the nation that the distresses of Ireland were
of a nature hard to be traced to the true source ; that they had been mon-
strously magnified ; and that, in particular, the official reports from Ireland
had given the lie (that was their phrase) to Lord Rockingham's representa-
tions. And attributing the origin of the Irish proceedings wholly to us,
they asserted that everything done in Parliament upon the subject was
with a view of stirring up rebellion." One hundred years later the small
knot of determined men who represent Irish interests in Parliament have
seen themselves forced to the policy of obstruction in order to compel a
decent amount of attention to the wants of their constituency.

Burke, says Mr. Arnold, " is the greatest of our political thinkers and
writers. But his political thinking and writing has more value on some
subjects than on others." The last sentence must be taken under some re-
serve. At all events Mr. Arnold, in editing this volume, has done a merito-
rious action which will be appreciated by all who take interest either in
Burke or in Ireland.

PATRON SAINTS. Second Series. By Eliza Allen Starr. Baltimore :
John B. Piet. 1881.

The author of this handsome volume, which is embellished by twelve
etchings by her own hand, has not aimed at anything original or critical in
her study of the lives of the earlier champions of Christendom. She has
brought together the beautiful mediaeval legends which have furnished the
great masters of art with material for some of their grandest work. The
reader will here find in all their bearing many of the subjects which Mrs.
Jameson and Mrs. Clements — Protestants both — have already made familiar
to non-Catholic readers, with the difference, however, that Miss Starr's
treatment is at all times both reverent and Catholic.

DECENNIAL SOUVENIR OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF ST. FRANCIS XAVI-
ER'S CHURCH — Unity, Liberty, Charity, 1871-1881. New York : Ste-
phen Mearns. 1881.

This modest but neat little pamphlet is a collection of interesting es-
says, and is a tangible evidence of literar}'- taste in young men, " some of
whom are of an age and experience at which nothing of their kind of a su-
perior character can be expected ; and some, too, are by gentlemen actively
engaged in various branches of business in which a proclivity for literary
pursuits is thought a detriment rather than an advantage ; and all the es-
says are by young men none of whom can boast of those great educa-
tional advantages which make merit in this kind of exercise a thing of

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

course." Many are the societies of Catholic young men in our large cities,
yet-- and we say it with a blush — few are the signs of literary enthusiasm.
How many bright young boys there are who, from taste or necessity, leave
school in early years, and bury their mental promise in the distracting sphere
of mercantile pursuits ! We return our most heartfelt thanks to Father
Thiry — ever zealous for and beloved by the young men of New York — for
this last token of his noble devotion ; and while we congratulate the young
men of the Literary Society of St. Francis Xavier's Church on the success
manifested in their Decennial Souvenir, we confidently hope for the con-
tinuance of their first fervor and the attainment of even greater and larger
success.

CROWNED WITH STARS. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Published to aid in
placing on the dome of the new University of Notre Dame, Indiana, a
colossal statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, crowned with twelve
stars. Indiana : University of Notre Dame.

Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly made a position by the publication of Out of
Sweet Solitude which her later writings have not improved. In that volume
she showed herself to be, not only a poet of deep and vivid imagination, but
a woman of a most passionately religious heart. Some of her war-poems
had become household legends in many homes long before Out of Sweet
Solitude appeared, and her fervent religious spirit as shown in other poems
had raised her to the level of the heavenly chorister of many Catholic cir-
cles. Crowned with Stars is one long hymn of praise to the Blessed
Virgin — a pure, sweet strain, whose deepest and strongest notes are the
echoes of the divine songs of the church.

THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. By T. Lander Brunton, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.
With illustrations. London : Macmillan & Co. 1881.

That day has gone by when, for a little while, scientific opponents of
revelation might, to some who were in doubt, have the appearance of being
on the strong side. Mr. St. George Mivarthas removed for English-speak-
ing readers any apprehensions of what might befall should the doctrine of
evolution prove true. Mr. Mivart has no fear of evolution, and, in fact, he
has, as he declares, St. Thomas Aquinas on his side, which, no doubt, is
startling knowledge for those who fancy that whatever is a discovery to
them must be a discovery to the world. A late writer has shown that a
contemporary of St. Thomas, the famous Albertus Magnus, was, in spite of
the foolish popular middle-age legends that cluster about him, a close and
most accurate observer of nature ; that among other things his contributions
to the study of botany were of immense value and have stood the test of
later observers.

Dr. Brunton's work seems to contain little, if anything, that is original,
yet he enables one at a glance to appreciate the present state of the contro-
versy between the friends and opponents of Christianity among the evolu-
tionists.

But it is a pity that an honest and earnest writer, such as Dr. Brunton
seems to be, should have permitted himself so stupid an assertion as that:
" We are accustomed to despise the inquisitors who tortured Galileo in
order to make him assert that he had been mistaken in believing that the

144 NEW PUB Lie A TIONS. [Oct., 1 88 1 .

earth went round the sun, instead of the sun round the earth." There are
people still who believe in Pope Joan, but it is discouraging to come across
a man in these days who makes a specialty of the natural sciences and
their history, and yet believes the old yarn about the torture of Galileo.
We might well vary Galileo's legendary expression into e pur si mentisce —
" they lie for all that." For in 1867 M. de 1'Epinois published from the cele-
brated Vatican MS. the entire process of Galileo's trial and nominal im-
prisonment— a publication which put an end once and for all, one should
have supposed, to the old story. A year later (December, 1868, and January,
1869) the lamented Col. James Meline made in the pages of THE CATHO-
LIC WORLD a thorough examination of the controversy with regard to
Galileo's treatment at Rome, and showed the fallacy, not of the charges of
cruelty only, but of the exorbitant claims as well that had been made by
prejudiced writers in favor of Galileo's contributions to science.

A TiRE-D'AiLE. Rene des Chenais. Paris • Bray et Retaux. 1881.

MEMORIALS OF STONYHURST COLLEGE. London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

SUNDAY EVENINGS AT LORETTO. By M. G«R. Dublin : M. & S. Eaton. 1881.

TALKS ABOUT IRELAND. By James Redpath. New York : P. J. Kenedy. 1881.

THE SKELETON IN THE HOUSE. By Friedrich Spielhagen. New York : George W. Harlan.

1881.
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. By Daniel Dorchester, D.D. New York : Phillips &

Hunt. 1881.

SUGGESTIONS TO YOUNG LAWYERS. An address delivered at the Commencement of Columbia
College Law School, May 18, 1881. By Cortlandt Parker. New York : Trow's Printing
and Bookbinding Company. 1881.

LETTERS AND WRITINGS OF MARIE LATASTE, lay sister of the Congregation of the Sacred
Heart. With critical and expository notes by Fathers of the Society of Jesus. Translated
from the French by Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. Vol. i. London : Burns & Dates.
1881.

PROVE ALL THINGS : HOLD FAST THAT WHICH is GOOD. A letter to the parishioners of Great
Yarmouth on his reception into the Catholic Church. By J. G. Sutcliffe, M.A., late curate of
St. Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, and late scholar of Clare Coll. Camb. London : Burns &
Gates. i88L.

FIRST COMMUNICANT'S MANUAL. A Catechism for children preparing to receive the Holy Com-
munion for the first time, and for the use of those charged with the duty of instructing them.
By Father F. X. Schouppe, of the Society of Jesvis. Translated from the French by M. A.
Crosier. London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

RITUALE ROMANUM. Pauli V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum et a Benedicto XIV. auctum et
castigatum. Cui novissima accedit Benedictionum et Instructionum appendix. Editio
secunda accuratissima a Sacr. Rituum Congregatione approbata. Ratisbonse, Neo-Eboraci
et Cincinnati! : sumptibus, chartis, et typis Fr. Pustet. 1881.

NOTE.— The sketch of the late Lady Blanche Murphy written by
Cardinal Manning, for publication in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and
which will be found at p. 40 of this number, was sent to the editor
by the Earl of Gainsborough, accompanied by a letter dated Au-
gust 2. It was with surprise, therefore, as well as deep regret that
the news was received of the Earl's sudden death on August 13.
His death, as appears from the latest advices, proceeded from an
affection that was no doubt a result of the sad tidings of his
daughter's death shortly before.

THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIV. NOVEMBER, 1881. No. 200.

THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM.

RADICALISM, as it is apprehended by the lower classes, is in
England rather an antagonism than a principle. It has less of
political desire or aspiration than of the spirit of contest against
the upper classes. It would be absurd to suppose that the or-
dinary (Radical) artisan, the profanum vulgus of any stratum or
pursuit, argued politics, or considered them, on scientific princi-
ples, so much as with piqued feelings and resentment. The main
idea is to pull down, not to build up. It has been well said that
" a true Tory must be also a pure Liberal, because he seeks to
elevate the whole tone of the lower classes " ; and though, unfor-
tunately, this is but theoretically true, it is a statement which no
good man would call in question. But in regard to the Radical
section, it must be sadly confessed that it does not seek to " ele-
vate" even itself so much as to do away with institutions. And
it does this from jealousy and irritation much more than from
political principle. There may be a dominance of principle
in a small minority, but there is a dominance of feeling in the
great majority. English radicalism, speaking loosely, is ha-
tred of class privilege ; it is a sentiment, which is fanned by dis-
content.

Let it be granted that this is the fault of the higher orders
quite as much as it is the mistake of the lower orders. If the
higher orders had always realized that their two great political
duties were, first, to set an example of a high standard, and, sec-

146 THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. [Nov.,

ondly, to assist " the people " in attaining to it, the people would
have less difficulty in believing that the higher orders really have
the popular interests at heart. But when the people are im-
pressed with the idea that the upper classes chiefly live for their
own aggrandizement, and do not exhibit more religion, more
charity, more nobility than are found in the classes which are
below them, they naturally turn Radical and say, " Why should we
be mere slaves to the classes who use us only for themselves ? "
This is, of course, a most exaggerated estimate, unjust in appre-
hension and in inference ; but it is nevertheless the feeling — not
the principle — of many millions who in England cherish radical
ideas. It is a feeling which comes about from the apparent pride
of rich persons, their apparent profound selfishness and disre-
gard, as well as from those social barriers which are cast up by
conventionalism, dividing English classes by iron walls. It is
less the fault of individuals in high position than of the canons of
social usage, long established. The higher classes seem, and for
the most part really are, socially separate from the classes which
are below them by as wide a gulf as the sternest laws of social
caste can render equally offensive and impassable. A want of
Catholic sympathies, of courteous manners and graceful modesty,
go further in developing radical feelings than any amount of
acts of parliament, good or bad. And since there cannot be a
question that in England the " democratic principle " (wrongly
named, for it is a feeling, not a principle) is assuming most threat-
ening characteristics, it is wise to consider whether the people
cannot be won over by an improvement in the tone of their " su-
periors." That the masses are getting more and more radical in
a subversive and revolutionary sense, more and more irritated
against " society " and whatever is included in its canons, is so
patent a fact that we cannot walk through the London streets
without seeing and hearing sufficient proofs of it. Now, there is
still plenty of time to stem the current of this feeling, which as
yet has not strengthened into a flood. It must be done, not by
new acts of parliament, by extension of privilege or of franchise,
or by stooping to patronize vulgar " Bradlaughism," but by a
total revolution in the ideas of the upper classes, which are at
present absurdly narrow and contemptible. It is much better to
recognize this fact at once. It is the selfishness and the weak
conventionalism of the upper classes which render them incom-
petent to impress the lower. As a clever workman observed
recently to the present writer (so far as the substance of his re-
marks can be remembered) : " I apprehend that religion with my

1 88 1.] THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. 147

superiors means respectability ; and that free thought, though
just as rife with my superiors as it is with the admirers of Mr.
Bradlaugh, is only veiled or mildly expressed by my superiors,
because they have but very few incentives to irritation. As with
religion, so with the natural virtues : my superiors keep them
chiefly for themselves, and whenever they are so kind as to think
of me they show me cool patronage or condescension, as though
they did me a great honor for their own diversion. In the House
of Lords I am only remembered as a serf, as being auxiliary to
the greater ease of their lordships ; and in the House of Com-
mons a strong Conservative party keeps me always out of my
right of being heard. In ' society ' I am always treated as a bar-
barian, suffered occasionally to approach the back door of an em-
ployer, and subjected to the impertinence of powdered flunkies
who reflect the exclusive grandeur of their masters. In church I
am shoved away into a back seat — allowed to contemplate the fine
dresses in the front seats ; and if the parson comes to visit me he
does it as a policeman, or as an almsgiver, or as a lecturer, or as a
' gentleman.' In the streets no one is polite to me in my fustian
jacket ; and in my home I am made the victim of some Scripture-
reader, who appears to think me equally ignorant and immoral.
If I get ' hard up ' I can go to the parish for relief — to be in-
formed, perhaps, that I am ' one of the undeserving poor/ a phrase
which is kept always for the unfortunate ; though as to the ' un-
deserving rich? I never hear anything of them, nor, of course, are
there any such people in the world. And, finally, when I come
to die a parson offers me ' consolation,' though no rich people
think of sending me comforts, nor do they recognize me any
more than if I were a dog."

Now, all this is but the language of irritation. It has nothing
to do with politics nor with Radicalism even. Yet be it remem-
bered that among the " roughs and the rowdies " — very differ-
ent people indeed to the thoughtful workman — the same spirit
which brews the sentiment of discontent brews the violent out-
ward expression of radicalism. There is in every population a
residuum of coarse people who, being equally vulgar, uneducated,
and obstinate, imagine that they are politicians because they hate
Tory principles, or enlightened thinkers because they hate re-
ligion. The London institution of Sunday newspapers — most
of them socialistic and mendacious — fan the flame of such tur-
bulent discontent. And because the rough classes herd ex-
clusively with one another, and never get a chance of being
taught better, they form a nucleus of quasi-political injurious-

148 THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. [Nov.,

ness which ferments from time to time in street-rows. Young
people are quite as blatant as their elders. Mere boys of seven-
teen are profoundly read in the Sunday newspapers, and consider
themselves fully competent to instruct everybody, and to re-
model the constitution to perfection. Now, all this comes from
wrong- association, as well as from vanity and inanity. It is a
sentiment which takes its sympathies from what is vulgar. It is
the offspring of three misfortunes in particular : the not recog-
nizing any religious authority ; the being ignorant of the philoso-
phy of history, ecclesiastical, political, and social ; and the herd-
ing always with an inferior class of people, from the impos-
sibility of associating with a higher. Radicalism, in England, is
not Liberalism ; it is not the principle of the extension of popular
liberties : it is a sentiment of antagonism to what is graceful in
the natural order, and to what is submissive and supernatural in
the religious order.

Radicalism was always the same in all countries, modified
only by the purely national accidents of religious and political
tradition. And it is due to all Radicals to say that their extrava-
gances have been inflamed by the faults of their superiors. It
is useful, as a warning in regard to the English future, to re-
member that all radicalism has been pleaded on the ground of
justice, or condoned by some sort of state tyranny. Let us take
the French radicalism in example. In France the worst ex-
cesses of the Revolution had their origin in the excesses of the
aristocracy, and the worst forms of blasphemy and Reason-wor-
ship were but the travesty of the hypocrisy of the court. The
same assertion would hold good as to " socialism." French so-
cialism was bred in high places. More' than this — for let us be
just to socialism even — certain benefits actually accrued from
its extravagances. It compelled the governing classes to take
into consideration the gravest questions which affect the work-
ing poor. It enlarged the compass of the sympathies of states-
men and the knowledge of their legislative duties, and it oblig-
ed them to ask the question: " Why is there hatred?" Even
socialism is not without its good fruits, any more than it is
without its apologies. And those apologies were imposing, if
not sufficient. Thus, if M. Proudhon could write the insane sen-
tence, " Property is theft " (which was a nihilism far more ram-
pant than that of Russakoff), let it be remembered that M. Tou-
lon, when the French people were starving, but when there was
no want of bread in the French court, had said impudently — and
was afterwards hanged for having said it — " Let the people eat

1 88 1.] THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. 149

grass." It was the knowledge of such cruelty in high places
which justified socialistic excesses, just as the knowledge of the
selfishness of the aristocracy justified the rage of the Sansculottes.
In the same way, when the delegates of the Third Estate (the first
formal institution of French radicalism) sat covered in the pre-
sence of Louis XVI., "with their slouched hats clapt on in hot
defiance," they were justified by the fact that Louis XIV. had
said — or at least was reported to have said — " L'etat c'est moi,"
and had thus supplanted all liberties by despotism. Not the
theory but the abuse of the French monarchy, not the theory
but the abuse of French nobility, were responsible for the hor-
rors of revolution ; the court — which was the king's — being
so stupidly egoistic that it trod the people as grass and made
them eat it. In speaking of the sentiment of all radicalism let it
be insisted that to the abuse of institutions, but not to the insti-
tutions themselves, is due the whole growth of revolution. In
other words, radicalism is an aggrieved sentiment arising out of
the faults of those in power. Radicalism is reaction from passive
suffering, and revolution is retribution for long insult. If the
French kings had not ignored all paternity, and the French no-
bility had not ignored all Catholic sentiment, there would never
have been French radicalism, French socialism, French loath-
ing of the odious hypocrisy of the king's court. The revolution
was begotten at Versailles, and was fostered and ripened in
French chateaux. The three kinds of revolution were all high-
born. It was the mixture of exclusiveness and injustice which
brought about the social revolution ; it was the mixture of des-
potism and tyranny which brought about the political revolu-
tion; and it was the mixture of immorality and hypocrisy which
brought about the religious revolution. Every Englishman who
would be a student of English radicalism should note well these
primary causes of the Reign of Terror, and should seek to cut
away from English radicalism every pretext which can suggest
revolution.

That there is a certain amount of socialism in England — that
is, of the sentiment of socialism — it would be simply insincere to
deny ; but, as was said at the beginning, every political extra-
vagance among the lower orders is rather an antagonism than a
principle. The socialism of the masses has nothing to do with
" social science," but is a sort of wild proletarianism plus scepti-
cism. It is no more the socialism of such a theorist as Lamen-
nais, or Fourier, or the author of the Histoire Philosophique,
or even of the apologetic Mr. J. S. Mill — who, however, pro-

150 THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. [Nov.,

nounced all such science to be impracticable — than it is the social-
ism of that unique madman, Robespierre, who wished the state
to decree, " There is a God." It has as little in common with the
socialism of Saint-Simon — who made some sort of religion his first
requisite — as it has with the ideal Republic of Plato, or the Uto-
pia of godd Sir Thomas More, or the City of the Sun of Campa-
nella. English socialism is irreligion. It is negation without
any affirmation. It could not explain itself if it would. Just as
M. Schareffe, one of the ablest expositors of German socialism,
says, " I have taken years to get to the bottom of it, and can-
not," so we might say of English socialism, " It has neither top
nor bottom, nor any vertebras to connect the two if it had them."
Its sole profession of faith is nego. The truth is that English so-
cialism has no reason of being. French socialism, which was be-
gotten in '89 and born into hideous life in '92, was the progeny
of anti-regal ideas, because the kingship represented suppressed
liberties. The English monarchy does nothing of the kind. It
is perfectly true that French socialism itself meant suppressed
liberties ; that its substitution of association for competition, of
partnerships for bravely earned wages, of social compact for in-
dividual energy, was nothing short of the killing of individuality,
and therefore the killing of true liberty. But French socialism,
strangely enough, has died out. Democracy — as the French now
understand it — may be said to have extinguished French social-
ism. It is true that democracy was the parent of socialism ; but
this is no dishonor to the parent. Democratic ideas, in a justly
liberal sense, must necessarily breed some offshoots which are
deformed, because so many persons tian appreciate mere license
who cannot appreciate true liberty. Just as monarchy has al-
ways led to some tyranny when it has been divorced from con-
stitutional safeguards, so democracy has always led to some tra-
vesty when it has been divorced from religion and sound sense.
Still, it would be impossible to deny that, under the present re-
public, French socialism has crept away into holes and corners.
Unhappily, the French nation, though it has cast out rabid social-
ism, has most certainly not robed itself in religion. The expla-
nation is that the " religion " of the typical Saint-Simon was a po-
litical, not a Christian, medicament — intended for the healing of
the diseases of society, but not for the purification of its morals.
French republicans are not a whit more religious because they
are less socialistic ; they only regard their republic as a safety-
valve for excesses which are purely political, not religious. As
a French writer has put it (perhaps a little too widely) : " Social-

1 88 1.] THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. 151

ism implied, as a necessity, a struggle against class-oppression.
We have no classes left in republican France, and therefore we
have no longer oppression." Now, in England there is certainly
no class-oppression ; there is only too much class-demarcation ;
so that the socialism which exists is rather a spirit of discontent
than a theory of social rectification. «•

Taking together the three points we have referred to as con-
stituting the basis of all radicalism (and both the French and
English socialisms are radicalism) — first, the loosening of the re-
ligious principle of obedient loyalty ; next, the hatred of aristo-
cracy, provoked by pride ; and, thirdly, the feebleness of example
and of aspiration in both the higher and the upper middle class-
es— let it be asked, How do these causes combine in England to
stimulate the sentiment of revolution ?

First, the religious principle of loyalty (the Catholic senti-
ment of obedience) may be said to be extinct in the masses. It
is as extinct as is " the belief in divine right." The progressive
steps in this great change have been thus marked : the crown
dispossessed the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century ; the
peers and the land-owners dispossessed the crown in the seven-
teenth century; and since the Reform of 1832 to dispossess
" church and peers " has been a favorite growing idea with ex-
treme Liberals. The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant
Church, coupled with the total loss of dogmatic influence in the
(soon to be disestablished) English Protestant Church, have shak-
en the foundations of the old Anglican tradition which was for-
mulated in the toast, " Church and state." No " divinity doth
[now] hedge " either the king or the church ; still less does it
hedge party government. No divinity hedges anybody in Great
Britain, unless it be the divinity of money. So that the senti-
ment of Catholic loyalty being obscured — both the Christian and
the natural sentiment — the flood-gates are opened, out of which
pours conservative principle, or into which pours revolutionary
sentiment.

Next, just as the Stuarts were expelled by a parliamentary
vote, so ever since that time the imperial mantle of government
has really rested on the shoulders of the people. We have re-
cently seen how, in the case of the Irish Land Bill, public opinion
is the ultimate appeal. (And it is to be regretted, by the way,
that the Lords have never been Ireland's friends, nor have the royal
family shown Ireland much sympathy.) The truth is that the
Lords seem to pose as representatives, not of the ever-changing
present, but of the past. Hence the sort of idea which the Radi-

152 THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. [Nov.,

cals have of the House of Lords is that it is a huge block to all pro-
gressive democracy ; that through its ponderous portals every " bill
for the people " has to be dragged, in a coach and six, from the
popular chamber ; that when the Lords discuss a measure they
have to dig up their intelligences out of graves of many years of
oblivion ; that because they are hereditary they must necessarily
be dull — very unlike the active candidates for popular favor ; and
that instead of being, as they should be, an assembly of the great-
est men, they are an assembly of the richest and noblest. The
Lords have heightened this impression by very foolishly declin-
ing to admit the excellent institution of life peers. That the Lords
have been the useful allies of the Liberals — such great Whig fami-
lies as the Cavendishes and the Russells having helped to lay the
lines of popular freedom — is a fact which is obscured by the re-
membrance of the other fact, that a peer need not be great, but
only noble. And so, through the Lords up to the throne, the
spirit of disesteem rises slowly. So long as the crown does not
meddle in politics it may be endured as a figure-head of society ;
but if the crown were to negative a popular vote there would be
a shout of "What is the use of the crown?" And some Lib-
erals would raise the shout, to please the Radicals ! Without
expressing any opinion as to the wisdom of Mr. Gladstone in
utilizing Radical sections for the Liberal interests, there cannot
be a question that he has done much to make the Radicals ima-
gine that they are the same party as the Liberals. Mr. Glad-
stone, Lord Harrington, Mr. Bright, Mr. Forster, are even
claimed as partisans of extreme views. Let there be only
some grave national suffering — a famine, or great depression
in trade, or even some odious mistake in domestic policy — the
Radicals would raise a cry for the partitioning of property, the
disestablishment of other things besides the church. Liberalism
may mean liberty, not equality ; but radicalism would mean
equality plus plunder.

When we come to the third point — the feebleness of example,
and the feebleness of even professed aspiration, which is observ-
able in the higher and upper middle classes (and which is shown
especially by that want of class-sympathy to which we have
alluded at the beginning) — we find plenty of reason for believing
that the Radical sentiment may develop into Radical revolution.
It is a difficult subject to speak of, this general tone of " good
society" in regard to its accepted summum bonum. Let us
get at the root of the matter. M. de Haulleville has very learn-
edly shown, in his exposure of the fallacies of M. de Laveleye,

1 88 1.] THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. 153

that the ages of faith were the ages of enlightenment in the
highest and purest senses of the word. " Servire Deo regnare
est " was the sentiment of the best Catholic kings, and the same
sentiment was caught by their subjects, and was, indeed, their
conviction and postulate. But in our own time the Catholic
sentiment, even in most Catholic countries, is so divorced from
every action of worldly life that enlightenment has come to
mean the science of gain, and egoism has pushed out every grace.
We will not stay to compare relative prosperities, or industries,
or progress, or enlightenment, because it is utterly futile to at-
tempt to gauge results when their principles have but little in com-
mon. The very words which convey one idea now conveyed a
totally different idea in the middle ages. The aspirations of life
have wholly changed. " It is false," says M. de Haulleville,
" that Protestant countries are more active, more industrious,
more thrifty than Catholic countries." True; but it must all de-
pend in what senses we take the words, or what measure of as-
piration we impute to them. To draw any comparison between
the condition of Spain and Portugal before the revolution of the
sixteenth century and their condition in this money-grubbing
nineteenth century, would be impracticable because the objects
of life were as different as is the modern method of locomotion
from the old. We live now chiefly to " get on "; and the getting-
on seems to be narrowed solely by the personal apprehension of
some pecuniary or sensuous gratification. Liberty means the
right to believe nothing (instead of the old security of the Catho-
lic faith) ; the privilege of envying those who are above us, and
snubbing or ill-treating those who are below us ; and the cher-
ishing every political novelty which seems to promise greater
play for our own importance. Servire mundo regnare est! It
may be true that " among Catholic nations civil liberty is an-
cient, absolutism is modern "; but since the ideas both of liberty
and of all obedience are quite changed from what they were in
the middle ages, we cannot stop to work out so huge a thesis.
It is better to accept things for what they are, and to try to
raise the standard of aspirations. And the only way to do this
is to try to spread the Catholic faith — the sole remedy for the
diseases of modern thought.

It is useless to obscure the fact that no philosophy but
Catholicism can be strong enough to resist revolution. Radi-
calism (of the baser sort ; for we do not speak of political
theories, which may be held with perfect impunity by eclectic
minds) has no master which can keep it down in the purely

154 THE SENTIMENT OF ENGLISH RADICALISM. [Nov.,

natural range, and certainly no master in the political range.
It is only by its own excesses that it will fall ; but it is not by
any inherent good that it can rise. English Bradlaughism is a
self-devouring plague, which will consume its own votaries by the
unutterable degradation into which it will plunge mind and soul.
And English Bradlaughism is just exactly that vulgar sentiment
which has no principle, no object, save vulgarity. And how are
you to oppose such an evil ? Solely by that highest philosophy,
that most refining of all sciences, which is summed up in the one
word Catholicism. If you could infuse into the higher classes
and the educated middle classes the aspirations, the intuitions
of Catholicism, there might be still a hope that, as M. de Haulle-
ville ventures to prophesy, " le prochain grand siecle sera un
siecle Catholique." Apart from so remote a probability, there is
the duty of trying our best now. And that best seems to be the
cultivation of truer sympathies between the best of such class and
the rougher classes. This may seem to be Utopian ; but it is not :
it is solely a question for earnestness. The usual reply to such
suggestions is : " You cannot combine classes. If you could you
would do no sort of good. ' You cannot make a silk purse out
of a sow's ear,' and you cannot refine roughs and rowdies."
It most certainly cannot be done by callous selfishness, but it can
be done by active Catholic sympathies ; and it is done, in a few
instances, in English large towns, and done with the most perfect
success. Among the poor classes — very distinct from the rough
classes — there is as much refinement as can be found in the best so-
ciety. The English poor are often typically refined, and as modest
and tractable as they are industrious. And since in the poorest
classes you may find pure exemplars — as well in the large towns as
in the country — what can hinder that all the sections of the com-
munity should be rendered as typical as these are ? It is evidently
the negligence of the higher classes which has led to the vast in-
crease of the residuum. It is their weak example which has been
made the apology for stubbornness, for scepticism, for coarseness,
for even grossness. The refined poor — of whom there are millions
— set an example in almost everything to the selfish rich. They
have nc sympathy with rabid politics ! They live to do their
duty, and to do it peaceably. It is only where religion, and tra-
dition, and refinement have totally died out from exceptional
grooves that you find the modern revolutionary radicalism,
which is as wicked as it is vulgar and blackguardly, and which is
at this time best typified in England by Bradlaughism.

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 155

A JESUIT IN DISGUISE.*

THE English Jesuits have undertaken an interesting and im-
portant task in illustrating, by means of materials lately made ac-
cessible in the Public Record Office and MSS. preserved in the
archives of their society, the trials of Catholics under Elizabeth
and James I., and the character of the daring priests who volun-
teered for the English mission in those terrible days. Father
Gerard was one of the most distinguished of these heroic adven-
turers, an associate of the martyrs, Henry Garnet, superior of
the English mission, and Robert Southwell, the poet ; and al-
though it was not his privilege to shed his blood for the faith, as
they did, he was hunted like a wild beast, he lay long in prison,
and he bore the torture. In common with Garnet he was falsely
accused of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Finding it impos-
sible, after that affair, to continue his labors in England, he made
his escape to the Continent, and he died peacefully at Rome more
than thirty years later, having passed his old age in training as-
pirants for the same mission of whose toils and dangers he had
so ample an experience. He wrote in Latin, for the information
of his superiors, a Narrative of his missionary adventures, and
this document, a manuscript copy of which is preserved at
Stony hurst College, is the foundation of Father Morris' book.
The title-page describes the present volume as a new edition
" rewritten and enlarged." It is practically a new book. The
Narrative was used in the preparation of a memoir of Father Ge-
rard printed together with his history of the Gunpowder Plot,
the autograph manuscript of which is at Stonyhurst (see The
Condition of Catholics under James I. , London, 1871); but in pre-
paring the memoir as a separate publication Father Morris has
greatly expanded and enriched it, amplified the extracts from the
Narrative, and made copious and important selections from the
State Papers.

Father Gerard's Narrative derives a special interest from the
fact that it was not intended for the public eye. The writer of
an autobiography, even if he be a saintly missionary, is always

* The Life of Father John Gerard, of the Society of Jesus. By John Morris, of the same
Society. Third edition, rewritten and enlarged. 8vo, pp. xiv.~524. London : Burns & Gates ;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Company. 1881.

156 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

hampered by self-consciousness ; and whether this inconvenience
result in over-modesty or over-complacency, the result is equally
an injury to the full and exact truth. Father Gerard's purpose was
not so much to record his personal experiences as to make a confi-
dential report to the general of the society respecting the condition
of the English mission, the manner of life which he and his breth-
ren were forced to follow, the disguises they assumed, the arts by
which they escaped the pursuivants, the perils they had to guard
against, the circumstances of the faithful among whom they la-
bored, and the means by which they were supported in their
work. This last particular in the story was not the least impor-
tant, for the life of " a Jesuit in disguise " was a pretty expensive
one : he dressed as a man of the world ; he mingled unsuspected
in fashionable society ; he had various hiding-places, the prepara-
tion of which must have cost a good deal of money ; he had to
pay dear for books, vestments, and sacred vessels, which were
smuggled into the country at great risk and expense, and, being
often seized, had to be often renewed ; sometimes he was black-
mailed by officers of the law, and in prison he had to pay con-
siderable sums to his jailers. It is generally supposed by Pro-
testants that there is a mysterious " fund " of some sort In Rome
from which the cost of secret missionary enterprises has always
been defrayed. This, of course, is not so. The Narrative of Fa-
ther Gerard shows that the Catholics of England, in the time of
persecution, gave freely of their goods for the support of the
faith, quite in the zealous spirit of the early Christians who laid
their fortunes at the feet of the apostles. The missionaries, on
entering the kingdom, had little more than enough to take them
to their field of labor : for the future they trusted entirely to the
beneficence of the faithful and the providence of God. The na-
ture of the contributions offered by laymen is set down by Fa-
ther Gerard, not with a mercenary feeling, but because it was of
great consequence that the superior officers of the society should
know what the missionaries could depend upon and how much it
would be allowable for them to undertake. These details have a
great significance as illustrations of the times, but they would
probably not have been given in a regular autobiography. Nei-
ther should we have found, except in a communication of the
most private character, certain not to fall into hostile hands, par-
ticulars such as are given here respecting persons who "harbored
priests," houses in which the proscribed confessors of Christ
sought shelter, and the various agencies by which they were ena-
bled to prosecute their perilous undertaking. The Life of Father

iSSi.J A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 157

Gerard has, therefore, a twofold interest — first, as the portrai-
ture of a sweet and heroic character ; and next, as the revela-
tion of the secret ways of that popular bogy, " a Jesuit in dis-
guise."

John Gerard was born at Bryn, in Lancashire, October 4,
1564. His father and mother both belonged to Catholic families
of substance and consideration, and, like most others of their
rank, they suffered more or less for' their faith. Sir Thomas
Gerard, the father, was reported to Sir Francis Walsingham as
" lurking in his house/' refusing to come to the Protestant
church, and " nourishing certain Massing priests." He was
twice imprisoned ; he was fined ; and one of his estates was con-
fiscated and granted to a Protestant kinsman, whose son, after-
wards raised to the peerage, appears in the course of this Nar-
rative as Queen Elizabeth's knight-marshal, personally conduct-
ing the search of a house in which Father Gerard and another
priest were supposed to be hidden. But to be hunted by a rela-
tive was not the worst of the good, father's trials. It is a sad illus-
tration of the dangers of the time that Sir Thomas Gerard him-
self, after bearing brave testimony to the faith, fell into apostasy,
and " livfcd a lewd and licentious life," at the very time that his
son was employed on the English mission. We find no mention
of Sir Thomas in Father Gerard's Narrative, and there was per-
haps no opportunity for intercourse between them after the son
became a priest. It is intimated, however, that Sir Thomas re-
pented and returned to the church about a year before his death.
The son was carefully educated in the faith. There is some obscu-
rity in the account of his early years, but we know that while still
a lad he spent a time in the English College at Douay and Rheims,
and in the latter institution he first found himself attracted to
the Society of Jesus. He studied also at the Clermont College
in Paris. He was about a year at Exeter College, Oxford, where
he had for tutor one whom he describes as " a good and learned
man, and a Catholic in mind and heart " — that is to say, one of that
numerous class of weak believers, then called "schismatics," who
conformed outwardly to the established heresy without accept-
ing the new doctrines. When John Gerard left the university
rather than take the Protestant sacrament, this tutor, moved by
the stanchness of his pupil, followed his example, and for some
time he lived in Sir Thomas Gerard's house, superintending
the young man's lessons. There was a secular priest in the house
at the same time, who afterwards became a Jesuit, and from him
John Gerard took lessons in Greek. This clergyman, Sutton by

158 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

name, was doubtless one of the " old priests " — that is, those or-
dained before Elizabeth's reign — for whom there was usually no
very keen search unless they were detected saying Mass or other-
wise exercising their ministry. They were assumed by the au-
thorities to stand upon a different footing from the " seminary
priests," who took orders abroad and entered the realm as mis-
sionaries.

When John Gerard was sent to the Continent " to learn the
French tongue " a license to travel was obtained for him. When
he proposed to go a second time, with the secret purpose of
entering the Society of Jesus, no such privilege could be had,
and, in company with several other Catholics, he sailed without
a license. The vessel was driven into Dover by contrary winds
and the whole party were arrested and sent to London. Our
hero avowed his religion ; but as certain members of the Privy
Council were friends of his family, instead of being imprisoned
with his fellow-adventurers he was committed to the custody of
a Protestant uncle. This worthy was unable to convert him ; and
the Bishop of London, who next essayed the task, succeeded no
better. Accordingly, at the age of nineteen he was locked up in
the Marshalsea prison, and there he remained " from the begin-
ning of one Lent to the end of the following." " We were twice
during this interval," he writes, " dragged before the courts, not
to be tried for our lives, but to be fined according to the law against
recusants. I was condemned to pay two thousand florins." This,
representing about one thousand dollars of our money, was, three
centuries ago, a very large sum. The Marshalsea, as described
to us in modern times, was something quite unlike the popular
idea of a jail, with tiers of narrow cells. Only a little fragment
of it now remains ; but it was standing when Charles Dickens
was a youth, and in Little Dorrit he drew it as he remem-
bered it, with its blocks or rows of squalid tenements inside the
walled enclosure. It was perhaps arranged on a similar plan in
Father Gerard's day, offering the prisoners many opportunities
to avoid the surveillance of the keepers, and affording the keepers
unrivalled facilities for extortion. There can hardly be a doubt
that privileges were for sale in this place. Father Gerard found
there no fewer than seventeen priests and thirty other Catholics,
" awaiting judgment of death with the greatest joy " ; and several
of them did afterwards obtain the crown of martyrdom. It is a
curious circumstance that, although these prisoners were held as
" recusants," they were in the habit of celebrating Mass in the
very prison itself. The Bishop of London wrote to Lord Burgh-

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 159

ley, about the time of Father Gerard's arrest, complaining of this
state of affairs :

"This I find among them, and specially in the Marshalsea, that those
wretched priests which by her majesty's lenity live there, as it were in a
college of caitiffs, do commonly say Mass within the prison, and entice the
youth of London unto them to my great grief, and, as far as I can learn, do
daily reconcile them. I have been so bold [as] to shut up one Hartley,
and to lay irons upon him, till I hear from your lordship what course
herein we shall take hereafter. But the Commission being renewed, I
doubt not but my lord of Canterbury will look to those dangerous per-
sons on that side."

Father Hartley, here referred to, was subsequently sent to the
scaffold, but the celebration of Mass was not stopped. The
keeper of the Marshalsea reported to Lord Burghley in August,
1582, that he had caught three priests saying Mass in different
chambers on the same day: "Their superstitious stuff, their
abominable relics and vile books, I have taken away ready to be
showed. My humble request is to have the priests removed
from me, and the rest to be examined and punished, as shall best
seem good to your honors." This happened a few months before
Gerard's incarceration, and how little effect it had is shown by
the following passage in the Narrative :

" At times our cells were visited and a strict search made for church
stuff, Agnus Dei, and relics. Once we were betrayed by a false brother,
who had feigned to be a Catholic, and disclosed our hidden stores to the
authorities. On this occasion were seized quantities of Catholic books
and sacred objects, enough to fill a cart. In my cell were found nearly all
the requisites for saying Mass ; for my next-door neighbor was a good
priest, and we discovered a secret way of opening the door between us, so
that we had Mass very early every morning. We afterwards repaired our
losses, nor could the malice of the devil again deprive us of so great a con-
solation in our bonds."

The report of a spy named Thomas Dodwell (perhaps the
false brother here referred to) is preserved in the Public Record
Office:

" There is four seminary priests in one chamber, and close prisoners —
viz., Fenn, Fowler, Conyers, and Hartley ; and yet, notwithstanding the
often searching, they have such privy places to hide their Massing trum-
pery that hardly it can be found, that they have to themselves often Mass,
and now because Sir George Carey [or Carew, knight-marshal] and his
servants have often taken from them their silver chalices, they have pro-
vided chalices of tin. . . . They hide their books in such secret places that
when any search is [made] they can find nothing."

160 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

The lot of some of the prisoners, however, was much more
severe than that of others. Gerard found in the Marshalsea a
servant of the Jesuit Father Campion, who had been arrested
" on account of some words he had let fall in praise of " Cam-
pion. " On my arrival there I saw him laden with heavy fetters
on his legs, besides which he wore a very rough hair-shirt. He
was most lowly and meek, and full of charity. I happened one
day to see a turnkey strike him repeatedly without the servant
of God uttering a single word. He was at length taken with
three others to the filthy Bridewell. One of their number died
of starvation a few -days after their transfer." Gerard obtained
leave one day, on his way from court to prison, to visit some
friends, pledging himself to return to the Marshalsea that night.
He employed his liberty in visiting this humble confessor in
Bridewell. " He was lying ill, being worn out with want of
food and labor on the tread- wheel. It was a shocking sight.
He was reduced to skin and bone, and covered with lice that
swarmed upon him like ants on a mole-hill ; so that I never re-
member to have seen the like."

Gerard was released on bail, being bound in sureties to the
amount of two hundred pounds, furnished by his friends, to report
in person at the Marshalsea every three months. The sureties
were several times renewed ; but at last " a very dear friend,"
whose name is not given, offered himself as bail with the under-
standing that Gerard should go abroad and that the bond should
be forfeited. The generous proposal was accepted, but the penal-
ty was never enforced, for the bondsman was one of fourteen gen-
tlemen hanged a few weeks afterwards for complicity in Babing-
ton's conspiracy in behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots. Gerard, in
the meantime, escaped across the Channel by bribing the search-
ers, made his way to Rome, and became a student of the English
College, having been advised to take orders before he entered the
Jesuit Society. His theological course was a very short one.
The wants of the English mission were pressing, and Gerard had
given such clear proof of virtue and constancy that it seemed
quite safe to dispense in his case with a great deal of the usual
training. In less than two years he was a priest and Jesuit, and
on his way back to his native country, accompanied by Father
Oldcorne, Jesuit, and two secular priests. They travelled incog-
nito, Father Gerard taking the name of Thomson. Elizabeth's
spies were watchful on the Continent, and documents now
accessible in the Public Record Office show, what our adven-
turers did not suspect at the time, that they were recognized in

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 161

Paris and their movements were minutely reported by false
brethren in the pay of the English government. One of the
most infamous of these informers was Gilbert Gifford, Father
Gerard's second cousin. This wretch, whom Sir Edward Staf-
ford, the English ambassador at Paris, called " the most nota-
ble double treble villain that ever lived," was the chief agent
employed to ripen the Babington conspiracy and then to be-
tray it. He was the intermediary of Mary's communications
with her friends in Paris and London, and all the letters entrust-
ed to him were promptly conveyed into the hands of Walsing-
ham. The better to play the spy, he caused himself to be ordain-
ed priest. After the execution of the Queen of Scots he seems
to have distrusted his employers, for he went over to Paris.
There, being arrested for immorality, he ended his life in pri-
son, drawing meanwhile a pension of one hundred pounds a year
from Elizabeth's government, and contriving even from his jail
to send news to Walsingham. From this source the English
authorities were warned that Gerard would " be in England
within five days." Another spy, reporting Gerard's arrival in
Paris, gave information of his assuming the name of Thomson.

The condition of affairs in England had changed greatly since
the setting out of the party from Rome. " The Spanish attempt
had exasperated the public mind against Catholics, and most
rigid searches for priests and domiciliary visits had been set on
foot ; guards were posted in every village along the roads and
streets ; and the Earl of Leicester, then at the height of his favor,
had sworn not to leave a single Catholic alive at the close of the
year." Jesuit fathers in France were so strongly opposed to the
missionaries' venturing into England at such a time that the mat-
ter was referred to Rome for the decision of the head of the so-
ciety. The father-general's reply is thus given in the Narra-
tive : " As it was the Lord's business that we had to do, he left
us free either to wait the return of greater calm or to pursue the
course we had entered upon. On receiving this desirable mes-
sage we did not long deliberate, but immediately hired a ship to
land us in the northern part of England, which seemed to be less
disturbed."

The party consisted of Father Gerard, Father Oldcorne, and
the two secular priests, Christopher Bales and George Beesley
—all, except Gerard, destined for the scaffold. We are not told
of the adventures of Bales and Beesley, except that they were
caught soon after landing and were both executed in London
under the statute 27 Elizabeth, for having been made priests

VOL. XXXIV.— II

162 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

beyond the seas and exercising- their functions in England.
The Jesuits sailed along the coast of the Channel until on the
third day they observed a spot where the ship's boat might easily
set them on shore. The anchor was accordingly dropped until
night ; under cover of the darkness the fathers were landed, and
the vessel immediately departed to convey Bales and Beesley to
another part of the coast. Our missionaries gave some time to
prayer, and then began to look for a path inland, since it would
be dangerous to be found near the sea. But the night was dark,
and every way they tried brought them to a dwelling, as they
were made aware by the barking of dogs. Afraid of being taken
for thieves, they turned at last into a wood, and there remained
until dawn, unable to sleep on account of the rain and cold, and
not daring to speak above a whisper. For greater safety they
resolved to separate and pursue their journey to London inde-
pendently, and they cast lots to determine which should leave
the wood first. The lot fell upon Father Oldcorne. " We then
made an equal division of what money we had, and, after embrac-
ing and receiving one from the .other a blessing, the future martyr
went along the sea-shore to a neighboring town, where he fell in
with some sailors who were thinking of going to London." He
made himself so agreeable to these men that, although he could
not refrain from reproving their bad language, they willingly ac-
cepted his company, and the searchers in the towns through which
they passed, taking him for one of the party, did not molest him.
He reached London without much trouble. Father Gerard, fol-
lowing a different road, pretended to people whom he met that
he was in search of a stray falcon. This gave him a plausible
excuse for keeping away from the highroads and villages, and
making across the country by fields and lanes. At last, late in the
day, soaked with rain and exhausted with fatigue, cold, and hun-
ger, he went boldly to an inn. His confident manner disarmed
suspicion. He not only obtained here the rest and refreshment
he needed, but he was able to buy a pony, and so to prosecute
his journey in the morning with a better appearance and with
less peril. He was arrested, indeed, at the entrance of the next
village ; but he held to the story of the falcon, and after some
trouble he was let go, and rode on to the city of Norwich. Here
he put up at an inn ; and what followed we shall let him tell in
his own words :

" I had rested me but a little while there when a man who seemed to be
an acquaintance of the people of the house came in. After greeting me
civilly he sat down in the chimney-corner and dropped some words about

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 163

some Catholic gentlemen who were kept in jail there ; and he mentioned
one whose relative had been a companion of mine in the Marshalsea some
seven years since. I silently noted his words, and when he had gone out I
asked who he might be. They answered that he was a very honest fellow
in other points, but a Papist. I inquired how they came to know that.
They replied that it was a well-known fact, as he had been many years im-
prisoned in the castle there (which was but a stone's throw from the place
where I was) ; that many Catholic gentlemen were confined there, and that
he had been but lately let out. I asked whether he had abandoned the
faith in order to be at large. ' No, indeed,' said they, ' nor is he likely to,
for he is a most obstinate man. But he has been set free under an engage-
ment to come back to prison when called for. He has some business with
a gentleman in the prison, and he comes here pretty often on that account.'
I held my tongue and awaited his return.

" As soon as he came back, and we were alone, I told him that I should
wish to speak with him apart ; that I had heard that he was a Catholic, and
for that reason I trusted him, as I also was a Catholic ; that I had come
there by a sort of chance, but wanted *to get on to London ; that it would
be a good deed worthy of a Catholic were he to do me the favor of intro-
ducing me to some parties who might be going the same road, and who
were well known, so that I might be allowed to pass on by favor of their
company ; that, being able to pay rny expenses, I should be no burden to my
companions. He replied that he knew not of any one who was then going
to London. I hereon inquired if he could hire a person who would accom-
pany me for a set price. He said he would look out some such one, but
that he knew of a gentleman then in the town who might be able to for-
ward my business. He went to find him, and soon returning desired me to
accompany him. He took me into a shop, as if he were going to make
some purchase. The gentleman he had mentioned was there, having ap-
pointed the place that he might see me before he made himself known. At
length he joined us and told my companion in a whisper that he believed I
was a priest. He led us, therefore, to the cathedral, and, having put me
many questions, he at last urged me to say whether or no I was a priest,
promising that he would assist me— at that time a most acceptable offer.
On my side I inquired from my previous acquaintance the name and con-
dition of this third party [Edward Yelverton, of Grimston] ; and on learning
it, as I saw God's providence in so ready an assistance, I told him I was
a priest of the Society who had come from Rome. He performed his
promise, and procured for me a change of clothes, and made me mount a
good horse, and took me without delay into the country to the house of a
personal friend, leaving one of his servants to bring on my little pony."

The next day our missionary arrived at Mr. Yelverton's
house, and there he remained two or three days, conducting him-
self with great circumspection ; for the brother and sister of his
host were heretics, and at first the strange guest was eyed with
some suspicion. Father Gerard, however, managed to allay dis-
trust. His early home-training had made him perfectly familiar
with hunting, falconry, and the other customary amusements of

164 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

English gentlemen. These were the common topics of conversa-
tion in society ; he bore his part well in the general discourse,
and he turned the talk readily upon hounds and horses whenever
dangerous matters were approached. " Thus it often happens,"
says he, " that trifling covers truth — ut vanitas veritatem occultet" ;
and in a later period of his mission we find him frequently mak-
ing use of sporting subjects as a prelude to the gravest obser-
vations. Good Father Southwell used to lament that he had a
wretched memory for such things, and be got many a lesson
from Father Gerard in the technical terms of sport ; but his suc-
cess in talking dog and horse seems to have been indifferent,
" for many," says Father Gerard, " make sad blunders in attempt-
ing this." When Father Gerard went away Mr. Yelverton pro-
vided him with a horse and a servant, and made him promise to
ask leave of his superior to return, offering the shelter of his
house and whatever assistance he could render in the work of
the mission. Thus sped upon his journey, our Jesuit reached
London without accident, and by the help of certain Catholics
found his superior, Father Garnet. Father Oldcorne had already
arrived ; Father Southwell was also there ; and the little com-
pany, meeting joyfully, consulted together as to their future pro-
ceedings until the near approach of Christmas (1588) warned them
to separate, " both for the consolation of the faithful and because
the dangers are always greater in the great solemnities." These
four were then the only Jesuits in England, except Father Wes-
ton, commonly known as Father Edmunds, who was a prisoner
at Wisbeach. At the time of Father Garnet's execution the
number had risen to forty.

Mr. Yelverton's proffer of an asylum in his house was accept-
ed, and Father Gerard stayed there six or eight months, during
which time his entertainer introduced him to nearly every family
of consideration in the county. The missionary dressed and de-
meaned himself as a gentleman of moderate means, associated
freely with Protestants, and seems to have been wholly unsus-
pected— unsuspected, that is to say, so far as regards his priestly
character ; that he was a Catholic must have been well known.
How complete indeed was his disguise we can judge from an an-
ecdote which he relates in connection with the conversion of his
host's brother-in-law. This gentleman had listened to Father
Gerard's persuasions and instructions in the confident belief that
he was listening to a zealous layman. He was even prepared
for confession, and was then informed that a priest would come
to him. " His brother-in-law told him that this must be at night-

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 165

time. So, having sent away the servants who used to attend him
to his chamber, he went into the library, where I left him pray-
ing, telling him that I would return directly with the priest. I
went down-stairs and put on my cassock, and returned so changed
in appearance that he, never dreaming of any such thing, was
speechless with amazement." Father Gerard adds a little argu-
mentative discourse by which he satisfied his convert that the
concealment of his profession had been necessary and proper.
But this seems superfluous. The missionaries were surely not
required to invite death and defeat their purposes by proclaim-
ing their mission. If they went about England in disguise it was
because the law would not let them go about openly. After-
wards, when he was in prison, Father Gerard always wore the
habit of the society, and as he passed through the streets on his
way to and from the magistrates the people used to flock to see
a Jesuit in his robes. This appears to have been the usual course
of the fathers under arrest. Among the converts who rewarded
our missionary's secret activity at Grimston, besides the person
just referred to, were Mr. Yelverton's brother and two sisters,
more than twenty fathers and mothers of families in good posi-
tion, and a great many people of inferior rank, to say nothing of
the weak who were confirmed in the faith, and the numbers of
others who were strengthened by the sacraments. But Father
Gerard's secret was now in the keeping of too many people about
Grimston, and he deemed it more prudent to accept the hospi-
tality of an excellent Catholic gentleman named Drury, of Losell
in Suffolk, in whose house he spent two years. Mr. Drury had
previously suffered a term of imprisonment in the Marshalsea as
a "common receiver, harborer, and maintainer of Jesuits and
seminary priests," and he crowned his useful career by selling
Losell, distributing the money among the priests in prison and
other Catholics suffering persecution, and entering the novitiate
of the Jesuits at Antwerp, where he died shortly afterwards.
Father Gerard meanwhile had taken up his abode with a family
named Wiseman, illustrious in the annals of these times of trou-
ble.* They lived on their estate called Braddocks, in the parish
of Wimbish, Essex. The household comprised a widowed mo-
ther, Mrs. Jane Wiseman — " a * true widow,' given to all manner
of good works " — and her eldest son, William (afterwards knight-
ed), with his wife. Two younger sons became Jesuits, and all the
four daughters took the veil. The widow Wiseman was a great
friend and protectress of priests, and it was in order to be of

* Cardinal Wiseman was descended from a younger branch of this family.

i66 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Nov.,

the more use to them that she subsequently left her son's house
and occupied a dwelling of her own at Northend, in the parish
of Great Waltham, where the pursuivants gave her no little
trouble. The report of one Justice Young to Lord Keeper
Sir John Puckering, preserved in the Public Record Office, de-
scribes a search made at this house at Christmas time, 1593,
when " they found a Mass a-preparing, but the priest escaped "
[he was hidden in the chimney] ; and after setting down the
names of the Catholics arrested on that occasion the report adds :

" Wherefore, if it may stand well with your lordship's good liking, I
think it were well that they were all sent for hither to be examined ; for
that the same Mrs. Jane Wiseman, her house is the only house of resort for
all these wicked persons. She was at Wisbeach with the Seminaries and
Jesuits there, and she did repent that she had not gone barefooted thither,
and she is a great reliever of them, and she made a rich vestment and sent
it to them, as your lordship doth remember, as I think, when you and my
lord of Buckhurst sent to Wisbeach to search, for that I had letters which
did decipher all her doings."

The notorious Topcliffe, most cruel and untiring of the priest-
hunters, seems to have pursued this excellent lady with a special
spite. At last a pretext was found for her arrest, and she was taken
to London and there put upon her trial for the heinous offence of
giving a crown to a distressed priest, one Father Jones, a Fran-
ciscan, afterwards martyred. Under the law against the mainten-
ance of priests this was. a capital crime. Unwilling that the guilt
of her blood should fall upon the jury, Mrs. Wiseman refused to
plead, and was in consequence sentenced to be crushed to death
by heavy weights laid upon her breast — the usual penalty for this
sort of contumacy. She welcomed the sentence with the excla-
mation, Deo gr atias ! But it was never executed. She lay in
prison until the death of Elizabeth, suffering the greatest hard-
ships, and on the accession of James I. she was pardoned.

In the Wiseman household we may be sure that Father
Gerard found a delightful home. He gives us a few glimpses of
the pious life of that heroic family, where the daily routine was
ordered with an almost conventual regularity. The reading of
religious books was a frequent exercise. Even at meals, when no
strangers were present, some one read aloud for half an hour.
The priests sat at table in their gowns. All the servants were
Catholics, and everybody in the house frequently approached the
sacraments. Mr. Wiseman was a great sufferer from gout, in
consequence of which he passed most of his time in his own

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 167

apartments, occupied with his books and his devotions, and trans-
lating into English a number of Latin works of a spiritual charac-
ter, several of which were published. Every Friday he made an
edifying address to his children in Latin — a tongue in which the
daughters as well as the sons were versed. On Sundays and
feast-days Father Gerard preached in the chapel. Mass, however,
was celebrated in a secret place, for it was necessary always to
be on guard against the visits of the pursuivants. The report
of a search made at Braddocks while Father Gerard apparently
was absent on a missionary tour mentions that the pursuivants
" found in a secret place between two walls in the said house an
old priest named Thomas Jackson, who hath been beyond sea, and
there was also found all the furniture belonging to Mass, and the
said priest useth ordinarily to say Mass there." As we have al-
ready seen, the laws made a distinction between the " old priests "
and those ordained after the accession of Elizabeth, and many of
the former class were permitted to live unmolested so long as
they abstained from the exercise of their ministry. The penalties
hanging over them, however, were severe enough. To maintain
the power or jurisdiction of any foreign prelate within the realm,
to refuse the oath of supremacy, to sue for or use bulls from the
Bishop of Rome, was high treason. It was high treason also to
withdraw any from the established religion. Only one of the
" Marian " or " old " priests actually suffered death under these
statutes, but numbers were imprisoned. The penalty for saying
Mass was imprisonment and a fine of two hundred marks. As the
old priests must have been well known to all their neighbors, they
could hardly labor in disguise, as the strange missionaries did ;
the pursuivants could always take them on the slightest provoca-
tion ; and not a few seem to have been encountered by our more
adventurous evangelists living inactive under the precarious
shelter of private Catholic houses, and sometimes viewing with
alarm the " rashness " of the Jesuits who disturbed their quiet.
Father Gerard, however, established the most cordial relations
with the priests of this class ; and witK Father Jackson in particu-
lar, who was his fellow-guest at Braddocks, he had the very best
understanding. We are not told what became of the good man
after the arrest just recorded.

CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

1 68 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, by Mary H. A. Allies.
PART I.— EARLY YOUTH.

CHAPTER V.

FINE FEATHERS MAKE FINE BIRDS.

A FORTNIGHT later there was another grand dinner in honor of
Herr Goldisch's sister, who had come from London with her
husband to make her future sister-in-law's acquaintance. The
reception-rooms were brilliantly lighted up, and all the Prost
family awaited the guest's arrival. The folding-doors opened
wide, and a pretty little figure appeared in a pink dress which
was done up with the usual accompaniment of lace, tulle, and
ribbon ; abundant tresses of fair hair ornamented the graceful
head.

" Sylvia, little fairy, is it really you ? " exclaimed Herr Prost
in pleased surprise. " This morning you were a dingy cater-
pillar, and now you are a radiant butterfly."

He took hold of the tips of her fingers with his, held her at
arm's length, scanned her from head to foot, and said approv-
ingly as he let her go : " In these horrid crinolines you all look
like tulips turned upside down. But you are still Sylvia, you
little witch ! "

" Yes, doesn't she look different ? " said Frau Prost, highly
pleased. " Fine feathers make fine birds."

It looked like a proof of the proverb, for Sylvia had lost all
her shyness of her uncle since he had expressed his admiration,
and she said pleasantly : " f am very glad that you like my dress,
dear uncle. My aunt chose it for me just as it is."

"And you like it better than your black merino? You
needn't say yes or no. Of course you do. You must always be
elegantly dressed. I must insist upon it, as I see you are a little
person meant to be elegant."

Valentine had been too intent on examining Herr Goldisch's
bouquet, which she held in her hand, to pay any attention to
Sylvia, whilst Isidora scanned her with a look which did not

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 169

express unmitigated satisfaction. Aurel silently shared his fa-
ther's admiration.

The guests arrived. Herr Goldisch was a man of forty, ap-
parently quiet and sensible. As the future husband of so senti-
mental a young lady as Valentine, Sylvia had formed a very
different notion of him in her own mind. He was a widower
without children, and, like Herr Prost, a man of business, with no
room for sentiment, but with a great deal of kindliness. He had
been taken with Valentine ; there was parity of circumstances,
Herr Prost liked the marriage, and Valentine showed an enthu-
siasm on the subject which mystified everybody. Suffice it to
say she declared it had always been her dream to marry an oldish
man, and particularly a widower, in order to console him for the
loss of his wife. Now, this widower happened to be a millionaire
and an excellent man whose relatives in London lived in grand
style ; she gave her consent without a moment's hesitation.

That evening the world opened before Sylvia in all its pomp,
vanity, and glare. Her great personal charms, heightened as
they were by unconsciousness, made a most favorable impression.
Everybody is pleasant to a nice, pretty girl of eighteen ; so Val-
entine followed suit. Up till then she had not found it worth
her while to notice her cousin, whom, for the matter of that, she
saw only at luncheon and upon occasions. Valentine was a great
deal too busy with dear number one to bestow notice upon a
being of so inferior an order as Sylvia at a time when the all-
important trousseau and future plans were engrossing all her
thoughts. But Herr Goldisch remarked to her that evening :
" I did not know that such a person as this nice cousin existed in
your house."

" I myself hardly knew it," said Valentine, " as Sylvia was in
mourning and lived chiefly in her room."

" I am very glad for Isidora that she will have a companion
when I carry you off," said Herr Goldisch.

Valentine chuckled to herself, partly for joy at the said carry-
ing-off, partly because she doubted whether Isidora much wished
for such a companion. Isidora had not yet appeared in society,
and coming out with Sylvia was not to her advantage. That
very evening a careful observer might have seen how little she
liked Sylvia's success — for success it was, in spite of her cousin's
ignorance of English, her bad French, and her extreme poverty.

Sylvia herself was only too well aware of the numerous short-
comings which were against her feeling at home in society,
though her tact prevented her from saying or doing anything

170 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

contrary to its usages. This consciousness gave her a slight shy-
ness which was in itself a charm, so that Mrs. Dambleton, Herr
Goldisch's sister, congratulated Frau Prost on her niece's excel-
lent bringing-up.

" She still wants polish," answered Frau Prost, " as she has
never been out; but I hope it will come with practice."

" Oh ! as to that, a little drawing-room politeness only wants
practice and habit, and is not a real advantage, even though it
would be a mistake to be altogether wanting in it. If only there
is that natural tact which knows exactly what to do and say at
the moment, ease is soon acquired."

" I think my little Sylvia will have her wits about her. Her
poor mother, my sister, was a most sensible person, and she had
a particular practical talent for trying circumstances."

As Sylvia got to her room about midnight she thought to
herself what a strange change had taken place since she went
into it for the first time. " How lonely I was ! " she mused. " I
seemed to be by myself in the world, and now I am a child of
the house. My aunt is so kind, and my uncle is getting quite
pleasant, and is already very friendly directly he sees me lively
and ready for jokes. I get everything I can possibly wish for ;
indeed, the daughters are not better off than I. Certainly, I
am still an orphan, and I have no friend here like Clarissa Lehr-
bach." She rang her bell. Bertha answered it ; for Sylvia, as a
fashionable young lady, now had her maid. Bertha said, in a tone
of the greatest admiration : " Really, miss, your dress is too pretty,
and you look too bewitching in it ! What a pity it is that you
are obliged to undress ! "

" And that very quickly," answered Sylvia, laughing ; " it is
late, and I have to get up at six o'clock."

" O miss ! don't think of it. It was all very well before, but
now that you are to do as the others you must have your sleep
out. Aren't you beginning to enjoy your life, as I to]d you you
would ? Did you remark the silver service, which is only used
on great occasions ? I peeped into the dining-room when it was
lighted up, just to look at the company, and really my eyes were
dazzled by the silver and the lights. I'm sure you had nothing
like this at home ? "

" No, Bertha, I had nothing like it ; but then I was home,"
replied Sylvia with a tinge of sadness.

" Oh ! " said Bertha, stopping short. Her business was over ;
she wished Sylvia good-night and withdrew. Sylvia struggled
with many distractions at her night prayers, but when Mile. Vic-

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 171

toire knocked at her door the next morning at six she did not
think twice about getting up. She dressed herself quickly, for
which operation she required no assistance, and went to Mass as
usual. On coming back out of the gray, miserable fog to her
rosy abode she felt a certain happiness at having made the little
sacrifice for God. Then she breakfasted and set about her Eng-
lish with great zeal. This same zeal delighted Miss Wilmot,
who was not spoilt in this respect by her pupils, and she spared
Sylvia her Calvinistic attacks upon Catholic doctrine. Perhaps,
indeed, Sylvia had a little scene to thank for it which she had
had with Harry one day when he happened to be in the room at
the time of her lesson. He was turning over her prayer-book,
and eyeing curiously the holy pictures contained in it. At last
he held up one of Our Lady and exclaimed : " Miss Wilmot, she
is a Papist."

" No, Harry, I am what you are — a Catholic," said Sylvia
with quiet determination.

The child stared at Miss Wilmot, as if expecting her to say
something. But what could she say? She observed drily: " Be
quiet, Harry, and don't interrupt us."

Sylvia had settled in her own mind to do as Mile. Victoire did.
" If a servant can assert her independence as to religion, I am
sure that I can," she thought to herself ; " and I will also imitate
her in making friends of every one." And her plan seemed to an-
swer. She won her relatives partly by her pleasant manner,
partly by her winning modesty, which Valentine with her cold-
ness, and Isidora with her imperiousness, had never been able to
do. Mrs. Dambleton could not understand how it was that a
German houseful of young people produced no music. Valentine,
in consequence, proposed to play one evening. She got through
a first movement of one of Beethoven's sonatas, but with so much
stumbling that at the end of the allegro she said she could not
possibly go on before an audience, and her father remarked drily :
" That seems to me the best thing you can do. But, Aurel, you
can sing. Won't you try what you can do? "

" Not without being accompanied," he said.

" You see, Mrs. Dambleton, we are poor in talents. People
must be contented with the solid good things we have to offer
them," said Herr Prost in a self-satisfied tone, and Mrs. Damble-
ton replied courteously that such " solid good things " were in-
deed the great consideration in life.

Sylvia seated herself next to Valentine and said: "You
could surely get over your shyness, Tirii, if you were to play

172 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

duets. That was what helped me. I was so nervous that I
couldn't play before papa, and it vexed him. My friend Clarissa
Lehrbach was the same. Then we began to play duets, so as to
get mutual support, and from that time people didn't frighten us
any more, because we both thought everybody was paying atten-
tion to the other. And when once we got so far we did better
and played before any body."

" Do you play, then? "asked Valentine, astonished. "Why
didn't you say so long ago? "

" Oh ! I wasn't in the way of it, and nobody asked about it."

" To-morrow we must see what you can do."

" Yes, but I am out of practice, as I have been three weeks
here without touching a piano."

" Oh ! never mind. We will practise in my room on my
beautiful Streicher piano, which is much sweeter, to my mind,
than the drawing-room Erard. But have you got any duets ? "

" Yes ; and to-morrow early I will bring' you what I have
got."

On the following evening every one was much surprised
when Valentine took off her gloves and said to her father :
" Papa, you rave about l Don Juan/ We are going to play the
overture." And with the air of a queen she made a sign to Syl-
via, and they both sat down at the piano.

" Is that our little charmer ? " called out Herr Prost in surprise,
and his wife gave him a pleased nod.

The overture went very well from beginning to end, Sylvia
taking the treble and throwing her soul into it. They were
much applauded.

" Little fairy, I am sure that you sing, too," exclaimed Herr
Prost.

" Yes, I do, but only little ballads — nothing very wonderful or
fashionable."

" Well done !" said Mrs. Dambleton. " German songs are a
treat to my German ear."

Sylvia went to fetch her music, and in the meantime Herr
Prost said to his wife : " Sylvia must have music-lessons, my
dear." Frau Prost nodded her assent.

" That will be an excellent thing," said Mrs. Dambleton. " A
good master pushes people on and helps them to practise and to
develop."

Sylvia came back with some music, yellow with age, contain-
ing Himmel's "Alexis and Ida."

"What old paper have you got there?" exclaimed Isidora.

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 173

" Heavenly music," answered Sylvia, laughing, as she seated
herself at the piano, and, after a simple chord or two, began to
sing, in a voice which was clear and mellow : " I send thee, fair
rose, to Alexis." Her audience listened with evident satisfaction.
As the last note died away Mrs. Dambleton said : " People may
call me sentimental, if they like, but there is nothing like the
melody of a German song."

Frau Prost smiled, and Herr Prost exclaimed : " Little fairy,
tell us who your Alexis is ? "

" Clarissa Lehrbach, dear uncle," she said.

" No, I am your Alexis," said Aurel, walking up to the piano.

" Will you be able to sing at first sight? " she inquired a little
anxiously.

" We shall get on. Play away," said Aurel. And he sang
Alexis' part in a voice and manner that widely surpassed Sylvia's
untaught singing.

" Why, we have a concert all at once," said Mrs. Dambleton
approvingly.

" Much to my astonishment," remarked Frau Prost in the qui-
etest way.

The ice was broken. Aurel went on singing. Sylvia accom-
panied him as well as she could, and earned thereby the gratitude
of her audience for giving them the pleasure of hearing him
sing.

kThe next morning Herr Prost broke in suddenly upon his
le's consultation with Mile. Victoire. He would have fright-
ed her, if she had not been cased in her lethargic calmness,
err Prost sat himself down in an arm-chair and began : " I want
10 speak to you about Sylvia, my dear. I look upon it as an ex-
traordinary bit of good fortune that a portionless niece happens
to be very pretty. It is quite a chance, and we will make good
use of it. Valentine is going to be married in a week, and in
two or three years Isidora will marry, too. Then our home
would be quite deserted ; for sons don't make it, though they are
noisy enough as boys, and, once grown up, they either go away
or get tiresome like Aurel. But girls enliven one, and here Syl-
via just comes to fill a gap. She shall stay with us."

" Who knows ? " interrupted Frau Prost. " She is so wonder-
fully pretty that she will be much admired, and perhaps she will
marry before Isidora."

" My dear ! " exclaimed Herr Prost in a tone expressive of
immense superiority. " You have lived in society now for three-
and-twenty years. I am surprised that you can think of such a

174 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

thing for a moment. Of course people will fall in love with Syl-
via and pay her attentions, but marry her with her two thousand
guilders, pretty as she is, and accustomed to all the luxuries we
can give her ! No, my dear, marriageable young men in these
matter-of-fact days have no such intentions. So this is how it is
to be : she stays with us to adorn your drawing-room, and she
shall learn everything that will qualify her to shine. She is full
of talent, so let her have the first music-master in the place, even
if the lessons should cost twenty marks each. See about her
French. With poor, simple Victoire she will only learn how to
sing psalms with a Parisian accent. Then she must know how
to ride. I will give her a riding-habit and a pianino for Christ-
mas ; a grand piano would be too large for her room. So see to
it all, my dear ; it is your department, and I am sure you are
pleased that your sister's child should have a home with us and
have found the way to my heart."

"Of course I am, love," said his wife, deep already in his va-
rious suggestions. They led, however, to her saying with sudden
impulse : " As you mean to spoil Sylvia after this fashion, I think
you ought also to provide for her."

" I do provide for her in letting her live with us," replied Herr
Prost sternly. " Let her marry when she is thirty-six, and then
we will find her some money, but not before. I have got enough
to do to look after my own children. Harry, who in the most
uncalled-for way has been made into a Benjamin, must needs have
the same as Edgar, and Edgar the same as Aurel ; yet I can't di-
vide Aurel's portion. The Rothschild brothers, who are in un-
divided strength at the top of the money-market, are my beau-
ideal."

" Oh ! yes, love, I will look after the riding-habit and the fta-
nino without betraying you," said Frau Prost, answering rather
her own thoughts than what her husband had been saying ; for as
soon as she saw that a suggestion made him impatient she let it
drop, not out of virtue but out of laziness. Her ideal in every-
thing was quietness. All that she wished for was to be able to
glide along the course of life.

" I know, my dear, that you take pleasure in looking after
things of this sort, and that you do it with understanding, so I
shall leave you for the present." With that Herr Prost, some-
what pacified, left his wife to resume her interrupted conference
with Victoire. If Sylvia had been a thing belonging to him he
would not have gone to work otherwise. In the same way he
might have seen to the gilding of a pet silver vase by which his

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 175

costly drawing-room would receive additional ornament. Was
this unfortunate Sylvia justified in desiring more than a gild-
ed life? She had no claims to anything whatever. This was
Herr Frost's opinion on the subject, and he acted in accordance
with it.

CHAPTER VI.

•

A SNOW-STORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

VALENTINE'S wedding was over, and she had started with her
husband for that El Dorado of all fashionable people — Paris.
Mr. Dambleton was obliged to go to St. Petersburg on business,
and his wife awaited his return at the Prosts'. She was a kind-
hearted, sensible woman, and it pained her to see Sylvia's vanity
so much fostered by her being spoilt and pushed forward. She
would have liked to take Sylvia back with her to England, and
Sylvia, attracted as all young people are by change and novelty,
would gladly have gone. So that one day when they were all to-
gether Mrs. Dambleton said to Herr Prost : " What would you
say if I were to steal Sylvia for a few months ? I do not mean
to stay in London, as my house will be in the mason's hands. I
am going to our country-place, where my husband is only free to
come of a Sunday, on account of his business ; and as our four
boys are all at Eton, I have a very dull winter before me."

" English country life is anything but dull in winter," said
Herr Prost with constraint.

" That may be, but my house is dull," said Mrs. Dambleton,
laughing. " I would bring Sylvia back in the spring, and she
would speak English better than if she were to study it here for
two years."

Three pairs of eyes watched Herr Prost's face with interest.
Sylvia liked the plan immensely, and so did Isidora, as she would
then be able to make her appearance in society with greater ad-
vantage; but Aurel was much against it. Herr Prost tried to
turn his answer off in a joking way, but his own hard-and-fast de-
termination was apparent in it.

" Isn't it enough, Mrs. Dambleton, to be robbed of one daugh-

by your brother ? Must you needs take the other ? No, I
mnot allow it. What would poor Isidora, who is so used to
ler sister, be at without Sylvia? No, your plan isn't feasible,

rs. Dambleton. But I am thinking of taking my wife and

176 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

daughter to an English watering-place next summer, and then I
can return your kind visit."

Mrs. Dambleton was obliged to rest satisfied with this plan,
and Sylvia was delighted at the thoughts of it. Isidora and
Aurel let their eyes fall, the one to hide her disappointment, the
other to disguise his unmitigated relief ; Frau Prost remained
passive, awaiting with imperturbable calmness the upshot of the
conversation which her husband's decision brought to a close.

Mr. Dambleton returned from Petersburg and lost no time
in hurrying back to England for Christmas. Before her depar-
ture his wife gave Sylvia some good advice, and, although Sylvia
promised to follow it, she had forgotten all about it in a quarter
of an hour. What with lessons in singing, music, languages, and
riding, and the practice they involved, and the numerous matters
connected with dress and society, she had not a quiet moment
in the day after the early Mass, to which she persevered in going
with Victoire.

A little before the beautiful feast of Christmas Victoire ven-
tured to inquire of Sylvia how she meant to manage about the
sacraments. " Of course I shall go to confession and commu-
nion," Sylvia replied. " At home I used to go about once in
three months. My life here is so different, and I am so dread-
fully taken up, that I am like my aunt, who cannot find time for
all she wants to do. But this is the first thing to be considered,
and I was beginning to feel scruples at having put it off for so
long."

" And yet it is the only thing which helps us to keep our
peace of mind in the midst of life's unrealities, and which
strengthens us to resist the world," said Mile. Victoire.

" You are quite right. Peace of mind and strength are just
what I want," exclaimed Sylvia earnestly. And she thought to
herself : " What a difference ! Mrs. Dambleton, worthy woman,
gives me all sorts of good advice — not to be vain, for instance, or
to seek to please, or to lose my head about nice clothes which are
given to me and pretty things which are said to me — and it is all
very much to the point ; but, with all her goodness and education,
Mrs. Dambleton cannot tell me how I am to carry it out, and
here a simple servant immediately suggests the right means to be
used: confession and Holy Communion."

" Victoire," she said after a pause, " how fortunate we Catho-
lics are, and how sad it is that so many people don't realize it !
Valentine, now, who is married to a Protestant, must consent to
have her children brought up Protestants. Why didn't she in-

i38i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 177

sist upon their being Catholics? Perhaps Herr Goldisch would
have consented."

" How could Miss Valentine insist in a matter which is indif-
ferent to her?" said Victoire sadly. "O my dear miss ! it's no
easy thing to remain a Catholic in this house, although it's sup-
posed to be Catholic, and Mr. Aurel is nearly a wonder. But it
isn't my place to complain of my masters, and I have enough to
do to look after my own conscience, I'm sure."

" How is it, then, that you stay with my aunt ? "

" It's that horrid money, miss. Your aunt gives very high
wages, and, being the eldest, I had my mother and six brothers
and sisters to help, as my poor father was killed in the Barri-
cades. Thank God ! my brothers and sisters are now able to earn
their own bread, and my poor mother has gone to heaven, where
she prays for her children. I must work for another two years
to save enough, and then I shall be free. Whatever God wills
for me is for the best, and if he wills me to stay on here I am
quite ready to obey ; but it will be a happy day for me when I
am set at liberty and free to live in peace and quiet."

" I'm sure it will be," said Sylvia warmly. " After doing your
duty in such a position rest will seem very sweet."

Christmas came. There was great rejoicing over the presents
at the Frosts'. Who thought of the heavenly gifts ? On Christ-
mas day Frau Prost drove to eleven-o'clock Mass with Sylvia
and Isidora. Catholicism compressed into an eleven-o'clock
Mass met her slumbering soul's requirements. Herr Prost
stayed behind and read the Incttpendance Beige over a cigar. Syl-
via had been to early Mass with Mile. Victoire, and had been
greatly edified to see Aurel going to the sacraments. After
luncheon on Christmas eve Sylvia followed her aunt, as she was
accustomed to do, and said : " Dear Aunt Teresa, will you let me
spend the evening quietly in my room ? I want to go to confes-
sion and communion to-morrow, and I should like to prepare to-
night."

" Wait till Easter, love, then you can go with Isidora and me,""
answered Frau Prost.

" Of course I mean to go at Easter, too ; but I shouldn't like
to miss this beautiful feast, so don't say no."

"It isn't our custom, love," remarked Frau Prost indiffer-
ently. " Isidora, did you ever hear that girls went to the sacra-
ments more than once a year here ? "

" Oh ! yes, they do, but only amongst the lower classes and the
Ursulines' charity-girls," replied Isidora.

VOL. XXXIV.— 12

178 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

" Now, you hear that, love. You don't belong to the lower
classes and are not a charity-girl, so you will do as I and Isidora
do in the matter, and go to confession and communion at Easter.
Nobody in their senses expects you to do more, and your uncle
hates pious enthusiasm." Sylvia made no answer, but that even-
ing, when a dinner as splendid as it was copious came to an end,
she left the drawing-room. Her absence was not remarked at
first, owing to fresh arrivals of guests. Herr Prost, however, had
no notion of being crossed, and he observed after a time :

" Now, then, Aurel, Sylvia, where's the music? To the piano
with you both ! But what's become of Sylvia ? "

" She's in her room," said Isidora.

"Is she ill?"

" Oh ! no, papa, quite well ; but she is reading."

" This reading passion in young ladies is intolerable. Go and
fetch her, Aurel, and then sing ' Alexis and Ida/ or some other
pretty thing."

Pleased, yet shy, Aurel made his way up-stairs. He had
never been in Sylvia's room, and had never spoken to her alone.
They certainly sang together every day, but before the music-
master or a third party. Now he was to see her alone in her own
room. What would she say ? His excitement was so great that
he hardly heard her carelessly-uttered "Come in. " She thought
it was a maid, and, as the soft carpet disguised his footsteps, she
remained intent upon what she was doing. It was only when he
got to the table at which she was reading that she looked up and
said, laughing : " I must send you away this very minute, Aurel,
for I am reading the Imitation, you see, as a preparation for the
sacraments to-morrow."

" My father wouldn't take such an excuse, Sylvia," said Aurel
sadly. " He has sent for you, as he wants us to sing his favorite
4 Alexis and Ida.' "

" Oh ! do invent an excuse, Aurel. I really can't sing to-
night."

" I quite understand your reason, Sylvia. But you are run-
ning a risk of being fetched by my father himself, and there
would be a dreadful scene if he found out what you are doing."

" But that is too tyrannical," exclaimed Sylvia, half crying.

" You must get used to it, Sylvia," said Aurel gravely. " My
father is really kind, and leaves everybody free to do as they like
in the way of pleasure as long as it doesn't put him out. But he
won't hear a word about church or religion, nor allow others to
show even a secret sympathy for holy things."

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. ' 179

" But what dreadful tyranny over conscience, Aurel ! And
how can my uncle think of such a thing, pretending as he does
to be so liberal and tolerant ? When other people happen to be
piously-minded he should allow them the same liberty which
he takes himself not to be piously-minded."

" Try to make him see it, Sylvia — or rather don't try. You
would have a stormy beginning and gain nothing. But now
come down."

" O Aurel ! it's so nice and quiet here. I really can't put up
with the constant whirl and never give my soul a thought. It
would be very bad for me if it were to last, and what should I
have to show for all the accomplishments and all the society
which fill up my days?"

" What do you think my life is? " exclaimed Aurel. " It is as
superficial as yours, except that I have my business instead of
your music and language."

" Well, now, Aurel," said Sylvia firmly, " do let us hold togeth-
er. We will mutually encourage and even correct each other, if
necessary. Let us bind ourselves to a strong friendship, which
may be an incentive to us both to do better and better."

" Oh ! yes, do let us," said Aurel, delighted and moved. " But
now come down, Sylvia."

" Yes, directly. Only tell me first how you manage to receive
the sacraments as you ought."

" I get up so early that I am at the church-door before it is
opened, which gives me some clear hours."

" That's what I'll do, Aurel. I am sure that Victoire will
readily put herself out to take me. Now I'll come. I'm quite
comforted and strengthened, for without cross and without strife
there's no living on this earth, says Thomas a Kempis."

The door had been softly opened. It was Isidora, who burst
out laughing and exclaimed : " Well, this is too absurd ! "

" It's not at all nice of you to come in on the sly," said Sylvia
impatiently.

" Do I disturb your t6te-k-t6te ? " she asked spitefully.

:< You heard my father telling me to fetch Sylvia," said Aurel
coolly.

"Oh! yes, to fetch her, but not to stay with her."

" And who shall prevent him from staying here, or me from
showing him my books and all my things when I choose ? " burst
out Sylvia.

" Now, Sylvia, don't excite yourself, or you won't be able to
sing < To Alexis,' " said Aurel kindly ; and, taking her by the arm,

i So THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

he led her down-stairs. Isidora had preceded them, and, seeing
her father's black looks, she called out in high merriment : " You
will laugh, papa, when you hear this absurd thing. Just fancy !
Sylvia was sitting at a table with a book before her, and Aurel
was standing humbly in front of her whilst she explained the
Imitation of Christ''

" I was not explaining, but only quoting," said Sylvia brave-

iy-

" Sing ! " commanded Herr Prost. " It is too late now to go
to the theatre before our party."

They sang. An hour later the drawing-room filled with peo-
ple, and it was past midnight when Sylvia got to bed after having
made her plan for the morning with Victoire.

A heavy snow-storm was blowing through the streets of the
capital as Sylvia and Victoire, well muffled up, hurried to the
church in the early morning. There Sylvia was at last able to
approach the tribunal of penance and to receive the Bread of
Life. As Mass proceeded the storm grew worse, and at last it
blew a hurricane. Victoire thought it necessary to take a cab
on Sylvia's account ; but the bad weather made cabs very scarce,
and Victoire had to spend some time in securing one. It was
hardly eight o'clock when they reached home, but, as ill-fortune
would have it, Herr Prost saw them get down at the door, and
his wife had already rung twice for Victoire. As the latter did
not appear, Frau Prost resigned herself to her fate and remained
contentedly within her silk curtains. But her slumbers were
disturbed by her husband, who burst into the room like a whirl-
wind and called out : " It is really intolerable that such things
should go on in my house."

" What things, love ? " asked Frau Prost, somewhat aroused
by his vehemence.

" Where has Sylvia been to, I want to know ?" he exclaimed
angrily.

" Surely she hasn't been to church ? "

" Yes, of course she has been to church in weather when one
couldn't turn a dog away from one's door. She will catch a
cold or a cough, or get hoarse, and probably lose her voice.
And as she could only do such a thing with that stupid Victoire
of yours, I tell you plainly that I won't have Victoire remain in
my house. She shall leave my roof stante pede"

11 My love, the thing's impossible," said Frau Prost, fairly
aroused. "I won't agree to Victoire's going before the Carnival,
unless I can have another Parisian in her place."

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 181

" Nonsense ! There are heaps of dressmakers who under-
stand things far better than such bigoted people as Victoire."

" You don't know what you're talking about, love. Victoire
is one in a thousand. If she hadn't this absurd liking for the
church she would be perfect. I must and will keep her. Vent
your anger on Sylvia."

" Yes, she shall be spoken to, but it is Victoire's turn first.
Ring for her."

Herr Prost had time to cool down before Victoire answered
the bell. When she appeared he asked her quietly enough
whether that was the first time Sylvia had been to early Mass.
From one thing to the other he found out to his intense displea-
sure, and his wife to her intense amazement, that Sylvia had been
to church every morning since her arrival.

" Very good," burst out Herr Prost at last. " I will over-
look the past. But if it happen again — even but once, mind — I
will turn both you and Miss Sylvia out of the house."

Thereupon he betook himself to Sylvia, disturbed her in her
recollectedness, told her that religious sentimentality was per-
fectly monstrous, inveighed against the impropriety of her secret
goings-on with a*iady's maid, and ended by saying that he would
punish her undutiful behavior on the next opportunity by expel-
ling her the house without a penny piece.

Too frightened to open her mouth, Sylvia burst into tears.
No sooner had her uncle administered his scolding than she was
summoned to her aunt. Frau Prost was sitting at her dressing-
table.

"This won't do, love," she remarked in her callous way.
" You mustn't play such tricks. You were very nearly losing
me Victoire, whose services are as necessary to me as my two
eyes. Moreover, I had forbidden you to go to the sacraments,
and, as you are so very pious, you should have known that the
Third Commandment, or the Fourth, I think — or at any rate one
of the Ten Commandments — says, ' Honor thy father and thy mo-
ther.' Now, don't cry, love. It shall be forgotten and forgiven,
and mark what I say : In future the morning walk to church is
prohibited. You will go to Mass every Sunday with me and
Isidora, and once a year to the sacraments."

"That's just why I am crying, Aunt Teresa,'' said Sylvia;
" for it was so different when my mother was alive."

" Perhaps it was, my love. I dare say people might have
different habits in your little Catholic nest. But I, too, am a Ca-
tholic, and I know perfectly well what the church requires — viz.,

1 82 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

Mass on Sunday and the Easter communion, and I follow it out.
Anything more than this is eccentric or hypocritical. Young-
people are very apt to be over-enthusiastic, and it makes them
either unhappy or laughable. You must be kept from both ex-
tremes, for I am very fond of you and treat you as my own
little girl. It is your bounden duty to be obedient."

Sylvia could find nothing Against this argument, for she was,
in truth, treated like a daughter, loaded with presents, fed upon
life's good things, and placed in the most brilliant circumstances,
whilst her talents and capacity for society were being turned to
account. She could not but acknowledge that she owed her
uncle and aunt deep gratitude and childlike affection, and fore-
saw that yielding would be a necessity. But piety, that tender
plant so carefully nurtured by her mother, required other air
than drawing-room temperature, and other dew than praise and
flattery. Sylvia felt more deeply than she herself suspected that
the supernatural element occupies too small a place in the world's
sultry and dissipating atmosphere, which pampers every phase of
self-love and supplies no counterpoise to its encroachments.

Outwardly she obeyed, but in her own mind she asked her-
self seriously whether it would not be better for her to leave
such a house. Whose advice could she ask ? Who knew her
circumstances or herself sufficiently well to guide her ? She
might have consulted Herr von Lehrbach, had not other reasons
made her shy of laying the whole matter before him, or his wife,
or Clarissa.

CHAPTER VII.

A BALL ON NEW YEAR'S EVE.

HERR PROST had declared it to be his good pleasure that they
should dance the new year in to the sound of music and orches-
tra, so accordingly a brilliant ball took place on the 3ist of
December. It was Sylvia's first, and she looked forward to it
with immense delight.

" My little Sylvia must deck herself out in her fairest attire
and do honor to her name," he said kindly to his niece, passing
his daughter over in silence.

"There will be no lack of pretty things," replied Sylvia.
" We have been sent two beautiful ball-dresses to choose from.
Isidora must settle whether we are to be dressed alike or not."

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 183

" Oh! please don't let us be alike," exclaimed Isidora disagree-
ably ; " it is so stupid."

" Are you afraid of the comparison ? " asked her father sarcas-
tically.

" I prefer it so," she answered haughtily.

The preference for his pretty niece which Herr Prost gave
himself no pains to disguise was a very sore point with his plain
daughter. At first Isidora would have been inclined to be friends
with Sylvia, whom she looked upon as something quite inferior in
her simple black dress and her shyness ; but Sylvia as she now
was, carrying all before her, was a great trial. Isidora might tell
herself over and over again that Sylvia was a poor little thing
without a farthing, living on her parents' bounty, and not, there-
fore, likely to make a good match. As often as she did so a
secret voice in her mind rose up against her and whispered:
" Sylvia beats Isidora out and out."

On the last day of the year Aurel and Sylvia had had their
music-lesson together as usual, and practised their Italian duet
with their master. Before they separated Sylvia said quickly in
a half-whisper to Aurel : " Will you dance with me to-night, Au-
rel, as often as your duties as eldest son of the house leave
you free ? "

" I should think I would," he exclaimed, highly pleased.

" I have a great deal to say to you," she added, " but — " And
she laid her finger on her lips, which sign Aurel answered by a
significant nod.

" Now, then, have you made yourselves smart ? Let me look
at you," exclaimed Herr Prost that evening as the two girls,
dressed for the ball, made their appearance in the drawing-room
before the guests' arrival.

" H'm, Isi, you're not bad ; why, you're quite nice. The roses
suit your dark hair. ' Supposing you were to rouge yourself a
little, how would it be ? "

" My love, what are you thinking about?" said his wife, laugh-
ing. " Paint is for old women, not for young ones."

" That depends upon the women. Why shouldn't they paint
if it sets them off ? Why didn't you give your daughters your
own beautiful complexion ? " And turning to Sylvia : " But here
is a bit of perfection. What fairy cloud have you fallen from,
little sylph ? Are you sure you can dance polka, mazurka, and
the rest ? "

" I don't know, dear uncle, but I have learnt it all," she said
lightly.

184 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

" Why, you can do everything, little witch. You will turn
many a head."

" What a sad and sorry sight that would be — turned heads, in-
deed ! " said Sylvia, laughing merrily.

Herr Prost was more and more charmed with the fair, merry
young thing. What wonder was it if she captivated Aurel ? The
father said to himself, " We will soon put an end to her pious
fads," and Aurel thought, " How dear she is, and how pious! "

The ball went off as most balls do. Aurel could not get to
Sylvia as soon as he wished, but when at last they stood side by
side Sylvia said in an earnest tone : " I haven't much time to pre-
pare my speech, Aurel, so I will begin at once without more
words. I think it would be good for me not to stay here, but to
become a companion or something of the kind in a really Catho-
lic family, for here I am too much spoilt on the one hand, and
too much kept under on the other ; neither can be good for me.
As I am still young to live amongst perfect strangers, I would
rather go back to my guardian ; but he is not well off, and he has
five children. I could certainly pay him something, and would
do it gladly until the right thing could be found ; but I know that
he wouldn't agree to it, so I can't consult him on the subject.
There is nobody else in the wide world to whom I can turn, so I
thought you would be able to give me a disinterested opinion, as
you understand things."

Aurel was quite accustomed to repress his personal views on
account of an unsympathetic atmosphere, and thus he succeeded
in disguising the alarm which he secretly felt at Sylvia's pro-
posal.

" The thing is not feasible, Sylvia. And now we have got to
dance."

Poor Sylvia would willingly have given up that dance, and the
ball itself, to come to a determination in a matter of so much mo-
ment to her. Great was her astonishment to find how sad and
weary at heart it is possible to be in the most elegant of ball-
dresses, and a novel feeling of deep melancholy came over her as
she realized the emptiness of this world of flower and blossom.

" My father and mother will never agree to- your scheme,
Sylvia," said Aurel between the intervals of dancing: " first, be-
cause they are very fond of you ; and, secondly, because it would
be a bitter reproach to them for their niece to be in a subordi-
nate position."

"No reproach to them if it were no disgrace to me," said
Sylvia eagerly.

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 185

" The world thinks differently, Sylvia. A companion is look-
ed upon as quite a subordinate person ; and are you sure you
could put up with that ? "

" No, not positive, Aurel ; but I could try and do my best, if I
thought it good for me spiritually."

" Do your best, and in the meantime be turned away from
five or six houses like a servant ? It won't do, Sylvia, for your
sake or for ours. What prevents you from staying here, or
from submitting outwardly and remaining inwardly devout ? "

" The fear of losing my little bit of piety, if I am to get no
help from without."

"Am I not exactly in your position, Sylvia?"

" Oh ! no, you are much more independent. You can go out
when you like, early or late ; and then you are a man, so of course
you are stronger and better able to resist secret temptations than
lam." '

" That's just the question, Sylvia. I have grown up under a
tyranny which may be good for developing obstinacy or dogged-
ness, but which is not conducive to quiet determination. I am
only too conscious of my weakness of purpose, and it makes me
shy of myself. But, Sylvia, if you would give up your plan and
stay with us you could do a great deal for me."

" What, Aurel ? " she asked eagerly.

" Well, in the first place, you would be here."

" I should be here, Aurel ? "

" Yes, Sylvia, and I should be refreshed and strengthened by
seeing your fervor. And it would comfort me to feel that we
understood and could encourage each other, as you said last
week when you appealed to me to make our friendship true and
lasting. Will you put an end to it already and leave me to my
loneliness ? "

" So you feel lonely, do you, Aurel ? " she asked pensively.

" I should think so : lonely, misunderstood, tyrannized over,
hemmed in, powerless — in short, unhappy."

" And do you really think that my staying would be of any
use to you ? "

" Use doesn't express it, Sylvia. I can only tell you that your
staying is so much to me that I would rather die than see you
go to strangers ; and I should think it ought to be a comfort to
you to know you can help me, and that we may, perhaps, hope
for better days."

" O Aurel ! " she said compassionately.

" Only promise me to stay, Sylvia, and you need not pity me.

1 86 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

You are doing a good work which makes me rich indeed," he
said with emotion ; adding earnestly, " and perhaps some day you
will rejoice in it yourself, for God will bless it."

" If you are quite sure of that, Aurel, of course I will stay. I
wanted to hear what you thought, because I know so little about
things."

" Well then, Sylvia, will you stay with us as long as it shall
please God ? " he asked in a tone of supplication.

" Yes, as long as it shall please God," she repeated.

They were just going to begin dancing again when it struck
midnight and a vigorous flourish of trumpets announced the
advent of the new year.

" A most happy new year, Aurel," exclaimed Sylvia heartily.

" I believe in the new year ; for are not you with me, and have
you not promised me that we shall not part ? "

" I didn't promise that," she answered with a touch of con-
straint.

" Will you let me put this construction on your words ? "

" Oh ! no, no," she answered hastily, as she ran off to wish her
aunt a happy new year.

The ball lasted till morning. When Sylvia got to bed and
thought over her evening she did not feel quite comfortable
about all that had passed between her and Aurel, pleasant and
reassuring as his words had sounded in her ears. But he had
also said that God would bless her staying on, and, as he had
both goodness and common sense, she would take his advice.
Set at ease once more by this reflection, she began her new year
on the strength of her determination. She put her confidence in
a man. On the other hand, Aurel began his new year with a
novel sensation of happiness. He felt equal to winning Sylvia
and to shielding her from the fitful blasts of fortune. Aurel put
his confidence in himself.

CHAPTER VIII.

LOVE'S STILL WATERS.

ABOUT a year later than the events recounted in the last chap-
ter Herr Prost said one day to his wife: " My dear, I must tell
you plainly that I am exceedingly displeased with you."

" O my love ! what have I done ? " asked Frau Prost, over-
whelmed with painful surprise.

" What have you done ? Why, this : you haven't used your

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 187

eyes or ears. A mother should both see and hear what her
daughters are doing."

" You frighten me, love. What is the matter ? "
" Nothing is the matter yet, but there is love in the air."
" Love in the air? What do you mean, love?"
" I mean just what I say, and what is not at all an uncommon
thing when young people live together in a house. Aurel is
madly in love with Sylvia, and there is a tacit agreement between
them which, slight though it may be, points to future marriage."
"God preserve us!" exclaimed Frau Prost, unwontedly ex-
cited. " It mustn't come to that. Marriages between sisters'
children are objectionable, and the church condemns them alto-
gether."

" You see how I agree with the church, and then people pre-
tend I am not a good Catholic," said Herr Prost, laughing scorn-
fully. " Certainly it is the first time in my life that we are of
one mind. And as we are three to two — the church, that is,'
and you and I, against Aurel and Sylvia — their marriage will
never come about."

" But it is a bad business. Are you quite sure about it ? "
" You may rely upon it ; it is as certain as that two and two
make four. Even last winter I was struck by the change in
Aurel. From being indolent and tiresome he woke up, became
alert and pleasant, sang readily, liked dancing and society, all
which things had previously been a burden to him. But since
the little charmer has been at hand to make him sing and dance
and chatter he has taken an extraordinary fancy to these occupa-
tions. I don't blame him for this — on the contrary, I admire him
for it ; but it mustn't go any further. When you went with the
two girls and the children in the summer to Griinerode, Aurel
fell back again into his old spiritless ways, which instantly disap-
peared when he and I joined you in the country. At Griinerode
he was in perfect bliss, and somehow he always managed to be at
the little creature's side ; whether it were on horseback, or walk-
ing, or in the drawing-room, or in the garden, he was always to be
found with her. Didn't you notice it?"

" Oh ! yes, I did ; but they are only children."
" My love ! when you were married you were not older than
Sylvia, and, I can answer for it, I, at least, was no child at Aurel's
age."

" It just strikes me," said Frau Prost, musing, " that Isidora
once said to Sylvia before me, ' Sylvia, did you see Aurel kissing
the glove you dropped yesterday, which he picked up ? "

1 88 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

" And what did Sylvia say ? " asked Herr Prost.

" She said quite coolly, ' No, I didn't '; and as Isidora went on,
* I don't believe Herr Goldisch ever kissed Valentine's glove,'
she called out, laughing, ' People's tastes are different,' and ran off.
I confronted Isidora with her silly remark, and she remonstrated,
in her grumbling way, that Aurel really did pay Sylvia too much
attention. But as I know what Isidora is, especially in matters
which concern Sylvia, I didn't think anything of what she said."

" I will prove the truth of it, much as it may surprise you,"
said Herr Prost. " Listen. Our English expedition came to
nothing, as Herr Goldisch went off to New York, and Valentine
and her confinement — most thoughtless of her — tied us at home.
You know that I had other things to do in England besides giv-
ing you sea-bathing and seeing Mrs. Dambleton. I had a great
deal of business there. But as I was not quite pleased with the
occurrences at Grlinerode, I preferred staying there quietly with
you, and letting Aurel do it for me under pretence of my great
confidence in him. That pleased him, and he liked going to Lon-
don, the more so as it was only question of a fortnight's absence.
Instead of a fortnight, here we are in November, as I managed to
prolong the expedition to London into a business tour through-
out the whole of Great Britain, and begged my friends, especial-
ly Mrs. Dambleton, to see that Aurel got a good insight into land
and people and society. Of course Aurel was obliged to be
pleased, and to be grateful into the bargain. But at last head
and heart have strayed, and he has written to Sylvia."

" How do you know that, love ? " asked Frau Prost, greatly
astonished.

" Because I am in possession of the letter, my dear. Here it
is — twelve pages, crammed full."

" Twelve pages !" she echoed in dismay.

" Yes, twelve pages full of sentiments which would have sent
Valentine into an ecstasy, and from which I conclude that Aurel
and Sylvia are of one mind and fully believe that their mutual
sympathy will develop into marriage in time. Certainly there is
not a word about engagement, but ' lasting fidelity,' ' immortal
love,' ' our happy future,' point to marriage between people of
Aurel's and Sylvia's stamp."

" What does Sylvia say to the letter ? "

" Nothing, for she hasn't seen it and won't see it. Aurel
didn't know whether we were still at Griinerode or in town.
He enclosed the letter to the steward, asking him to forward it,
and, strangely enough, the steward has had the rare good sense to

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 189

send me on this letter with my other correspondence. The enve-
lope is addressed to ' Miss Sylvia von Neheim '; but I did not re-
mark the address and opened it, and of course do not intend
Sylvia ever to have it."

" But what is to be done now, love ? " asked Frau Prost de-
spondingly.

" My dear, you have nothing to do but to ignore the whole
thing to every one. I will take all the rest upon myself, and you
may rely upon my discretion and delicate handling. It must be
put a stop to gently, but the thing must be done. Aurel is in a
position to aspire far higher than this portionless little enchan-
tress."

" Who is his cousin," added Frau Prost. " I detest such
marriages. Don't be the least anxious, love ; I will be as silent as
the grave."

Whilst Herr Prost and his wife were talking another conver-
sation was going on a story higher, where a suite of rooms had
been very comfortably and prettily arranged for Valentine. She
was lying on a chaise-longue in a cloud of lace and embroidery.
She was very pale, and her dark hair fell loosely on her shoul-
ders. She had a telegram in her hand, and was saying in a tone
of complaint to Sylvia, who sat beside her with some work : " Be
warned, Sylvia : don't spend your love on your husband. All men,
without exception, are next door to heartless, and when they mar-
ry they become quite so. They don't dream of the secret depths
of the feminine mind, and don't care to trouble themselves about
it, for they think of nothing else but of how comfortable they can
be — the matter-of-fact wretches ! "

" But, dear Tini," said Sylvia soothingly, "your good hus-
band—"

" Is a married man, and that is all about it," interrupted Val-
entine. " He says that he is coming back to-night for certain.
I will pay him out by being icy cold."

" You talk as if he had been to New York for his own plea-
sure, whereas he went because his money affairs were threatened.
He was so distressed when he brought you to Griinerode and
was obliged to go so far away !"

" And I, in the meantime, might have died whilst he was think-
ing of his money."

" If it weren't for his money, Tini, I doubt your caring for
life. So make yourself happy. Everything has come right ; you
are sound and well, and so is your little boy. What more do you
want?"

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

" I want my husband to understand me, Sylvia. Fancy what
trouble I took to make him understand the very depths of my
heart. I wrote him pages and pages every day during our en-
gagement. After our marriage I wanted to read with him, and
he agreed. Of course I only care for novels with plenty of love-
making in them, and what do you think he proposed ? Macau-
lay s Essays — the most tiresome things, full of history and phil-
osophy ; just -fancy ! We" never got through them, and never be-
gan anything else. So this shows you how very little sympa-
thy there is between us."

" Perhaps as far as books are concerned. But it is less read-
ing together than living together that you want to do."

" You can't separate the two. He doesn't understand me,
and I am condemned to weep over my mistake for the rest of my
life."

" What mistake, Tini ? "

" Having married him."

" You should not talk in this way," said Sylvia seriously.

" I say it to you in confidence, you dear, sweet creature, for
you attract me wonderfully. Mamma is too cold, and Isidora
worse still, she is so sharp and vinegary. You have got a warm
heart, and it soothes me to be with you."

It might do her good to unbosom her imaginary grievance
about her husband's not understanding her, but it was not to Syl-
via's advantage to be indoctrinated in the fanciful whims of a pas-
sion which made sentiment, not duty, its ideal, and indulged in all
sorts of vain dreams.

Ever since the ball on New Year's eve a kind of tacit yet no
less real understanding had sprung up between Aurel and Syl-
via. They themselves could not tell how it had come about,
but so it was. They had the same way of looking at things,
or met each other's thoughts half-way. They were mutually
happy in each other's world. They had never spoken of their
love in so many words, or talked about an engagement, but
they felt pledged to each other for a lifetime. The future held
out the one hope, the one name, the one dream to both, and their
hearts spoke the same language. Sylvia's fancy shrouded these
pleasant imaginings in a golden maze, but Aurel saw them
through a less fantastical light, for he foreboded a struggle. He
knew his father too well not to be sure that gold, as the thing which
purchased a fill of pleasure and enjoyment, honor and comfort,
was his synopsis of happiness, and that he looked upon a higher
ideal as a myth. " People with empty stomachs," he was wont

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 191

to say — " poets, writers, and such like dreamy, useless, and conse-
quently hungry people — have invented an ideal happiness as a
compensation to themselves ; they want to make those who have
got tangible goods jealous, just as the priests invented heavenly
delights in room of a used-up mythology. Certainly there is this
difference : that poets are the most contemptible people on earth,
and nobody thinks of attending to what they say, whereas the
priests impose their old women's stories on a considerable por-
tion of mankind."

This was the kind of teaching Herr Prost lavished on his
children. His table was luxurious, and after dinner he was wont
to go to the theatre, employing the drive thither in a comfortable
snooze on the downy cushions of his coupe. He would then
watch the prima ballerina's feats with great interest, return home
pleasantly excited, receive his wife's guests courteously when
there was no ball or party elsewhere, and end what he considered
a remarkably well-filled day with whist or chombre. Had he not
spent its chief hours in toiling to procure similar dinners, theatre
and society pleasures for his children and grandchildren ? It
may be surmised that in his various business undertakings and
speculations he knew how to speak with unction on the benefi-
cial effects of industry as promoting the people's good, greater
mental cultivation, a higher state of civilization, and the pros-
perity of the commonwealth. He was inclined to think with the
proverb that trade implies a certain amount of noise in the
world. But, as a shrewd man of business, he ought to have
known that industry requires other panegyrists than its mer-
chant-kings to find lasting favor with the multitude.

In short, Aurel knew his father's mind well enough to feel
certain that he would not welcome a poor stepdaughter, but
Aurel trusted to Sylvia's winning charms, to time and his own
faithfulness, in order to gain over his father. He had liked going
to London, for he made a point of carrying out to the letter his
father's business suggestions. But when he found that his stay
was not drawing to a close impatience and longing got the better
of him, and he wrote the letter to Sylvia which was pocketed
on its way to her. Shortly afterwards he was summoned home,
where he was greeted, as usual, with cold friendliness from his
father and feebly-expressed pleasure from his mother. He
gazed into Sylvia's delighted eyes ; he was with her again and
could enjoy her company : what more could he desire ?

Valentine had no delighted eyes for her husband. She was
determined to have a grievance which would enable her to give

1 92 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Nov.,

an extraordinary amount of attention to herself and her hard fate.
Though such women may be scarce, they are to be found. As
head of a large banking-firm, and consequently very rich, Herr
Goldisch was nevertheless a very different person from Herr
Prost. He was very kind-hearted and good-natured, and would
have been quite ready to make life smooth to a sensible wife, or
even to let her get the upper hand. But he could not be expect-
ed to sit down to read French novels with Valentine, or to bother
himself about grasping her " soul." He was more than double
her age, and, being a good man of business, he set much store by
time. With all her lamentations over not being understood, it
was Valentine who .did not take the trouble to understand her
husband, for she failed to see how glad he would have been to
read and talk sense with her. He was kind enough to attribute
her queer fits and her superficiality to her youth.

" But, Tini," he said good-naturedly, " why has my expedi-
tion to New York brought me into such disgrace with you?"

" It wasn't the expedition, but the time you chose for it."

" My dear child, a failure can't be expected to time itself to
your confinement."

" But I might have expected you to time yourself."

" Now, Tini, I told you exactly how it was before I set out,
and left you to decide whether I should go myself or send some-
body else."

" You represented the thing in such dark colors that I was
obliged to persuade you to go."

" I represented it to you as it was, as a question of thousands
of dollars, and that consequently I had a livelier interest than
fifty people I might have sent in seeing to things myself."

Valentine was silent, for she had decided for her husband's de-
parture. She was far too truly her father's daughter to trifle
with the loss of a million of money.

" Well, shall we make peace ? " he asked, giving her his hand.

Instead of taking it she said crossly : " I might have died."

" So might I, my child. Death spares none of us."

" This is really too much," she exclaimed angrily.

" Gently, gently, Valentine," he answered calmly. " You
know perfectly well that my wife, the mother of my child, is by
no means a matter of indifference to me, so I beg of you to spare
me your trifling reproaches." With this he left her. Valentine
got into an extraordinary state of excitement about what she
called to Sylvia her husband's unbearable neglect. " But I will
pay him out," she added.

;88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 193

" What will you do ? " asked Sylvia, frightened.

" I will make him jealous."

" O Tini ! what have you to make him jealous about ? "

" Let him find out what he loses in me when he begins to fear
that I like somebody else."

" God forbid it, Tini ! You mustn't do it, indeed. Think of
some other plan," exclaimed Sylvia, shocked.

" Any means of melting his cold heart is lawful. Be warned
in time, Sylvia, and never marry. Marriage ties you to a selfish
creature who adores you just at first, and treats you with coldness
and indifference ever afterwards. All men are selfish by nature ;
they are selfishness personified."

" Do you think so ? " asked Sylvia, bewildered by this whole-
sale condemnation of the male sex.

" I don't think it : I am certain of it," replied Valentine unhesi-
tatingly.

" I am sure it's very sad for women."

" Of course it is, Sylvia — dreadfully sad," said Valentine in
a melancholy tone. " Women are ill-used, oppressed creatures.
But it is marriage which makes it apparent. A girl has sweet
dreams about souls understanding each other under the spell of
love. Her awakening is frightful. Be thankful that I have
opened your eyes beforehand."

Sylvia was silent, not because she was convinced, but because
she secretly doubted. As for the selfishness of the male kind, it
did not trouble her much, for she knew of one important excep-
tion to the contrary, and she had daily opportunities of seeing
for herself that Valentine was by no means either an oppressed or
an ill-treated wife. Herr Goldisch was all kindness and attention
to her. Valentine's real misfortune was an excess of prosperity.
She had a husband whom she could trust and respect, a child,
and a brilliant position. The troubles of life alone were wanting
to her ; yet man is so constituted that he creates them for himself
in default of real ones. Valentine's small dose of common sense
and her selfish indolence of character made her inclined to har-
bor the wildest notions.

TO BE CONTINUED.

VOL. XXXIV.— 13

194 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. [Nov.,

THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX.

" Tell me, what ancestors were thine ? "

(Farinata degli Uberti to Dante.}

— Inferno, canto x.

TWELVE miles southeast of Vezelay, in France, is the ancient
castle of Chastellux, picturesque and imposing, on the top of a
sharp granite cliff that rises suddenly up from the banks of the
river Cure, which, uniting with the Yonne, sends its waters to
the Seine. Its hoary towers and battlements have a feudal as-
pect that carries you back to the romantic age of chivalry, and
you almost expect to see some venturous knight in his armor,

" With belted sword and spur on heel,"

come pricking over the hills to pay his devoirs to the fair chate-
laine watching his approach from her bower in one of the gray
old turrets. This castle is specially interesting to us as the an-
cestral seat of the gallant Marquis of Chastellux, who took part
in our Revolutionary war, serving as major-general for three years
under the Count de Rochambeau. The memory of the brave
Frenchmen who lent their enthusiastic aid to our cause must al-
ways be dear to Americans, but, with the exception of Lafayette,
we know but little of their family history. It was therefore with
unexpected pleasure I came, as upon the traces of an old bene-
factor, upon the towers of Chastellux, and found means of trac-
ing the lineage of the chivalric race whose banner from time im-
memorial has floated from their walls.

The present castle of Chastellux is more than six hundred
years old. Over a gate in the outer wall is a stone on which is
rudely graven the date of 1240, in which year it was rebuilt
by Artaud III., one of its greatest lords. But the stern don-
jon-keep, which stands apart, melancholy and threatening of
aspect, is much more ancient. In its depths, hewn out of the
rock, are dungeons from which there was once no escape. A
passage through the walls of immense thickness has recent-
ly been found, leading to oubliettes over twenty feet in depth.
Above the prisons were lodged the guards in a hall that
has narrow loop-holes in every direction. The fourth story was I
the armory, which, at the revolution of 1789, still contained hel-

1 88 i.J THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. 195

mets, shields, cuirasses, swords, spears, etc., that had doubtless
been worn by crusaders and knights of the house of Chastellux.
And in the Salle des Gardes may still be seen ancient armor,
sheaves of lances, battered arquebuses and other fire-arms, that
are curious to examine, as well as the immense fire-place and the
armorial ensigns and quarterings of the family and its alliances
from 1131 to 1842, emblazoned on the walls like so many pages
of family reminiscences, kindling the mind of posterity to heroic
deeds. This old tower witnessed the gathering of an illustrious
assembly of bishops, abbots, and lords of Burgundy and Niver-
nais, after the first Crusade, to deliberate upon the affairs of the
country.

The castle, which is triangular in shape, is composed of six
towers connected by buildings lower in height. The largest,
but most modern, is the Tour d'Amboise at the north angle, so
named in honor of Marguerite d'Amboise, wife of Oliver de
Chastellux, who built it in 1592. The square tower of the Hor-
loge contains the family archives. In the wall between the Tour
d'Amboise and the chapel is an ancient mosaic found by the
Count of Chastellux while making excavations in his forest of
Chagnats in the year 1838, together with medals, fragments of
vases and marble columns, among the ruins of a Roman villa
with frescoed walls, a little to the west of an old Roman road
to Autun.

The family chapel was built by Claude de Beauvoir, one of the
most illustrious lords of Chastellux, authorized by lettres patent es
from Jean-sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, who assigned revenues
for its maintenance. This chapel is entered from the second
story, as was not uncommon in ancient castles, probably for in-
creased security of the sacred place. It is dedicated to St. An-
thony. The arms of the founder and his wife are to be seen in
the painted windows.

In the centre of the castle is the court of honor, entered by
pointed archways — silent and gloomy as a cloister, overshadowed
as it is by towers and high walls.

The castle of Chastellux, with its massive walls, drawbridges,
barbicans, battlemented and machicolated towers, and portcullises
"spiked with iron prong," was a genuine fortress. Its some-
what inaccessible position also made it more impregnable, so
that in times of civil disturbances it was always garrisoned as
a post of importance. It stood, too, on the borders of Bur-
gundy, and we find Charles the Bold, in his contests with Louis
XL, authorizing his faithful vassal John III., Sire of Chastellux,

196 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. [Nov.,

to man his castle with as many archers as he could muster.
As late as last century there was still a battery here of four cul-
verins given Louis de Chastellux, governor of Metz, by King
Charles IX.

At the time of the Revolution the mob took possession of the
castle, and with hatchet and hammer made sad havoc among the
carvings, paintings, and family escutcheons ; but it has since been
restored, and now shows but few traces of injury. It is, in fact,
one of the best preserved castles of the country, as well as one of
its most interesting features.

The commune of Chastellux extends to the other side of the
Cure, over which is a bridge of two arches, where King Henry
III. authorized the lord of the manor to collect a toll on all vehi-
cles and animals that crossed, and on all wood floated down the
river — no inconsiderable privilege when we remember how much
fuel is sent down the Seine to Paris from the forests of Morvand,
and how many cattle for its market by land. According to the
book of accounts for 1686, the Count de Chastellux received from
the wood alone that year twenty-five hundred livres.

The parish of Chastellux now contains about seven hundred
inhabitants. The church, which is under the invocation of St.
Germain d'Auxerre, was partly rebuilt by Count Cesar Laurent
de Chastellux in 1822, but no change was made in the ancient
portal, tower, and nave. The chapel to the north is the family
chantry by royal ordinance. Here you see memorial tablets of
its later members, and the mausoleum of Count Louis de Chas-
tellux, of the sixteenth century. Beneath are vaults for burial
purposes, entered from the east, with the dying wish of the patri-
arch Jacob, Dormiam cum patribus meis, over the door. The
counts of Chastellux, however, had anciently the right of burial
in seven churches, in return for services or benefactions render-
ed : the cathedral of Auxerre, the church of St. Lazare at Aval-
Ion, that of the Cordeliers at Vezelay, the abbey church of Cure,
and the parish churches of Quarre-les-Tombes, St. Andre-en-
Morvand, and Chastellux.

Chastellux is not only one of the most ancient baronies of
Morvand, but in feudal times was one of the most wealthy and
powerful. Its domains used to extend five leagues from north to-
south, and three from east to west. There were five mills, three
oil-presses, a lime-kiln, a tilery, five large fish-ponds, twelve small
ones, and about four thousand seven hundred acres of woodland.
Its lords seem to have had the right to coin money, for in 1864
a -mould was found with Loys de Chastellux on one side and Vain-

1 88 1.] THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. 197

ere ou mourir on the other. Another had the family coat-of-arms.
They also held the barony of Quarre-les-Tombes, the viscounty
of Avallon, and eighteen seigniories.

The origin of the family, like so many feudal races, is lost in
the remoteness of time, but it is said to be of Roman descent, as
the name of Chastellux (Castrum Lucii) would seem to warrant.
All through this region are traces of Roman villas and encamp-
ments ; and Autun, a favorite city of Caesar's, was called " the
sister of Rome " by his followers. Such a descent, therefore, is
not improbable. The family has always been remarkable for its
chivalric and military spirit. Its ancient knights were among the
first to take the cross for the Holy Land, and it has borne its
part in all the wars of the country. Its old war-cry was, Mont-
re"al a Sire de Chastellux, in allusion to its alliance and kinship
with the family of Montreal, one of the most illustrious in Bur-
gundy and intermarried with its dukes. It has given France a
marshal, an admiral, several generals, governors of cities and
provinces, and counsellors to its kings. And while remarkable
for its patriotism, it has been equally noted for its devotion to
the church. It has founded abbeys and priories, and built
churches, and bestowed gifts on countless religious houses, and,
by its foundations for perpetual religious services, manifested
great faith in the suffrages of the church and its power to loose
and to bind. Everywhere in Morvand we find the name of Chas-
tellux— in old charters and cartularies of monasteries and manor-
houses, in documents of civil administration, and in records of
alliances with the leading families.

The most ancient member of the family known to us is a
knight named Hugues de Chastellux, who lived in 1070. His
son, Artaud I., bore the title of Sire de Chastellux, as did his de-
scendants till the erection of the barony into a county. Artaud,
with his five sons and his son-in-law, took the cross at V6zelay in
1146, and the next year went to the Holy Land, whence, it is be-
lieved, he never returned. Before his departure he made rich
offerings to the church, and gave to Notre Dame de Regny and
"the brethren who served God therein " the right of pasturing
their swine in his forests, by way of alms for the health and re-
demption of his soul, and that of his wife Rachel (who consents
thereto), and the souls of his ancestors, as set forth in a solemn
act, still extant, drawn up at Avallon in presence of the bishop of
Autun and of Odo, Duke of Burgundy, and other lords.

His son, Artaud II., was equally pious and beneficent. After
his return from Palestine he founded an anniversary service for

198 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. . [Nov.,

his father's soul, and gave lands, woods, and a right in certain
streams to the abbey of Notre Dame de Regny. And out of
gratitude for his safe return he built the abbey of St. Martin at
Chors, or Cure, lower down the river of that name, on the left
bank. All that is now left of this old monastery is a fragment in-
corporated in a dwelling-house, an isolated tower, and the half-
ruined church, now used as a store-house. Its caveaux, where
once reposed Guy de Chastellux and John, his son, besides other
benefactors to the abbey, are now completely empty. The cells,
cloisters, and abbot's house have all disappeared, but the old well
remains that stood in the centre of the inner quadrangle.

Artaud II. died in his native land, and was buried in the col-
legiate church of St. Lazare at Avallon, where Hugues de Chas-
tellux, by his beneficence, had acquired the right of family burial.

When Aubert de Chastellux in 1195 ratified the donations of
his father and grandfather to the abbey of Regny, the grateful
monks made him the present of an ox and a chariot well equipped,
and gave his wife five sous * and each of his four children six
deniers.

Artaud .III., a preux and loyal knight, was honored with the
friendship of St. Louis, whom he accompanied in his crusade of
1248. He founded a convent of Cordeliers at Vezelay in 1232
(six jears after the death of St. Francis), on the spot where St.
Bernard preached the Crusade on Good Friday, 1 146, in presence
of Louis VII. and an immense number of lords and people, and
tore up his own crimson vestment to make crosses for the volun-
teers to the holy cause, among whom was Artaud I., Sire of Chas-
tellux. For this purpose Artaud III. bought the chapel that
Peter, Bishop of 'Marseilles, had already built on this consecrated
spot. Artaud 's departure for the Crusade leaving the friars with-
out any protector, their house was burned down, but he rebuilt
it at his return and chose it as his burial-place, perhaps hoping
this might be a safeguard to the inmates and ensure them the
protection of his descendants.

John I. of Chastellux had only one daughter, named Mar-
guerite, who became a nun at Reconfort ; and when he was dying
he asked to be buried in that convent, in order to be near his fa-
vorite child, and founded for her and himself an anniversary ser-
vice there with a rent of sixty sous. His son Guy was buried in
the abbey of Cure, and so was his grandson, John II., who be-
queathed the abbey one hundred sous tournois for the remedy of

* The sou, from the time of Charlemagne to the reign of Philip I., was of silver. After that
time it was alloyed more and more, and kept decreasing in value till it became a copper coin.

1 88 1.] THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. 199

his soul (1331). This John, when he paid homage to Duke Eudes
IV., grandson of St. Louis, for his estates in the duchy of Bur-
gundy, was created Vicomte of Avallon, and a stronghold was
given him in that town, on the side toward Dijon, which Philippe
le Bon afterwards allowed Claude de Beauvoir to repair and
fortify on condition it 'should be at his service when required, at
a suitable recompense. The family of Chastellux kept possession
of this residence till 1789.

John II. dying without children, the barony of Chastellux
passed to the female line in the person of his sister, the haute et
puissante dame Simone de Bordeaux,* and at her death to her
daughter Laura, wife of John of Bourbon. When Laura died she
requested to be buried in the abbey of Quincy in Champagne, to
which she bequeathed a small sum of money, one hundred pounds
of wax, six oxen, and a car with five wheels well ironed, begging
the abbot and monks to come for her remains and bury her in
their church, where a solemn, service should be offered every
year for her soul. The barony now fell to her sister Jacquette,
dame de Beauvoir, who died soon after, leaving her son William
sire of Chastellux.

William de Beauvoir went to the court of King Charles V.,
where he was warmly welcomed and appointed counsellor and
first chamberlain to the king. He was the second founder, as it
were, of the Cordeliers of Vezelay, whose convent he rebuilt
after it was burned down again in 1390. Beside it he erected a
pavilion for himself, which became known as the Mail de Chas-
tellux, where he often spent some days in retreat. He was so
attached to this convent that he requested to be buried in the
church beside his ancestor, Artaud III. His tomb, which stood
before the high altar, bore the following inscription : " Here lies
the noble and puissant lord, William de Beauvoir, knight, Sire de
Chastellux, Vicomte of Avallon, lord of Bazoches, chamberlain
of the king our sire."

Of William's two sons, George became an admiral in 1420.
He was buried in the cathedral of Auxerre. Claude de Beau-
voir, the next sire, by his judgment, courage, and brilliant
achievements as a soldier, proved himself to be the greatest lord
of Chastellux. He was born in his ancestral castle in 1386, and
placed while a mere boy as a page with Philip of Burgundy,
Count of Nevers. He afterwards entered the service of Duke
Jean-sans-Peur, who made him his counsellor and chamberlain,
and sent him at the head of an armed force against the Arma-

* The castle of Bordeaux was three leagues from Autun, where the ruins are still to be seen.

200 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. [Nov.,

gnacs at Paris, on which occasion the Count of Armagnac was
killed and the party annihilated. King Charles V. invited him
to his court in 1418, made him his counsellor, appointed him mar-
shal of France, and sent him as captain-general against the Eng-
lish in Normandy, where he took the town of Louviers and
otherwise distinguished himself. But his most brilliant feat at
arms was the taking of Cravant, one of the keys of Burgundy,
with only four hundred men, and defending it for five weeks
against the combined forces of Tanneguy du Chatel and the Sire
de La Baume, whom he put completely to rout July 31, 1423,
slaying or taking prisoners four or five thousand men. The
canons of Auxerre, " lords of Cravant from all time," out of
gratitude made him and his successors for ever canons of the ca-
thedral of St. Etienne, with right of sepulture therein, and parti-
cipation in all the prayers, suffrages, and benefits of that church ;
which favor the Sire de Chastellux graciously accepted, thanking
God piously and the dean and chapter most heartily.

The canons, not satisfied with "this recognition of his services,
bound themselves to celebrate the Mass of the Holy Ghost in his
behalf every year on the day after the Assumption. They called
this the Mass of Victory. After his death it was to be changed
into an anniversary service for the good of his soul and the souls
of his relatives.

Claude de Beauvoir was as devout as he was valiant, after the
old knightly fashion. Amid all the bustle and distractions of
camp-life he seldom failed to hear Mass daily, and Pope Euge-
nius IV., by a special brief, allowed him to have a portable altar,
at which it could be celebrated when he pleased. He died at
Chastellux in 1453 at the age of sixty-eight, and was buried in
the cathedral of Auxerre.

One of Claude's daughters, named Pierrette, took the veil at
Crisenon, of which house she became the abbess in 1473. The
abbey of Crisenon was on an island in the river Yonne, belong-
ing to the diocese of Auxerre. It was founded in 1134 by three
lords of that region, and soon became so flourishing that in 1174
the number of nuns had to be limited to one hundred. Several
of its abbesses were of the house of Chastellux, which was
among its benefactors ; among other things bestowing on it the
priory of St. Jean de la Vernhee, founded by a lord of Chastel-
lux in the twelfth century, the ruins of which are still to be seen
on the edge of a forest south of Montcreon, its chapel sacrile-
giously converted into a stable. The abbey of Crisenon in 1790
had dwindled down to nine inmates.

1 88 1.] THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. 201

Claude de Beauvoir's successor was his son, John III. He
served under his suzerain, Charles the Bold, who authorized him
to garrison the fortress of Chastellux with a company of arch-
ers against the forces of Louis XL, which did not prevent that
politic king from appointing him the next year his counsellor
and chamberlain. John III. seems to have married his cousin
in the fourth degree without proper dispensation, though the
ceremony was performed by one bishop in the presence of an-
other; but three years before his death Pope Innocent VIII. was
induced to sanction the marriage, and his three children were
placed under the nappe of the altar at Mass, by way of recogniz-
ing their legitimacy. To effect this sanction, however, the king
himself was obliged to write to the bishop of Lombez, then am-
bassador at Rome, also to Cardinal Benevento, and even to the
pope, declaring that the families of the two parties had " from
all time been good and great."

Claude's son, Philip I., was brought up at the court of Charles
VIII. as enfant d'honneur, which procured him a distinguished
marriage with Barbe de Hochberg, of the house of Baden. Two
of their daughters became nuns. Their grandson, Louis de
Chastellux, first belonged to the household of his aunt, the Duch-
ess of Longueville, but afterwards had several appointments at
the court of Henry II. He restored the church of St. Andre-en-
Morvand, and, like so many of his family, made a foundation for
a perpetual service there. He had the heart of his deceased
wife, Jeanne de La Roere, deposited in the choir in 1549. When
this old church was repaired in 1864 the cognizance of the house
of Chastellux, as seigneur du clocher, was found each side of the
door, with the date of 1101. The entrance is through an old
porch of the twelfth century, with rude carvings around it. This
church, a monument of the piety of the sires of Chastellux,
stands on the culminating point of the village of St. Andre, which
is picturesquely seated on a hill nearly surrounded by the Cure
and the Chaloire, which unite at its base ; the former flowing
calmly out of a narrow ravine bordered by hills that rise almost
perpendicularly six hundred feet, and sweeping with a deep bend
around the height on which the village is built. St. Andr6 was
one of the five parishes belonging to the comt6 of Chastellux,
and all the inhabitants owed their lord military service and
were under his civil jurisdiction.

Oliver, son of Louis de Chastellux, was one of the most dis-
tinguished men of the race. Though a sincere Catholic, he early
joined the party of Henry of Navarre, and was made governor

2O2 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. [Nov.,

of O16ron and Arnay, on account of which Catherine de' Medici
made complaints to his father. After his father's death he went
to Auxerre, attended by Saladin de Montmorillon and a crowd
of other lords, to take possession of the canonicate at the cathe-
dral of St. Etienne, given his ancestor, Claude de Beauvoir. He
did not lose sight of his own castle, but added to its defences,
and built the Tour d'Amboise, so called in honor of Marguerite,
his wife. After Henry of Navarre succeeded to the crown he
made Oliver de Chastellux governor of Cravant on account of
his military services and his fidelity to his cause. As Francois
de Beaucaire, abbot of Regny, and all his monks had joined the
League, they were punished by the confiscation of their tithes
and revenues in Morvand, which were given to Oliver de Chas-
tellux, as well as their seigneurie of Charbonnieres. But the
latter, at least, seems to have been restored to the monks, for we
find it belonging to them in 1740. Of Oliver's children three be-
came nuns. One was abbess of Crisenon, and when the island
was invaded by the Duke of Mayenne, and the nuns were obliged
to flee, she, in the disguise of a peasant, took refuge at Chastellux
till her father routed the duke. His daughter Helen became a
nun of the Visitation at Moulins during the lifetime of St. Jane de
Chantal, who died there, but she was afterwards placed at the
head of the convent established at Avallon in 1646.

The tomb of Oliver de Chastellux may still be seen in the
church of Quarre-les-Tombes.

Hercules, son of Oliver, was created Count of Chastellux by
Louis XIII. in recognition of his father's services. He himself,
however, stood high in the king's favor and received the ap-
pointments of chamberlain, governor of Cravant, etc. His piety
is shown by his foundations in the churches of St. Lazare and of
the Minimes at Avallon. He also built the chapel cf the Virgin
in the village of Pont, near Chastellux, where he founded a Mass
and Vesper service on all the festivals of Our Lady. He was
buried at St. Lazare in Avallon, as well as his wife, Charlotte de
Blaigny. Their tombs, which stood on the left side of the choir,
disappeared in some of the civil disturbances, but were found in
1 86 1 among the rubbish of the church, and placed in the tower
of the Horloge at Chastellux. Of his nine children two became
nuns. His son Cesar Philippe served under the Duke d'Enghien.
Count Cesar, at his accession, did not neglect taking possession
of the canonicate at Auxerre, hereditary in the family. The
counts of Chastellux, on these semi-ecclesiastical occasions, wore
a singular costume. He was booted and spurred, and wore a

1 88 1.] THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. 203

surplice over his secular attire, with a baldric over the surplice.
He had gloves on both hands, and an amice on his left arm. In
his right hand he held a plumed hat, and he had a falcon on his
wrist. He appeared in full chapter thus attired, and took his
oath of fidelity to the church of Auxerre, promising to defend
its rights and to abstain from injuring it. Then the canons con-
ducted him to the choir by the grand entrance and seated him in
his stall. When Louis XIV. came to Auxerre in 1683 the Count
of Chastellux appeared before him, as canon of the church, in the
above-mentioned costume. Some of the courtiers laughed at its
singularity, but the king instantly put a stop to their jests, saying
that any of them ought to feel honored to fill such an office.
This count founded, for the repose of his parents' souls, a Mass
in perpetuity in each of the five parish churches in his county, in
which all of the five cures were to take part, and each one give,
in his turn, a dinner to the rest. After his death his heart was
deposited in the church of the Cordeliers at Vezelay.

His third son, Guillaume Antoine de Chastellux, was intended
for the ecclesiastical profession, but, after the death of his two
older brothers, succeeded to the family estates. He was appoint-
ed governor of Roussillon, and died at Perpignan in 1742. His
wife was the daughter of Chancellor d'Aguesseau. Their chil-
dren all distinguished themselves. Cesar Francois, the oldest, in-
herited the county of Chastellux. The youngest, Jean Francois,
took part in the wars in Germany, and afterwards came to the
United States with the Count de Rochambeau. At his return to
France he published a book entitled Voyages dans r Ame'rique Sep-
tentrionale, and was chosen member of the French Academy. He
seems to have unfortunately imbibed the spirit of the so-called phi-
losophy of the period, but could not help paying now and then a
tribute to the church so dear to his forefathers. In 1787 he mar-
ried the daughter of General Plunkett, an Irish officer in the
Austrian service, whom he met at the watering-place of Spa.
He died the next year, leaving one son, Alfred de Chastellux,
who became member of the Chamber of Deputies from Yonne,
and was appointed chevalier d'honneur to the Princess Adelaide of
Orleans. His mother was, from the time of her marriage, maid
of honor to the Duchess of Orleans, mother of King Louis Phi-
lippe, and followed her to prison and exile. She died in 1815,
greatly regretted by the poor. Henri Cesar, Count of Chastel-
lux after the death of his father, Cesar Frangois, was appointed
chevalier d'honneur to the Princesses Victoire and Adelaide, aunts
of Louis XVI., and his wife was one of their ladies of honor.

204 THE SIRES OF CHASTELLUX. [Nov.,

The count had the spirit of ancient knighthood, and with his
family followed them into exile. After these princesses found a
grave at Trieste he returned to France ; but his castle of Chas-
tellux having been devastated by the revolutionists, he went to
Normandy, where he died. His son Cesar Laurent was worthy
of his descent. In his boyhood he shared his father's exile, and
began his education at Rome, where he embraced the career of
arms. He became afterwards an officer in the .French army un-
der Louis XVI II., and took part in the war with Spain in 1823.
He was subsequently made a peer of France. After the revolu-
tion of 1830 he retired to his estates in Morvand, where he made
great efforts to ameliorate the condition of the laboring classes.
He restored the castle of Chastellux and the parish church,
and built a parsonage on land he gave for the purpose, beyond
which the countess established a school in 1846, kept by the
Sisters of the Cross of St. Andrew. In the year 1849 ne gave
seven acres of land near Quarre-les-Tombes for the monastery of
Sainte Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire. This originally belonged to
the Benedictines, being part of the land given the abbey of Notre
Dame de Regny in 1186 by Regnier de Chastellux, in gratitude
for which the monks sent him two hundred lambs, a palfrey, and
ten sous every year. The name of Pierre-qui-Vire is derived
from a granite dolmen, formerly believed to turn on its base
three times every day at the noontide hour. It stands on a rock
blackened by time, half buried in the earth, in the midst of a vast
forest, the silence and wild solitude of which were then only
broken by the torrent of the Trinclin pouring along the foot of
the cliff on which the monastery is now built. Near by is a time-
honored fountain of the Virgin. When the monks went to take
possession of this secluded spot in 1850 four thousand people
accompanied them across the forests. Their monastery forms a
striking feature of this woodland scene. Near by they have
erected a solemn Way of the Cross in the open air, which you
follow through the cliffs from the bridge of the Gue d'Arfant to
the old dolmen among the oaks once sacred to the Druids, on
which a colossal statue of Our Lady is now enthroned. The
place once more, as in the middle ages, is part of the dower of
Mary.

1 88 1.] CATHOLIC MUSINGS ON "IN MEMORIAM." 205

CATHOLIC MUSINGS ON TENNYSON'S " IN MEMO-
RIAM."

THE " In Memoriam " of Mr. Tennyson has called forth the
greatest display of the varied gifts of his wealthy imagination.
It contains more sentences that will live as classical than any
other poem written in this century, and perhaps more than all
his other productions together. In no one of his poems are
clustered so many sure marks of his poetical genius. Though
Mr. Tennyson comes far short of the ideal, still he shows more
the workings of a Christian mind than any other modern poet of
notable celebrity, either in England or the United States. His
muse rises to the highest he has been taught to believe or feel
as a Christian, and oftentimes it takes its flight far beyond that.
" In Memoriam " is no pagan threnodiac wail over death.

Appreciating to the extent of our feeble capacity this remark-
able product of his genius, we cannot, while admiring as we read
it, help noticing how often the poet's muse fails to reach the height
he might easily have gained— not because of poverty of his
poetical gifts, with which he is so lavishly endowed, but for lack
of that full-orbed faith which is not his, and the brightness of its
light, which would have brought the sadly missed truths within
the horizon of his poetic vision and have added to the greatness
of the poet. But ours is not to depict the poet of the coming
age — an age of increased light of faith and knowledge, when an-
other Dante, in presenting the drama of divine action in human
events, will " make music as before, but vaster."

Let it not be supposed that we are in search after profound
theological lore, or after philosophical proofs strongly knit to-
gether, in these singularly tender songs poured forth from the
soul of a truly great poet ; though it would require an ampler
knowledge of these satisfactorily to settle the grave problems
which he not only frequently touches upon but often most deeply
stirs. We are content, however, to look at his poems from his
own standpoint, and accept the estimate he himself has placed
upon his work ; which estimate does him, in our opinion, less than
scanty justice, and hardly justifies the bringing forth into so
bright a light as he sometimes certainly does questions from the
profoundest depths of the soul, and then to utter not seldom in

206 CA THOLIC MUSINGS ON [Nov.,

reply " wild and wandering cries." Far be from us the wish
to transform the poet into a theologian or a philosopher. Let
the poet be a poet, not less but more ; such is our heart's desire.
But if, in an age of doubt, the poet's vision of truth be too clear
or his speech too firm, he loosens his hold upon it, and will he not
fail in his highest work ? Let, then, his sight be dim and his lips
stammer, so that his muse captivates men's minds to a higher
range of thought and sways their hearts to a nobler love. It is in
this sense the following canto may be accepted as an explanation
of his purpose and as an excuse for his occasionally faltering
muse:

" If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn :

" Her care is not to part and prove ;

She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love :

"And hence, indeed, she sports with words,
But better serves a wholesome law,
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords :

" Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away."

In the proem of this series of elegies, after the invocation begin-
ning with the line :

" Strong Son of God, immortal Love,"
he tells us in the third stanza :

" Thou madest man, he knows not why."

Is this so? What means the Incarnation of the " Son of God,"
and nineteen centuries of light of his divine teachings? But,
thanks to this light, man does know why, and so does the poet,
and he tells us in the very same canto plainly the why :

"Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine."

iSSi.] TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM" 207

Surely, he who can truly say, The will of God and mine are one,
has attained the height of perfection.

" Our wills are ours, to make them thine."

How can we say more, do more, or aim at higher than this?
How, then, can the poet say,

"Thou madest me, I know not why" ?

Does he mean that man's destiny is a secret locked within his
Creator's bosom, and so sublime and noble is the end for which
God made man that, until he please to reveal it, man cannot
know why ? Perhaps. Or does his doubt settle about the motive
of God in the creation of man ? — which the Angel of the Schools
teaches was God's love for his own goodness, that is by its na-
ture diffusive and lives out of itself. The poet's meaning is not
clear. Again, in the same canto he teaches :

" Merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee."

A poet, when he dogmatizes, unless he be inspired like David,
the singer of Israel, or equipped as Dante, creates only confusion
and fails in truth. For grant that merit exists from man to man,
since they stand on a footing of equality ; but why should not
merit also exist " from man to God," when it has pleased God to
become man, and to raise man, by making him by adoption his
child and a participator in his nature, to a certain equality with
himself :

" Here is the source,
Whence cause of merit in you is deserved."*

Otherwise how shall we read the cheering words addressed by
Christ to man : " Well done, good and faithful servant ; enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord ! " " He that glorieth," so runs
the text of Holy Writ, " may -glory in the Lord." To esteem
ourselves less than God has made us is not humility.

It would be a wrong done to our author if we harbored the
thought that he were insensible to the shortcomings of his song.
Listen to an open confession in the last stanzas of this prefatial
poem, and in its last line the breathing of a lowly and most sub-
lime prayer :

* Dante.

2o8 CATHOLIC MUSINGS ON [Nov.,

" Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth ;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise."

We know not in what writer of our day one can find so often
and so perfectly expressed the different states of the soul com-
mon to men who fain would be Christians in this sceptical age,
and the thoughts and feelings to which these give birth, as in
the poems of Alfred Tennyson. The basis of his wide-spread
popularity is real and well deserved, and men of competent in-
telligence look upon him as the prince of poets of the nineteenth
century. He has his religious doubts — doubts deep and strong —
and what earnest man of this age has not, or has not had his mind
clouded with like doubt? We speak not now to Catholics ; for
them to be tormented with such doubts is no mark of earnest-
ness or intelligence, but of delinquency or of culpable mismanage-
ment. He, too, does not hesitate to bring his dismal thoughts to
full utterance and say :

" My will is bondsman to the dark ;
I sit within a helmless bark."

But he does not publish them boastfully or recklessly like

" Some wild poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim."

His voice of sincere confession of darkness usually issues into
an earnest cry for the light :

" But what am I ?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light :
And with no language but a cry."

Alas ! where will this soul, whose " will is bondsman to the dark,"
find the light ? Will the muse of a soul baptized like a neo-pagan
one presume to mock us and say :

" All my hurts

My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds." *

Not so ; this would be making Nature more (which is false) not
less divine (which she is) than man. Without disparaging her

* Emerson, " Musketaquid."

TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM" 209

precious gifts, our poet, urged by a wound which no spade, or
bird, or flower has the virtue to heal, exclaims :

" And all the phantom, Nature, stands —
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own—
A hollow form with empty hands."

Nor can the sorrow of his loss be drowned in forgetfulness born
of commonplace :

" One writes, that ' Other friends remain,'
That ' Loss is common to the race ' —
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain."

" And what to me remains of good ?
"And unto me no second friend."

But what mysterious power upholds the poet ? He dimly ex-
presses it :

" My Arthur ! whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run."

It is not nature, or the Stoic's lesson got by rote, but the sweet
hope of meeting his friend, and their mutual recognition in the
ampler future life, that secretly sustains the almost vacant long-
ings of his soul in its bitter grief at his present loss, as we shall
see. Let the poet recount the steps by which this height was
reached. On Christmas eve, he tells us,

"Then echo-like our voices rang ;

We sung, though every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year : impetuously we sang :

" We ceased : a gentler feeling crept
Upon us : surely rest is meet :
' They rest,' we said, ' their sleep is sweet,'
And silence follow'd, and we wept."

To know that the loved ones who are gone before us sleep —
to know this and nothing more is a comfort, but a very slender
comfort : a comfort too slight to still the tenderest and deepest
yearnings of the soul and the poet says properly :

"And silence follow'd, and we wept."
VOL. xxxiv.— 14

210 CATHOLIC MUSINGS ON [Nov.,

On this holy eve a diviner faith solicits their souls, and brings to
perfect birth nobler and more comforting truths, which find their
way to their lips and expression in his song :

" Our voices took a higher range ;

Once more we sang : « They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change ;

" ' Rapt from the fickle and the frail

With gather'd power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.' "

Well may the poet, after such a spontaneous and triumphant
outburst of divine faith, conclude, not with silence and in tears,
but in nobler tones of joy which until now has not been heard
from his mournful muse :

" Rise, happy morn ! rise, holy morn !

Draw forth the cheerful day from night :
O Father ! touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born."

Other things may be gathered from this and other poems of
Mr. Tennyson, some favorable, and markedly so as displaying Ca-
tholic instincts, and some things vague, doubtful, and at times, but
rarely, uncatholic. Uncatholic — we do not say unchristian, for
it can be said, in excuse, where there are no defined limits or cri-
terion of divinely revealed truth, unless it be what each one in
his own eyes sees fit to hold, who can say where Christianity be-
gins or where it ends ? But we note distinctly, and at the same
time with thanks, that, unlike our Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson,
Whittier, because better instructed or less swayed by bias, per-
haps, he does not allow himself to indulge, as we regret to say
they do, in circulating oft repeated and as oft refuted calumnies
against the Catholic faith or the church. We do not remember
one instance in contemporary non-Catholic poets of their fear-
lessly stepping forward, as he does, against fanaticism, in favor
of both. Acknowledging in the " St. Simeon Stylites " of the
poet a certain appreciation of much of what is Catholic, neverthe-
less the attempt of his muse to depict in proper colors the cha-
racteristics of a Catholic saint is, in our opinion, a failure. This
is not to be wondered at, for Christianity, as he has been led to

1 8 8 1 .] TENN YSON* s l I!N MEMORIAM. " 211

understand it, furnishes him with no type of human sanctity by
which he could interpret his superhuman excellence. By super-
human we do not mean non-human, because superhuman, in a
Catholic sense, means supremely human, divinely human.

Though we have not said the thousandth part of what we
have to say on this singular poem, and have but touched upon
a few of the elegies which it contains, we should not do their
author justice if we passed without noting the fact that he does
not hesitate to smite, with all his strength and scorn, the oppo-
nents of Christianity, whether pantheist or atheist. Here is one
of his blows aimed at the latter foes :

" I trust I have not wasted breath :
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ;

" Not only cunning casts in clay :

Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me ? I would not stay.

" Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things."

Our pleasant task is ended, though it has not been the more
genial one to cull the flowers and precious gems that spring luxu-
riantly on every page and in almost every line of these songs.
Ours has been rather to appreciate, enjoy, and admire these gift's,
as far as our capacity allowed, in our solitude, and to touch
lightly and mostly on a few points when we have felt envious
that he who had done so much for us should not have done,
what he might have done, all.

212 KELT AND TEUTON. [Nov.,

KELT AND TEUTON.

ONE of the most widely received ideas of the day is that
"English" and "Anglo-Saxon" are synonymous terms. For
many reasons an inquiry into the validity of this opinion would
prove interesting. It so happens that the modern Irish have
never been entrusted, in Ireland, with self-government ; it so hap-
pens that the English have built up in England a great and sub-
stantially free state which has challenged the admiration and
hatred of the world. Some admire the government ; others do
not. De Lolme devoted a book to showing the working of the
constitution ; Ledru-Rollin had nothing but condemnation for
what he regarded as an unmitigated oligarchy. However, the
many grand qualities of the English people are admitted on all
hands. It would be folly to deny them. Whence came this peo-
ple ? The average answer of the present day would be, " from
the Teuton race."

Is the Kelt, then, by nature an inferior being ? Compare
England with Ireland, we are told. The comparison is, of
course, to the advantage of England. But is it fair?

To be fair we should see, not what the Irish as a people are
to-day, but the best development they reached in an independent
state. They touched the highest point, most likely, just before
the invasion of the Danes and three hundred years before the
coming of the English. At that time they possessed as many of
tbe comforts of every-day life as the English of the same epoch.
If we consult the candid historians of each country we shall find
that their houses, their food, their system of agriculture, and the
few rudiments of the mechanical arts they had attained to were on
some points better, and on some worse, in the respective states.
Look, too, at the Brehon code of laws, which had existed among
the Irish from time immemorial, modified by the introduction of
Christianity, but substantially the same. Those laws embodied
a gentleness which men living under a harsher system have al-
ways struggled for and are just now obtaining. While in this
respect — freedom from capital punishments — they will compare
favorably with the code in force in England one hundred years
ago, it also testifies to the character of the people in a more im-
portant way. In an independent state harsh laws. are the out-

1 88 1.] KELT AND TEUTON. 213

come of evil living. Now, while the face of Irish history presents
a constant succession of crimes, in private life they must "have
been very different, else mild laws would have been insufficient
to sustain the fabric of society. The missionary spirit of the isl-
and, and its fame as the home of learning and religion, during
that epoch of history, are too well known to need any comment.
Taking all these facts into consideration, it would not be far
from right to say that the civilization of the Irish was not infe-
rior to the civilization of the English of the same age.*

That civilization did not abide. When the English came they
found the country in great disorder. The Danes had been ex-
pelled, and the sparks that had been trampled down were begin-
ning to glow again. But the incessant invasions of three hun-
dred years had left marks not to be easily effaced. However, it
does not fall within the scope of the present paper to discuss the
causes and nature of that decline. All that has to be shown is
that a high comparative degree of civilization was once attained
by the Keltic race in an independent nation.

To say that this race was proud, factious, tribal, and often
engaged in civil strife is merely to describe the state of that
epoch in all lands. The same objection might have been urged
by Xerxes against the old Greeks. It argues no failure in gov-
ernmental ability, except one — fatal in an age of force. During
a civil war a foreign power has an opportunity to subjugate the
country. And this was the actual result in the case of the Irish.
It happened that a neighboring power — England — was strong
and united, while the Irish were weak and divided ; hence the
present relations of those countries.

But suppose that no foreign power had interposed, or sup-
pose that the Irish had united, as they had done after many years
in the case of the Danes, and that they had expelled the hand.ful
of English who were gaining a foothold in the land. Can we not
conceive a fair civilization growing out of the beginnings that
then existed ? If it had thus developed, with only the normal in-
fluences of other nations acting upon it, it would have been a
singular, as Mr. Froude justly says, but nevertheless a better
development for the Irish themselves than that which they have
been forced through. Fatal as civil war is, it is better than con-
quest by a foreign power. If Darius had conquered Greece, and
thus barred off that independent interval between his invasion

* Consult Cusack's History of Ireland. This work is valuable especially for the reason
that it brings into the compass of a popular handbook many of the researches into the civiliza-
tion of the ancient Irish.

214 KELT AND TEUTON. [Nov.,

and the coming of the Romans, the name of Greece would have
been little more familiar to us than the names of Persia's appen-
dages. A distracted France is better than a dead Poland.

Let us leave these speculations on the what-might-have-been,
and turn to actual facts. England is amply recognized as a
great nation, and the greatness of that nation is generally re-
ferred to Teutonic sources. Writers who differ on thousands of
other points are all agreed upon this. And those English histo-
rians— Mr. Freeman and his younger followers, Canon Stubbs
and Mr. Green — whom the world credits as the best constitu-
tional authorities on the history of their country have given
a weighty import to a vague popular belief. What is here said
is not meant to be derogatory to Mr. Freeman in any other
respect than as to his attitude towards this theory of race. In-
deed, on questions involving pure matters of history — such as the
actions of men in this or that age — he has exhibited a notable im-
partiality. By a close study of chronicles and state papers he
has cleared English history of many errors and hasty false-
hoods. But the time has now come when the scientific spirit of
the age questions the supreme authority of old chronicles ; and
the conflict between what those old chronicles say and the con-
clusions of anthropology is so sharp and violent on this matter
of the ancestry of the English people that one or other must be
discredited.

The opponents of the Teuton theory have not hesitated to at-
tack it even on its favorite ground. When the chronicle of Gildas,
on which so much reliance is placed, is shown to be untrust-
worthy, a shock is administered to the whole line of annalists.
And now, in addition to Dr. Nichols' laborious work, The Pedi-
gree of the English People, in which the above result was obtained,
we have Mr. Skene, in his Keltic Scotland, showing, on purely
documentary evidence, that the Teutons do not predominate in
that section of the island. But the field here is so vast that it will
be many years before any sweeping conclusion can be formed.
Nevertheless, this aspect of the question will not be neglected ;
and as the historical inquiry will seem more valid to many than
scientific observation of existing peoples, we may expect to see
works of this kind appear from time to time. They will be con-
firmatory, at all events.

Now let us see what the scientists have to say upon the sub-
ject. Anthropology, the science that divides races by noting
their physical peculiarities, is now admitted by the best philolo-
gists to be a more decided test than language. Chronicles upon

1 88 1.] KELT AND TEUTON. 215

this subject are probably weaker than either, on account of their
inherent nature. Every one will have to form his own estimate
when they come into conflict with anthropology. The task I
have set myself is merely to show what anthropology reveals as
to the ancestry of the English people.

Professor Huxley is a writer whose philosophical opinions
have deservedly found few followers ; but as a scientific authority
he will not be disputed by many. More than nine years ago he
showed that the population of western Europe may be broadly
divided into two types, the dark and the fair. It had till then
been popularly supposed that the Kelts were dark. But he
pointed out that all ancient authors were agreed that Kelt and
Teuton were alike fair, and it then remained for him to show
whence came the dark race. But of this dark type there are two
races, perfectly distinct from each other. One — the Silurians —
have long and narrow faces and heads, high noses, and frequently
retreating chins and foreheads ; the other — the Ligurians — have
short and round heads and faces, small and fleshy noses, and fore-
heads round and inclined to bulge. The first are found among the
Basques on the slopes of the Pyrenees, as the Silures in Wales,
and were generally considered to form the dark stock of Britain.
This view is partially adopted by Mr. Grant Allen.* The Ligu-
rians were estimated by M. de Boisjoslin in his work, Les Peuples
de la France, to form ten millions of the French. They have lost
their original speech, but the name is preserved in the Ligurian
Alps and the river Loire, formerly Ligur. The Logrians were
a British tribe at the time of the Saxon invasion ; and the name
Liogairne occurs in Ireland. These Logrians were most likely
identical with the continental Ligurians. Professor Phillips,
quoted in Mr. Grant Allen's article, describes the exact dark type
of the race, which he found in Yorkshire and some of the eastern
counties. The conjecture has been hazarded that they occur
most often in the east, while the Silurians or Basques are chiefly
found in the west. Mr. Larminie is inclined to add another race,
but this is rather hypothetical. The Mongolian or Eskimo type,
descended from the Cave-men of the glacial epoch, are too far off
for anything certain to be known about them, and the present
complications of the British race are quite sufficient.

Mr. Larminie shows how these facts bear upon the Teuton
theory in such concise sentences that I cannot do better than
quote him :

* Fortnightly Review, October, 1880.

216 KELT AND TEUTON. [Nov.,

"... We see that the Britons were composed of at least three races,
two of them dark, the Silurians and Ligurians, and one fair, the Kelts. Mr.
Freeman tells us that these people were exterminated by Teutons in the
fifth and sixth centuries throughout the greater part of England. But Pro-
fessor Huxley is still able to divide our population into two principal types,
the dark and the fair. Now, if the Teutons, who were undeniably fair, com-
pletely destroyed the earlier races, how comes it that there is a dark type
in England at all ? The dark types, by their presence amongst us, tell the
story of their own survival, and testify to a fact which it might otherwise
have been hard to prove. The true Kelt, being himself fair, can with diffi-
culty be distinguished from the Teuton in our existing population ; but the
dark Briton having survived, we cannot suppose that the fair Briton per-
ished ; so that while the whole of our dark stock is non-Teutonic, so also is
perhaps one-half of our fair stock, while only the remaining half of the
latter is really of Teutonic descent." *

The word Keltic is now used to designate the composite pre-
Saxon race. With this understanding Mr. Grant Allen, in the
article already quoted, has been able, by studying the English
people as they are, to map off the Keltic area of England as
follows :

In the southwest it extends along the southern coast far
enough to include Hampshire.

Many west and west-midland counties are either Keltic or
half-Keltic in blood.

The important northwestern counties are chiefly peopled by
Kelts.

In addition to the original foundation of Keltic population,
the western counties have received continual reinforcements of
the same element from Wales. Also, into the great manufactur-
ing towns of the north, and into London, there has flowed a con-
stant stream of Kelts from Wales, Ireland, and the highlands of
Scotland. He estimates that the population of London is re-
cruited to the extent of thirty per cent, from English counties,
such as Devon and Somerset, that are intensely Keltic.

Mr. Larminie brings philology and history to fortify the
position of the scientists :

" It is clear that the Teutonic conquest of these islands was much less
complete than the previous Keltic conquest. In the earliest times of
which we know anything the Keltic speech had penetrated into every cor-
ner of Britain and Ireland, and had completely driven out the earlier
tongues. The races, however, who spoke those tongues had not been de-
stroyed. Now, English, in spite of its advantages as the language of a great
civilized empire, has but recently replaced Keltic in Cornwall, has as yet

* Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1881.

i88i.] KELT AND TEUTON. 217

failed to establish- itself in many parts of Scotland and Ireland, and has
hardly gained ground at all in Wales. In connection with these facts let
us note at what a late period Wales was finally conquered, the Saxons even
under Egbert being unable to accomplish the task. But if all England up
to the Welsh mountains had been occupied by a homogeneous Teutonic
population, can we believe that Wales would not have been at once over-
whelmed, and that the Keltic name and language would not have been
completely obliterated ? The Saxons were evidently not strong enough
really to colonize the western half of England ; they were able only to con-
quer it and occupy detached positions sufficient for that purpose. With
regard to the west generally, we may sum up by saying, in Professor Hux-
ley's words, that it is probably more Keltic, as a whole, than Ireland itself."*

Assuming, as we have now abundant right to do, that the
ethnological topography is to a certain extent settled, we may
pursue the inquiry by examining what each section of the British
Empire has contributed towards building up the fabric of its
greatness. I may be met at the outset by the objection that, no
matter what part of England we take as an illustration, Teuton
blood has supplied the brain and energy which went into the
creation of her wealth and mind. Why ? Certainly the original
Saxon has not achieved much in his own country. In truth, no
reason can be given. And ethnology is a vain study, if the con-
clusions of anthropologists can be overruled by such an empirical
assertion.

In war, both by sea and land, the Scotch and Irish are allow-
ed to be unsurpassed by any other nations. The northwestern
counties, in manufacture ; the west, including Liverpool, in com-
merce ; the southwest, extending along the southern coast to
Hampshire, in agriculture — all these represent the energy and en-
terprise of the Kelt in those respective spheres of human en-
deavor.

This, in the light of Professor Huxley's remarks, is so obvious
that it need not be dwelt upon. But how about that widest
field for the work of the human brain which, now that it has such
extensive development, is also held to be the highest? — I mean
literature. Can the Kelt hold his own with the Saxon here ?

The answer hitherto has been, no. The Kelt, it was said, was
able to make sporadic efforts of great brilliancy. In song- writ-
ing, for instance, the Kelts were allowed the highest mark. The
best song-writers in English literature were born in Scotland and
Ireland. But when the Kelt ventured into the more continuous
and grander form of the epic and the drama his endurance

* Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1881.

218 KELT AND TEUTON. [Nov.,

failed. The reason alleged is the lack of force in mental cha-
racter. Is this so ? May not the absence of great works of art
in Scotland and Ireland be accounted for on much humbler and
better comprehended grounds ? Keltic France possesses such
works. Therefore the absence of them in Scotland and Ireland
cannot be attributed to any serious defect in mental character.
The true cause of barrenness was want of demand. The drama
had no national capital in either Scotland or Ireland to exhibit
itself in ; and both the epic and the drama would have proved
too ponderous works for countries always struggling for their
rights. Subject countries have never produced epics and dramas.
The necessities of their situation and the nature of their exis-
tence straiten the national efforts at expression to the short
and stirring song. Subject countries have produced the most
and the best song-writers. Let us now examine whether, under
more favorable circumstances, the Kelt was able to produce great
works of an abiding character.

The apotheosis of Anglo-Saxonism is probably reached by M.
Taine in his English Literature. And it is rather singular to no-
tice, in this connection, how little of the Anglo-Saxon talk is done
by true Anglo-Saxons. Professor Huxley and Mr. Matthew Ar-
nold, who strenuously combat the idea of Teuton superiorit}^,
are both true Anglo-Saxons ; while it is left for a Kelt like M.
Taine to give the most continuous and emphatic expression to
the theory. According to him, every eminent English author
from Chaucer to Tennyson is but an insular development of
Germanic forms of thought. How such a theory could prove
palatable to the proud English is a mystery. It only concerns us,
however, to ask, is it true ?

If it is, then those authors must have been born in East Eng-
land. Now, I have taken the trouble to make out a list of Eng-
lish authors, selecting only those who produced a marked im-
pression on the thought of their country. Taking the counties
in which they were born as an indication of the prevailing stock
from which they came, and of course including Scotland, Ireland,
and Wales on the Keltic side of West England, East England
was credited to the Teutons, and London was marked neutral.
The result is this : the West has one hundred and eight, London
thirty-four, and the East forty-nine. Or, again, let us take those
authors who, in M. Taine's opinion, embodied the strongest es-
sence of the Teuton spirit, and about whose great names he con-
structs his whole book.

Of these the West claims : Ben Jonson (Scotch parentage),

1 88 1.] KELT AND TEUTON. 219

Shakspere (Warwick), Joseph Addison (Wilts), Swift (Ireland),
Henry Fielding (Somerset), Tobias Smollett (Scotland), Robert
Burns (Scotland), Wordsworth (Cumberland), Byron (Scotland),
Walter Scott (Scotland), Charles Dickens (Portsea), Thackeray
(a Keltic name), Macaulay (Scotland), and Carlyle (Scotland).

London has Chaucer, Milton (whose father came from an
eastern family, but whose mother, as Dr. Johnson informs us, was
Welsh), Defoe, and Pope.

The East claims John Dryden (Northampton), Samuel Rich-
ardson (Derby), and Alfred Tennyson (Lincoln).

The above is the result, if we accept M. Taine as a critic who
has taken pains to estimate correctly the merits of the men he
dealt with, and has given them their true positions. Many will
not be inclined to do so ; they will think he exalts some and
passes over scores unjustly ; but however a candid man may look
at it, he will find that the Keltic parts of England have at least
contributed their share to the intellectual wealth of the country.
In one department the Teutons can claim a just predominance :
out of the thirty most famous theologians the East gave twenty,
London four, and the West only six.

If the Keltic theory is made out important results may be ex-
pected. But we should be cautious in accepting one theory as
against another, especially when that other is old and well estab-
lished. And apart from the fact that no conclusive reply has yet
come from the upholders of the Teuton theory, opposed to an-
thropology will be found the still accredited chronicles, the great
fact of language, and an idea which has become a popular tradi-
tion. As to the objection on the score of language, among others
Mr. Matthew Arnold has recently attempted to show the kinship
between the forms of phrase and imagination to be found among
the Kelts and in various English writers. But in this he was
rather unfortunate, his results being not exactly in accordance
with the results obtained by the anthropologists. And it should
be understood that no arbitrary line can be drawn so as to de-
signate this county Keltic and that Teutonic. The utmost that
can be said, even accepting the scientific view, is that a predomi-
nance of one or other is found. It will in the end be decided, in
my opinion, that Kelt and Teuton enter into the existing popula-
tion of the British Islands in something like equal quantities. At
all events the Kelts, in asking a recognition at the hands of the
Teutons, should not depreciate the merits of the latter.

And the recognition which the Irish Kelts are seeking from
their English brothers — a recognition of their capacity for self-

22O BOURDALOUE. [Nov.,

government — will be hastened by the present agitation of the
question in England. The misgovernment of Ireland has never
had its root in any great want of justice in the English people —
a fact testified to by the frank admission of the iniquity of those
seven hundred tyrannical years. The complacent assumption of
superiority on the part of the English, by virtue of their sup-
posed Teutonic descent, is the real cause. The Kelts, in their
eyes, were an inferior people, not worthy of constitutional gov-
ernment ; and though the strong hand was to be deprecated, it
was the only means to keep them in order. But now, when we
find that their thinkers are beginning to show them that this
same despised Keltic race is most likely the prevailing element
of the English people, their complacency will be mightily shaken
and a kinder feeling will grow out of this result. A decided
anti-Teutonic sentiment has for some time animated a large sec-
tion of the English, as we may see by consulting such popular
writers of the past as Cobbett, and they may be trusted to push
the new Keltic theory into popularity.

BOURDALOUE.

THE only portrait of Bourdaloue was taken after his death.
The calm, placid face and closed eyes gave occasion to a tra-
dition that he whom Lord Brougham considered the greatest
preacher of modern times delivered his immortal sermons with
the pose and the expression represented in the picture. The en-
graving prefixed to Pere Brettoneau's edition of the Ouvrages of
Bourdaloue has the motto : Et loquebar de testimoniis tuis in con-
spectu regum, et non confundebar : " I spoke of thy statutes before
kings, and I was not ashamed " — an admirable summary of the
career of the king of preachers and the preacher of kings.

Louis Bourdaloue was born at Bourges, August 20, 1632, just
eight years before the birth of Louis XIV., whose reign he
chiefly was to immortalize ; for such is the severity of modern
criticism that it is now held that of all the glories of the Augustan
age of French literature only Bourdaloue and Moliere perma-
nently abide. The fearful tests of time, change, novelty, fashion,
enthusiasm, and indifference have been successively applied to

1 88 1.] BOURDALOUE. 221

the preacher and the dramatist, and both have survived them.
Nor is criticism abashed at thus dividing the laurel between the
priest and the player, for it judges only of the indestructible ele-
ment in the works of each. Bourdaloue held very stringent
views regarding the dramatic profession, and it is probably
owing to these views and their fearless expression that the drama
of the age of Louis XIV. was ennobled with the masterpieces of
Corneille and Racine, and that comedy was taught that it might
be laughable and at the same time pure. What criticism has
chief regard to in Bourdaloue is the presence of pure intellec-
tual power, dominating the imagination and the feelings, and
shining with the steady lustre which we instinctively associate
with the permanence of truth. In pure intellect Bourdaloue
stands as the representative man of his era ; of sensibility, natural
and spontaneous, Moliere is the master.

It must be said in fairness that the judgment which assigns to
Bourdaloue the highest place not only in the eloquence of the
pulpit but in the oratory of modern times is an English judg-
ment, or rather a legal decision, resulting from a,n .examination,
criticism, and sifting which no other preacher, 4^, such', c&n stand.
For it is manifestly trying to apply to a sermon '$fr& tests which
hold good in regard to a merely theological thesfs.v A sermon is
infinitely more than a dry, scientifically constr$et£<i|3js's1ertation.
The very nature of a sermon implies eloquence.- ,. It cannot be
handled as a judicial opinion, or a paper read before a learned so-
ciety, or an historical essay. Now, in the opinion of Brougham,
this is the unique excellence of Bourdaloue : that he is supremely
judicial, and yet of mighty eloquence. Lord Erskine approaches
in this power the illustrious preacher of the Augustan age of
France. Erskine is now acknowledged to have been the greatest
advocate that ever addressed an English jury. Another point of
resemblance between these two advocates — for Bourdaloue was
God's advocate — is that there is no record of the manner in
which they prepared their discourses. There is not a hint about
Erskine's preparation, except that implied in his having always
been ready. Bourdaloue preached for thirty-seven years, and,
says La Bruyere, who spent twenty years in preparing his little
book, the Caracteres, each sermon was better than the last. Yet
during that time he was six hours daily in the confessional, had
an attraction for attending sick-calls which amounted to a divine
passion, and held intimate social relations with all the great men,
authors, painters, and warriors, of his famous era. When did
he study ? The quotations from the Fathers were made from

222 BOURDALOUE. [Nov.,

memory, yet they have all been verified almost to the phrasing.
There is material for a dozen sermons in almost every paragraph
of his discourses, which are, nevertheless, marvels of unity.
Even as we have his orations, it is clear that they are only out-
lines and drafts. He had no models of that style of preaching
which the modern pulpit owes to him. Before him the sacred
chair had degenerated into a place for the reading of the pettiest
moral essays. The Protestant Reformation and Erasmus had
thrown ridicule upon the philosophy and the theology of the
schools — a ridicule the injustice and ignorance of which Bourda-
loue demonstrated.

It seems to us that a mighty fountain whence Bourdaloue
drew his inspiration was the study of the Christian Fathers. His
mind had an affinity to theirs. Most of us read the Fathers in
a scrappy, unconnected way, perchance only for their doctrinal
value in controversy. We limit our acquaintance with them to
the extracts in a handbook of dogmatic theology. We know
what they say about confession, or the Eucharist, or baptism ; but
knowledge of this kind is of little use outside controversy, and
even in that such half-knowledge is unavailing, as an opponent
may place his " scrap " from patristic sources alongside of our
scrap and confuse us. To realize what St. Cyril of Jerusalem
taught about baptism or the Eucharist we must read at least the
Catechism entire. To appreciate St. Cyril of Alexandria's witness
to the divinity of our Lord we must study his commentary on
St. John. We must read the whole Dialogue with Trypho to grasp
the grand faith of St. Justin Martyr. And in proportion as we
absorb the spirit of the Fathers we grow into a perception of the
strength of Bourdaloue. That antique majesty is not the same as
Athanasius', but akin to it. That wonderful analysis of text is
Augustinian, and in the denunciation of sin we hear the voices
of Ambrose and Chrysostom. But in all Bourdaloue never loses
his own individuality. It is not Ambrose rebuking Theodosius,
but Bourdaloue reproving Louis. It is not the corrupt court of
Arian emperors that awakens the zeal of the new Chrysostom.
His genius seizes the spirit and the principles of the Fathers and
applies them to his own day. Bossuet read Homer before
preaching. Bourdaloue needed nothing to fire his mind, which
lived in calm. The Eagle of Meaux loved the tempest and storm
of ideas, the mountain-peaks of thought, and the sublimities of
imagery. The effects of Bossuet's eloquence were astonishment,
rapture, applause ; of Massillon's, delight and tears ; but it was
truer of Bourdaloue than of any other orator, before or since

1 88 1.] BOURDALOUE. 22$

him, that " vanquished senates trembled as they praised." And
the fear was that supreme one which comes from profound con-
viction and unanswerable and inexorable demonstration.

It is interesting to note that amid the variant opinions re-
garding Bourdaloue in the most brilliant and intellectual court
that Europe has ever seen, one impression was general — that
the great preacher was utterly indifferent to the opinion itself,
whether it was flattering or the reverse. La Bruyere, who was
a very keen man, saw that this indifference, whether arising from
a moral or only a natural cause, was, in a man of Bourdaloue's
transcendent powers, the simple result of his greatness. He was
too great to be proud, or touchy, or heated about reputation.
Bossuet had a severe struggle to keep himself from being carried
away by his commanding fame. Fenelon's holy humility is pro-
verbial. But Bourdaloue made no pretensions to humility or to
extraordinary piety, though it was said truly of him that his life
was the best refutation of the Provincial Letters. He was simply
great. Courtly preachers never forgave the king for saying that
he would rather hear an old sermon of Bourdaloue's than their
new ones. And Louis was more than a mere king whose whims
are laws. He fully deserves his title of Great. To Bourdaloue,
in the truest and deepest sense, the king and court were only
men and women with souls to save. Among his hearers were
men destined to earthly immortality, but he thought only of the
life everlasting. That handsome, grave gentleman who thrilled
with every poetical allusion was, to Bourdaloue, Jean Racine,
whose talents only imposed upon him a stricter inquiry when
the divine Trader came. He spoke to Turenne and Conde, to
Corneille and Boileau, to Puget and Claude Lorraine, to Colbert
and D'Aguesseau, but to them as men, as sinners, and as Chris-
tians. He had not one style for the poor and the unlettered, and
another for the courtier and litterateur. He was as self-possessed
in the pulpit of Versailles as on the altar of a village church.
The blaze of diamonds, the pomp of arms, the splendor of king-
ship, of art, and of letters ; the overpowering consciousness to a
weak man that all this grandeur was forgotten in hearing him
speak, and that he, for a season, was a king greater than Louis in
the sway over mind, imagination, and feeling, never disturbed his
great soul, which judged men and all things by the standard of
the cross of Christ. Massillon burst into tears when he ascend-
ed the pulpit to preach the funeral oration of the Grand Monarch,
and beheld assembled the pride and glory of France. Flechier
was so agitated at the obsequies of Turenne that he trembled

224 BOURDALOUE. [Nov.,

violently. Cicero fainted when he tried to deliver his oration for
Milo. With all his animal courage, amazing effrontery, and pre-
tended sincerity, Luther could hardly articulate a word before an
assembly of peaceful and gentle ecclesiastics who simply asked
him to explain and defend his opinions. The serenity of Bour-
daloue marked a soul that lived in a sphere above merely earthly
interests. In the zenith of his fame — which, indeed, never had a
setting — he longed for his cell and the companionship of his
brethren of the Society of Jesus. But, as if God intended to
mark him out as a constant teacher, he was refused permission to
retire from the desk of truth, and he died, in almost the very
exercise of his sacred ministry (May 13, 1704), after an illness of
only two days.

Cardinal Maury (Essai sur r Eloquence de la Chavie] does not
assign the first rank to Bourdaloue, on account of the great
Jesuit's departure from the French idea of oratory; ably defended
by the cardinal as consisting in a series of majestic and moving
pictures. Cardinal Maury holds that the supreme triumph of
eloquence is in stirring the passions, and he seems to hold that in
bringing about this result the appeal to the imagination is the
most availing. The astonishing effects of a powerful delineation
are dwelt upon with great earnestness, and the student is coun-
selled to cultivate all the imaginative power he has, aiding it by
the study of poetry and other such literature. We readily grant
that no one can be a great orator without a great imagination,
but it seems to us that, however acceptable and even necessary
this view may be to Frenchmen, it has never been the one insist-
ed upon in English rhetorical training. What, therefore, Cardi-
nal Maury regards as a defect in Bourdaloue is, in our eyes, a
merit. We are fonder of proof, reasoning, calm illustration and
argument than of grand pictures, which, if not done by a master-
hand, are sure to seem daubs. Bourdaloue's sermon on the Pas-
sion is universally admitted to be the highest uninspired utter-
ance on that subject of which written record remains — the very
retort of the argument that the cross is a stumbling-block and a
scandal, carrying St. Paul's declaration to its completest human
expression. Now, tableaux of the Crucifixion do not permit that
reach of thought. We have a most powerful portraiture of the
Agony in the Garden by Cardinal Newman (unquestionably the
most striking tableau, in Maury 's sense, in the sermon-literature
of the English language), but it does not bring one's intellect into
subjection, as Bourdaloue's Passion sermon, which avoids the de-
tails of the Crucifixion in order to fix the mind, soul, heart, and

1 88 1.] BOURDALOUE. 22$

the whole being on the two simple points — the cross is the
power and the wisdom of God.

The French preachers excel in portraiture ; and as this grace
of eloquence possesses a powerful attraction for the people, its
sedulous cultivation is enjoined. The language itself, copious as
it is, and fitted for the expression of the highest metaphysical
speculation, lends itself most readily to description. It is pre-
eminently the language of history and romance ; and if the form
which its epic poetry is forced to take seems to us unfavorable
to harmony, the poetical thought is there. Gibbon hesitated long
whether to write his history in French or in English. The grace
and expressiveness of their beautiful tongue appear equally in the
romances and in the driest philosophy of the French. The
charm of Malebranche's style won him more disciples than his
logic. There is no people so quick as the French to understand
and to appreciate an excellence foreign to their own. To read
their translations is a pleasure not often given to the reading of
the original, so true are they to the thought, so appreciative of
the sentiment. It is this sympathy with intellect and sensibility
that makes France, after all, the idol of the world, and her lan-
guage the form in which every intellectual man secretly wishes
his own thoughts to be enshrined. How tender and sympathe-
tic in tone are even the criticisms that condemn ! How bravely,
for example, does Cardinal Maury strive to render justice to the
unspeakably dull sermons of Hugh Blair ! The Scotch divine
knew too much about rhetoric to write naturally, and he ground
out orations on the principle of a grammarian arranging senten-
ces for parsing.

The best sermon-literature of France, viewed as to style and.
expression, thus runs in portraiture, panegyric, and imagery.
What a noble gallery has not Bossuet painted ! These are ideal
men and women transfigured by his imagination. How startling
are the pictures of Massillon ! His description of Famine, as liv-
ing and terrible, woke cries of horror in the church. All virtues
and vices become living in this great school of impassioned ora-
tory ; and we sigh over the departure of days when men of a
simpler and more impressible heart listened to the preacher
as their fathers looked upon the Vice of the old morality-plays..
But the Revolution is between Massillon and Montsabre.

Now, Bourdaloue is the orator that faces this nineteenth
century with the characteristics of the speaker for all time —
universality, the appeal to ultimate reasons, the why and where-
fore of virtue and of vice, the grounds of faith, the power of

VOL. xxxiv.— 15

226 BOURDALOUE. [Nov.,

the everlasting Gospel. We read the Esther and the Athalie of
Racine, but do not relish them as so presented from the pul-
pit. We love to contemplate the Blessed Virgin as discoursed
on by the genius of Ventura, and we treasure more highly
than the sweetest description of the Last Supper the work of
Arnauld on the Perpetuity of the Church's Faith in the Eucharist.

The mind of Bourdaloue, essentially analytic and Thomis-
tic, treated metaphor and allegory only as subservient to a
theme. They were scholia, which the proof of the proposition
could dispense with. The text was made to yield up all its
treasures, as in his sermon on St. John the Baptist's witness to
Christ, which reads like an articulus of the Angelical's "Five
things are necessary to a witness: faithfulness and disinterest-
edness ; exact knowledge ; evidence of proofs ; zeal for the truth
of the testimony ; constancy and firmness in giving the testi-
mony." Such was the Baptist's witness to Christ. Our Sa-
viour's witness to him regarded his greatness, the dignity of
his ministry, the excellence of his preaching, the value of his
baptism, the holiness of his life, and the austerity of his pen-
ance. All these noble thoughts, each suggesting a sermon,
are taken clearly and without effort from a few pages of the
Gospel. An inferior preacher would content himself with a
scenic representation of the Baptist in the wilderness, clothed
with camel's hair and filled with memories and musings. Of
course a powerful picture full of lights and shadows might
be sketched, and no doubt an audience might be entranced
with it, but its permanent value would be simply nil. St. John
did not wish to be represented en pose.

There is no better model of the style of general teaching
which the present Sovereign Pontiff is desirous of having intro-
duced, or, where introduced, perfected, than the style of Bour-
daloue. The pulpit is to become the professor's desk, and the
faithful the class ; and though we may feel a natural pang at put-
ting aside our flowers and pictures, it is a call to labor in the
deepest parts of the Garden that gives the flowers, and to build
up the walls upon which our pictures are to hang.

1 88 i.J THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 227

THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA.

IN Abyssinia, erected into a vicariate in 1846, and the popu-
lation of which is supposed to exceed three millions, the French
Lazarists, or Vincentians, are prosecuting the work of evangeli-
zation begun by that model missionary and true disciple of St.
Vincent de Paul, the saintly Jacobis. After serving a rude ap-
prenticeship to the apostolate Jacobis lived and labored as bishop
of this country for twelve years, during which time he never
wore the episcopal dress, but, clad in poor, tattered clothes, led
a life of poverty and penury. He gathered into the fold twenty-
five thousand souls, and left behind him, when he lay down to
die upon this African land, the nucleus of a native ministry des-
tined to supply the pressing spiritual needs of this renascent
church.

"There is a report spread through the whole kingdom of Hamara,"
wrote Jacobis in June, 1843, when he was simply prefect, "that at the time
when Oobiay was sending to the Coptic patriarch for a bishop, a hermit,
who had lived for a long time in the desert of Bajoolo, near Gallas-Egion,
appeared at Gondar, saying that a bad bishop, sent by the Copts, would
come into Abyssinia ; that, after him, another bishop would be given by
Rome, and that this would be the time when Abyssinia would become
Catholic."

He little thought, when penning these lines, that he himself was
the future apostle of Abyssinia, thus, as it were, prophetically
indicated, who was to inaugurate the restoration of Catholicity
in this country, which in days long gone by was the refuge of the
persecuted faithful hunted out of Egypt by the Arians, Euty-
chians, and Nestorians, and which seemed to him reserved for
some great religious events.

This consummation so devoutly to be wished seems, however,
rather far from its complete accomplishment. The present em-
peror, Ati-Joannes, an astute prince, much dreaded but little
loved by his subjects, whom he treats as slaves, is no friend to
Europeans, whom he sets at defiance, and is an inveterate enemy
of the faith of Rome. Though perfidious and much given to
plunder, it seems the people have an innate respect for religion,
and, if purged of the bad leaven of schism, might become good
Catholics in process of time. For example, Jacobis says : " Let

228 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Nov.,

no religious order of women fear to come to this country : the
Abyssinians have the greatest respect for Christ's spouses, and
will defend them on every occasion at the risk of their own
lives." The present vicar-apostolic is Mgr. Touvier.

Farther inland and north of the equator, among the Gallas
tribes — a vigorous race, who derive their name from the Galla ox
(remarkable for its immense lyre-shaped horns), and who fought
and conquered their way from Abyssinia far to the southward —
we find the French Capuchin friars, whose numbers were rein-
forced at the time of the expulsions in France, and who, under
the jurisdiction of Mgr. Taurin, have been evangelizing this por-
tion of eastern Africa, erected into a vicariate in 1846. A dark
cloud, however, has obscured the horizon of missionary prospects
here. At the instance of the Abyssinian emperor, who is lord
paramount over these countries, and whose word is law, Menelik,
King of Choa, his vassal, has been compelled to banish from his
states Mgr. Massaja, Bishop of Cassia in partibus, and formerly
vicar of the Gallas ; his successor, Mgr. Taurin Cahange, Bishop
of Adramythe in partibus ; and Father Louis Gonzaga, Capuchins,
on the specious pretext of sending them on an embassy to Eu-
rope. The emperor complained that Abyssinia was, as it were,
invested and blockaded by Egypt, which will allow neither arms,
nor munitions of war, nor merchandise to pass the frontier, and
that to remedy this state of things the missionaries above named
should plead his cause in Europe. It was a pure deception. As
soon as they left Choa they were constituted prisoners for the
faith. Ras Aria, the emperor's uncle, was present when the lat-
ter dictated his ultimatum to Menelik in these terms : " Expel
these people who are teaching a faith contrary to mine, or pre-
pare for war." The order had to be obeyed, and the missiona-
ries were sent to Matama by way of the Soudan, a painful jour-
ney, rendered still more painful and perilous by forced marches
in the midst of wasting fevers, occasionally solaced, however,
by the succors of some Good Samaritans. The Capuchins are to
be met in the Seychelles Islands also, an insular dependency of
the Mauritius, formed into a vicariate in 1860.

The fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost and the
Holy Heart of Mary, founded by Libermann, administer on the
east coast the immense prefecture of Zanguebar, where there are
from six thousand to eight thousand Catholics, and a still larger
extent of the west coast, including the prefectures of Cimbe-
basia (running northward from the mouth of the Orange River),
Congo, Senegal, and the vicariates of the Two Guineas, Sierra

i88i.] THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 229

Leone (begun by Father Blanchet, in 1866) and Senegambia.
These fathers, Mgr. Lavigerie assures us, have done wonders at
Bagamoyo, on the east coast, and the letters of the Algerian
missionaries, who make this their way to the interior, overflow
with eulogies of their charity and hospitality, frequently called
into active exercise at Zanguebar, where the Somalis, a fanatical
tribe of Arabs, impede the passage of travellers and missionaries.
They have charge of one of the most trying missions in Afri-
ca, for the climate is especially destructive in the region ex-
tending from the east coast to the great lakes. The lands are
low and marshy, owing to the heavy rains, and the miasma and
fevers which are thus generated develop with extraordinary ra-
pidity under the action of a tropical sun. French priests of this
Congregation are also stationed in a civilized and settled portion
of Cape Colony within Mossel Bay, George Oud's Town, and
Victoria West districts. Stretching up northward and west-
ward from the latter place is a vast tract of country thinly peo-
pled by a nomadic tribe called the Korannas, described as one of
the least promising and most contracted fields in South Africa.

Considerable attention has been of recent years drawn to the
South African missions, where Bishops Leonard, Rickards, and
Jolivet, and the Jesuits, are doing wonders. Cape Colony is di-
vided into three vicariates, the eastern, western, and central. In
the western vicariate, the headquarters of which are at Cape
Town, where there are about thirty-five hundred Catholics, the
vicar- apostolic, Dr. Leonard (formerly of Dublin), has twelve
priests under his jurisdiction, who are aided by Marist Brothers
and Dominican nuns in the education of the children. The Ca-
tholic population of the colony is almost entirely Irish or of Irish
extraction. Dr. Leonard's general views on the subject of Afri-
can missions are that Catholic missionaries should be first in the
field, that they should be able to preach to the natives in their
own language, and that the work should be undertaken by the
members of a religious community or order, who could be pro-
perly prepared for the life they would necessarily have to lead
in places so far removed from the civilized world. The eastern
vicariate is bounded on the north by the Orange River, and on
the east by Kaffraria proper, and contains more than five thousand
Catholics, about two thousand of whom live at Port Elizabeth, five
hundred at Graham's Town, and the rest at King William's Town,
Graaff-Reinet, Algoa Bay, Uitenhage, Fort Beaufort, and Bedford,
at each of which towns there is a chapel and one or more priests.
There are from twenty to thirty thousand Protestants and two

230. THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Nov.,

hundred and fifty thousand unconverted blacks. The vicar-apos-
tolic, who is also titular bishop of Retimo, left Maynooth thirty
years ago, then subdeacon, to labor in the vineyard which the
indefatigable zeal and apostolic spirit of Mgr. Devereux had
planted, and which, extending from the banks of the Orange
River to the Indian Ocean and comprising one hundred thousand
square miles, then contained only a comparative handful of Ca-
tholics. When Mgr. Rickards was consecrated in 1871 there
were only five priests in the vicariate ; in 1879 there were thirty-
one, and five new stations had been established — that is, they had
bought lands, built churches and presbyteries, and were breaking
fresh ground where no priests had hitherto been. The college of
St. Aidan, erected at a cost of ten thousand pounds and directed by
the Jesuits, contained at that date fifty boarders and one hundred
and sixty extern pupils, mostly English or Irish, whose number has
since been greatly augmented, and there is a convent of fifteen
Dominican nuns at King William's Town ; while the Marists have
a well-attended school at Port Elizabeth, and have established a
novitiate destined to keep up the supply of teaching brothers in
all the missions in South Africa, besides a school for farmers and
others unable to send their sons to St. Aidan's. Three new con-
vents are in process of erection. The vicariate now counts fifty-
three hundred Catholics : twenty-four hundred at Port Elizabeth,
more than one thousand at Graham's Town, and over eight hun-
dred at King William's Town, the number in the other missions
varying from seventy to one hundred. In all there are eleven
missions and nearly twenty stations to meet the spiritual needs of
the Catholics thinly scattered through about twenty-five towns
and villages far apart, who are visited three or four times a year,
the missionaries being ready to mount horse night or day in all wea-
thers, and traverse distances sometimes exceeding one hundred
miles, to administer the last sacraments. For over twenty years
pious priests and devoted religious have been laboring in secret
and unknown, so to speak, in the very heart of Kaffraria. The
Oblates of Mary possess in Basutoland several houses, where the
Kafirs have proved that they are susceptible of being instructed
in our holy religion, and may become as worthy sons of the church
as any other race on earth. The Trappists have established
themselves on a vast tract of land, comprising twelve square
miles, purchased by Mgr. Rickards for five thousand pounds, and
have founded a monastery which it is expected will rival that
of Staoueli (" land of saints," situated ten miles from Algiers on
the way to Koleah, and which has two thousand acres of land),

1 88 i.J THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 231

besides another monastery in Tambookieland in process of estab-
lishment. Much is hoped for as the result of the introduction of
the monks into South Africa. The four dioceses of South Af-
rica contain altogether about twelve thousand Catholics ; forty
years ago they hardly numbered five hundred.

The Central Cape district, which extends from east to west,
dividing the two districts above referred to, constitutes an apos-
tolic prefecture and is administered by the Society of African
Missions of Lyons. The largest of the South African vicariates
—that of Natal, which takes in the Orange Free State, West Gri-
qualand, Basutoland, and the Transvaal — is chiefly supplied by
French Oblates, who are under the jurisdiction of Mgr. Jolivet,
vicar-apostolic, formerly resident in Liverpool. Most of the Ca-
tholics here are Irish, of whom there are from three to four thou-
sand. In the outlying stations the faithful are few and far be-
tween. The largest and richest congregation is at Kimberley, in
Griqualand West, a place which only a few years ago was in the
inaccessible wilds ; while there has been for some years a suc^
cessful native mission in Basutoland at the sources of the Orange
and Val rivers.

The vast district between the Limpopo and the Zambesi^
which comprises the enormous area of over nine hundred thou-
sand square English miles — including Lake Bangweolo, on the
shores of which Livingstone died ; both banks of the Zambesi,
with four hundred miles of unexplored country between the lake
and the river ; Lake Nyassi and the country peopled by the power-
ful tribes of the Bamanguato and Amandebele — has been assigned
to the Jesuits, who administer the prefecture of Madagascar also,
and the cluster of small islands lying between Madagascar and
the continent. For reasons fully detailed in Father Weld's in-
teresting pamphlet the Jesuits have resolved to make Cape Co-
lony their basis of operations, and Graham's Town — where they
conduct the college of St. Aidan, the foundation of which gave
the African mission an existence and pointed out the direction
which future development should take— their point of departure.
These zealous missionaries are now penetrating into regions
which but lately were unknown even to our best geographers,
and there, where no Catholic priest had ever before been seen,
there is good hope that serious missionary labors will begin a
new era.

It only remains to speak of the districts assigned to the So-
ciety of African Missions,* established about twenty years ago

* The headquarters of this society, of which the superior-general is the Very Rev. Father

232 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Nov.,

at Lyons by Mgr. Marion-Bresillac, who, after an apostolate of
twelve years in British India, conceived and carried out the idea
of creating1 a body of missionaries who should devote themselves
to the most abandoned of the African races, and be always ready
to respond to the needs of the moment, striving by every possi-
ble means to penetrate wherever and whenever occasions pre-
sented themselves of opening this vast continent, and occu-
pying gaps between missions already existing. They have the
prefecture of the Gold Coast and the vicariate of the Benin,
where they have established some of the best administered and
most promising missions in Africa, although having had to con-
tend with difficulties it is no exaggeration to describe as simply
appalling, the climate alone being sufficient to deter any but men
full of apostolic courage, constancy, and fervor, not to speak of
the desolating scourges of slavery and human sacrifices, which
have made Dahomey one of the darkest spots in the dark conti-
nent.

" How easily we could free slaves, if we had but the money ! " wrote Fa-
ther Holley, one of the missionaries of this society, from Abeokuta. " To
feel this, after each warlike expedition we need only visit one of the great
squares (and they are many) and see entire families of captives exposed
pellmell for sale. The poor creatures will hold out their arms towards us,
as if to cry, ' White man, buy me ! ' But why subject one's self to so afflicting
an experience, since we have not money for such a purpose? The poor
children, who might be the objects of the missionaries' care, will certainly
be ruined by their merciless masters. ' For them the fetishes are good
enough,' they say of these poor things. ' No one can do anything with
such brutes. They are born thieves, and thieves they will die ! ' If those
thousands of Christians who only seek a real opening to do good, and thus
put out their income at good interest, could once witness these deplorable
sales of human flesh and blood, many of them would hasten to rescue the
miserable life of one of these poor brothers, who are truly worthy of all our
sympathy. How many pious souls could do this unspeakable good to
their poor African sisters without saying good-by forever to the sweet ties
of family life, without leaving their beloved native land ! To rescue a poor
black and put him in the way of becoming a child of God is easy — so little
effort is required to give him into our charge to be transformed from a
little slave of Satan into a Christian who will call a shower of blessings
from heaven on his benefactor's head ! "

And referring to those horrible human sacrifices which for-

Planque, are at Lyons. A branch house has within the past few years been established at
Cork, Ireland, mainly through the exertions of the local superior, Father Devoncoux, and the
fathers associated with him, Fathers Barrett and Pagnon. Although at present only a lesser
seminary for teaching the humanities to such subjects as offer themselves, and preparing them
for the philosophy course at Lyons, it promises, funds permitting, to develop at no distant date
into a greater seminary and become a valuable basis of operations.

1 88 1.] THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. 233

merly took place by day, but now are never perpetrated except
at night, Father Zimmerman says :

" If our brethren in Europe and America only knew the sad fate of the
blacks, if they only reflected on the misery of their state, they would pray
to heaven more fervently that the divine grace might be shed abundantly
on these poor abandoned nations. Doubtless all cannot come and preach
the Gospel to the Africans, but nearly all could give their penny to the As-
sociation for the Propagation of the Faith ; and if they did we should have
more schools and be able to buy more children, some of whom would be-
come fervent Christians and others schoolmasters and catechists."

As it is the Mussulmans who almost exclusively carry on this
debasing slave-trade, and as Mussulman society is so organized
as not to be able to exist without slaves, its complete abolition,
one of the grand aims of the African missions, will at the same
time weaken the power and influence of Mohammedanism, which,
Sir Bartle Frere avers, is an advancing and converting religion
and the chief obstacle to the evangelization of Africa.

Although the public sale of slaves has been abolished at Zan-
guebar, in the interior and at certain points of the coast they still
carry off the unfortunate natives and transport them to the
depths of Asia and every part of the Mohammedan world ; whole
provinces having been depopulated and changed into deserts, the
bare, bleached bones of the wretched negroes who have fallen
victims to hunger or brutal ill-treatment indicating the passage
of the slave-gangs to the coast — ghastly evidences of " man's in-
humanity to man." The American, recalling the unhappy share
which his great country at one time had in this infamous
slave-trade, which Pope Gregory XVI. characterized as " the op-
probrium of the Christian name," must be indeed callous to all
sense of shame, indignation, and human sympathy who can read
of the sad fate of the poor blacks, so long " seated in darkness and
the shadow of death," without resolving, as a debt of reparation,
to do all that may lie in his power to aid the grand work of the
evangelization and liberation of these fallen races. It has been
said that if one were to lose his way from the interior to the
towns on the coast where the slave-markets are held, he would
easily find it again by the whitening bones of the corpses that
strew the route. Every year more than a million are subjected
to this dreadful fate, and under such conditions that an eye-wit-
ness affirms that if one were to accumulate every detail of horror
and suffering it would not exceed the truth.

" They have closed the seas and highways of the new world to it," says

234 THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AFRICA. [Nov.,

Mgr. Lavigerie ; " it has multiplied in the interior and has there become
more murderous. In vain the powers of earth are leagued to abolish the
inhuman commerce that ensanguines Africa. Their efforts are powerless.
The leprosy prevails. What do I say? It is extending its ravages.
Whether the measures are insufficient because they only reach those who
sell and not those who buy, or that the evil is too deep-rooted to be healed
by the hand of man, slavery is still erect, and the narratives of the latest
explorers of the equatorial regions are full of its horrors. It is no longer
foreigners alone, it is the blacks themselves who, taught a contempt of
man, have become the artisans of their own ruin — so low the human mind
sinks when it finds not in a purer illumination the force to combat the
brutalities of nature ! "

It is to diffuse this pure light, to illuminate and liberate these
suffering and enslaved races — illuminare his qui in tenebris et in
umbra mortis sedent — that men full of that spirit of sacrifice
without which nothing truly great and good was ever done for
God, the church, or humanity are generously and unselfishly de-
voting their lives. And it is an appalling thought that, after
nearly nineteen centuries of Christianity, there should still be
within easy and rapid reach of Europe a vast continent where
there are millions of human creatures still sunk in utter bar-
barism, wholly ignorant of God and of his law. In Africa, as
Father Weld observes, there are many millions of souls in abso-
lute danger, unless we make haste, of being taught all the cor-
ruptions of a premature civilization before they have had the
opportunity of knowing the truth, and of being, therefore, cast
into a state even more hopeless than ever. All the cry of the
missionaries who have penetrated into the densely-populated dis-
tricts of the interior, where the fields are already white with
the harvest, is for more apostolic laborers. The men wanted for
this difficult but glorious mission are not men of the common-
place type, who would pause to weigh the personal advantages
or disadvantages of attaching themselves to this or that order or
congregation engaged in what the writer has ventured to de-
nominate one of the grand achievements of the church — the spiri-
tual conquest of Africa. To summon these slumbering nations
to life and liberty — to the supernatural life of faith and the lib-
erty of the children of God ; to vitalize and energize these dry
bones and make them live again ; to spiritualize a people so long
sunk in sensualism and fetishism, would assuredly need apostolic
men, men like Jacobis or Gonzalez Silveira, full of the spirit that
quickeneth ; and such men, though they are always to be found,
are still not numerous enough for all the church's needs.

CONCLUDED.

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 235

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART V. — A.D. 335-456.

DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE — ARIAN TROUBLES — EPISCOPATE
OF ST. MAXIMUS — OF ST. CYRIL — ST. HILARION AND THE MONASTIC INSTITUTE IN
PALESTINE— PILGRIMAGES— ST. JEROME, ST. PAULA, AND THEIR COMPANIONS IN BETH-
LEHEM— EPISCOPATE OF JOHN — OF PRAYLUS — JUVENAL PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM.

THE splendor with which Christianity and the church burst
forth at the epoch of Constantine and the First Council of
Nicaea was obscured by the cloud of Arianism. Ecclesiastical
historians have occupied themselves so much in describing the
contentions and persecutions arising out of this heresy that the
whole history of this age has come to be regarded as identified
with the war waged for and against the Symbol of Nicasa. This
was, however, only one great incident of this history, and not the
whole history itself, which is most glorious, not only through
the victory of the faith over heresy, but in a thousand other
ways. Moreover, there is much exaggeration and misunder-
standing prevalent respecting the extent of the actual ravages
which formal heresy, whether Arian or Semi-Arian, made in the
faith either of bishops and clergy or the lay people. There were
numerous heretics in all these classes, and relatively more among
bishops, emperors, and the grandees of the laity than in the com-
mon ranks of the clergy and people. But we are not to suppose
that by dividing between the open and firm adherents to the
Nicene Symbol and the cause of St. Athanasius, and the rest of
professed members of the Catholic Church, we can also divide
between the orthodox believers and the heretics. The latter
were always a party and in the minority ; the Christian world
was generally and invariably orthodox. The show of numerical
superiority and the actual possession of power on the part of the
Arian faction were due to the fact that its able and unscrupulous
leaders were cunning enough to keep or gain possession, at times,
of some of the principal sees. This was effected through the
support of the men who wielded the civil power, and who were
either deceived by their art, or themselves virulent enemies of
the Catholic faith. They did not seek to make a new sect, but, to
make good their position in the Catholic Church, they concealed
and masked their heresy under ambiguous formulas, they perse-

236 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Nov.,

cuted the clear-sighted and intrepid champions of Nicene ortho-
doxy under false pretexts, and it was only after a long time and
many vicissitudes that they were completely unmasked and defini-
tively driven out from the external communion of the Catholic
Church. The greater number of the bishops who were drawn or
driven into complicity with their acts and measures, and who are
generally classed under the head of Semi-Arians by historians,
were really neither infected with Arian or Semi-Arian heresy,
and were only deficient in clear-sightedness and courage. They
were more or less duped and deceived by the hypocrisy and
fraud of Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Acacius of Cassarea, and
their companions or successors in heretical malice and astute-
ness. They were bewildered by the abstruse and subtle contro-
versies about ideas and terms relating to the most profound of
all mysteries, or daunted and oppressed by the arrogance and
violence of worldly and powerful prelates and the insolence of
civil rulers. These tyrants, with the connivance of heretical
bishops, usurped authority over the church, and both together
succeeded in carrying, with the acquiescence of the majority, doc-
trinal decrees and administrative measures whose whole tendency
and scope, it was afterwards clearly seen, were to undermine the
faith of the Nicene Council and destroy its faithful defenders.

There are many difficulties in the way of attaining correct
and certain knowledge of the details of ecclesiastical history in
the fourth century, especially in regard to certain particular per-
sons who figured in its events and transactions. One of these
obstacles is the great amount of forgery and falsification perpe-
trated by the Arian faction. Moreover, we cannot follow blindly
even the statements and judgments of orthodox writers, though
these may be canonized saints and doctors, when they speak of
certain persons and transactions. Modern critical history has
done much in the way of approximating to a correction of cur-
rent and loose misapprehensions of facts and characters. There
still remain, however, disputes and differences of opinion among
the soundest scholars. It is becoming, therefore, to use a mod-
est reserve and caution in expressing positive judgments upon
matters of this kind, unless one is prepared to furnish conclusive
reasons.

The question about the orthodoxy and Catholic loyalty of
Eusebius of Cassarea is one of this kind. We cannot enter into a
discussion of his character, and will merely state our impression
that although an indifferent theologian, and far from the saintly
type of episcopal virtue which is seen in St. Athanasius, he was

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 237

really Catholic in faith, and on the whole a worthy prelate. We
see no reason, either, for doubting the orthodoxy of the Emperor
Constantine and his sincere devotion to the welfare of the Catho-
lic Church. The view taken of these two great men, one the
principal instrument of effecting the triumph of Christianity in
the fourth century, the other the principal historian of early
Christianity, must necessarily modify the impression one gets of
their epoch and its most interesting events.

Among these events, the dedication of the grand basilica of
the Martyrium at Jerusalem, described by Eusebius, in our esti-
mation, stands pre-eminent, as one particular instance, and as a
general type, of the grand triumph of Christ in his church over
Jewish and heathen persecutors. In the order of our narrative
we have reached this event, which took place A.D. 335, six years
after the beginning of the work, which was described in our last
number. Eusebius, in his account of the preparation for con-
structing the basilica — which is by no means full and complete,
his object being rather to give a personal biography and eulo-
gium of Constantine than to write a history — passes over the find-
ing of the cross. It is, however, attested by Ruffinus, Theo-
doret, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and generally so well known
that we need not here enlarge upon it.

The following is a description of the dedication of the great
Church of the Resurrection from the pen of Eusebius, who was
present, and, as the metropolitan of Palestine, was one of the
principal prelates who took part in this great and splendid cele-
bration :

" When these injunctions [those, namely, contained in an imperial re-
script to the bishops assembled at Tyre] had been carried into effect, another
messenger from the emperor arrived, bringing an imperial missive, in which
he exhorted the synod to come without delay and as soon as possible to
Jerusalem. All, therefore, departing from the province of Phoenicia, took
the public road for the place where they were commanded to assemble ; and
the whole city of Jerusalem was crowded with a concourse of the ministers
of God, bishops of distinguished rank, who had come together there from
all the provinces. For the Macedonians had sent the bishop of their first
see, and the Pannonians and Mysians had deputed the choicest flower of
their clergy, the chief glory of their nation. The ornament of the bishops of
Persia, a holy man thoroughly versed in the divine Scriptures, was also
present. Bithynians, also, and Thracians adorned the assembly by their
presence. Nor were most illustrious bishops from Cilicia wanting. Like-
wise from Cappadocia some remarkable for learning and eloquence occu-
pied a conspicuous place in the midst of the assembly. Moreover, all Sy-
ria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and the dwell-
ers in the Thebaid were present by their representatives collected to-

238 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Nov.,

gather and filling up that grand choir of God. An innumerable multitude
of men from all the provinces followed these prelates. These were all pro-
vided for with royal bounty; and men of well-known probity were sent from
the imperial palace to oversee the distributions made at the emperor's ex-
pense and add lustre to the festivity. A man of rank in the service of the
emperor, who was conspicuous for faith, religion, and knowledge of the Sa-
cred Writings, presided over all these ; and as he had in the times of ty-
rannical oppression made himself illustrious by many confessions of the
faith for the defence of piety, he not undeservedly had this charge com-
mitted to him. In the discharge of this duty, which he fulfilled i'n faithful
obedience to the orders of the emperor, he honorably entertained the as-
sembly of bishops with a singular comity and the most magnificent feasts
and banquets. He distributed also to the needy and destitute of clothing,
and to the infinite multitude of poor of both sexes who were suffering from
scarcity of food and other necessaries a great deal of money and a great
many garments. Finally, he adorned the entire basilica magnificently
with royal gifts. In such a manner did this man fulfil the office with which
he was entrusted.

"The priests of God, on their part, adorned the festivity partly by their
public offices of prayer, and partly by their discourses. Some of these,
namely, delivered eulogies on the devotion of the religious emperor
toward the Saviour of all men, or magnified in their orations the splen-
dor of the Martyrium. Others offered to their hearers a spiritual banquet
by discoursing on the sacred dogmas of theology in a manner appropriate
to the occasion they were celebrating. Some interpreted lessons from the
sacred books, bringing to light their hidden and mystical significations.
Those, moreover, who could not aspire to such efforts as these, by UN-
BLOODY SACRIFICES AND MYSTICAL IMMOLATIONS SOUght to propitiate God,

offering supplications and prayers to God for the church of God, for the em-
peror, the author of so many benefits, and for his most pious children. There
we ourselves, also, having obtained more favor than our merits deserved,
contributed to the honor of the solemnity by various discourses delivered
in public, at one time reading a written description of the beauty and mag-
nificence of the royal fabric ; at another interpreting the sense of the pro-
phetic oracles in a manner suitably accommodated to the figures and images
of the things foretold which were present to our sight. Thus was the so-
lemnity of the dedication celebrated with the greatest rejoicing at the time
when the emperor had completed the thirtieth year of his reign " (De Vit.
Const., lib. iv. cc. 43-45).*

* The following ingenious and perhaps tenable supposition of Dr. Sepp is worth inserting in
this connection : "The Messiah himself, as he drove out the trafficking Jews and proclaimed the
insufficiency of the Mosaic sacrifices, exclaimed : ' Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.' The rabbins affirm that the Holy House was to be built three times : the first was
the Temple of Solomon, the second the Temple of Ezra, the third the Messiah should build.
We read in the Midrasch Tanchuma : ' The third temple will the Edomite people (that is, the
Roman Christians) build, as it is said '. The Edomite kingdom will restore the crown after
the destruction of the temple.' But Christ spoke of the temple of his body, as John informs
us (ii. 21) — i.e., of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which nevertheless was not to be erected
on Mt. Moriah. So far as relates to the three days, we can reasonably explain this to mean
the three hundred years before Constantine " (Jerus. und das H. Land, vol. i. p. 106).

iSSi.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 239

This is the bright side of the picture. It has a dark side,
also, which Eusebius, as a partisan of his namesake of Nicomedia,
and too much given to adulation of the emperor, fails to present.
Arius was present at this grand celebration, and at its close was
absolved from the censures inflicted upon him by the Council of
Nicasa and restored to the communion of the church, so far as
the authority of that synod of Jerusalem went. It had previ-
ously condemned and pretended to depose Athanasius at Tyre.
This synod had within it and was actually managed by a knot of
the most malicious heretics and worst men who have ever dis-
graced the episcopal order. Nevertheless, although the infa-
mous character and policy of these men, from whom began and
proceeded the troubles which disturbed both church and state
for the next fifty years, cast a dark shadow into the historical
picture of this epoch of triumphing Christianity, this is not a
singular or isolated phenomenon either in secular or ecclesiasti-
cal history. The mixture of dark and bright is incident to all
human affairs, and will be, in our opinion, to the end of the
world. The considerations presented at the beginning of this
article come here into play to determine a just and impartial
estimate of men and things at this critical period. The absolu-
tion of Arius was not, in the intention of the majority of the
bishops or of Constantine, the absolution of heresy and a renun-
ciation of the Council of Nicasa, but the absolution of the man
from censures inflicted on account of a- heresy which he disavow-
ed, and for which God judged him a year afterwards. Eusebius
of Nicomedia and his chief partisans had signed the decrees of
Nicasa and had not retracted their external assent. So far as the
.bishop and church of Jerusalem are concerned, with which we
are specially occupied in this writing, they were always orthodox
and pure from the Arian taint. St. Macarius was one of the first
to discover and condemn the heresy of Arius, and was one of the
leading prelates at the Council of Nicsea. His successors, be-
tween that council and the First Council of Constantinople,
which gave the death-blow to Arianism, were St. Maximus and
St. Cyril. Maximus was the dupe of the astute Eusebians at
Tyre to some extent, though it does not appear with certainty
how far he consented to or tacitly submitted to endure the illegal
and unjust condemnation of Athanasius. He was again deceived
by the hypocritical pretences of Arius and his associates at Jeru-
salem. He withdrew, however, from all participation with that
faction soon after ; when Athanasius was restored to his see he,
with all the bishops of Palestine, two only excepted, received

240 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Nov.,

him cordially and with honor, and before his death he retracted
all that he had done in common with his persecutors.

St. Cyril is one of the principal Fathers and most illustrious
ornaments of the church of the fourth century. In respect to
dates and particular events of his life there is considerable uncer-
tainty. In the ensuing brief account we give what seems to be
the most probable history, according to good authors. He was
born and bred of good Christian parents in or near Jerusalem,
and both carefully educated and piously trained from childhood.
His birth was shortly after the ceasing of Diocletian's persecu-
tion and a few years before the Council of Nicasa. At the dedi-
cation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre he was about twenty
years of age, and near about this time was ordained deacon by
Bishop Maximus, who promoted him to the priesthood about ten
years later, and two or three years afterward appointed him to
the high and responsible office of catechetical lecturer — i.e., su-
perintendent and instructor of the classes of catechumens who
were prepared for baptism and the other sacraments. These
catechetical lectures were delivered in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre and form the principal portion of his works. In the
year 350 or 351 he was raised to the dignity of Bishop of Jeru-
salem.

The beginning of his episcopate was signalized by the remark-
able phenomenon of the appearance of a brilliant luminous cross
in the air on the 7th of May, 351. It appeared at nine o'clock in
the morning, extending from Golgotha to the Mount of Olives,
a distance of fifteen stadia, effacing the light of the sun, and last-
ing for several hours. All the inhabitants of the city, Christian
and heathen, even the virgins who lived in strict seclusion in
their houses, ran together to the churches, struck with mingled
emotions of joy, astonishment, and fear. St. Cyril sent an ac-
count of this wonderful event to the Emperor Constantine in a
letter which is still extant.

The church of Jerusalem flourished so well under St. Cyril's
administration that St. Basil says in one of his epistles (ep. iv.
ad Monach. Laps?) that he found the city peopled with saints.
Acacius of Cassarea, the disciple and successor of Eusebius, a
man of versatile faith and unprincipled ambition, who changed
his profession of faith from Semi-Arianism to extreme Arianism,
and backward to Nicene orthodoxy, when his interest could
be served by his hypocrisy, but was always a heretic at heart,
early began a quarrel with Cyril. The bone of contention was
the respective rights of the see of Jerusalem and the metropoli-

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 24 1

tan see of Cassarea. Besides this cause of dispute Acacius made
a charge of Sabellianism against Cyril — a common artifice of Ari-
ans to disguise the real motive of their persecution of the ortho-
dox. He accused him, also, of wasting the treasures of the
church — a charge which really redounded to his honor, since it
was founded on the liberal alms which he distributed among the
poor during a pestilence in 357, when he sold some of the pre-
cious vessels and vestments presented by Constantine. Acacius
succeeded in getting a sentence of deposition decreed by a synod
in Palestine, which was afterwards confirmed by another held at
Constantinople. Force was employed to carry into effect this
sentence, the validity of which Cyril refused to recognize, and
against which he appealed to a higher authority. He was oblig-
ed to leave Jerusalem, and was on the way to Antioch when,
learning of the death of the Patriarch Leontius, he turned aside
to Tarsus and took refuge with the bishop of that see, who en-
tertained him honorably during his exile. The synod of Seleu-
cia annulled the illegal sentence against Cyril and deposed Aca-
cius ; but its decrees were not carried into effect, and Cyril
was only restored in 361, when the Emperor Julian recalled all
the exiled bishops to their sees. The effort made by this apostate
emperor to rebuild the Temple on Mt. Moriah, and its frustration,
are too well known to need special notice. Cyril continued in
peaceable possession of his see until 367, when he was again ex-
iled by the Arian Emperor Valens, and did not return to Jerusa-
lem before 378, under the Emperor Gratian. From this time, dur-
ing the remaining eight years of his life, he continued to govern
his church and exerted himself to repair the great damages it
had sustained during the period of heretical troubles and perse-
cutions, supported by the authority of Theodosius, the colleague
of Gratian, and the co-operation of Gelasius, the successor of
Acacius in the see of Cassarea, who was his own nephew and dis-
ciple.

In the year 381 the council of Oriental bishops held at Con-
stantinople and presided over first by St. Meletius of Antioch,
and next by St. Gregory of Nazianzen, at that time bishop of the
imperial city of the East, renewed the condemnation of the Arian
heresy, condemned that of Macedonius, and added some new and
more explicit terms to the Nicene Symbol. This council, on ac-
count of the ratification given to its dogmatic decrees by the
popes, in which the bishops of the Western church, and after-
wards the succeeding oecumenical councils of Chalcedon, etc.,
concurred, is reckoned as the Second (Ecumenical Council. St.

VCL. xxxiv.— 16

242 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Nov.,

Cyril and his nephew Gelasius were present and took part in its
action. It is probable that St. Cyril laid before this council a
full account of his promotion to the see of Jerusalem, and vindi-
cated himself against all the charges made against him to the full
satisfaction of the fathers. For the same bishops, for the most
part, were reassembled the following year at Constantinople, and
sent three deputies to the pope and a council of Western bishops
at Rome, with a full report concerning the principal matters which
had been transacted at the East ; and in the letter which they
sent by the three bishops, having given account of the election
of Nectarius to the see of Constantinople, and of Flavianus to
that of Antioch, they speak as follows of the see of Jerusalem
and of Cyril : " We recognize the most venerable and beloved
of God Cyril as the bishop of the mother of all the churches,
which is in Jerusalem, canonically ordained long ago by all the
bishops of the eparchy, and who has suffered many things in
divers places from the Arians " (Theod., Hist. EccL, lib. v. c. ix.)
St. Cyril is supposed to have died in the year 386, in the seven-
tieth year of his age and the thirty-fifth year of his episcopate,
having passed nineteen years in the actual government of his
diocese and sixteen years in exile.*

Just about the time when the (Ecumenical Council of Con-
stantinople was held died St. Hilarion, the St. Anthony of Pa-
lestine, whose biography St. Jerome wrote. Elijah, Elisha, St.
John Baptist, and the Essenes had set the example of an austere
and ascetic life in the solitudes of the Holy Land, and our Lord
had given it the supreme sanction of his own strict fast and re-
treat of forty days upon Mt. Quarantain. Protestants are put
to wonderful shifts in their efforts to turn aside the significant
lesson of the examples of St. John and Jesus Christ, which the
Catholic Church has read aright and put in practice. The con-
secration of individuals to a strict religious life of continence,
fasting, poverty, and seclusion dates from the foundation of the
church, among Christians. In the fourth century this monastic
way of living took a more regular form and received a more ex-
tensive development in Palestine through the influence of St.
Hilarion. He was born of heathen parents at the little village
of Tabatha, near Gaza, about A.D. 292. Converted in his boy-
hood at Alexandria, he became a disciple for a time of St. An-
thony, and in the year 307, being only fifteen years of age, he re-
turned to the desert region of Palestine nearest to Egypt to be-

* For a critical analysis of the life and writings of St. Cyril see Saint Cyrille de Jlrusa-
lem, sa Vie et ses CEuvres. These pour le Doctorat par M. 1'Abbe E. Delacroix. Paris. 1865.

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 243

gin for himself a life similar to that of his master. He is regard-
ed as being, with St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony, one of
the founders of the monastic institute, and the father of the nu-
merous and flourishing communities of Palestine and Syria. His
example was followed by thousands, his saintly progeny was
spread over the whole region from Idumsea to Libanus, from
the sea to the Arabian mountains. The grottoes, cells, and ruins
of monasteries which they inhabited are still to be seen dotted
all over the surface of Palestine and Syria, and at this day, in
Jerusalem, on Mt. Carmel, at St. Sabbas, and in many other
places, the Catholic and Greek monasteries, and the religious
communities of various kinds, bear witness to the genuine and
primitive nature of Christianity, to the original idea of the most
perfect state of Christian life, and the true interpretation of our
Lord's counsels of perfection.

In this same century began also those pilgrimages to the
Holy Land which have continued in an uninterrupted stream to
our own day, either from piety, or from curiosity, or from mixed
motives. " In proportion," writes M. Poujoulat,* " as Christian-
ity extended itself in the world Jerusalem took possession of the
minds of men ; the adorers of Jesus crucified informed themselves
with pious ardor concerning the places where the days of his
mortal life had been passed, where his divine mission had been
fulfilled. No country was more holy or venerable for them than
Judasa ; the Christians of distant lands regarded those as a thou-
sand times happy whose destiny had given them birth around
Calvary and the holy sepulchre, near the Mount of Olives, at
Bethlehem, on the banks of the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee,
and they dreamed of a pilgrimage to Palestine as one dreams of
the felicities of heaven." The Itinerary of a Pilgrim of Bordeaux
was composed in the year 333. So general and enthusiastic did
this movement become that it was the incidental cause of grave
inconveniences and scandals, so that St. Gregory of Nyssa, and
even St. Jerome, found it necessary to protest against the exces-
sive and extravagant passion for pilgrimage which had seized on
the minds of the multitude. But though it was well to repress
what was disorderly, to moderate the excitement of an unen-
lightened religious emotion, and to rebuke the scandals oc-
casioned by the gathering of a miscellaneous crowd around the
holy places, the mainspring of the movement was a reasonable

* Hist, de Jerusalem, Ouvrage couronnee par 1' Academic Franchise, t. ii. p. 151. This
work is recommended to those whose interest has been awakened in the subject of our brief
sketches.

244 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Nov.,

and pious sentiment. This sentiment moved numbers of the
best and most elevated souls to seek for grace and consolation by
visiting, or even by taking up their permanent abode in, the vici-
nity of Jerusalem. Melania, an illustrious and rich Roman lady,
went in 368 to visit the solitaries of Egypt, and from there came
to Jerusalem, where she lived for twenty-seven years. Paula and
Eustochium, and several other ladies of Rome of the highest
rank and education, imitate^ her example. St. Jerome came to
Bethlehem toward the close of the fourth century to pass there,
in the monastery which he founded and governed, the rest of his
life, which was closed in 420. St. Jerome's monastery for men
and Paula's convent for women were filled with numerous and
fervent inhabitants.

St. Cyril had been succeeded in the episcopal chair of Jerusa-
lem by John, a bishop who is made very prominent in ecclesias-
tical history by his relations with St. Jerome, and the part which
he took in the vehement controversies about Origen and the
Pelagian heresy which arose during his episcopate. It is very
difficult to form a just appreciation of his character and of the
line of conduct which he pursued, so many different and contra-
dictory judgments were passed upon him by those who lived
during or near that time. The impression one receives from the
history of that period, as we have it in ecclesiastical authors, is on
the whole not very favorable, yet there are reasons for withhold-
ing the very severe judgment which we should be warranted in
making, were we to consider St. Jerome's estimate of him as
strictly just and impartial. Pope Anastasius, St. John Chrysos-
tom, Theodoret, and Basil of Seleucia have praised John of Jeru-
salem, and Cardinal Noris calls him a bishop illustrious by the
holiness of his life and the excellence of his doctrine. Perhaps
the safest opinion we can form, after balancing these testimonies
in his favor against the opposite ones of Pope Innocent I. and St.
Jerome, may be that he was on the whole both orthodox and
upright in his intentions, but with great faults of character
and prone to fall into great mistakes in his administration. The
greatest of all these was the countenance he showed to Pelagius
and his partisans, for which the excuse is made that he was de-
ceived by them in respect to their real doctrine. His episcopate
closed with his life in 417. The most glorious event of his reign
was the discovery and translation of the relics of St. Stephen, of
which we have spoken in a former number.

Praylus succeeded to the place of John, and in the first year
of his rule drove the Pelagians from his diocese. Philostorgius

1 88 1 .] CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN. 245

relates that in 419 fearful earthquakes visited Palestine, accom-
panied by volcanic eruptions and other convulsions of nature,
causing the destruction of towns and villages. The terror of
these disasters drew multitudes of Jews and pagans to seek for
baptism, and St. Augustine speaks of seven thousand persons of
this kind who were baptized at this time.

In 421 or 424 Juvenal succeeded Praylus and was the first
bishop of Jerusalem who was formally placed in the rank of
patriarchs with metropolitan jurisdiction. He sided for a time
with Dioscorus of Alexandria, taking part in the Latrocinium of
Ephesus, for which he was near incurring excommunication and
deposition from the pope. He renounced this party, however,
was reconciled with the pope and received among the orthodox
prelates by the Council of Ghalcedon, which recognized and con-
firmed his claim to the patriarchal dignity. He had a long reign
of forty years, during the latter part of which he was for a time
dispossessed by an Eutychian usurper named Theodosius, but he
regained his place three years before his death, which took place
in 456.

TO BE CONTINUED.

CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN.

SPAIN is, perhaps, the most Catholic of European kingdoms ;
England the richest and most powerful of Protestant nations.
The legally-recognized bishops of both are regularly paid, the
former by the state, the latter by endowments. The compensa-
tion allowed by the Spanish government to the bishops and
clergy is the smallest in Europe, whilst there never was a richer
or better-paid Protestant ministry than that of England. When
one reads of the immense sums left by Protestant archbishops
and bishops he concludes that these " servants of the servants of
God " took more than ordinary care when in the flesh and world
to place their surplus income in the place where it would draw
— the largest interest.

The predecessor of the present Protestant Archbishop of Ar-
magh left his heirs the trifling sum of £3 50,000 ($1,750,000). Agar,
the Archdeacon of Kilmore, County Cavan, who died in 1868,
left ;£ 1 50,000; and his ancestor, the Bishop of Ossory, who found-
ed the Clifden family (Agar Ellis), left .£450,000, or $2,250,000,

246 CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN. [Nov.,

and several estates. Bishop Agar lived in those rare old times
when an Irish Protestant bishop's power to amass was only
bounded by the area of plunder. The now disestablished Church
of Ireland was a well of delights to the favored few. His Loreh-
ship the Archbishop of Dublin had a net income of $40,000 a
year ; his brother of Armagh received the sum of $50,000 ; the
Most Rev. premier (Protestant) Bishop of Ireland, at Navan, $20,-
ooo ; the Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, $32,000; the Bishop
of Down, Connor, and Dromore, $20,000 ; the Bishop of Kil-
more, Elphin, and Ardagh, $26,000 ; the Hon. and Right Rev.
Bishops of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry, $25,000; the Bishops of
Ossory, Cashel, Cork, Killaloe, and Limerick received each $20,-
ooo per annum. If this was not liberal we don't know what is.

But in England the pay is higher. The Archbishop of Can-
terbury receives $75,000, and the Archbishop of York $50,000 ;
while the Bishop of London draws $50,000, of Durham $40,000,
of Winchester $35,000, of Bangor $21,000, of Bath and Wells
$25,000, of Carlisle $23,000, of Chester $23,000, of Chichester
$23,000, of Ely $28,000, of Exeter $17,000, of Gloucester $25,000,
of Hereford $22,000, of Lichfield $22,000, of Lincoln $25,000, of
Llandaff $22,000, of Manchester $22,000, of Norwich $22,000, of
Oxford $25,000, of Peterborough $22,000, of Ripon $22,000, of
Rochester $22,000, of Salisbury $25,000, of St. Asaph $25,000, of
St. David's $22,000, of St. Albans $22,000, of Worcester $22,000,
of Truro $15,000, and of Sodor and Man $10,000. The Anglican
bishops' incomes are without doubt the largest in the world. We
must not omit some dozen or more deans, like him of Westmin-
ster, who have $10,000 or more per annum.

The last generation saw some strange things in the English
hierarchy. Dr. Markham wras tutor to George IV., and was re-
warded for his care of " the first gentleman in Europe's " morals
by being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Pitt's tutor, Dr.
Pretyman, was made Bishop of Lincoln. He wrote a biography
of his pupil, which Macaulay declares is only remarkable as be-
ing the worst biography of its size in the English language. The
Marchioness of Conyngham had the instructor of her sons made
Bishop of Winchester. Dr. Sparkes was tutor to the Duke of
Rutland, and got the mitre of Ely with the enormous income of
£27,000, or $135,000, per annum. He loved " the Sermon on the
Mount " so profoundly that he gave to his son Henry three valu-
able livings and a prebendal stall in Ely Cathedral, and to his
son Edward three livings and a prebendal stall. To his son-in-
law he gave livings amounting to $18,000 a year.

1 88 1 .] CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN. 247

The tutor of Mr. Pitt, as soon as he became Archbishop of
Canterbury, set out to provide for his three elder sons. " He that
provideth not for his own house is worse than an infidel," was a
favorite quotation of his. He was not an infidel. His successor,
Dr. Sutton, was the champion nepotist of England. He gave
his seven sons sixteen valuable livings. When Hugh Percy,
son of the Earl of Beverley, married Dr. Sutton's daughter, the
good father-in-law gave him eight important livings. He was
also a most sanctimonious sycophant to the minister of the day.
In one of his charges he regretted the change that had come
over the laity in his generation. " There was no longer," he
said, " that prostration of the understanding which ought to be
found among a pious people."

The tutor of George IV. before mentioned, a few years pre-
vious to his death, presented each of his grandchildren, fifty-two
in number, with a New Year's gift of ^"1,000, so that he might with
propriety be surnamed the Munificent Doctor ! As to how the
Sumner family feasted on the revenues of Canterbury and Win-
Chester one need only glance at any ordinary English directory.
It was the favored family, and took extraordinary care to quarter
its scions upon all the vacant benefices, and to reserve and pre-
serve the unemployed for prospective stalls and empty mitres.

The comedy going on in England under the name of High-
Churchism is graphically illustrated in the life of the late Rev.
Mr. Browne. That gentleman had been in the army. After
Waterloo his occupation was gone. His friend, however, " the
last and worst " Duke of York, wrote him that he could have the

excellent living at in Cornwall. His Royal Highness said :

" You needn't reside, you know ; you can get a curate to do
the work for eighty pounds a year or so, and you can live about
town on the rest." The ex-officer was delighted, but he was not
in orders. The commander-in-chief of the army, the paragon
of English morals, overcame that seemingly insuperable ob-
stacle by writing to the Bishop of Cork as follows :

" DEAR CORK:

"Ordain Browne. Yours,

" YORK."

In a few days after the reception of the above the " Rev." Mr.
Browne presented himself before the duke, to whom he gave the
following note:

" DEAR YORK :

" Browne is ordained. Yours,

"CORK."

248 CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN. [Nov.,

The " reverend " gentleman went down to Cornwall, read him-
self in, returned to London, and never again visited his bene-
fice, although he lived for some fifty years after his ordination.
This reminds one of the case of the Bishop of Llandaff who never
visited his diocese, but spent his days " meditating upon matters
and things super and sublunary on the banks of the Winder-
mere."

Such men would find it rather unpleasant nowadays since
Lords Carnarvon and Onslow, and several other peers of the
realm, " in the season," have interested themselves in the atten-
dance on Sunday at religious services. The noble lords aforesaid
are not afraid to call attention to the apathy of the clergy of Lon-
don. Lord Onslow lately declared that there are fifty-seven
churches in London which have an income of $201,500, and out
of a congregation of 31,000 the average attendance on favorable
Sundays was 6,732 persons. Of these 571 were officials and
their families, 706 paid choristers, 227 were applicants for alms,
1,374 were children attached to schools, while of the remaining
3,854 of the general public but 1,200 were adult males! This is
a bad exhibit for a church whose property, according to the
Clergy List (London, 1880), is valued at nine hundred and seventy-
five millions of dollars.

This immense property is so situated and divided that " the
crown " has only a limited number of livings at its disposal.
The great land-owners, including the dukes, marquises, and earls,
from his grace of Portland to the owner of Hawarden Castle,
have the bestowal of church livings ranging each from $20,000
to $1,000 per annum. There are of this class 218 in number.

If one is inclined to be risible after reading of Browne's " or-
dination " he must laugh heartily when he encounters, as one
occasionally does, among the thinly-settled pastures of Anglican
High-Churchism a clerical Jack-of-all-trades, who, in variety of
employment and multiplicity of vocations, excels the broad-
shouldered Western Baptist minister who kept a tannery, a
country store, was a stage-coach proprietor, and attended ser-
vice on Friday and twice on Sunday. Not far from the main road
leading to the summit of Snowdon, and in the vicinity of the
ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, there is an Anglican clergyman
who is the pastor of three churches, works a salmon-fishery, has
a farm in lease, is a coal merchant, a general carrier, a car pro-
prietor, a private road contractor, a partner in public baths and
mineral wells, holder of turnpike gates, a lodging-house keeper,
a guardian of the poor !

1 88 1 .] CHURCH LIVINGS IN ENGLAND AND IN SPAIN. 249

When alumni of Oxford and Cambridge contemplate such
a state of religious negation and apathy, it is only natural that
deep thinkers, eminent scholars and logicians among them, such
as Cardinals Newman and Manning, born in the purple of Pro-
testantism, should seek the centre of faith — Rome — and dedicate
their big brains and rare erudition to a peaceful eradication of
error and religious comedy, and restore to their mighty country
the ardent faith of Austin, who found England a wilderness and
left it a garden of roses.

Let us look at the venerable archbishops, bishops, and priests
in the Spanish Peninsula. There are nine religious provinces
in Spain : Toledo, the seat of the primate, Burgos, Saragossa,
Tarragona, Valencia, Granada, Seville, Valladoiid, and Santiago,
and forty-four (suffragan) dioceses.

Spain was a rich kingdom before Protestantism was known.
From the coming of St. James, her patron saint, to the date of
the abolition of the Established Church in Ireland she has never
wavered in allegiance to the chair of Peter. Her schools of di-
vinity once were the first in Europe ; the philosophers and theo-
logians of Salamanca outranked those of Bologna or Paris. Her
hierarchy is learned and frugal ; her priesthood poorly paid, but
second to none in learning. Of the nine archbishops four are
generally members of the College of Cardinals.

The primate of Spain, the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo,
receives $8,000 as archbishop and $1,000 as cardinal. The other
cardinal archbishops receive $6,500 as archbishop and $1,000 as
cardinal. The four receive altogether $31,500, the remaining
five $34,000.

There are forty-four suffragans ; one receives $5,500, four
$5,000, twenty-one $4,500, and eighteen $4,000 per annum ; total,
$192,000. Add amount received by cardinal archbishops and
archbishops, and we have the sum of $257,500, or fifty-one thou-
sand five hundred pounds sterling.

The two archbishops and the twenty-five bishops of England
and Wales alone receive the enormous sum of $773,000, against
the sum of $257,500 allowed the four cardinal archbishops, five
archbishops, and forty-four bishops of Spain. Thus we find
twenty-seven English prelates receiving three times (with about
$3,500 of a surplus) the amount allowed to fifty -three Spanish
bishops of all grades.

Why, then, wonder that in this age of great changes, of rail-
roads and telegraphs, there are men in the Protestant commu-

250 THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND [Nov.,

nion who wish to reform the church that was set up, after shed-
ding cataracts of blood and spending tons of treasure, " to reform
the world." These large salaries and the mode of appointment
tend very rarely to an elevation of piety among the English poor,
who are the worst religiously instructed people, as a class, of all
the English-speaking people in the world.

The reform will be a radical one — the disestablishment of the
church, perhaps. It may not take place during the present reign,
but it is sure to come, for the lords spiritual of the upper
house of the British Parliament are not in harmony with the peo-
ple, but are, as they ever were, hostile to all kinds of genuine re-
form, because they imagine that in reform they see the spectre of
short commons and hard work, earnest labor among the people,
true apostolic self-denial, and the divine poverty from which
Christianity sprang among the hills of Judea two thousand years
ago.

THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND THE FATE
OF THE OBSERVANT FATHERS.

I HERE return to the history of the two last survivors of the
Charter-house community, and the part enacted against one of
them by Archbishop Cranmer and the Protector Somerset.

Andrew Borde, who sometimes in Latin calls himself Per-
foratus, was a native of Sussex. He was educated at Oxford, and
subsequently joined the Carthusian Order at the Charter-house.
When the majority of the Carthusian Fathers perished on the
scaffold or in the deadly enclosures called prisons, Father Borde,
like Maurice Chauncy, escaped by a mere accident. Borde
travelled in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and other parts of
Europe. He subsequently settled down at Montpellier, where
he applied himself to the study of medicine, and became "a regu-
lar doctor, with the usual license to practise at the said learned
profession." On his return to England he was " incorporated at
Oxford, and also in the College of Physicians of London." The
medical authorities had no idea, nor had the government, that
the medical student of Montpellier had been a member of the
disbanded Carthusian community. Anthony Wood has chroni-
cled a favorable character of this learned and eccentric cleric.
" For a considerable time," writes Wood, " he had no fixed abode.
For a few months he remained with his relatives in Ponsey, who

1 8 8 1 .] THE FA TE OF THE OB SRR VA N T FA TPIER S. 2$ I

were persons of rank and wealth, and no doubt furnished him
with money. He was most cordially received in respectable so-
ciety, on account of his agreeable manners and conversational
powers. His knowledge as a scholar was very extensive. He
took up his residence at Winchester — a place long known as the
haunt of learned men and witty women with charming con-
versational talents. Notwithstanding Borde's rambling life and
secular occupations, he constantly practised the essential duties
of the Catholic religion. Three days a week he drank nothing
but water and partook of bread as food. He wore a hair-shirt
at certain penitential times ; every night his shroud was hung up
at the foot of his bed to remind him of his last end and the great
hereafter which was sure to follow." For a time the fact of
Borde's being a priest was known to a few personal friends only,
and the most devoted amongst them were two Protestant gentle-
men of Winchester. Several of the " Reformed clergy/' as the
apostates of those times were styled, having visited Winchester,
Borde seeing the grossness and levity of their conduct, and
being a rigid observer of his own vows of chastity, publicly
denounced some leading men of the "new order of religion."
This course of action created for him a bitter enemy in the per-
son of Dr. Poynet, the new Bishop of Winchester, who would not
countenance any priest until he was first " wifed" Poynet was
appointed bishop of the ancient see of Winchester by the Protec-
tor Somerset, and the appointment was a disgrace even to the
government of Edward VI., the " boy-king." I cannot resist the
opportunity of laying before my American friends a portrait,
however brief, of Poynet's career, for it will illustrate the class of
men who came forward to " reform religion " in England on the
death of Henry VIII.

John Poynet was an eminent scholar of King's College, Uni-
versity of Cambridge. His mechanical skill first made him
known to Henry VIII. , who subsequently appointed him to the
office of a royal chaplain. He attracted the notice of Archbi-
shop Cranmer also. Poynet conducted himself in Henry's reign
with apparent propriety. He celebrated Mass with seeming de-
votion, preached before the king, and denounced heretics, whilst
at the same time he had secretly violated nearly all his vows as
a priest. Upon the accession of Edward VI. he publicly pro-
claimed his adhesion to the Reformation. Poynet was highly
favored by Cranmer and esteemed by Roger Ascham and the
leading Reformers of Edward's reign. He was an excellent
mathematician. He gave Henry VIII. a wonderful dial of his

252 THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND [Nov.,

own invention, showing not only "the hour of the day, but also
the day of the month, the sign of the sun, the planetary hour ;
yea, the change of the moon, the ebbing and flowing of the sea,
with divers other things as strange, to the great wonder of the
king, whose commendation he deservedly received in this case."
As a linguist he had no rival at Cambridge. He was widely
known for his knowledge of Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and
German. John Strype, the worshipper of the leading English
Reformers, declares that King Edward — a boy some twelve years
old — was " struck by the admirable sermons preached by Dr. Poy-
net," which led to his further promotion ; but there happened to
be a gulf of some depth between the "moral essence of the noted
preacher " and his practice. Whilst Bishop of Rochester Poynet
cohabited with the wife of a Nottingham butcher, and subse-
quently went through the form of a marriage with this woman.
He was divorced from the dame at St. Paul's, and there amerced
in fines. The Camden Society have disentombed several docu-
ments which proclaim to posterity the sadly profligate life led
by this "Reformed bishop."

Under the year 1551 (Edward VI. 's time) we have the fol-
lowing in Maehyn's Diary, p. 8, whose words are modernized
for the general reader: "The 2/th day of July the new Bishop
of Winchester was divorced from the butcher's wife with shame
enough" In the Grey Friars Chronicle the record of Poy net's
divorce is set down as follows : " On the 27th day of July the
Bishop of Winchester, that was there, was divorced from his wife
at St. Paul's ; the woman was the real zvife of the Nottingham
butcher, who was accorded a certain sum by law, which Dr.
Poynet had to pay to the said butcher."

Poynet was afterwards married at Croydon to a girl named
Maria Simmons. Archbishop Cranmer was present at this mar-
riage. The Poynet scandal was well known to the inhabitants
of London in the reign of Edward VI., when some very gross
ballads were circulated concerning the " bishop that robbed the
butcher of his wrife."

Upon the death of Edward VI. Poynet joined the conspiracy
to raise Lady Jane Dudley to the throne, but soon abandoned
the cause of that ill-fated lady and joined Sir Thomas Wyatt's
insurrection. Here he again proved false and fled to Strass-
burg. It was with evident reluctance that Heylin ever wrote
a line derogatory to the reputation of a Reformer, and more
especially one regarded as a leader ; nevertheless, this noted
Protestant historian felt compelled to write thus of Poynet,

l88l.] THE FA TE OF THE OBSERVANT FA THERS. 2$$

briefly yet significantly : " John Poynet, a better scholar than
a bishop, was purposely preferred to the rich bishopric of Win-
chester to serve other men's purposes." Burnet denies that Poy-
net's life was in any way immoral. For making an unblushing
assertion Gilbert Burnet had only one rival — John Foxe. The
late Dean Hook, in his voluminous and learned work, the Arch-
bishops of Canterbury, censures his hero, Cranmer, for having
been the patron of Poynet, whose evil deeds Dr. Hook condemns.
" Poynet," he writes, " was an immoral and a bad man, and at
last became so lost to all sense of shame that he lived in open adul-
tery with a butcher s wife." Such was the man selected by Cran-
mer and the arch-Reformer, the Duke of Somerset, to succeed
in the see of Winchester Dr. Gardyner, who, with all his faults,
was a stern man, of strict morality, and always mindful of the poor
of his diocese, towards whom he acted as a father.

Poynet died at Strassburg in 1556, in his fiftieth year. Of his
life in Germany little is known, but that he "got wifed again, and
took to black beer and dice." Such was the end of the gifted and
the fallen", the persecutor of honest Andrew Borde, the " priest-
doctor " of Hampshire.

To return to Father Borde. His position in Winchester was
that of a layman more than a cleric, for none of the "pope's
priests " were tolerated by Somerset and Cranmer. The noted
John Bale was also numbered amongst his enemies. Bale made
the vilest accusations against this good and virtuous priest. It
is possible, however, that even in those corrupt times few paid
attention to the accusations of a being like this, apostate friar, as
gifted as he was immoral. Bale did the work of his employ-
ers to their own and his satisfaction. It h.as been truly remarked
by Macaulay that " none hate with such intense malice as the
renegade."

The " priest-doctor's " life was made miserable by the " gov-
ernment spies and the hunting-down " process adopted by the
" Reformed clergy," to whom I have just referred. The Reform-
ers at last determined to remove Borde from Winchester. He
was arrested ; his papers and books — a treasury in themselves —
were seized upon and carried to London, and perhaps there met
the fate of many similar collections. Borde was lodged in the
Tower for some weeks, and then transferred to the Fleet, where
he died from " ill-treatment, bad food, and neglect" in 1549-50.
Thornclale says that while in the Tower Borde cured some of
the prisoners of virulent diseases. He was also brought to at-
tend Lady Jane Seymour, the protector's daughter, who was

254 'THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND [Nov.,

dangerously ill. After three or four visits from the " priest-
doctor" the young lady rapidly recovered. The London physi-
cians petitioned the council " to set their learned brother free,
because he had committed no crime and was a benefactor to all
mankind." Somerset, whose daughter he had recovered, was
" inclined to mercy," but Archbishop Cranmer was altogether
opposed to clemency. He said there were more than twenty
of the pope's priests playing the part of medical doctors at
that moment in England, that it was a device to. overturn the
" Reformed religion," and, however harsh it might appear, Borde
should not be released unless he adopted the principles of the
Reformed church. This "act of mercy" Borde declined to ac-
cept. So, like many other good and noble characters, he died in
a pestilent cell of the Fleet Prison.

Father Borde had high repute as a medical practitioner in
Hampshire and the surrounding counties. His kindness to the
poor patients whom he attended was widely kno\vn and fervently
appreciated. He received large fees from his wealthy patients,
and spent them upon the poor. It has been related by a physi-
cian of Hampshire that "his kindly manner to the ailing did
much to bring about a speedy recovery, and he always left his
patients in a cheerful mood." " And," adds Dr. Whitworth,
" the Reformers of the extreme party had faith in my popish
friend as a medical adviser, for his heart, his mind, and his splen-
did talents were alone directed to the performance of good offi-
ces for the afflicted of body or mind. Fie labored thus for the
honor and the glory of God, and I hope he has received his re-
ward."

Pomeroy, another Protestant contemporary of Father Borde,
says " that there was much humor both in his writings and con-
versation." Borde was the author of several interesting works,
now almost unknown. He published a small book in French on
his visit to Vienna. It related to the position of society in that
city, and is described by Mr. Fenton as highly interesting ; but
few copies of it ever reached England. In 1542 Father Borde
published a book upon Fashions and old Coins. Carlo Logario
says that Borde had written a book upon his travels and " the
strange folks with whom he became acquainted " ; but the MS.
was accidentally consumed by fire in Winchester. Logario, who
was himself a physician and personally acquainted with many
of the Carthusian Fathers, joins in the general tribute offered
to the merits and the memory of Andrew Borde.

I cannot close the tragic story of the martyrs of the Charter-

1 88 1 .] THE FA TE OF THE OBSER VANT FA THERS. 2$$

house without recurring- again to Maurice Chauncy. He was
undoubtedly a native of Ireland, and born within a few miles of
the picturesque bay of Carlingford. It is stated in an old book
entitled the Irish Friars that Chauncy was a native of Suffolk and
of Irish parents. This statement is contradicted by the nephew
of Chauncy, who names Carlingford as the place of his birth.
Mr. Froude " does not believe that he was an Englishman ; he sus-
pects he was born in Ireland." It has been asked, " What would
induce Irish monks and nuns to visit England in those days ? "
In the course of my research, ranging over twenty years, I find
that in the days of the Heptarchy, down to the Wars of the
Roses, and later still, many monks and nuns from Ireland joined
the English abbeys and convents, and the Irish religious houses
were largely recruited from England. For a long period the
famous Abbey of Bective, in Meath, had a number of English
monks, and the good feeling which existed between the " soldiers
of the cross " was most edifying.

At the period of Lord Crumwell's inquisition of the English
religious houses the nuns made some resistance ; but the bravest
opposition offered to Crumwell's'i unmanly "intruders" came
from Irish ladies, who courted martyrdom on several occasions.
Dean Seaton, one of Crumwell's agents, in a letter to his em-
ployer declares " that if the nuns were all Irishwomen it would be
impossible to put them down." Thorndale heard " something simi-
lar from Layton's own lips." Two of Maurice Chauncy 's sisters
were nuns in the convent of Shaftesbury, and they became
noted for the courageous resistance they made to Dr. Layton
and his inquisitors.

Father Chauncy continued a zealous advocate of the doctrines
of the Catholic Church to the close of his long life. In his his-
tory of the Carthusians of the Charter-house he laments not
having stopped and awaited the martyrdom of his brethren. He
excited the particular hatred of Lord Crumwell and his royal
master. Thomas Wyatt was informed by his patron, Lord
Crumwell, that the king charged him " specially to hang Chaun-
cy the moment he was caught." This speedy execution was
under the provost-marshal warrant. Such executions were fre-
quent in the reign of Elizabeth.

Dodd describes Maurice Chauncy as " a man of primitive
zeal, and much esteemed by the English residents on the Conti-
nent." Archibald Graham, a Scotch Puritan, says that " Chaun-
cy would do a kind office for a Protestant as soon as for one of
his own creed, provided the person was worthy of being aided."

256 THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND [Nov.,

Jacob Alloar, a Prussian Lutheran cleric, speaks in the highest
terms of " the kind and Christian feeling which marked the in-
tercourse of Maurice Chauncy with those of opposing creeds."
The high-minded Anthony Wood pays an honest tribute to the
memory of this last survivor of the Charter-house slaughter.
" It is not denied," writes Wood, " by any intelligent and mode-
rate Protestant but that the name of Maurice Chauncy is worthy
of being kept in everlasting remembrance."

Upon the accession of Queen Mary, Chauncy's community —
few in number — returned to England for a short time. In 1575
Chauncy again visited London in the guise of a Flemish physi-
cian, when he discovered that nearly all his former friends were
either dead or immured in dungeons. Dr. Chauncy, the kinsman
of the expatriated Carthusian, says that he accompanied him in
a walk round Westminster Abbey and amidst the ruins of the
Carthusian houses. On approaching those sacred wrecks " he
was seized with a melancholy ; clasping his hands and casting his
eyes downwards, he spake not a word for some time. He then
hastened from the spot, shedding many big tears ! " He next
visited the grave of Bishop Fisher at Barking. Kneeling beside
the last resting-place of the martyred prelate, he begged to be
alone for a while. . . . On the following day Father Chauncy
sailed from the Thames for Antwerp. A few hours after he left
London Sir Francis Walsingham's agents discovered that they
had missed their prey. The narrator of the above sa}rs : " I
never saw my good uncle again." Father Chauncy ended his
eventful life at Bruges in July, 1581.* He must have been
beyond eighty years of age at the time of his death.

I now approach the tragic story of another religious com-
munity, whose history has been but recently discovered, al-
though written on the wall of Time, with this text for their ac-
tions: " For the honor and the glory of God."

The Observant Fathers f of Greenwich had many claims upon
the kindness and protection of King Henry. They had been
fostered and aided in good works by his father and mother. His
aunts of the House of York were constant in their visits to Green-
wich Chapel, where, before the great altar, the Countess of Rich-
mond knelt, and where the Seventh Henry and his queen had

* MS. records of the English Carthusians ; Diary of Douai College ; Thorndale ; Athen.
Oxon.; Pomeroy's Chronicle ; Dodsray, p. 527.

t The Observant Friars, or Observan tines, are a branch of the great Franciscan Order. —
ED. C. W.

1 88 1 .] THE FA TE OF THE OBSER VANT FA THERS. 2$?

many times received Holy Communion, to the great edification
of the people. The Eighth Henry was born in the vicinity of
this sacred edifice, and he was baptized at its font; here, too,
Henry, Duke of York, in the presence of his father, mother,
grandmother, and aunts, made his First Communion. Time
brought many other memorable events. For instance, in the
bloom of a hopeful youth this same Henry Tudor, then a king,
on an early morning in June besought one of the Observant
Fathers to join him in wedlock to the " bride of his first love."
Twenty years had scarcely passed from that interesting scene
when all kindly remembrance seemed erased on the monarch's
part.

Thorndale relates that the Observants were not only broken
up as a community, but they had been " hunted down, owing
to a decree that no religious house should give them meat,
drink, or shelter." Two hundred of their number were quick-
ly imprisoned ; forty " died from putrid or prison fever " ; and
the others, who were in extreme old age, died from cold and
hunger. Lord Crumwell's agents went forth on the highways
to denounce them as "lazy and profligate." Unmeet and cruel
treatment this for such generous benefactors of the needy, the
sick, and the dying, whose last moments they consoled and whose
faith they strengthened.

John Stowe, a Reformer, and almost a contemporary of the
Community, has left on record an interesting narrative, disclosing
much observation on the " manners and passions of those licen-
tious and turbulent times." Stowe writes thus :

"The first that openly resisted or reprehended the king's highness
touching his marriage with Anna Boleyn was Friar Peto, a simple, devout,
and fearless member of the Order of Observants. This goodly man
preaching at Greenwich upon the two-and-twentieth chapter of the First
Book of Kings — viz., the last part of the story of Achab — saying, ' And even
where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall the dogs lick
thy blood also, O king ! ' and therewithal spake of the lying prophets,
which abashed the king; 'and I am,' quoth he, 'that Micheas whom thou
wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that thy marriage is unlawful ; and
I know I shall eat the bread o'f affliction, and drink the water of sorrow,
yet because our Lord hath put it into my mouth I must speak it.' And
when he (Peto) had strongly inveighed against the king's second marriage,
to dissuade him from it, he further saith : ' There are many other preachers,
yea, too many, who preach and persuade thee otherwise, feeding thy folly
and frail affections upon the hope of their own worldly promotion ; and by
that means they destroy thy soul, thy honor and posterity, to obtain fat
benefices, to become rich abbots and get episcopal jurisdiction and other

VOL. xxxiv. — 17

258 THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS AND [Nov.,

ecclesiastical dignities. There, I say, are the four hundred prophets who,
in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee ; but take good heed lest you,
being seduced, find Achab's punishment, which was to have his blood
' licked up by the dogs,' * saying it was the greatest miscarriage of princes
to be daily abused by flatterers.

" The king, being thus reproved, endured it patiently, and did no vio-
lence to the courageous Peto. The following Sunday, being the 8th of
May, Dr. Curwin preached in the same place, strongly reproached Father
Peto and the style of his discourse. He called Peto dog, slanderer, base,
beggarly liar, closeman, rebel, and traitor, saying that no subject should
speak so audaciously to princes. And having spoken much to that effect,
and in commendation of the king's marriage, thereby to establish his family
for ever, Dr. Curwin supposing he had utterly suppressed Father Peto, he
lifted up his voice and said: 'I speak to thee, Peto, which maketh thyself
Micheas, that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now thou art not to be
found, being fled for fear of shame, as being unable to answer my argu-
ments.' But whilst he thus speaketh there was one Elstow, a fellow-friar
to Peto, standing in the rood-loft, who, with a bold voice, said to Dr. Cur-
win : ' Good sir, you know that Father Peto, as he was commanded, is now
gone to a provincial council holden at Canterbury, and not fled for fear of
you, for to-morrow he will return again. In the meantime I am here as an-
other Micheas, and will lay down my life to prove all those things true
which he hath brought out of the Holy Scripture, and to this combat /
challenge thee before God and all equal judges. Even unto thee, Curwin, I
say, which are one of the four hundred prophets into whom the spirit of
lying has entered, and seek out of adultery to establish a succession, be-
traying the king unto endless perdition, more for thy own vainglory and
hope of promotion than for the discharge of thy dogged conscience and the
king's salvation ! '

" On this Father Elstow waxed hot and spake very earnestly, so as
they could not make him cease his speech, until the king himself bade him
hold his peace, and gave order that he and Peto should be convented
[cited] before the council, which was done the next day. And when the
Lords had rebuked them, the Earl of Essex [Thomas Crumwell] told them
that they deserved to be put into a sack and cast into the Thames. Where-
upon Elstow, smiling, said: 'Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk,
who are clothed in purple, fare deliciously, and have their chiefest hope in
this world ; for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the discharge
of our duties we are driven hence, and, with thanks to God, we know the
way to heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not
which way we go ! ' '

* Father Peto's reference to the statement recorded in Scripture actually occurred in Henry's
case. Here is the startling incident : The royal remains being carried to Windsor to be buried,
the coffin, placed on a stand, remained all night under the dilapidated walls of the Convent of
Sion, and there, the "leaden shell being cleft by the shakening of the rude conveyance along the
bad roads, the pavement of the church was wetted with King Henry's blood. In the morning
came plumbers to solder the coffin, under whose feet— I tremble while I write it (says the
narrator) — was suddenly seen a large black dog licking up King Henry's blood. It was with
difficulty that the animal was driven away." This statement is to be seen in a MS. in the
Sloane State Papers, also in the correspondence of Thorndale, Hapsfield, Sir Aedward Deny,
and Sir Anthony Brown, all of whom were present on that morning.

1 88 1 .] THE FA TE OF THE OBSER VANT FA THERS. 259

John Stowe concludes his narrative in these words : " Peto and
his devoted brotherhood were subsequently banished from
Greenwich."

Curwin was made Dean of Hereford for his pliant action as
to the king's conduct. When Cuthbert Tunstal preached against
the pope's Spiritual Supremacy in England he was answered
by several powerful sermons from the Observant Fathers. They
constituted missions throughout the country, and enjoined the
people "not to leap out of Peter's ship," and to beware of the
many false prophets who were ministering to the king's vanity.*
In Yorkshire thousands of people came forth to greet the
Observant Fathers. They were fearless in denouncing all en-
croachments upon the church, for which they earned the enmity
of the court party concurrently with the reverence and affection
of the people.

Many deliberate misrepresentations have been made by Puri-
tan writers as to the merits of the Observants. The Observant
Fathers were long known to, and much regarded by, Henry VII.
He gave them a small piece of land near Greenwich Palace, and
one thousand pounds to set them forward on their works of
goodness and mercy, all which works were performed for " the
honor and the glory of God." There were two young friars in
this community who were the special favorites of Henry VII.
— namely, John Forrest and William Peto, both remarkable for
their calm courage and high sense of equity. The intercourse
between these friars and the royal family was courteous, re-
spectful, edifying, kindly. According to the rules of the com-
munity, they were vowed to live in poverty and obedience ; they
supplied a meat dinner for visitors or for the poor, whilst they
themselves partook of vegetables, bread and water, and only two
curtailed meals in the twelve hours ; they were to attend the in-
sane, the outcast, and the leper ; they were the unpaid nurses of
the sick, the unsought teachers of the poor; they went into
woods and forests to seek for outlaws and desperate characters,
and converted many of those sorrow-laden creatures who were
styled "the lost sheep." The Observant Fathers were celebrat-
ed for the cultivation of herbs ; they studied medicine, chemis-
try, and surgery; they were admirable gardeners, and made most
nutritious vegetable soups for the sick 'poor. The Observant
communities tilled the land ; they planted fruit-trees for the poor
beside the cottage homes ; and, in the words of a distinguished
Protestant historian, "they did work which no L^e else would

* Adam Goodchylde's Account of the Sufferings of the Observant Fathers.

260 THE LAST OF THE CARTHUSIANS. [Nov.,

look after," and refused all payment for their labor. Where, in what
land, have the Gospel expounders of the Reformation produced
such a community ? The Observants had every description
of toil, which they cheerfully performed for the honor and the
glory of God. They were bound by their vows to follow armies
on the march, to shrive (confess) the dying, and to decently
cover the dead in the grave. In fact, most of the heroic deeds
of the present day are but imitations of the example set by the
religious orders in the days of yore. The " Geneva Cross " of
recent battle-fields is a welcome repetition by conscious and un-
conscious believers of the present day in those unselfish men who
derived their faith and fearless devotion direct from the cross of
the Divine Founder of Christianity.

Queen Katharine was a tertiary Sister of the Observant Or-
der ; and the brotherhood were much indebted to both king and
queen. At Greenwich the Observants had five houses, which were
dedicated to the Virgin Mother, to St. Francis, St. Joseph, and
other saints of blessed memory. Henry VII. left six hundred marks %
to keep those houses in repair, and as soon as Katharine became
queen she expended large sums of money on the community.
Whilst at Greenwich she repaired every morning to the neatly-
decorated chapel. There she knelt and prayed before the high
altar, at which not many years before the lovely and hopeful
Castilian maid pledged her bridal vows to Henry Tudor. Fa-
ther Forrest and his brotherhood were Katharine's devoted
English friends. They had witnessed the sunshine which sur-
rounded her for many years ; later, when the sudden change came,
they participated in the darkness of her fortunes, and as the
thunderstorm burst around the royal lady these poor, honest-
minded men shrank never from the way of duty. They took
their part in the path of danger, and were not only not afraid to
vindicate the wrongs, but to the cold mind of philosophy seemed
officiously to anathematize the wrong and denounce the wronger,
never afraid to speak God's truth. When divested of her queenly
titles the Observant Fathers still adhered to Katharine. But the
end soon came ; the queen sank into the grave, a broken-hearted
heir to the reverence of posterity. Father Forrest perished by
a barbarous immolation, and the rest of the community were
ruthlessly driven from the dismantled home of their edifying and
beneficent duties. The people of the south of Ireland extended
their hospitality and sympathy to a few of the Observants who
landed upon the shore of Kinsale, hunted like the wolf from their
own once happy land.

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. 261

NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN.

THERE is a tendency in physical nature, if it is not a law, to
condense force in some one of a family to the detriment of its
other members. How seldom two of the same name become il-
lustrious in letters, statesmanship, or military glory ! If, how-
ever, we sometimes find two of the same family sharing the same
gifts, one will be found to be but an echo or a reflection of the
other. There are not two Homers, nor two Shaksperes, nor two
Newtons, nor two Ciceros, and, in the sense in which we write,
are we not justified in saying that there have not been two Bona-
partes ? There is, indeed, a whole family of the name which still
counts its members by the dozen and its ramifications by the
score, but in the light of recent history the fact is evident that
only one of them was gifted in an extraordinary manner. The
Corsican who rose from the post of minor officer in the French
army by the force of his own talents to be the tamer of the revo-
lution, the conqueror of Europe, the Emperor of France, and its
lawgiver even to the present time, left no Eliseus behind him to
wear his mantle or share his greatness. Nor should it be over-
looked that the genius of the first Napoleon is not so apparent in
the battles that he won as in the code of laws which he framed
and bequeathed to France. The " Code Napoleon," written with
the clearness of Caesar and the pith of Tacitus, places its author
in a rank higher than that of Lycurgus or Solon, or even of
Charlemagne. The vices of the man as told us in authentic his-
tory, his private failings as portrayed in the somewhat preju-
diced pages of Remusat, will never make men forget the spirit of
equity which breathes through this Code, nor cease to admire
the greatness of the restorer of public order in France, the victor
of Austerlitz, and the founder of new dynasties all over Europe —
dynasties which failed everywhere, because, although many bore
the name, only one possessed the genius of Napoleon. This fact
is well illustrated in the history ol the last of the name who held
the sceptre of his uncle. Those who had looked at the outside
only of things during the twenty years' reign of the last of the Na-
poleons, and judged him by the material prosperity of France, the
embellishment of its capital, the respectful fear of other nations
and the homage of their monarchs, the military success of the
Crimean and Italian wars, and the annexation of Savoy, were dis-

262 NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

posed to think that the nephew, although not the military peer
of his uncle, was his equal in statesmanship and his superior in
diplomacy, and that the glory of the Napoleonic dynasty had
risen from the tomb at the Invalides for a second apotheosis.
But now, after the disgraceful surrender at Sedan, the invasion
of France and capture of Paris by the countrymen of Bliicher,
guided by the son of Queen Louise ; after the fall of the dynasty
and the revelation of its secret history, its vices, and its weakness,
we are forced to conclude that the nephew was but a caricature
of his uncle — in short, a " Badinguet" as the audiences in the
French theatres wittily nicknamed him.

Charles Louis Napoleon, or Napoleon III., was born in Pa-
ris April 20, 1808, and died at Chiselhurst, in England, January
9, 1873. He was the son of Louis Bonaparte, for a time King
of Holland, third brother of the great emperor, and of Hortense
de Beauharnais, daughter of Josephine. Charles Louis received
a good education under the care of a mother who, whatever
other faults she may have had, was certainly not lacking on the
score of devotion to her children. His early life was one of wild
and often foolish adventure. In 1836 at Strasbourg, and in 1840
at Boulogne, where he displayed a tame eagle as the symbol of
his dynasty, he made ridiculous attempts to overthrow the gov-
ernment of Louis Philippe. After a novitiate spent in insurrec-
tion, conspiracy, travel, and jail, he was elected a member of the
French Assembly in 1848, and chosen president of the republic
for four years on December 10 of the same year. On December
2, 1851, he overthrew the existing government by force, and just
one year after, on December 2, 1852, by a successful conspiracy
and a violation of his oath, he became Emperor of the French.
At the instigation of Jules Favre, on September 4, 1870, after the
surrender of the French troops at Sedan, the French Assembly
voted his dethronement and the re-establishment of the republic.
Thus Napoleon as emperor controlled the destinies of France for
almost twenty years, and for eighteen of them his sway was al-
most despotic. He had the initiative of the law-making power
and the unchecked disposition of the army, navy, and finance of
the greatest nation in Europe for eighteen years — time enough
to mould a full generation of men.

But what is the record which he left? The republic of 1848,
conservative for a time, was so disturbed by insurrection of the
dangerous classes that good men lived in continual terror of
communism and socialism. A licentious press threatened, con-
spiring clubs menaced, peace, law, order, and religion. Conse-

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. 263

quently when Napoleon seized the reins of power and repressed
the incipient Commune the better-minded men of France and the
rest of Europe, although condemning the means employed by
him, rejoiced at their consequence ; for they hoped that his
strong arm would shield property and religion from mob aggres-
sion. They were encouraged the more to hope this because the
men who surrounded his throne in the beginning were generally
able and well disposed to the higher interests of society and to
Christianity. Rouher and Troplong were conservatives, and his
Spanish wife, Eug6nie, was said to be a devout Catholic. Canro-
bert, Saint-Arnaud, and afterwards Niel and MacMahon, were
soldiers of the old school, uncorrupted by the license which at a
later date ate the heart out of the discipline of the French army.
And so Napoleon, after the Coup-d 'ttat ', was hailed even by the cler-
gy of France as a new deliverer. Country curates in La Vendee
and Brittany, the heart of the Legitimist faction, saluted him as law-
ful king and met him at the door of their churches with smoking
thuribles, as if he were Henry V. himself, while admiring pea-
sants shouted, " Vive VEmpereur ! " from throats that had always
been used to the cry of " Vive le roi!" France was at peace.
" The empire is peace," said the emperor, and prosperity bright-
ened the hills and valleys of the whole land. In a few years the
whole world bowed to France. Her sword drove back the
Cossack from the Black Sea and the Austrian from the plains of
Lombardy ; and her word settled the quarrels of the East and
swayed the diplomacy even of England, timorous and distrustful
of so great a rival. Cavour and Bismarck, then humble intriguers
conspiring for the aggrandizement of their ambitious but intimi-
dated states, bent low to the Cassar who held in his hands the
sword of Brennus which decided the balance into whichever
scale it was cast. The French army that had conquered Algiers
and relieved Rome was believed to be invincible. Its prestige
received a new lustre from the name of Napoleon — of a Napo-
leon, too, who had shown some evidence in his published works
of being a philosopher as well as a strategist, in spite of the
reveries scattered through them. Everything went well at first.
With such an army, such a navy, so splendid a financial condi-
tion, such a system of police as existed in France in 1852, what
was there to prevent Napoleon from correcting the false notions
of so many Frenchmen in regard to government by improving
the education of the young, and by aiding religion in its en-
deavor to recapture the hearts of the lower classes in French
towns and cities, tainted by the infidelity that accompanied the

264 NAPOLEON HI. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

first Revolution ? He had the control of the education of the
whole of France, yet he did not correct the infidel tendency of
the University, always jealous of Christian schools. Renan, an
arch-infidel, was allowed to corrupt young France in the College
de France until in 1864 public opinion forced his dismissal. The
laws against religious orders were not enforced, it is true, as they
have been lately under the new republic, but they were not
abrogated. Instead of founding Christian schools among the
laboring classes, Napoleon thought to convert them by giving
them plenty of work at the public expenses-feeding them, as it
were, at the public crib — and to control them by mouchards in-
stead of by religion. He should have prevented public work on
Sunday, as he had the power to do ; but he feared the secret so-
cieties and the Orsini bombs. The laboring classes were trained
to infidelity by public sanction. His influence in the church was
thrown on the side of Gallicanism — not a Gallicanism of principle,
like that of the old Bourbons, but one of sentiment and political
expediency. George Darboy was the representative of this new
form of Gallicanism, as Bishop of Nancy, and afterwards as Arch-
bishop of Paris, and he received many reproofs from the pope for
his trimming between him and Csesar. Thus did Napoleon fail
to improve the moral condition of France while he was adding
to its material wealth ; thus did he fail to understand that a
Christian people loyal in obedience to the Ten Commandments is
the only one upon which a ruler can depend for support in his
hour of adversity.

If we look at the chief events of his reign we shall perceive
this lack of foresight more clearly.

The first great event of his reign was the Crimean War. It
is related that Louis Napoleon being at Stuttgart in 1847 a
French journalist interviewed him.

" ' What impression do I make in France ? ' said the prince.

" ' A bad one, prince.'

" ' Then you think my cause lost ? '

" « Yes, lost ! '

" ' You are mistaken, sir. France cannot live without destroying the
treaties of 1815 and avenging Waterloo. She knows that I alone will give
her satisfaction.' " *

The prince who spoke thus showed the inconsistency of his
character when as emperor he became the ally of England and
throughout his whole reign the slave of English diplomacy. In

* Le Dernier des Napoleon, p. 113.

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON HI. AND HIS REIGN. 265

1852 Russia menaced the interests of English power and com-
merce in the East. England controlled Turkey politically and
financially. Russia, irritated and desirous of extending her own
influence in the East, declared war against Turkey in 1854. Eng-
land alone could not withstand the Cossack ; France was neces-
sary, and, through the unfortunate influence of Eug6nie, Napoleon
became the ally of his uncle's only conqueror, contrary to his
own and his country's true interest. The French army, at first
decimated by cholera in the Dobruscha swamps, beat Menchi-
koff at Alma, in the Crimea, saved the English army at Inker-
mann, and took Sebastopol by storm September 8, 1855, after a
long and bloody siege. Peace followed, but what did France
gain? The hatred of Russia, in the first place — a great misfor-
tune for Napoleon's mushroom empire. The Russian power was
only checked but not broken in the East. Nor did Napoleon
know how to keep the friendship of his ally, for he refused to
destroy Cronstadt and St. Petersburg. Thus he gained nothing
even on the side of England, while through his fault France lost
both her soldiers and her money.

An incident that occurred on the occasion of signing the
treaty of Paris, after this war, shows clearly the weakness of this
imperial dreamer. He was master of the situation. His troops
had won the battles of the Crimea. It was in his power to dic-
tate his own terms and to form strong alliances. Russia could
not resist, and England dared not. Yet, instead of acting for the
future interests of France or of his own dynasty, he was specially
occupied with the question of what kind of quill the plenipoten-
tiaries should use in signing the treaty of peace ! A feather was
pulled from the wing of an eagle in the Jardin des Plantes for
the glorious purpose ; and the gentleman * who plucked it gave a
certificate of authenticity in the following words : " I hereby cer-
tify that I myself have plucked this quill from the wing of the
imperial eagle." Here we have " Badinguet " and the women of
his court, instead of the spirit of the great conqueror of Ma-
rengo and Austerlitz.

If the r61e of Napoleon III. in the Crimean War proved him
to be the dupe of England, insincere in his words — for he had
said that the empire meant peace, just before going to war ; and
that Waterloo should be avenged, previous to becoming the ally
of Wellington's countrymen — his conduct in the war of Italy
showed further that he was a poor soldier, affiliated with the
secret societies, and the tool of their conspiracies. Louis Napo-

* M. Feuillet de Conches.

266 NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

Icon's true policy would have been to identify himself with the
conservative forces in European society. He could not trust the
revolution. He ought to have known that it would push him
aside, if it ever obtained the upper hand. He should have known
that the names of emperor and empire were as distasteful to the
secret societies as those of king and kingdom. To placate the op-
position of the followers of the old regime, to inspire confidence in
the bosom of the conservative classes — this would have been true
diplomacy, for on this side alone lay the hope of his dynasty.
Pius IX. and his much-abused minister, Antonelli, had repeat-
edly warned him of the danger of joining in the intrigues of
Cavour and the other subalpine conspirators. He had already
alienated Russia, the great conservative power of the North. He
next alienated Austria, the great conservative power of Germany,
by making war on her in the interest of all the Red Republicans
in Europe, the sworn enemies of his own throne.

Count Cavour, true disciple of Machiavelli, knew how to
manage the hesitating and irresolute Louis Napoleon. Partly
intimidated by the attempts at assassination, partly cajoled, and
partly from sympathy — for had not some of his youth been spent
in attempts at Italian revolution ? — the emperor declared war
against Austria on April 13, 1859. All Italy was in arms. The
cohorts of Mazzini, with whom Napoleon had always held a mor-
ganatic relation, brought the knife of the assassin to assist, but to
sully, the sword of the gallant French army. The battle of Ma-
genta, won on June 4, 1859, by Marshal MacMahon ; and the battle
of Solferino, won on the 24th of the same month by Marshal Niel,
terminated the campaign. Napoleon took a personal part in the
war and manifested absolute incapacity as a soldier. His two
brave marshals saved him from complete disaster, and achieved
victory where alone he would have experienced defeat. Incom-
petent as a soldier, he again showed his incompetency as a diplo-
mat. He went to war for the sake of Italy, yet abruptly made a
treaty with Austria at Villafranca, leaving the north of Italy still
in the hands of the detested foreigner. The Italians cried out
against the French emperor for deserting them after having de-
clared that he would free Italy " from the Alps to the Adriatic."
They forgot that only for his assistance Austria might have
crushed them to powder, as she had already done during the
reign of Charles Albert. Napoleon made peace with Austria
because he was afraid of Prussia, who was afterwards to become
his conqueror.

There was another conservative force in Europe which Napo-

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. 267

Icon III. should have kept friendly at all hazards: that was the
Papacy. Its temporal power was the oldest sovereignty in Eu-
rope, guaranteed by the law of nations. It represented law and
right. It represented the great Catholic party of France and the
world. It stood in the way of the ambition of the subalpine
kingdom, ever grasping and aggressive, and plotting the over-
throw of all the other Italian principalities for the pretended
cause of Italian unity, but really for the sake of Sardinian domi-
nation. Napoleon should have seen that Italian unity meant the
creation of a great force hostile to France on the south, as Prus-
sia was hostile to her on the east. But he seemed to be dazed.
The blindness of his uncle fell on him. The uncle had tried to
get rid of the vieux calotin, Pius VI L, and the nephew tried to
get rid of his namesake, Pius IX. Both broke their power on
the same rock. The curse of Rome followed them and their
armies, the one to the Borodino and Moscow, the other to the
Rhine and Sedan.

Napoleon became more unprincipled as he grew older. He
fell under the domination of the subalpine clique, more especially
after the marriage of his cousin Prince Jerome to the daughter
of Victor Emmanuel. So it was decreed that the pope's tem-
porality should first be sacrificed after the kingdom of Naples
had been abolished. Napoleon wrote to Pius IX. letters signed
" Your devoted son," expressing his anxiety for the papal wel-
fare, and sent words of sympathy to the King of Naples, holding
out hopes of aid to him, while at the same time he was tolerating
or secretly encouraging Cavour and Garibaldi to destroy the tem-
poral power of both. Lamoriciere, the pope's general, asserted
that he had the word of Napoleon for it that the Piedmontese
army should not be allowed to interfere at Castel Fidardo.
King Ferdinand had his promise of non-interference at Gaeta.
But the word and the promise were of a true Corsican. The
Italian general, Cialdini, told Lamoriciere at Castel Fidardo
that he had seen the emperor and was sure of his sympathy.

With the fall of the papal sovereignty Napoleon lost the sym-
pathy of all the Catholics in France and in the world. He never
had the full sympathy of the infidel body, and so when he sur-
rendered at Sedan no one wept for his fate. Before that event
came, however, he was to commit more blunders, one of which
made him as detestable to Americans as he had become to the
best classes in European society.

This blunder was the expedition to Mexico. It was the less
excusable because Napoleon, having lived for some time in our

268 NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

country, ought to have known that his interference in the af-
fairs of this continent would be resented. In virtue of the Mon-
roe doctrine we are jealous of European interference in our own
or in the affairs of our neighbors. Our national sympathies are
with republics and democracies everywhere, but especially in
America. Napoleon knew that he would alienate the feelings
of all the inhabitants of the United States by taking advantage
of our civil dissensions to attempt to erect an empire at our very
doors. His sympathy for the Southern rebellion created a bitter
feeling against him in the North. His effort to destroy the
Mexican republic and turn it into an empire under an Austrian
prince intensified our hostility to him and his dynasty. Even
if he had succeeded in realizing his foolish dream of a Latin
empire in Mexico it could not have lasted. We would have
crushed it so soon as our civil war would have been over. This
state of feeling in the United States Napoleon himself perhaps
knew ; but, with his usual weakness, he allowed himself to be
influenced by the royalist Spanish camarilla that so often con-
trolled his court. Labastida, the exiled archbishop of Mexico,
full of resentment against the republic, is said to have used his
influence with the empress, and both, together with Juan Prim, of
Spain, engineered the plot to turn Mexico into an empire. La-
bastida's motive was probably the interest of his own party ;
Prim expected to be made emperor himself; and Napoleon's
vanity was stimulated by the project. It seemed easy to be real-
ized while the power of the United States was divided by the
civil war. On the 3Oth November, 1861, France, England, and
Spain agreed to interfere in the domestic affairs of Mexico.
The French army, sent across the Atlantic at enormous ex-
pense, was decimated by disease. France was robbed by the
expedition. Prim, perceiving that he was not to be the empe-
ror, induced Spain to desert, and England, selfish and cunning,
left Napoleon to carry out the scheme alone. Bazaine, a name
since Metz infamous in France, was the agent, and Maximilian
the victim, of this unfortunate undertaking. The result of it is
well known. The United States threatened; Juarez held out;
France withdrew, and Maximilian, one of the bravest names that
ever gave glory to the house of Hapsburg, was left to fight his
battle alone. He died like a hero, shot by the republican soldiers
of Juarez at Queretaro on July 19, 1867 — almost on the anniver-
sary of the battle of Waterloo. His death was a second Water-
loo for the Bonaparte family, for from it broke out that feeling
of hatred in Austria, and that feeling of contempt in France and

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. 269

throughout the world, which culminated in execration after the
surrender of Sedan.

Austria never forgave the interview between Maximilian's
wife, Carlotta, and Napoleon III. in a hotel at Paris previous to
the fall of her husband. She begged Bonaparte not to desert him,
telling him that it would be dishonorable to do so. She threw
herself at his feet as a suppliant, but in vain. " It is useless to
insist, madame," said the cold-blooded son of Hortense. " I shall
not give your husband another man, not another crown." The
words broke her heart and disordered her brain. She rose to
her feet, and with flashing eyes, from which shot the fires of in-
cipient insanity, exclaimed : " Ah ! I was not, then, deceived in
you. I know you, destroyer of my family ! You have your re-
venge on the granddaughter of Louis Philippe, who saved you
from misery and the scaffold." She followed him to the door
as he departed, crying after him: " You think you can, through
.your police, tear from me your letters and promises; but you are
mistaken. They are secure. Go ! and may the curse of God
fall on you as on Cain ! "

She lost her reason, and the curse fell on the betrayer of Maxi-
milian. As the ghost of Cassar haunted Brutus at Philippi, so
did the vision of Maximilian's bloody corse and the shadow of
his insane wife haunt Napoleon at Sedan.

Step by step the crisis was approaching. The Catholic party
alienated by his treachery to the pope ; England and Russia both
distrustful ; the conservatives of Italy unfriendly on account of
his having betrayed the exiled sovereign of Naples ; the radicals of
Italy discontented by the abrupt treaty of Villafranca ; Austria
hostile on account of the Italian war and his desertion of Maxi-
milian ; the United States unfriendly on account of his Mexican
enterprise and because of his well-known sympathy for the
Southern rebellion; Prussia watching the game and making
ready for the inevitable struggle : how stood France to Napoleon ?

The secret societies to which the emperor had belonged, and
to please which he had betrayed the pope and attacked Austria,
still continued to plot. Their motto was nationality and an in-
ternational republic. By nationality they meant a union of the
people of the same race in spite of geographical, financial, or
municipal reasons. By internationalism they meant socialism
and communism. True nationality, like true liberty, is based on
the preservation of municipal rights and is opposed to central-
ization. Our form of government, with its system of separate
States, each preserving its own peculiar privileges, serving as a

270 NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

check to centralized uniformity ; or Switzerland with its distinct
cantons ; or the confederation of the Italian States, each retaining
its own constitution and laws, as advocated by Gioberti ; or the
Spanish system, in which some of the provinces retain their own
customs <mdfueros, would not satisfy the advocates of national
unity. They wanted a geographical, legal, and centralized na-
tionality, which could be moved from one extreme to another, as
an electric current is set in motion by the touch of a button un-
der the thumb of one executive. They wanted, not a nationality
like a mosaic, with variety in unity, but a nationality vulgarly
uniform. Prince Jerome was the friend and protector of all
these dreamers and schemers, while at the same time he held re-
lations with all his cousin's theories regarding the perpetuity of
the Napoleonic dynasty. Indeed, it was in the interest of this
cause that he courted the socialists and publicly seemed to favor
the Internationale while the emperor was prosecuting it. Both
imagined that, despite the opposition of Legitimists and Orleanists,
they could at last found a liberal Napoleonic dynasty on the sup-
port of the irreligious masses. They imagined that they could
make the Commune content with a liberal empire, and cheat the
people out of their desire to re-establish the republic. But they
counted without Gambetta, Favre, and Rochefort. They did
not expect that Pierre Bonaparte was going to murder Victor
Noir, one of the idols of the Parisian mob. They forgot that the
more the tiger of communism gets the more he wants. They
forgot that the empire had lost its hold on the French heart, and
that Bismarck knew it. Rouher and the old Bonapartists saw
the chasm into which the emperor was going to plunge ; but he
would not listen to them. He preferred the counsels of his
quondam enemy, the demagogue Emile Olivier, to those of his
tried friend, Rouher ; and he trusted Le Boeuf, the imbecile Min-
ister of War, rather than Niel and MacMahon, the true victors
of Solferino and Magenta. Honest Niel was dead ; MacMahon
was in quasi-exile in Africa. Thiers' advice would not be listened
to. Bismarck was ready. Prussia was armed and longing for
the fray. France was rich, but the administration of civil affairs
had become corrupt and the nerves of discipline, both in the
army and the navy, were fatally relaxed.

We now reach the last act in this emperor's reign, one that
began in such splendor and ended in such disgrace. We saw in
the beginning the genius of Cavour leading him into the blunder
of the Italian campaign, the result of which was to raise up on
the southern frontier of France a rival power discontented with

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. 271

the half- measures of Villafranca. We shall now see a German
statesman lead Napoleon to ruin at Sedan. Bismarck, like Ca-
vour and Napoleon, belongs to the Machiavellian school of poli-
tics. Hatred of France and of everything French had been in-
stilled into King William's mind from his very infancy, and de-
testation of the Napoleons was with him almost a monomania.
Bismarck was a strange agent for this royal son of Luther, half
fanatic in his Protestantism and half savage in his policy, to
choose. Yet the pair have ever worked harmoniously, the king
calling on Providence, while the minister called on his Uhlans
and his rifled cannon, to carry out the policy of deception, of blood
and iron, which was to enlarge the Prussian kingdom into an em-
pire and humiliate France. Bismarck played his game astutely.
He helped Cavour to gain Italian unity, in order to weaken Aus-
tria and create sympathy for Prussian aims beyond the Pyre-
nees, and then he duped Napoleon into non-interference in the
war with Austria.

It is not probable that Bismarck at first hoped or intended to
take Alsace-Lorraine from France. His aim was to drive the
Austrian influence out of North Germany and leave it entirely
under Prussian hegemony. But he could not do this without
the leave of France. In order, therefore, to gain the sympathy of
the latter he paid court to Napoleon, and in 1862 submitted to
him a plan for the reorganization of Europe. The chief points
of it were that France was to annex Luxembourg and Belgium,
and afterwards the coal districts on the Rhine of Saar and Mentz.
Prussia, in return for helping France to this piece of territory,
was to get control of Hanover and all the German states as far
south as the Main. He flattered, coaxed, bribed, and intrigued at
the court in Paris and Biarritz, till Napoleon, weak and mute, al-
lowed him to carry out his scheme. Napoleon perhaps thought
that after the expulsion of Austrian influence from Schleswig-
Holstein, and the breaking of her power at Sadowa, Bismarck
would keep his word. It is strange that such an adept in du-
plicity as Napoleon should have trusted a man like Bismarck.
But the sybarite who presided over the destinies of France was
every day growing weaker and weaker. In 1866 Prussia declar-
ed war on Austria. Napoleon even then could have dictated
terms to Bismarck. He could have at once pushed his army to
the Rhine, which old Frederick II. said was the natural eastern
limit of France. Both Prussia and Austria would have been
obliged to assent. They were at war with each other. But the
opportunity was lost, and after the Prussian victory at Sadowa

272 NAPOLEON III. AND HIS REIGN. [Nov.,

it was no longer possible for France to dictate terms. Bismarck
was allowed to achieve the work of Prussian aggrandizement
without let or hindrance. The Prussian chancellor himself ex-
pressed surprise at the stupidity of the French emperor. M.
Drouyn de Lhuys, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and gallant Mar-
shal Niel tried to awake him to his danger and exact from Bis-
marck, while it was possible, some compensation to France for
her friendly neutrality. But in vain. When the last scene in
his inglorious reign opened Niel and Drouyn de Lhuys were
dead.

On the 1 5th of July, 1870, the French parliament decreed war
against Prussia, exactly four years too late. Rouher and the
old imperial counsellors had been superseded by men like Olivier
and Le Boeuf. The emperor had yielded up many of his pre-
rogatives and relaxed his hold on the French people. He
thought that the liberal constitution would reconcile them to his
dynasty. A war with Prussia for refusing to give France the
Rhine as a boundary would distract the attention of France, and,
if it were successful, would make it forgive his Mexican and
Italian mistakes. Success, of course, he expected. He always
believed in his star. In a few months after a rapid march on
Berlin he would return with spoil and glory, the conqueror of the
victor of Sadowa. Prussian insolence, that had dared to favor
the candidacy of a Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne, was to
be punished at Berlin by the nephew, as it had been punished at
Jena by the uncle. Yet suddenly it was found that nothing was
ready. Luxury had destroyed the discipline of the French
army. A veritable reign of " shoddy " pervaded all the depart-
ments of the administration. Theft and imbecility were found
everywhere. The commissariat was defective. The quota of
the regiments was not filled. The officers did not know the
geography of their own country. They had not even the maps
necessary to study it. Yet all seemed right on paper. M. Le
Bceuf, Minister of War, said that France was ready, that she did
not need to buy even a gaiter-button. He said that there was
a stock on hand of four millions of chassepot rifles ; in reality
there were but eleven hundred. There was a powerful French
navy, which Prussia especially dreaded, for it could have blockad-
ed her Baltic ports and landed a force on her northern frontier.
But the navy, commanded by Rigault de Genouilly — another pro-
duct of this reign of shoddy — had no proper charts of the Baltic,
and did absolutely nothing during the campaign. The adminis-
tration in France had seen the growth of Prussia, her magnificent

1 88 1.] NAPOLEON IIL AND HIS REIGN. 273

army and its splendid equipment, its thorough discipline and
great prestige, especially after the. victory of Sadowa ; yet no
proper preparations had been made for the struggle that
every one saw to be inevitable. The most bitter satire that was
ever penned against French vanity is not half so strong as the
record of the battles in Napoleon's last war, from Worth and
Forbach to Metz and Sedan. " On to Berlin ! " was the cry of
the whole French people when Napoleon left Paris. They be-
lieved in the prestige of French arms. They could not believe
that the emperor was an absolute imbecile. They thought that
all was ready , but the answer to their cry was the harsh " Nach
Paris / " of the Uhlans. German sobriety, steadiness, discipline,
and poverty trampled down in the dust the luxury, volatility, and
licentiousness of the administration of the last of the Napoleons.
The corrupt officers of his army, debauched by Mexican wealth,
Parisian effeminacy, and government appointments irrespective of
merit, were no match for the sinewy sons of Bavaria and the
brawny braves of Brandenburg. France, still crippled and hu-
miliated, will never forgive the disgrace of her last defeat, due
to the neglect and blindness of her emperor. The defeat at
Sedan on the 2d of September, 1870, ended the Napoleonic
dynasty.

The man is dead, but his work survives him. The present re-
public is a fit sequel to an empire begotten in perjury and nur-
tured in deception. The charlatanism of the present leaders of
French diplomatic thought, of Gambetta and Ferry, is but the
fruit of Napoleon's failure to set France on the road to real
greatness, to progress based on truth, honor, self-restraint, and
religion.

Yet perhaps we should make some allowances for his short-
comings. His moral education was bad, owing to the corrupt
[surroundings of his youth. He was taught to be a Catholic
rather because Catholicity was the religion of his family than on
account of the fixed principles and strict practices which it en-
tails. His only fixed belief was in his star, in his destiny. The
government of Louis Philippe is accused of having purposely
(given him opportunities of debauch in the prison at Ham. His
physical and mental debility manifested after his escape give pro-
bability to the story. He was a bundle of contradictions, a model
of duplicity. He called himself a devout Catholic and acted like
a free-thinker ; a son of the church, yet a Carbonaro ; and although
a Frenchman by descent, he was a Corsican in insincerity and a
Hollander in phlegm. His cold character, so unlike that of his un-

VOL. xxxiv.— 18

2/4 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov.,

cle, caused many to doubt his legitimacy. His public policy was
tortuous, shuffling, Machiavellian. Perhaps at no period of his-
tory does the contrast appear more striking between it and true
Christian diplomacy than during his reign. Palmerston, Cavour,
Bismarck, and Napoleon III., aiming at success by systematic ly-
ing and deception, making the end always justify the means, were
incarnate representatives of Machiavelli's system.

THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION *

" Praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise him, all ye peoples. For his mercy is confirmed
upon us, and the truth of the Lord remaineth for ever." — Psalm cxvt.

How naturally these words of the Psalmist come to our minds
and rise to our lips on an occasion like this ! We are here to
give thanks to Almighty God for the great victory won on this
spot a hundred years ago, which virtually ended our country's
struggle for freedom and put the seal of the Lord of Hosts on her
independence. Standing on this battle-field, and viewing in lov-
ing memory that noble band of patriots who, after so many dis-
couragements and from amid the gloom of so many difficulties,
here beheld the glorious sunburst of hope — nay, of assured suc-
cess, gleam forth upon their country's cause, we feel anew the
thrill of their relief, their exultation, and their gratitude, and we
would fain sing forth our rejoicing to the Lord, our deliverer.

From that event, as from their fountain-head, we see pouring
forth the blessings of a century of national life, and our hearts
rise up in dutiful thanksgiving to the Giver of all good.

We behold the influence of these blessings shed abroad,
through the myriad channels of human intercourse, till their
power is felt in every corner of the world ; and we would fain
have all the nations and peoples of the earth join in our canticle
of praise.

From the past and the present we glance to the future ; and,
strong in our faith that the Almighty's providence has not be-
stowed such wondrous bounty for evanescent purposes, but for
great ends which he will surely carry to their full accomplish- 1
ment, we recognize in his past mercies the best guarantee of his

*The Discourse of the Right Rev. John J. Keane, D.D., Bishop of Richmond, Va., at the
Mass of Thanksgiving at Yorktown, Sunday, October 16, 1881.

1 88 1.] THE YORK TOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 275

future beneficence, and with gladsome trust we exclaim ; " His
mercy is confirmed upon us, and the truth of the Lord remaineth
for ever."

And with our gratitude to the Almighty is inseparably bound
up our gratitude to that noble nation which he was pleased to
use as the agent of his providence in our country's behalf — to
chivalrous and generous France, to whom, under God, we are so
largely indebted for all that we to-day give thanks for. To her,
above all the nations of the earth, do our hearts on this day go
forth, and on her we invoke heaven's richest rewards.

Men have various sets of weights and measures for estimating
the meaning and value of human events ; but we never see them
in their true light, nor put upon them their right value, till we
view them in the light of God's overruling providence and dis-
cover the place which he has assigned them in the development
of his plan, and the efficacy which he has given them in promot-
ing and securing his purposes of wisdom and love. Viewed in
its own proportions and amid its own surroundings only, the
victory which we commemorate is dwarfed by many another of
far greater brilliancy in the annals of mankind. But regarded as
an element in God's providence over the nations of the earth, it
ranks among the foremost of the great events that have shaped
the destinies of the world. Faintly and imperfectly at best could
the patriots of 1781 have imagined the growth that was to spring
from the seed which they so laboriously and wearily planted.
But now that the battle-clouds which then overshadowed it
have long since passed away, and the tree of liberty spreads its
branches far and wide, we can estimate their work aright, and
trace the stream of providential guidance which leads up to it
and flows from it.

From the beginning God destined man to live in society, to
have social relations each with his fellow-men. His social rela-
tions as w.ell as his individual life were meant for his welfare and
happiness, both here and hereafter. To this end every form of
human authority and government called for by the social state
was to contribute and to be subordinated. The Creator foresaw
all the forms of imperfection and of evil that were to follow from
the blundering and the perversity of men ; but his wisdom, which
" reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things
sweetly," knew how to provide, and assuredly did provide, that
the net outcome of it all should tend to the realizing of his plan
and to the greater welfare of mankind. Whithersoever they
migrated over the face of the earth, and whatever were, in sue-

276 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov ,

cessive ages, their ups and downs of fortune and of civilization,
that heavenly guidance was ever with them, moulding their
forms of society and of government into conformity with their
capacities and their needs. Kings and emperors, . chiefs and
princes, statesmen and legislatures and politicians, seemed ofttimes
to shape the nations to their wills, and sway and use them ac-
cording to their ambitions, their interests, or their caprice; while
ever and anon mighty popular upheavals would burst all re-
straints and overthrow the growth of generations in a day, and
then, through fiery processes, settle into new social forms. But
the eye and the hand of the Almighty were ever above them all,
guiding the final results to the furtherance of his own all-wise
ends. And these ends are all summed up in this : that men should
be made nobler and wiser and happier by the suppression of all
that disturbs or degrades them and by the promotion of all that
elevates character and makes life peaceful and commodious.
This is the providential purpose of all social systems, and the
functions of every just government are comprised in these two
things : to hinder every cause within its reach that tends to popu-
lar unhappiness and evil, and to promote every cause within its
reach that contributes to popular happiness and welfare. But
these two ends of government, although equally necessary, are
not equally noble and pleasing. The encouragement of good is
an occupation equally pleasing to God and to noble minds,
whereas the suppression of evil is a sad necessity imposed by
human folly and wickedness. 'The greater and more numerous
the moral evils that afflict or degrade a people, the more stern
and severe must its government naturally become. And if the
hands that hold the reins are also perverse, then despotism and
tyranny rule and grow apace. The more this unhappy condition
develops, the greater, too, becomes the alienation, and even the
hostility, between the governing and the governed. Here we
have the key to the appalling picture presented by nearly all
governments and peoples before the Christian era. Human
nature had almost universally perverted itself in the ways of con-
cupiscence ; hence their greatness, as a rule, had fear for its
treacherous prop, and their brilliancy was but an embroidered
cloak for the corruption which finally wrought their ruin.

Then Christianity came to shed its sacred light throughout
the world and to mould the hearts of men to its blessed morality.
Little by little the good leaven penetrated the mass, and the
result was seen in legislation and government, as well as in do-j
rnestic relations and private morals. The Divus Imperator, who

1 88 1.] THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 277

claimed divine honors and absolute sway, gave place to the Chris-
tian ruler, who bent his knee to the same God and Father as the
lowliest of his subjects; who knew well, even though ambition
might sometimes blind him to the truth, that he was only the
responsible agent of a beneficent Providence, that the welfare
of his people was the only reason and right for his holding sway,
that the rights of the governed were as sacred as those of their
ruler, that if he trampled on theirs he forfeited his own, and that
he would best secure his own interests and happiness, here and
hereafter, by identifying them with the interests and happiness
of his people. Thus, on the one hand, a higher right and a more
sacred sanction were given to authority, and, on the other, sub-
jection to it was no longer a galling yoke, but a reasonable and
voluntary submission to the essential conditions of peace, order,
and prosperity. Authority was seen to be divine in its origin
and its rights ; but equally divine the rights of the people which
it was commissioned to guard and foster. Thus the governing
and the governed, no longer two alienated or antagonistic classes,
were drawn nearer and nearer together, and more and more
blended and identified through common interests and reciprocal
duties. And so the providence of God led steadily forward to-
wards that perfect balancing of mutual rights, and that complete
union and almost identification of the governing with the gov-
erned, which was to be known as self-government.

At different times and with various fortunes Christian states
had essayed the republican form of government, so consonant
with the spirit of Christianity, but our own favored land was des-
tined to be the field in which the social system should assume this
lofty shape in its grandest proportions. Twas for this that God
cut her loose from swaddling-clothes and leading-strings, and set
her strong and firm on her own feet, and gave her that individual
responsibility which is the necessary condition for noble aspira-
tions and lofty ends. Twas for this that the men of '76, taking
their stand on the inalienable rights of man, proclaimed to the
world their country's independence and consecrated to the holy
cause their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. 'Twas
for this that the fire of patriotism was spread abroad through-
out the land, nerving the people with a heroism which neither
dangers, nor hardships, nor disasters could overcome. Twas
for this that, when the need was greatest, He gave her the sym-
pathy of the noble French nation to cheer her on, and its strong
right arm to aid her to victory. Twas for this that, on this bat-
tle-field of Yorktown, He gave forth the fiat which sealed her

278 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov.,

freedom as an accomplished fact. 'Twas for this He guarded
her amid the doubts and anxieties which at first beset her path-
way, when scoffers said she had only to be let alone and they
would soon see her end. 'Twas for this He gave wisdom more
than human to our patriot fathers to store up safely the harvest
which had been sown amid their tears, and watered with their
blood, and reaped with their brave swords — to launch a new
world on its destined course — and, shunning both the revolution-
ary rashness which spurns the wisdom of the past, and the con-
servative timidity which shrinks from the responsibilities of the
future, to gather up all the experience of preceding ages and
mould it into the new and better shape which was to mark an
era in history and lift mankind to a higher level.

'Twas thus that Washington viewed it when, at the close of
the constitutional deliberations, to whose success he so largely
contributed, he declared that it was through ways little short of
miraculous that they had accomplished the framing of a Consti-
tution which embodied all the progress that mankind had made
in the science of government, and surrounded liberty with more
safeguards than any other government hitherto instituted among
mortals. In this spirit, too, he exclaimed : " We may, with a
kind- of a pious and grateful exultation, trace the finger of Provi-
dence through those dark and mysterious events which have,
step by step, led to the Constitution, thereby, in all human pro-
bability, laying a lasting foundation for tranquillity and happi-
ness when there was but too much reason to fear confusion and
misery."

We speak not boastfully but gratefully. We do not forget
that, as our great Washington said, we must not expect anything
perfect in this world ; and we doubt not that the treasures of
God's providence contain still richer and higher blessings for
future stages in the march of mankind. Nor do we forget that
it would be a foolish and an evil thing to boast as if these bless-
ings were our own making or the making of our fathers, and not
the gift of the Most High. No ; we recognize and proclaim His
bounty, and therefore are we here this day to pour forth to Him
our loving thanksgiving. We thank Him for the destiny which
He has vouchsafed our country, and for all the blessings which
have thus far marked her pathway towards its realization. We
thank Him for our patriot fathers, for their deeds of heroism, for
the fortitude which upheld them amid untold trials, for the glo-
rious success which crowned their efforts, and for the noble ex-
ample which they have bequeathed to us and all subsequent

1 88 1.] THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 279

generations, than which there is none grander in the annals of
history. We thank Him for the wisdom which guided their
counsels, and which used their timid and inexperienced hands for
tracing and founding the majestic social fabric which himself
had planned. We thank Him for having laid the foundations so
deep and strong that the mighty convulsions of civil war have
left the edifice as majestic and, we trust, as firm and solid as
ever. We thank Him for having knit the ties of union and bro-
therhood so close that they who, so short a time ago, met in the
awful shock of battle meet here to-day with no strife or rivalry
save that of enthusiastic devotedness to their common country,
and are gathered here, around this old fountain-head of liberty,
that all may drink deep of the patriotism of our fathers — a patri-
otism high and universal, knowing no limits of sect or section,
no bounds save God and humanity. And while this mourning
drapery entwined with the emblems of our exultation reminds us
how, so lately, our country bent in tearful sorrow over the pros-
trate form of her Chief Magistrate, cut off in the midst of his
noble career by the iniquitous act of an assassin, yet we see no
blanch of terror on her cheek, no tremor of anxiety in her hand.
She inscribes his name on the list of her illustrious sons, and then
points calmly onward and upward, strong in the faith that He
who has so marvellously blessed her with unparalleled prosperity
during this century of her life will not abandon his work and
has not exhausted his treasures. To Him be all the glory, from
whom all the good has come.

Nor is there any narrow exclusiveness in our exultation and
our thanksgiving. Our hearts must elate with world- wide sym-
pathies to-day, because the blessings we rejoice in were meant to
be world-wide in their influence. Our country was meant by
divine Providence to be the home of liberty for all mankind, the
refuge of the down-trodden in every land, the sanctuary of free-
dom in which the noble-souled of every clime might find the ob-
ject of their loftiest yearnings. Thus our country was meant to
be the grandest exemplification of the universal brotherhood of
men, and in the name of all we give thanks to the Father of all.

Nay, more, the Almighty not only meant her to be a mo-
ther-land, with wide-extended arms offering shelter and plenty to
all ; she was meant to be a teacher, through whose lips and in
whose life He was to solve all the social problems of the Old
World. The European nations had grown, by slow stages, from
the chaos of the fifth century to the civilization of the eighteenth.
In their social systems, as in general culture, the movement had
been ever onward ; but much of the husk and shell of transi-

280 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov.,

tion periods was still tightly clinging to the ripe or fast ripen-
ing fruit. Hence arose anomalies and social problems involving
contradictory views, and clashing interests, a*id opposing forces,
and great dangers. Then the God of nations set our country
apart from all the rest, and took from her all props and bandages
that were no longer needed, and moulded her form and life in
such wise as to solve all those problems and to show both the
rulers and the peoples of the Old World how to lay aside tute-
lage without falling into unruliness ; how to avoid both tyranny
and anarchy ; how to reconcile the fullest majesty of authority
and law with the highest popular intelligence and the complet-
est popular liberty. Oh ! how beautiful is that spectacle to
every one who loves liberty and who loves order. Blessed be
the God of order and liberty, who has realized this grand ideal
among the sons of men ! May his providence long preserve in
our country this union of these two blessings — the centripetal
and the centrifugal forces of society — which so many, erring
through timidity or rashness, think to be incompatible, but
which reason and our country's experience prove to be not
only reconcilable, but to be the complement and the perfection
of each other, and to constitute the true ideal of the Christian
State.

I say the Christian State, because Christianity alone has ever
given the ideal, and Christianity alone ever has produced or
ever can produce the character and circumstances of individu-
als and of society which make the realization of such an ideal
possible. It was Christianity that supplied the fundamental
principles of our independence and of our social system by
teaching and maintaining against all the traditions of paganism
the God-given and inalienable rights of man. It was Christianity
that vindicated, at the cost of the blood of her millions of mar-
tyrs, the superiority of the rights and conscience of the indi-
vidual man over the majesty of Caesars and the might of em-
pires. It was Christianity that taught the great truth that all
systems and appliances and forms of authority, whether re-
ligious or secular, have for their providential reason of existence
the welfare, temporal and eternal, of individual human beings,
and the glory of God resulting from the happiness of his crea-
tures ; and thus she gave the world the principle that the rea-
son of government is the welfare of the governed. Hence we
see how natural is the affinity of Christianity with a govern-
mental system in which the authority which preserves order in
all the general movement and in all its details is made to agree
with and to foster the individual rights and uses and prosperity

1 88 1.] THE YORK TOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 281

of every member of the body corporate. And as all man's natu-
ral powers develop best in the air of freedom, tempered by law
and order, so is it also with his spiritual being and with the work
of Christianity ; for grace loves noble natures, and Christianity
loves children whose characters are fitting reflexes of the beauty
and nobleness and freedom of God.

Here, again, we are not so boastful as to assert or imagine
that this grand ideal has been realized among us in its perfection.
No one, surely, could hesitate to acknowledge, with Washmg-
ton, that we must not expect perfection in this world ; but, with
him, we would gratefully declare our belief that God's provi-
dence had better fitted our system and its principles for an ap-
proach to that perfection than any that had ever preceded it.
We, like all the rest of mankind, have abundance of human per-
versity to lament, and it is evidently not best that there should
exist the diversities and contradictions and antagonisms, in reli-
gious and in secular matters, which are found among us. But
all these imperfections and evils existed before our country was
formed. They are pre-existing defects and difficulties which
her principles have to contend with. But what we unhesitat-
ingly assert is that, since these defects were already in existence,
our country's principles were the best on which they could be
dealt with. We falter not in our confidence that what is right

and true will ever prevail in a fair field. We doubt not that,
from amid pre-existing and unavoidable imperfections, the God
of nations will lead our country to the highest development yet
reached by man's intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual nature,
and that Christianity, which has laid the foundations and begun
the work, will carry it on to its completion. We cannot admit
the fear that the minds and hearts of our people will ever lose
their hold on Christianity, or withdraw themselves from its
blessed influence, for there is and can be no antagonism be-
tween Christianity and their highest and noblest aspirations.
On the contrary, it is her finger that points them to the loftiest
heights and exclaims : " Excelsior ! " She has given the world
the only true civilization the world has ever known ; and she will
be carrying out an integral part of her divine mission by not
only accompanying man, but leading him, to the furthest ad-
vances that civilization is capable of. For true civilization means
our advancing in God's ways to God's destiny. He is the True,
the Beautiful, and the Good, in himself and for us. His ways are
the ways of the true, the beautiful, and the good ; and progress
in them is the object both of civilization and of Christianity.

282 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov.,

Progress in truth, whether revealed or philosophical or scien-
tific, is his gift, and is pleasing to him, and is meant to be a way
that leads to him. Progress in the beautiful, in every form of
art, in all that smooths and beautifies the path of life — this, too,
is his gift, and is meant to tell of him and lead to him. Progress
in all that lifts up to well-doing and happy living, in all that is
good and useful — all this is from him and is meant to help us
towards him. It is these three forms of progress that constitute
civilization, and they are equally elements and aims of Chris-
tianity. And the reason of this is plain. Both Christianity and
civilization are from God, and there can be no contradiction in
him or his work. He made both heaven and earth ; and earth
was meant to lead to heaven, and there is no incompatibility.
If only we bear Him in mind who is in all things our first be-
ginning and last end, and remember always that it is his ways
we are going in and his ends we are aiming at, then the grand-
est efforts of genius and of energy will be blessed by him and
we be perfectly in accord with the spirit of Christianity. Our
longest reaches cannot reach beyond what he is and what he
means for us ; and he " puts all things under our feet," that all
may help on to him. In the words of the apostle : " All things
are j^ours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Let our
aspirations, then, be ever so exalted and our progress ever so
advanced, neither the aspirations nor the progress need ever
entail any sacrifice of the truth, the principles, or the spirit of
Christianity. That may be dreaded wherever Christianity has to
deal, in any degree, with a tendency to tyranny on the one hand
or to unruliness or anarchy on the other. But wherever, as in
our favored land, the principles of the social system are in accord
with the principles of Christianity, then there can be no reason-
able fear that the development of the one will lead to antagonism
with the other.

All that we have to fear is that passions and selfish interests
may lead our people astray from the great principles alike both
of Christianity and our country. We cannot forget Washing-
ton's solemn words that we " can never be in danger of degene-
rating into any despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall
remain any virtue in the body of the people " / nor the oft-repeated
warning that there can be no true liberty without morality, and
no morality without religion. Nor can we close our eyes to the
evil influences that are at work, and to the dangers which
threaten both religion and liberty. We know but too well the
tendency to substitute expediency for principle, selfishness for

1 88 1.] THE YORK TOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 283

patriotism, and darkness for light. But our faith is in God and
in our country's providence, and we would rather seem to err by
being too sanguine than sin against him by want of trust. Only
we would implore our people to remember that now, as in the
days of old, " perpetual vigilance is the price of freedom " ; we
would beg of them to appreciate the pricelessness of our coun-
try's liberties, and to recognize that Christianity is their only
safeguard.

Perhaps some one may be tempted to wonder that I have
thus far said nothing distinctively as a minister of the Catholic
Church. Not so, friends and brethren : every sentiment that I
have uttered I have uttered not only as an American citizen
and as a Christian, in the vague sense sometimes given to the
name, but in my character as a Roman Catholic. Here before
God and my country I profess my soul's innermost conviction
that every word that I have said is in harmony with God's
truth, with the principles which Jesus Christ gave the world,
with the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church, with all that
is symbolized by the vestments just now worn at this altar, and
with the robes in which I am clad as a Roman Catholic bishop.
As such we have offered up the sacrifice of the Eucharist —
the highest Thanksgiving, as the name signifies — to thank the Al
mighty not only for the victory of Yorktown, but also for all
the moulding of our country's form and all the shaping of her
life which have followed as the consequences of that victory.
And we have offered it in supplication, too, that he would render
her social principles everlasting ; that he would guard and shield
them against any hand which from any quarter soever, or for
any motive soever, might seek to attack them, or change them,
or misuse them ; and that through them he would lead our coun-
try to the destiny for which he made her, that she may show to
the world the highest manhood ennobled by religion, the highest
intellect illumined by faith, the highest social progress beautified
"by the order of the kingdom of God and by the " liberty of the
children of God," and the highest physical and scientific pro-
gress, giving means to spread that light and beauty and power
into every nook and corner where darkness lurks, or misery
crouches, or tyranny clutches its victims, or delusive unwisdom
would cheat noble aspiration into Utopian morasses or plunge it
into the abyss of anarchy and despair. Thus, we implore, may
our country be, in the natural order, " the salt of the earth and
the light of the world," because walking faithfully in the ways
of Him who alone gives light and peace and true welfare.

O friends and brethren ! let us on this day, and on this

284 THE YORKTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. [Nov.,

field sacred to liberty, rally more lovingly than ever around the
11 landmarks of our fathers " and vow that we will ever make
them the standard of our judgments, the guide of our delibera-
tions, the measure of our social acts, the light of our onward
pathway ; for they are the work and the gift, not of men, but of
God.

Let our final word be of France. Well may she hold a large
share in our thoughts to-day, since one of the chief objects of this
centennial celebration is to commemorate our alliance with her
and the invaluable aid received at her hands. Blessings on that
noble land which, alone of all the nations of the world, stood by
our country in her hour of direst need and became the champion
of her struggling liberties ! Blessings on her for the cheering
sympathy poured into our country's drooping heart ! Blessings
on her for the noble generosity which spared nothing and
counted no cost of men or money ! Blessings on her for the
chivalrous leaders who rivalled Washington himself in their de-
votedness to the cause, and for the thousands of brave men who
bore unmurmuringly the untold hardships of a dreary campaign
in a strange land ; who panted for the fray as eagerly as our own
patriot- soldiers ; who, on this battle-field, outnumbered the colo-
nial forces, and laid down their lives more numerously to secure
the glorious result. Never can our country forget Washington's
declaration that, were it not for the aid given on this spot by
France, not only would the victory of Yorktown never have been
gained, but the disheartened colonial forces would probably have
disbanded and given up altogether the struggle for liberty.
Think, therefore, of what France has assured to us, and then
think whether there ought to be, or ever can be, end or limits to
our gratitude. May all that is honorable and noble die out of
the hearts of men ere the remembrance of this die out of our
country's heart ! May this soil, sacred to our country's liberties
—more sacred than even old Independence Hall, because while
there she made the grand but almost desperate venture, here the
wreath of victory was twined around her brow — may it be ever
doubly sacred because of the mingled blood that has hallowed it ;
and may that mingled blood be the covenant of a friendship that
can never die — a friendship more lasting than the monumental
shaft which here is to tell all future generations of the alliance
between France and America !

And now let our concluding anthem of thanksgiving and sup-
plication be one in which all can join ; and let every heart and
voice give praise to God in the strains of the Te Deum.

1 8 8 1 ] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 285

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

CATHOLIC CONTROVERSY. A Reply to Dr. Littledale's Plain Reasons.
By H. I. D. Ryder, of the Oratory. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

In a small duodecimo of two hundred and sixty pages Dr. Ryder has
condensed succinct and incisive answers to as many as one hundred counts
of indictment laid by Dr. Littledale to the charge of the Roman See and
the Catholic Church in general. The motto on the title-page aptly cha-
racterizes the nature of Dr. Littledale's polemics : Dilexisti omnia verba
prcEcipitationis, lingua dolosa — " Thou hast loved all hasty words, O fraudu-
lent tongue." Dr. Ryder says he was teased for several weary months — and
we can well conceive how weary must have been the months devoted to
the irksome task of refuting such an odious book as Plain Reasons — by the
effort to account for the phenomenon which that book presents. He found
the easy theory of deliberate lying repulsive and contrary to his experi-
ence of human nature. This is how he solves the difficulty : " Dr. Little-
dale, I am willing to admit, has committed himself to an illicit pursuit of
truth, truth politic, truth artistic, it may be, at the expense of truths of
detail, a respect for which ordinary folks associate with common honesty ;
and he has failed, as such unscrupulous efforts deserve to fail " (p. 258).
We find ourselves involuntarily smiling very much over this, and reminded
of an anecdote which we heard forty years ago from a late very eminent
Protestant bishop. An editor of a very evangelical newspaper of New
York published a story of certain doings of this gentleman, who was then
a professor in a college in this vicinity. The story was false, and in an in-
terview with the editor was proved to be so by the professor, who demand-
ed a public retractation and apology. The editor declined to accede to this
demand, and justified himself on the ground that he considered it lawful
and useful to recount any story illustrative of the nature and tendencies of
Puseyism, whether it were true or not. If it were not true, it had, anyhow,
verisimilitude. Dr. Ryder's solution of the problem, how men who are not
liars can seek to promote politic and artistic truth " at the expense of
truths of detail," is capable of application to several other writers besides
Dr. Littledale — e.g., Mr. Froude, who has said: "There is no cause for
which any man can more nobly suffer than to witness that it is better for
him to die than to speak words which he does not mean," and yet has
written what he has written. We have to account also for the fact that
some men speak and act in reference to Catholics at the expense of cour-
tesy, decency, and justice in detail, without condemning these men as ruf-
fians, and a little modification of Dr. Ryder's theory will enable us to do
this.

Calumnious and vituperative attacks on the Catholic religion have
still very considerable influence on the popular mind in England and Ame-
rica. Though irksome, it is most useful to answer them, and the briefer
the compass of any sufficient answer the better it fulfils its purpose. Dr.

2 86 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [Nov.,

Ryder's reply to Littledale is as thorough as it could be consistently with
its brevity. Thoroughly acquainted with theology and history, very criti-
cal in his mind and training, and enjoying the advantage of the excellent
library of the Edgbaston Oratory, perfectly in command of his temper, and
master of a most excellent and taking style, whatever he writes is well
worth reading. The general divisions of his little book are as follows :
Part I. The Privilege of Peter and his Successors in the Roman See. Part
II. Charges against the Catholic Church in Communion -vith the See of
Peter, subdivided under seven heads, viz.: i. Creature- Worship ; 2. Un-
certainty and Error in Faith ; 3. Uncertainty and Unsoundness in Morals ;
4. Untrustworthiness ; 5. Cruelty and Intolerance ; 6. Uncertainty and
Error in the Sacraments ; 7. Lack of the Four Notes. Among all these the
part on Creature- Worship has struck our mind as specially clear and able.
This book, being small in size and cheap in cost, is admirably fitted for
the most extensive reading and circulation. We recommend it emphati-
cally both to Catholics, and to those who are not Catholics but wish to get
correct notions about the Catholic Church and religion.

THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. By Daniel Dorchester, D.D.
New York: Phillips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Walden & Stowe. 1881.

The aim of Dr. Dorchester in this work is to comfort such of his evan-
gelical brethren as may have been discouraged by the many assertions
recently made, even by Protestants, that Protestantism has failed. He
wishes to show that the "great working doctrines of Christianity" (that
is to say, those generally agreed on by the Reformed churches), which
he gives with soirfe unavoidable vagueness, to suit every one as well as
possible, are still working well and bringing forth good fruit, and bid fair
to root out all the errors and corruptions of Rome and overcome all the
powers of infidelity ; and that the particular selection of conflicting sects
which he takes for the church of Christ, instead of being on the point of
still greater dispersion, are now acquiring substantial unity and entering on
a career of victory.

To support these cheerful views he searches history, examines the
present state of the world, and collects all the statistics which will help him
in his statements. He displays, as is to be expected, the ignorance as to
the real teachings and tendencies of the Catholic Church that is usually
met with in those of his class, and upon which it seems hopeless to make
any impression. It is in vain to try to show to such that what real progress
their religion makes is owing to the Catholic truth which it still retains, or
to make them believe that Rome is not occupied in converting the world
to pomps and mummery instead of to Christ. This is perhaps the principal
reason why it is not worthwhile to answer such books as this ; for the only
people who are influenced by them are those thus placed beyond the reach
of our words.

We of course acknowledge that the imperfect and mutilated Protestant
gospel still does bear some fruit, and rejoice in all the good that it can ac-
complish. But it is amusing to see how the doctor, in his zeal, overrates
its power. As an example of his statistical crumbs of comfort we may ad-
duce the astonishing classification of the Christian world according to re-
ligion, in which he foots up the Protestant states at 486,000,000, while the

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 287

Catholics come out only 103,000,000. How is this accomplished ? Very
simply : principally by counting in the British Empire, with 283,000,000, on
the Protestant side. Is it possible that he really imagines that the Protes-
tant religion has a hold, or shows any signs that it ever will have a hold
on the vast numbers now under English sway, or that the German Empire
(put, of course, on the same side) is a state actually pervaded by " evangeli-
cal " views, or is this a little piece of brag, which he hopes some one here
and there may believe, and which other good Protestants will, for the sake
of the good cause, excuse ?

THE TwiT-TwATS. A Christmas allegorical Story of Birds connected
with the introduction of Sparrows into the New World. By Rev. Aug.
J. Thebaud, S.J. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.
1881.

The want of a children's book in English, Catholic in tone and enter-
taining in subject and style, is something that has caused many a heartache
to the seeker after Christmas presents for the young folks. But that such
a book should come from the pen of Father Thebaud will perhaps surprise
those who had hitherto known the learned Jesuit's capabilities through his
valuable contributions to the philosophy of history only.

The Twit-Twats is a book about sparrows. To the sparrows, which,
like the poor, we have always with us, we usually give a passing glance and
thought only, as too many of us are apt to do with the poor. But Father
Thebaud has closely studied the sparrows, and, while describing their na-
ture and habits in a most fascinating and instructive way, he has given the
history of their introduction into this country, and, by means of a well-
sustained allegory, has shown how the successes and failures, the trials
and triumphs of these little immigrants may be compared to the vicissi-
tudes of some of our Catholic settlers from abroad. The moral is there,
plain for all who care to find it, but not so much in the way as to prevent
a boy or girl from thoroughly enjoying this charming book.

The publishers have done their part ungrudgingly. The book is a
handsome quarto, printed on very fine paper, well illustrated, and taste-
fully and attractively bound.

LETTERS AND WRITINGS OF MARIE LATASTE, Lay Sister of the Congrega-
tion of the Sacred Heart. With critical and expository notes by the
Fathers of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the French by Ed-
ward Healy Thompson, M.A. Vol. i. London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

We became long ago familiar with the Life and Writings oi Marie Lataste
in one of the editions published in French. This remarkable person was a
totally uneducated peasant-girl. Nevertheless she wrote on the highest top-
ics of theology in a manner so correct and sublime that, deducting certain
errors of expression, her writings would do honor to a profound theologian.
After she became a lay sister of the Sacred Heart she wrote no more, but
passed her life entirely in humble labor and the ordinary practices of a re-
ligious house. Mr. Thompson has already issued an edition of her Life.
The present volume contains all her writings except letters of a personal
and biographical nature, which the editor will publish in a second volume,
if there is a demand for it. The Life and Writings of Marie Lataste have
passed the most searching ordeal, and there can be no reasonable doubt

288 NE w FUBLICA TIONS. [Nov., 1 88 r .

that she was the recipient of extraordinary gifts and illuminations from
which came the infused knowledge by which she was enabled to discourse
so wonderfully upon heavenly things. There is no solution of the problem
how an ignorant peasant-girl could produce these writings, except this one,
which is in the least degree reasonable. The facts of her life are all proved
by conclusive evidence. The book is one which all pious Catholics will
find to be eminently instructive and of great practical utility, besides hav-
ing its own special and enthralling interest.

NACH ROM UND JERUSALEM. Von Hermann Leygraaff. Mit Bildern. St.
Louis : B. Herder. 1881.

The Rev. Mr. Leygraaff, of the diocese of St. Louis, the writer of these
sketches of a tour which he made in 1879 from the Mississippi to the Jor-
dan in search of health, departed this life soon after writing the preface to
his little book, which is dated January, 1881. It is sprightly and readable.
The most interesting portion is that which relates to the Holy Land, and to
us what is more pleasing than anything else is the description of the foun-
dations and works of F. Alphonse Ratisbonne and the Daughters of Sion.
The wood-cuts are respectable, and two of them, giving a correct idea of
F. Ratisbonne's church and monastery on Mt. Sion, and of the restored
church and convent of St. Ann, where the Daughters of Our Lady of Sion
are established, add much to the interesting description of these unique
and admirable institutions from which we hope so much for the future of
Jerusalem and Palestine.

RANTHORPE. By George Henry Lewes. New York : W. S. Gottsberger.
1881.

This old and forgotten novelette of the year 1847 is republished, we pre-
sume, as a literary curiosity. It is dedicated by the author to his real wife,
and not to " Marian Evans, spinster." It reads like a sort of autobiography.
Mr. Ranthorpe, however, although not very wise or exemplary in his young
days, behaved himself in a much more moral and creditable manner than
his creator, who in his own later life fell far short of his earlier ideal of
fidelity to conscience as presented in this tale. It is just as plain that
novel-writing was not Mr. Lewes' forte as it is that it was the forte of
George Eliot, who, in his company, gave the world such a signal example
of defiance of the laws of God and man from a purely disinterested and sub-
lime altruism.

RITUALE ROMANUM PAULI V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum et a Bene-
dicto XIV. auctum et castigatum. Cui novissima accedit Benedic-
tionum et Instructionum Appendix. Editio secunda accuratissima a
Sacr. Rituum Congregatione approbata. Ratisbona?, Neo-Eboraci et
Cincinnati : Sumptibus, chartis et typis Fr. Pustet. 1881.

This handsome work is the complete Ritual in a convenient form.
While adhering to the matter of the Roman Ritual, the publishers have in-
troduced certain modifications. The chant melodies and the style of nota-
tion adopted in the Graduale and the Antiphonarium published by Fr.
Pustet have replaced those found in the older Rituals. This will be es-
teemed a great convenience by many.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XXXIV. DECEMBER, 1881. No. 201.

THE GERMAN PROBLEM.

IT has been evident to every unbiassed observer from tne be-
ginning that none have been more desirous of national unity
among Germans than Catholic Germans. The idea of a German
Empire they have held most dear, and have considered its destruc-
tion by the action of the religious revolution of the sixteenth cen-
tury as a great calamity. Regardless of minor differences, they
have persistently labored for its restitution, and with an enthu-
siasm, self-sacrifice, and heroism unsurpassed. The Catholic King
of Bavaria, the largest element in the Confederacy, Prussia alone
excepted, was among the first to accept at Versailles in 1871 the
Protestant King of Prussia as the hereditary German Kaiser.
The number of inhabitants of the empire is, in round numbers,
forty millions, and of these fifteen millions are Catholics. With-
out the consent and co-operation of those Catholics King Wil-
liam of Prussia would never have been dignified with the proud
title of emperor and the national unity would have existed only
in dreamland. He who would attempt to impeach the patriot-
ism of German Catholics trades upon the ignorance of his read-
ers. Their patriotism stands before the whole world, after long
and severest tests, unimpeached and unimpeachable. Thus much1
has been gained by reviving against the Catholics of the Prussian'
Empire the old pagan cry of disloyalty — Vaterlandslieblosigkeit,
not-loving-the-fatherland.

Nobody doubts that Catholic Germans would rather see the

290 THE GERMAN PROBLEM. [Dec.,

Catholic house of Austria wield the sceptre of the empire than
the Protestant King of Prussia. But they knew how to subor-
dinate their wish to the realization of national unity — the steady
object of their earnest desire. Hence as a body they have never
raised a voice not favorable to the existing confederated impe-
rial government. Let the empire stand as it is, and let the im-
perial government be maintained with all the power at its com-
mand!— this is the sincere expression of the aspiration of the
Catholics of the German Empire.

If any one says that there is an issue between Catholics and
Protestants concerning the existence of the German Empire, he
makes an egregious mistake. The empire commands the entire
suffrages of both religious parties. There is, however, a serious
issue between them, but this issue does not involve the political
existence of the empire. What it does involve is its right to
proscribe religious freedom. Not to make this distinction is to
create a contest where none exists, and betrays the sinister de-
sign of placing fifteen millions of Catholics in a false position.

The German chancellor appears to have adopted this disin-
genuous course, hence his misleading cry : " Wir gchen nicht nach
Canossa " — We will not go to Canossa. And German Protes-
tants, Jews, infidels, rationalists, Freemasons, atheists, socialists,
communists, et id genus omne, with the entire National Liberal
party, united together, with the applause of the sectarian and
secular press everywhere, to infringe the imprescriptible rights of
conscience of their Catholic fellow-citizens ! The prince-chan-
cellor appears to have entertained the vain idea that with the in-
famous Falk laws he could bind hand and foot the Catholic
Church ; and if Catholics showed signs of resistance, then he
could seize the occasion, in the words of that despicable American,
the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, " to stamp out popery in Ger-
many." To stamp out the convictions of millions of consciences,
and these consciences informed with the divine light of the Ca-
tholic faith, is sooner said than done. Foolish men ! They count
in vain who think to overcome with human weapons divine con-
victions. This is the contest in Germany. Here is the tug of
war. As for Catholics, their faith makes them naturally at home
in vast connections, and if the German Empire is ever imperilled
it will never be on account of their conduct, but on account of
those who, with a bitter and intolerant spirit, refuse to Catholics
their religious liberty.

The crowd of followers of " the man of iron and blood " did
not stop to ask what is the meaning of the defiant phrase, " We

1 88 1.] THE GERMAN PROBLEM. 291

will never go to Canossa." Their blind obedience to their
leader has no parallel, except it be in the poet's fancy of the fa-
mous charge of the Light Brigade when he says :

" Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred,"

So the Prussian National Liberal party and its sympathizers rode
but to an ignoble defeat and dishonorable grave in voting for the
Falk laws, disclosing to the whole world the hypocrisy of their
profession of religious toleration and the hollowness of their love
for liberty of conscience. Bismarck's cry duped this pseudo-
liberal party, and after it had served his purpose it lost power,
and now there is none so poor as to respect its remains.

What could these deluded followers of Bismarck imagine he
meant ? Was it that he was engaged in the defence of the state
as a separate and independent organization from the church ?
Was it that the state had its own proper sphere of duty and
action, and in this he was resolved to receive no dictation from
either priest, prelate, or pope ? Was it because he would have
the clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany to be Germans ?
Was it because he would have this clergy enlightened and un-
mistakably patriotic? Was it that he would have the Catholic
German people of the empire its sincere friends and stanch up-
holders? If this was his meaning of the phrase, " We will not go
to Canossa," may he never break the pledge which it contains !
May he never take a single step in the direction of Canossa !
None recognize and maintain the divine origin of the state more
strenuously and sincerely than Catholics. Catholics are not, and
never were, in favor of theocracy — the absorption of the functions
of the state into the church — that is a Puritan idea ; nor are they
in favor of the abolition of the state — that is a communistic dream.
If this was not his meaning, then what did he mean ? Was it his
intention to exalt the state above the church ? or to dictate to
her hierarchy and make her rulers subservient to his political
policy and ambitious schemes? Was it to this end he attempt-
ed to decatholicize Catholic Germans and make the church a
function of the state? If such was his design, then he was
foolish. He and his followers were day-dreaming, fancying
that the Catholic Church was a voluntary association to be
moulded or overcome at the pleasure of the state — a fancy not

292 THE GERMAN PROBLEM. [Dec.,

to be wondered at with the training which he and they had re-
ceived.

But what an infatuation ! Nero, Domitian, Diocletian, and
other Roman emperors had all the power of- their colossal em-
pire at their command, and failed in the same enterprise. The
hordes of Huns and Goths and Visigoths came, and their arms fal-
tered before her pontiffs. Henry IV. and Barbarossa, both em-
perors of Germany, repeated the folly and ignominiously failed.
Henry II. of England tried, and met the same fate. The two Na-
poleons, the first and the third, the one by force and the other
by craft, strove to prevail against the church, and both were
dethroned and died in exile. None but a fool or a madman,
with so many historical examples before his eyes, would repeat
so fatal an experiment.

It is true that a man-made church, like every other volun-
tary human institution, is conquerable. But a church which has
God for her builder and has his promise to be her sustainer until
the end of time, and which rests upon the inherent needs of the
soul for her fast foundations, is divine and unconquerable. This
truth, one would suppose, had been made sufficiently plain to all
tolerably well-informed minds by the repeated persecutions and
attacks during nineteen centuries against the Catholic Church.
The testimony of history, however, makes but a slight impres-
sion on the minds of dreamers, and' is soon effaced. The lesson
had to be taught over again in our day, and, that it may be re-
membered, let it be proclaimed from the hous'e-tops that " the
Prussian kingdom, at the head of the most powerful empire, with
1 the man of iron and blood ' wielding its weapons, made the seri-
ous attempt to overcome the Catholics within its limits, and suf-
fered defeat." Thanks to Prince Bismarck's war against Catho-
lics, he has reawakened Germany and the whole world to a fresh
appreciation of the superhuman strength of the Catholic Church !

Nobody expects the imperial chancellor to recognize, or to
acknowledge if he does recognize, the divine character of the Ca-
tholic Church. But he has enough good sense to recognize that
his campaign against her has not been successful. He has suffi-
cient sagacity to see that if he would save the German national
unity from ruin he must stop his violent persecution of Catho-
lics. He knows that the empire was formed by the aid of Ca-
tholics, and he has learned by his recent experience that the em-
pire cannot stand without their good-will and co-operation. Bis-
marck's first duty, unless he would be considered as an enemy
to the empire, is to seek and to find, and that speedily, a modus

1 88 1.] THE GERMAN PROBLEM. 293

vivcndi acceptable to the chief pastor of the Catholic Church,
Leo XIII.

And, to all appearances, the prince chancellor has at last come
to the conviction that this is a political necessity. He says as
much in these words : " I have not given up my arms, but hung
them on the wall, for we may have future use for them." This
is an acknowledgment of defeat under the cover of a threat. At
the outset of this daring conflict with the church the chancellor
won a certain admiration for his frankness. He threw down, in
the sight of the whole world, his glove into the arena, and pro-
claimed his intention of reopening the historical battle against
the Catholic Church. Catholics had no choice left but to ac-
cept the challenge and incur the chancellor's hostility. He has
waged war during these ten years. He is weary — "sick," to use
his own words, " unto death."

He has got enough, but lacks the manliness to acknowledge
this openly. This is not handsome on his part, and it is to be
feared that what some had supposed was due to a certain natural
nobleness of Bismarck's character sprang from an overweening
self-conceit. In common parlance, it was brag. This, however,
is a personal matter and of no great importance. But what is
important to know is that the terminus of the road on which he
has started is the for-ever-famous " Canossa."

" Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt."

Defeat, then, there has been, and it is certain that the Catholic
Church in Prussia has not been destroyed or subjugated to the
state ; on the contrary, she has not been so strong and so con-
scious of her strength for a long while as at this very moment.
Defeat there has been, and it is certain that the attempt to detach
Catholic Germans from their allegiance to the supreme authority
of the Holy See has signally failed. Never have their expres-
sions of readiness to obey the decisions of the chief pastor of the
church been more explicit, more sincere, and more worthy of ad-
miration. Defeat there has been, and it is certain that the foster-
ing care and aid by the state of the Old-Catholic movement, in
order to create a national German Catholic Church, has proved
to be the most abortive attempt made in the religious world in
this century. Thus far the war waged against the Catholic
Church in the kingdom of Prussia has resulted as follows : It has
gained for Prince Bismarck the unenviable distinction of being
placed on the list of the persecutors of the Roman Catholic

294 THE GERMAN PROBLEM. [Dec.,

Church, at the head of which stands Nero ; and it has contri-
buted powerfully in making the fifteen millions of Catholics exist-
ing- in the German Empire, more particularly those in Prussia,
the most intelligent, fervent, unflinching, and heroic in the fold of
the holy church. The man who made the German Empire has
ventured to measure himself with Him who built the Catholic
Church, and the Galilean has conquered.

How often it has been said by its opponents that the Catholic
religion is altogether dependent on its hierarchy, its external
worship, its ceremonies, symbols, and forms ! Destroy these, so
they fancied, and the Catholic religion would cease to exist.
This assertion has been put to the practical test before our eyes
in Prussia. The Catholic Church has been deprived of all of her
bishops, except one ; a thousand, more or less, of her parishes are
destitute of priests ; her churches in great numbers have been
taken and given over to apostates ; all her religious orders have
been banished, her institutions of beneficence and education have
been closed, and her children, so far as it was in the power of the
state, have been handed over for their education to the tender
mercies of the enemies of her faith. What has been the result
of this persistent and bitter persecution? Has the faith of Catho-
lics died out? Has their fervor cooled off? Has their unity
been broken ? Has their courage for one instant faltered ? Have
they flinched, or given any signs of flinching? The precise con-
trary has taken place, and, like the Christians of early days, they
hold up their heads undaunted, their hearts beat with noble valor,
and with firm and stout arms they hold aloft their banner ! It
was theirs to show the falsity of the charges against the divine
character of their faith, and to render evident that the convictions
of their consciences of its truths were invincible. Let others
yield to the dictation of the state; they have so learned Christi-
anity as to stoop to no authority in religion that is not divine !
Noble Catholic Germans of this unbelieving age, your conduct
will shine forth to all future time as an example to the faithful in
their trials and as an encouragement in their sacrifices !

But suppose that the present dispositions of Prince Bismarck
do not eventuate in a modus vivcndi ; what then? What then ?
Why then the conflict will have to go on, and the weaker ves-
sel will go to the wall and be dashed into pieces. What then ?
Why, the life-purpose of the German chancellor will not be real-
ized, and, like his predecessors in this historical battle, his end will
be ignominious. Like them, he was unwilling to brook in the em-
pire a body who were resolute in maintaining the rights of con-

1 88 i.j THE GERMAN PROBLEM. 295

science and in defending at all costs their religious faith. He
had mastered and broken up the German Diet; he had duped
and vanquished Austria ; he had led France craftily into a disas-
trous war, defeated her armies, and humbled her pride ; he had
restored the German Empire, and placed its sceptre in the hands
of his own prince, the King of Prussia — he who had done all these
great things meets, for the first time in his career, with men
whom he cannot dupe by any artifice, overreach by all his craft,
or conquer by all the force at his disposal ! For the first time
this " man of iron and blood " finds himself constrained to hang
up on the wall his victorious arms ! He is compelled from the
necessity of the case to face the alternative, either to witness the
failure of the darling project of his ambition, or give up his perse-
cution of Catholics and respect their religious convictions. It
looks likely that he will try the latter. For he can find nowhere
else that basis of support necessary to uphold the empire, ex-
cept in the compact body of Catholics. The national Protestant
Church is a rope of sand. The National Liberal party has lost its
hold on the masses because of its lack of all principle. The only
cement which has the virtue to bind the integral elements of the
empire together is Catholicity. But before this can be utilized
by the chancellor he has to undo the disgraceful work of these last
ten years against the Catholic Church. This is a bitter pill for
him to swallow. Will he take it ? He is evidently making now
wry faces over the dose. His acceptance of the newly-appointed
bishops by the Pope, and the rumor of his willingness to re-estab-
lish diplomatic relations with the Holy See, are signs of his will-
ingness. But the man of Varzin is not now dealing with Aus-
trians or Frenchmen ; he has to deal with his own Prussians,
whom he cannot so easily baffle. Signs will not satisfy them ;
they will insist upon his swallowing the pill, and not be content
until they detect its effects by his restoration of their religious
liberty. Wherever the Falk laws are incompatible with the
rights of the church they will have to be abrogated, or Prince
Bismarck will have to see what he once declared was his
hope. " I hope," he said, " to live to see the foolish bark of the
state dash itself to pieces against the rock of the Church."
Was this prophetic of the new German Empire ? We sincerely
trust not. And was Bismarck himself to be the fated instrument
of its fulfilment ? God forbid ! The fall of the German Empire
would fill us with unfeigned regrets. There are good reasons in
God's providence to hope for great things in the future from the
empire of Germany.

296 THE GERMAN PROBLEM. [Dec.,

There is but slight prospect that the connection between the
church and state which existed in the Prussian kingdom before
this contest will be restored. If such a restoration were possible,
with the prevailing tendencies of men's minds it .cannot be
lasting. From a religious point of view, no less than from a
political point of view, its recovery might not be desirable. For
the men who have control of the state almost everywhere
in actual Europe either aim at the reduction of the church
into servitude or are bent on her destruction. Politicians and
courtiers will forge every connection between the church and
the state into chains to fetter her free limbs or turn them
into weapons against her. " The hind that would be mated
by the lion must die of love."

The pages of history teach the important lesson that under
the bloody persecutions of the Roman Empire the church con-
quered her persecutors. Under the bitter persecutions of Eng-
land the faithful and heroic children of Ireland are breaking
her fetters and she is fast regaining her lost freedom. History
teaches indisputably that the church can exist independently of
the state much better than the state can exist independently
of the church. Is it not a sign of a lack of faith, and an in-
justice to the divine character of the church, to mistrust her
ability to stand upon her own feet and maintain herself erect?

The Catholic Church exists, and has existed without patron-
age from the state one hundred years in this country, and flour-
ishes. The tree of Catholicity grows strong and bears precious
fruit when planted in the soil of liberty and intelligence. Would
to God that the Catholic Church everywhere in Europe enjoyed
liberty to preach her holy faith and exercise her salutary disci-
pline, as she does in these United States ! Religion reigns most
worthily, in an age tempered like ours, when she rules by the
voluntary force of the intelligent convictions of conscience, and
finds in these alone her sufficient support.

It is when both church and state are the expressions of the
religious faith and political convictions of the entire community,
and each acts in its own sphere concordantly with the other
in aiding man to attain his divinely appointed destiny, that the
kingdom of God upon earth approaches to its nearest fulfilment.
Every well-informed Catholic knows that the separation of
church and state is a great calamity. He knows also that the
destruction of the liberty of the church and her servitude to the
state is a still greater, perhaps the greatest of calamities. Now
that the old system between church and state has been broken,

1 88 1.] THE GERMAN PROBLEM. 297

and its recovery hopeless, may it not be the interest no less than
the policy of the church not to neglect but to embrace the op-
portunity which Heaven yields to secure above all things, in view
of menacing dangers, her independence and freedom of action ?

The solution of the German problem, looked at exclusively on
its political side, is another thesis, but ail we can do here is to
make its presentment, which might be stated as follows : Con-
sidering the German Empire with its conflicting religious ele-
ments, would not a programme assuring to all denominations
their liberty and equal protection of their rights satisfy the rea-
sonable demands of all parties, produce that internal peace neces-
sary to the stability of the empire, and open a door to Prince
Bismarck, its chancellor, through which he might escape from
his present embarrassments without humiliation, and renew his
title to leadership of the empire with honor?

The persecution of the Catholic Church in the kingdom of
Prussia, if public rumors are to be credited, has ceased. May it
not be a truce only, but may the armor now hanging idly on
their walls hang there for ever ! The strife has entered upon a
new phase — that of arranging a modus vivendi, as it is called.
The contest is no longer one of principles and rights, these being
settled ; the question is one of compromises, concessions, and con-
ciliations. Catholics, in an emergency like the present, cannot
'be too thankful to God for placing as chief pastor of his church
militant one who possesses" in an eminent degree the various
gifts and virtues which fit him for the functions of his high of-
fice; one who, like a skilful and experienced captain, knows how
to steer in stormy and tempestuous times the bark of Peter into
calm waters and harbors of safety ; one who, while holding
tenaciously the divine principles and rights of God's church,
knows how, with admirable sagacity, to adjust their bearings on
the interests of society and the prosperity of the state, while se-
curing to religion a reign of peace and a fair prospect of future
triumph. May the Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII., now gloriously
reigning, have the support of the fervent and earnest prayers
of the faithful throughout the world to aid him in the execution
of his great task, and God grant that his reign may be long and
prosperous !

298 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED THE BRITISH

EMPIRE.

" THE life of a lord-lieutenant of Ireland comes up to my idea of perfect
misery, but if I can accomplish the great object of consolidating the British
Empire I shall be sufficiently repaid. — LORD CORNWALLIS."

LORD CORNWALLIS enjoyed some repose after returning to
England from America, where he had learned that, although he
was a trained strategist, a general untrained in that part of the
art of war was more apt in it than he ; and the memory of York-
town had become softened by five years of more agreeable expe-
rience when he was sent out as governor-general of Bengal and
commander- in-chief of the army in India. Neither military nor
civil critics are agreed concerning the permanent effects of his
efforts to consolidate the British Empire in that quarter. He re-
signed his post in 1793 and returned to England, receiving a
marquisate for his services and the appointment of master-gene-
ral of the ordnance. The government placed no slight estimate
on his abilities as a diplomat, whatever they may have thought
of his brilliancy as a soldier ; and as it was craft, not bravery,
that was most needed in Ireland in the woful year of '98, Corn-
wallis accepted the functions of lord-lieutenant and commander-
in-chief, and entered upon his duties in June of that year. Be-
fore he was in office a month he wrote to Major-General Ross a
letter of which the above is the closing paragraph.

There was not the slightest uncertainty in his mind or in the
minds of the king or ministers as to the nature of his mission to
Ireland. He was to suppress a rebellion and abolish a national
parliament. For this double purpose he was to have as many
men and as much money as he deemed necessary. Both pur-
poses were to be accomplished at any cost ; but the men were to
be drawn from England or her mercenaries, for the Irish soldiers
could not be depended upon to massacre their own blood ; and
the money was to be drawn from the Irish, for they were suffi-
ciently at peace to be taxed to death, if they were not sufficiently
at war to be slaughtered. Should the resources of that country
prove inadequate, then the secret-service fund — the corruption
fund — of the English ministers was to be invaded. The suppres-
sion of the rebellion and the abolition of the national Parliament

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 299

of Ireland would, it was confidently expected, effect the perma-
nent consolidation of the British Empire.

The moment is opportune to take the story of this the most
remarkable chapter in the career of Lord Cornwallis from the
official and private letters written by him during his Irish ad-
ministration. We shall walk at his side through that exciting
and dramatic epoch ; and there shall be no divergence from the
path, except for the purpose of ascertaining whether he is always
frank in his assertions, or to break the branches overhead and let
in a little clearer light on some especially dismal spot. The
story is by no means a cheerful one ; but there can be no serious
objection to permitting the chief actor in it to tell it in his own
way. Where the testimony of others is borrowed to confirm,
disprove, or elucidate, the reader will find the authorities quite as
trustworthy as the respectable gentleman who surrendered to
Washington ; for Lord Cornwallis was really an amiable and by
no means bigoted man, and had his counsels been followed the
record he was compelled to make for his country would be one
in which his countrymen to-day would feel less shame.

As to the rebellion, the dreadful details need not be repeated,
except as they enter naturally into the progress of the narrative ;
but it is well to understand precisely the nature of the enterprise
Lord Cornwallis had in hand in undertaking to abolish for ever
the national Parliament of Ireland. In describing the character-
istics of that Parliament and ascertaining its official composition
it is necessary to employ the terms Protestant and Catholic free-
ly ; for those were the sanguinary days when fanatics hated each
other to gratify their peculiar conception of the love of God, and
when audacious and ambitious politicians fanned that hatred for
the consummation of their schemes. It is obviously judicious,
therefore, in this instance, since every effort should be made to
avoid wounding the sensibilities of the descendants of either
party, to employ only Protestant authors in discussing a subject
from which pain cannot be wholly eliminated. If any inaccuracy
creep into the recital, at least it will be apparent that it is not
the wish or the fault of the writer.

It is a paradox to speak of the Irish Parliament as the national
Parliament of the Irish people. Strictly speaking, it never was
a national Parliament in the sense in which we understand that
word now. Prior to the passage of Poynings* law during the
reign of Henry VII. political dissensions and wars rendered its
nationalization impossible ; and as soon as it displayed a spark of
genuine national spirit a snuffer was sent over from England to

3OO HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

put out the light the spark might have created. The snuffer was
Poynings' law. It was, in substance, that the Irish Parliament
should meet only when the King of England desired it to meet ;
that it should meet only at his pleasure, and when it had done his
business in Ireland that the members should go home. That law
was passed in England in 1495. Of course it had to be accepted
in Ireland. A Parliament thus fettered was indeed no Parlia-
ment ; but in course of time astute men in it found ways to do
slight favors for the country without the previous permission of
the crown, and when the religious fanaticism of the subsequent
period introduced new elements of distress into Irish life it was
deemed prudent to expel the Catholics from seats and to deprive
them of the right to vote for Protestants who were candidates.
Yet the Catholics were seven-tenths of the population, according
to Lord Cornwallis. A Parliament which contained no represen-
tatives of that proportion of the people of a country can scarcely
be designated a national Parliament.

But there were factors in its composition which rendered it
less than representative of the minority who were eligible. The
Stuarts had fostered the borough system so industriously that a
Parliament of three hundred members represented actually only
about as many individuals or families. Two hundred and sixteen
members represented only manors. Manor proprietors who sent
in men to the Commons acceptable to the government were re-
warded with peerages ; and thus the upper and lower houses
were simultaneously degraded and corrupted. Still further to
withdraw the Parliament from public opinion, should any be de-
veloped by events, the lower house, unless dissolved by the
crown, continued for an entire reign. The Irish Parliament of
George III. continued for thirty-three years.

Nevertheless, in the middle of the eighteenth century the
Irish Parliament began to feel the faint throbs of a national pulse.
Supine under their yoke, the Catholics, having no share in the
government, devoted themselves as best they could to those
forms of production which were possible in a country in which
manufactures might easily be promoted with capital. The Pres-
byterians, suffering like the Catholics on account of their reli-
gious views, engaged largely in manufacture, especially in the
North ; and while the land had been confiscated, and Catholics
could not even buy it at any price, the English who had settled
on the estates taken from the native owners became interested in
the material growth of a country which they intended to make
their home. Enough money was in circulation to keep a healthy

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 301

feeling between the agricultural and manufacturing classes ; and
some of the manufactures attained such proportions as to arouse
the jealousy of the English producers, who immediately appealed
to the king and Parliament of England to suppress in Ireland
every manufacture which would rival any in England, and to tol-
erate in Ireland only such industries as would help the English
market. In principle the Irish should be permitted to make
only such articles as the English could not sell to them. Law
after law was passed in England for the destruction of Irish
manufactures ; the finishing blow was given in the beginning of
the eighteenth century by the prohibition of the last that remain-
ed, the woollen trade. Irish ships, which had been met on every
ocean highway, were excluded from the sea, and the country sank
into abject poverty whose depths reached the famine- pits at fre-
quent intervals.

The vitality of the Irish must have astonished their foreign
government. Commerce by water was practically abolished, ex-
cept with England ; but the domestic trade revived slightly from
time to time, and as a little capital came to the despondent manu-
facturers they began to appeal to the Irish Parliament to help
them by endeavoring to obtain a modification of the laws by
which Irish industry- had been destroyed. These manufacturers
were chiefly Protestants, and they received countenance, in some
degree at least, from the English land-owners in Ireland who had
money to spare ; while the Presbyterians, who were so busy in
Ulster, were strengthened by accessions from Scotland, Irish land
and water-power being so cheap that many availed themselves
of the chance to better their condition by emigrating from the
neighboring country, bringing at least some money into Ireland.
It was the Protestant and Presbyterian manufacturers who first
imbued the Irish Parliament with national sympathy and aspira-
tion.

It is proper to say Protestant and Presbyterian, because in
those days Presbyterians were not Protestants ; that designation
belonged exclusively to members of the church by law estab-
lished. It is worthy of mention, for justice* sake, that it was the
Protestants and not the Presbyterians who founded Orangeism in
Ireland. Neither Catholics nor Presbyterians were eligible for
admission to the original Orange lodges. The object of Orange-
ism was one toward which the Presbyterians had shown decided
animosity — the perpetuation of English rule in Ireland ; on the
contrary, the Presbyterians were accused, and justly, of down-
right democratic tendencies.

302 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

The temper of the Irish Parliament in the second half of the
eighteenth century was one to give the English crown some soli-
citude. Lords were sent over as viceroys, and they selected as
their representatives in the two houses the ablest men who could
be induced to accept official posts, with the understanding that
their duty was to the King of England and not to the people of
Ireland. Gradually an opposition had grown bold, energetic,
and sagacious ; while a literature outside Parliament, of which
Swift and Molyneux were the parents, helped to organize public
opinion, which reacted upon Parliament. When the American
war broke out there was undisguised joy among the masses of
the Irish people ; the courage of the opposition in Parliament re-
ceived substantial access of resolution, although the prevailing
hypocrisy in public affairs required that formal sympathy should
be expressed with the crown in its reverses; but the victories of
the rebels were sincerely celebrated, with prudent decorum, by
the patriots in and out of Parliament.

The king's necessities in America precipitated an altogether
unprecedented state of affairs in Ireland. All the troops that
could be sent to the colonies were urgently needed there ; and
the regulars in Ireland were demanded, although, with invasion
threatened by France, their withdrawal was a confessed menace
to the safety of the crown in Ireland. Nevertheless they were
withdrawn, after a debate which no student of great oratory can
have missed — that in which Flood appeared as the advocate of the
crown and Grattan as the exponent of the sympathy of the Irish
people with the American rebels. Flood had enjoyed the confi-
dence of all classes of the people until he entered the Irish cabi-
net; from that moment he was looked upon with suspicion, and
when he described the troops to be sent out from Ireland to
America as " armed negotiators " Grattan poured out upon him
a withering invective from whose effects he never recovered,
characterizing him as standing " with a metaphor in his mouth
and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of Ame-
rica— the only hope of Ireland, the refuge of the liberties of man-
kind." The regulars having been sent, Ireland was actually
without defence, and the formation of volunteers began with the
consent of the government. " The cry to arms," writes Lecky,*
" passed through the land and was speedily responded to by all
parties and all creeds. Beginning among the Protestants of the
North, the movement soon spread, though in a less degree, to

* Author of History of Rationalism in Europe, History of England in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, etc.

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 303

other parts of the island, and the war of religions and castes that
had so long divided the people vanished as a dream."

The character of the Volunteers was unique. Furnished with
arms by the government, they paid their own expenses, refused
commissions from the crown, elected their own officers, and be-
came speedily a threat, instead of a defence. Having no battles
to fight with France, they devoted their moral force to fighting
the government ; and with their formidable numbers, estimated to
have been from sixty thousand to a hundred thousand, armed,
equipped, and drilled, with not a battalion in either island to con-
front them, they became the masters of Parliament and compelled
it to assume a virtue which it had not : they compelled it to na-
tionalize itself, Poynings' law was still in force ; they demanded
its repeal. All the prohibitory laws which had strangled indus-
try and trade in Ireland were still in force ; they demanded their
repeal. The penal laws by which seven-tenths of their country-
men were excluded from participation in the government of
their country were still in force; they demanded their repeal.

It has always been characteristic of English dealings with
Ireland never to grant her any concession except under com-
pulsion of force, and then to grant less than is demanded. It
was only as a preventive of insurrection, the Duke of Wellington
told the stubborn dullard who wore the crown in 1829, that Ca-
tholic Emancipation was conceded ; but coupled with it was a
suffrage law which disfranchised many of those who had become
voters while the Irish Parliament was independent, as we shall
soon see it. The movement to effect repeal of the Act of Union
would probably have succeeded had O'Connell not been too old
and feeble to maintain the vigor of the people. The present first
minister of Great Britain is authority for the confession, openly
made, that the abolition of the Irish church establishment, the
hoary relic of penal law, was made necessary by Fenianism,
which set out on an entirely different errand, that it could not
complete. When the secret records of these disturbed days shall
be uncovered by another generation the world will read that the
Land Act of 1881 was wrung from the crown by ministerial as-
surance that if some relief were not allowed the Irish tenants in-
surrection would inevitably ensue. To postpone relief Michael
Davitt, the strong man of the Irish people, was thrust into prison,
unaccused, untried.

To resist the demands of the Volunteers in 1782 was impossi-
ble ; to grant them all the crown would not consent. But Poyn-
ings' law was repealed ; the Irish Parliament was conceded the

304 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

exclusive right to legislate for Ireland ; the trade restrictions
were all removed. But the third demand — political equality for
all classes of the people — was withheld ; and before the Volunteers
could coerce it the government disbanded them.

We have reached the Irish Parliament as Cornwallis found it.
It had enjoyed independence for sixteen years. His mission
was to abolish it, because its independence had unfettered the
manufacturers of Ireland, to the anger and injury of the English
manufacturers ; because there was every reason to believe that, as
it had allowed the Catholics the right to vote for members, it
would soon allow them the right to be members and to enter the
race of life on the same terms as those possessed by the non-Ca-
tholic minority ; and because there was danger that, when all the
people united in the government of their country in a native con-
gress, they would dispense with the services of a foreign crown.
It was necessary, therefore, to abolish the independent Irish
Parliament in order to consolidate the British Empire.

All representative bodies fluctuate in the relative merit of
their personnel. No country has always been able to command
at all times the services of its ablest and most virtuous sons.
When the Irish Parliament, with eighty thousand Volunteers at
its back, in 1782 declared itself independent, removed the restric-
tions which a foreign Parliament had placed upon its manufac-
tures and commerce, and wisely fostered every form of industry,
it contained a very large proportion of able and determined men,
although the vast majority of the people had no voice in its halls.
In 1798, when Cornwallis proceeded on his mission to abolish it,
many of the ablest members of the former period were absent from
it. Neither Grattan nor Curran was there — the one the most ef-
fective wit, the other the most eminent patriot and most power-
ful orator, of the time. In 1782 the government councillors were
weak and commonplace men, while the patriots had the genius,
the eloquence, the courage of the country on their side. In 1798
the government had Castlereagh for chief secretary, and a host
of mercenary men whose faculties had been sharpened by neces-
sity and who were as keen as they were unscrupulous. In 1782
the Parliament was literally on fire with patriotic ardor, and men
were ready and anxious to make sacrifices, if necessary, of per-
sonal interests for the general' good of the whole people. In
1798 a spasm of selfish office-seeidng was in progress, and place
and promotion were the chief objects of a large number in Parlia-
ment and of their friends, who hoped to obtain one or the other
through their influence.

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 305

Let it not be forgotten that the Parliament in 1798 contained
no representatives of the majority of the Irish people, and that
the minority represented was composed in considerable part of
manor proprietors and their placemen, of Englishmen, Scotch-
men, and other aliens who had no permanent interest in Ireland.
It ought also to be recalled that the upper house in Ireland never
contained a dozen men of mark. The Protestant lords saw in
the Protestant crown exclusive privileges for themselves which
they could not hope for after the Catholics of Ireland obtained
their political rights ; the few Catholic peers were vacillating
and nerveless, incapable of serving their country and willing to
sell out her independence for their own profit.

The task of Cornwallis was not so difficult, therefore, as it
would have been a few years earlier. The English agents, who
had been acquainted with the designs of the crown, had ample
time to pack the lower house as fully as possible with persons
expressly selected for the object in view. The borough system
quite as truly as gold corrupted and extinguished the Irish par-
liament. It was declared on the floor of the lower house that
less than ninety individuals returned a majority of that body.
Yet so tenacious was the little flicker of national spirit which
still burned there that as soon as the intentions of the lord-lieu-
tenant became publicly known the people arose and by their de-
termined resistance kept the imperial corruptionists at bay for
more than a year.

Cornwallis' description of the men who were at that time
foremost under English protection in ruining Ireland is the best
possible explanation of his final victory in buying them up and
destroying the legislative body which was cursed by their pre-
sence. On July 8, 1798, he writes to the Duke of Portland as fol-
lows, the letter being marked "private and confidential"; his
allusion to the rebels needs no comment :

"The principal persons in this country and the members of both houses
of Parliament are in general averse to all acts of clemency, and, although
they do not express, and are perhaps too much heated to see, the ultimate
effect which their violence must produce, would pursue measures that
could only terminate in the extirpation of the greater number of the in-
habitants and in the utter destruction of the country. The words papists
and priests are for ever in their mouths, and by their unaccountable policy
they would drive four-fifths of the community into irreconcilable rebellion.
... I should be very ungrateful if I did not acknowledge the obligations I
owe to Lord Castlereagh, whose abilities, temper, and judgment have been
of the greatest use to me, and who has on every occasion shown his sincere
VCL. xxxiv.— 20

•

306 HOW CORNWALLTS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

and unprejudiced attachment to the general interests of the British Em-
pire."

At other times the noble lord wrote of Castlereagh, " He is so
cold that nothing can warm him " ; but when he wished to give
him a persuasive recommendation to the favor of the imperial
government he pleaded that he knew no favors were for the
Irish, but that an exception should be made in the case of Castle-
reagh— " he is so very unlike an Irishman." When the news of
the arch-traitor's suicide was spread it was another English lord
— Byron — who wrote :

" So he has cut his throat at last ! He — who ?
The man who cut his country's long ago."

In a letter to Pitt, dated July 20, Cornwallis makes the first
avowal of his chief business in Ireland. He informs the minister
that he does not see at that moment the most distant encourage-
ment for the project. A few days later he tells Ross that there
is no law in the country except martial law, and that number-
less murders are committed by his people without any process
or examination. His yeomanry, he adds, " are in the style of the
Loyalists of America, only more numerous and powerful, and a
thousand times more ferocious." Many letters are full of the
loathsome details of betrayals of the rebels, of the sums paid in-
formers, the artifices resorted to to obtain the secrets of suspects,
and the rewards held out to the base and the infamous. In Au-
gust Cornwallis issued general orders appealing to the regimen-
tal officers to assist in putting a stop to the licentious conduct of
the troops. In September his thoughts revert to the Parliament.
The Catholics who have kept out of it by the determination of
his majesty must be conciliated. Some advantages must be held
out to them in the proposed union of the two countries — " the
union of the shark with its prey," as Lord Byron termed it. The
lord-lieutenant has been talking with some of his official friends,
and is beginning to think that they would not be averse to the
union, provided it were a Protestant union ; but they would not
hear of the Catholics sitting in the imperial Parliament. This
bigotry does not please him, nor does he see in it the promise of
success. He writes Ross that he is convinced that until the Ca-
tholics are admitted into a general participation of rights there
will be no peace or safety in Ireland. A private and somewhat
alarming letter is despatched to the Duke of Portland by hand.
The progress of rebellion, the disaffection of the Catholics, and

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 307

the apparent resolution of the discontented to effect a general
insurrection convince Corn wallis that if the union be not speedily
accomplished it will soon be too late to attempt it. In October
Cornwallis writes Pitt :

" It has always appeared to me a desperate measure for the British gov-
ernment to make an irrevocable alliance with a small party in Ireland
(which party has derived all its consequence from, and is in fact entirely
dependent upon, the British government) to wage eternal war against the
Papists and Presbyterians of this kingdom, which two sects, from the fair-
est calculations, compose about nine-tenths of the community."

In the same letter he prophesies that if Catholic emancipation
is not granted then it will be extorted at a later time — a pro-
phecy literally fulfilled and acknowledged by the Duke of Wel-
lington thirty years afterwards.

All the transactions in progress at this time are either un-
known to Cornwallis, or he leaves the mention of some of them
to others, or his editor, careful of his reputation, omits them.
In November the lord-lieutenant writes to Ross : " Things have
gone too far to admit of a change, and the principal persons in
this country have received assurances from the English ministers
which cannot be retracted." No information of the nature of
these assurances appears previously in the correspondence ; but
the evidence is accessible elsewhere. Pitt writes from Downing
Street to Cornwallis that the Speaker of the Irish House of Com-
mons (John Foster) had been in London, and had conversed with
him on the proposed union. Pitt believed he would not obstruct
the measure, and if it could be made personally palatable to him
he might give it fair support. The premier suggests that the
prospect of an English peerage be held out to him, with some
ostensible situation. Time proved the minister did the Speaker
gross injustice ; Foster had been cautious in talking with the min-
ister, and the latter was so accustomed to thinking that every
man had his price he misconstrued Foster's wariness into the
solicitation of a bribe. A week or two later Cornwallis, in a let-
ter to Ross, expresses his frank opinion of the men in Ireland
who were acting for the English government in carrying on the
project of the union. " They are detested by everybody but their
immediate followers, and have no influence but what is founded
on the grossest corruption."

Yet the enterprise moved slowly and painfully. Castlereagh
admits to a friend that " there is no predisposition in its favor,"
but, while the bar is almost a unit against it, the Orangemen are

3O8 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

for it, believing that the Catholics will oppose it ; he hopes that the
arrangement proposed for the Catholic clergy will secure their
support. No arrangement, in fact, was ever made for them ; but
some individuals for whom " arrangement " was made were in
favor of the measure. Among these was Dr. Troy, Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin. Castlereagh closes this letter with an
important statement : " The principal provincial newspapers
have been secured, and every attention will be paid to the
press generally." November 27 Cornwallis writes a secret let-
ter to the Duke of Portland, describing minutely the steps he
had felt it his " duty to make in consequence of your grace's
despatch enclosing heads of a union between the two kingdoms " ;
and the steps must have been humiliating enough to a man of
Corn\vallis' professed disgust for such atrocious business. He
summarizes the results of his approaching "the most leading
characters " on the subject. Lord Shannon is favorable, but
will not declare himself openly until he sees that his doing so
" can answer some purpose." " Lord Ely (relying on the crown
in a matter personal to himself) is prepared to give it his utmost
support." Lord Yelverton had no hesitation about it ; he was
made Viscount Avonmore. Lord Pery would not pledge him-
self against it ; he had a government pension of three thousand
pounds a year.

In December Cornwallis writes to the Duke of Portland that
Speaker Foster and Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, are still in London, and that he hopes they will not have left
it before Castlereagh shall arrive there. " Some of the king's
Irish servants appear to be the most impracticable in their opin-
ions, and I feel confident that your grace will leave no means
untried to impress these gentlemen more favorably before their
return to this kingdom." The plain hint was not lost ; with what
result the final record will show. Lord Castlereagh bore a letter
to Pitt, in which Cornwallis declared : " That every man in this
most corrupt country should consider the important question be-
fore us in no other point of view than as it may be likely to pro-
mote his private objects of ambition or avarice will not surprise
you" — an allegation true as to Pitt, who proceeded solely on that
assumption ; for he was not silly enough to believe that any man
of sound sense in Ireland would be moved by other motives than
avarice or ambition in betraying the right of his country to make
her own laws under a British constitution guaranteeing her that
right. But it was a careless exaggeration on the part of Corn-
wallis: he approached men whom he could not corrupt. A

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 309

great meeting of the bar held that month revealed the fact that
only thirty-two were in favor of the measure, while five times
as many opposed it ; and of those thirty-two five only were left
without government appointment. It is not unlikely that the
five had been won by what Harrington calls " simple metallic
corruption." Intimidation was tried with more or less success
on those who were exceptionally dangerous ; in the beginning of
the year 1799 it was even proposed to disgown Saurin, one of
the ablest Protestant lawyers. The threat was not carried out ;
and after the union had been consummated he accepted the office
of attorney-general for Ireland, and prosecuted Sheil energetical-
ly for speeches not half so "treasonable" in behalf of Catholic
Emancipation as his own had been against the union. Plunkett,
another of the patriots of the bar of 1799, accepted the office of
solicitor-general soon after the passage of the act; it was he who
prosecuted poor Robert Emmet.

That " simple metallic corruption " was being carried boldly on
there was no attempt to conceal in government circles. January
10 Castlereagh acknowledges the receipt of five thousand pounds
from the English secret- service fund, and adds: "Arrangements
with a view to further communications of the same nature will be
highly advantageous, and the Duke of Portland may depend on
their being carefully applied." Cornwallis was busy trying to
make converts among those then holding positions under the gov-
ernment. He writes to the Duke of Portland that, finding Sir
John Parnell determined not to support the union, " I have noti-
fied to him his dismission from the office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and I shall pursue the same line of conduct without
favor or partiality whenever I may think it will tend to promote
the success of the measure." Cornwallis may have had occasion
to regret deeply his failure to corrupt Parnell ; for after the first
test vote in the Commons, which was a great surprise to the gov-
ernment, the lord-lieutenant writes to the Duke of Portland :

" I have now only to express my sincere regret to your grace that the
prejudices prevailing amongst the members of the Commons, countenanced
and encouraged as they have been by the Speaker and Sir John Parnell, are
infinitely too strong to afford me any prospect of bringing this measure,
with any chance of success, into discussion in the course of the present
session."

The test vote should not have so deeply discouraged Corn-
wallis. It is thus analyzed by Harrington : The house was com-

310 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

"*•

posed of three hundred, of whom eighty-four were absent. Of
the two hundred and sixteen who voted one hundred and eleven
were against the government, and of the one hundred and five
who voted with it sixty-nine were holding government offices,
nineteen were rewarded with office, one was openly bought dur-
ing debate, and thirteen were created peers or their wives were
made peeresses for their votes. Three were supposed to be unin-
fluenced. The absentees were presumably against the union ;
were they for it the government could have required their at-
tendance. Castlereagh addressed himself assiduously to corrupt-
ing '{hem during the recess, and when the question came up
again in the following year forty-three of the eighty-four voted
for the union.

It is difficult to determine who were the more astonished at
the result of the test vote, the government or the people ; but
the joy of the latter exceeded the dismay of the former. The
weak personnel of the Parliament; the unblushing effrontery with
which bribery had been carried on in and out of its walls ; the
pertinacity with which Castlereagh was known to continue his
efforts in any given direction ; and the vast power of the British
Empire, which was understood to be at the service of the corrup-
ters, had naturally driven the masses of the people into the con-
viction that the scheme must succeed. Its failure inspired the
drooping country with wild enthusiasm, which vented itself in all
forms of popular demonstration. Grattan was unquestionably
accurate when he said " that the whole unbribed intellect of Ire-
land " was opposed to the union. But the government agents
returned to their work, resolved to accomplish after the recess
what they had not won before it. They first secured the absen-
tees. They then elaborated a gigantic fraud on the Catholics by
circulating the information that although, for obviously politic
reasons, no pledge would be publicly made to the clergy, the
imperial government, after the passage of the act, would provide
for the payment of the Catholic priesthood on the same terms as
those enjoyed by the clergy of the Established Church ; and a like
lure was cast about the dissenters. There is not the least doubt
that Cornwallis honestly desired that this assurance should be in
good faith, and there is ample testimony that he was authorized
to make it by Pitt and his associates. But after the union was an
accomplished fact the pledge was broken ; the king positively
affirmed that he never had been spoken to on the subject, and
would never have consented to it had he been ; and in conse-
quence of what Pitt affected to consider for a moment dishonor

1 8 8 1 .] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 3 1 1

at the king's hands, he resigned, only to accept office again
soon afterwards.

It is certain that Cornwallis was adroit enough to secure
the support of a very large number of Catholics, and the silence
of the rest, and that the enterprise was thus substantially for-
warded. But he did not rely on promises from those who had
no votes : he continued to buy those who had. A bill was
audaciously introduced by Castlereagh, providing what he
euphemistically termed "compensation" for those who would
lose their seats by the Act of Union. His terms were generous
enough. Every aristocrat who returned members was to receive
in cash fifteen thousand pounds for each member ; every mem-
ber who had purchased a seat should have his mone}^ refunded
from the Irish treasury; and every member who was in any
manner a loser by the union should be amply repaid. The
amount drawn from the people of Ireland in taxes for this shame-
less proceeding was fixed by the secretary at seven million five
hundred thousand dollars. Thus did the English agent actually
make the Irish people pay out of their own pockets the bribes by
which their servants were induced to betray them to their ene-
mies ! A parallel for this deed will be sought in vain in ancient
or modern history. The passage of the bill showed that the gov-
ernment had actually secured a majority, although a small one ;
and the patriots became disheartened. In their distress they ap-
pealed to the absent Grattan to return to the house and once
again lift up the mighty voice which eighteen years before had
won the independence of the now degenerate body. The reap-
pearance of the venerable statesman on the floor of the house at
the most critical juncture which had occurred since his with-
drawal from politics furnishes an illustration of the manner in
which " history " is made.

First we have the intimation from Cornwallis ; the date is
January 15, 1800: "Grattan, I hear, is to be introduced after
twelve to-night, until which period the debate is to be prolonged.
I pity from my soul Lord Castlereagh, but he shall have some-
thing more than helpless pity from me . . . Grattan has, you
know, the confidence of forty thousand pikemen." The next day
Cornwallis wrote to Portland that Grattan took his seat at seven
in the morning, having been elected for Wicklow at midnight.
" He appeared weak in health, but had sufficient strength to de-
liver a very inflammatory speech of an hour and a half sitting."
The biographer of the lord-lieutenant thus describes the scene :
" The election had been timed by Mr. Grattan's friends so as to

312 HOW CORNWALLIS CONSOLIDATED [Dec.,

prevent his taking his seat until the unusual hour mentioned
above, when he was supported into the house apparently in a
fainting state. . . . The scene was well gotten up, but the trick
was too palpable and produced little effect." The truth was that
Cornwallis and Castlereagh, profoundly dreading the influence
of Grattan, had resorted to all possible devices to prevent his
election, and the writ was withheld until the last moment the law
allowed ; it was only by waking up the proper officer after mid-
n;ght that the return was gotten to parliament at seven in the
morning. The allegation that Grattan's entrance at that time was
a bit of theatricalism invented by him or his friends is therefore
a mere falsehood. Instead of appearing a " palpable trick " his
arrival is pronounced by Barrington, who was present, " electric."
Grai:tan, he says, was reduced almost to the appearance of a
spectre. " As he feebly tottered into the house to his seat every
member simultaneously rose from his seat." Would they, cor-
rupt and incorrupt, have so risen in homage to " a palpable
trick " ? " He moved slowly to the table ; his languid countenance
seemed to revive as he took those oaths that restored him to his
pre-eminent station ; the smile of inward satisfaction obviously il-
luminated his features, and reanimation and energy seemed to
kindle by the labor of his mind." Almost breathless, amid the
deep silence, Grattan attempted to rise, but could not keep his
feet. He was given permission to remain in his chair.

"Then," says Lecky, "was witnessed that spectacle, among the grand-
est in the whole range of mental phenomena, of mind asserting its supre-
macy over matter. . . . As the fire of oratory kindled, as the angel of en-
thusiasm touched those pallid lips with the living coal, as the old scenes
crowded on the speaker's mind and the old plaudits broke upon his ear, it
seemed as though the force of disease was neutralized and the buoyancy of
youth restored. His voice gained a deeper power, his action a more com-
manding energy, his eloquence an ever-increasing brilliancy. For more
than two hours he poured forth a stream of epigram, of argument, of ap-
peal. He traversed almost the whole of that complex question ; he grap-
pled with the various arguments of expediency the ministers had urged ;
but he placed the issue on the highest grounds : ' The thing he proposes
to buy is what cannot be sold — liberty.' "

"Never," adds Barrington, " did a speech make a more affecting
impression ; but it came too late."

It was too late. Bribery had accomplished its undertaking ;
and, lest the people should rise up on the purchased traitors and
rend them, Cornwallis had prudently increased the military in
the country to one hundred and twenty thousand men. So con-
vinced was he that the people might attempt to save by force

1 88 1.] THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 313

what they had lost by fraud that in extremity he resolved to ac-
cept even Russian and Dutch soldiers, if no others could be had.
On the test vote, February 6, 1800, the government had a ma-
jority of forty-three ; and thus the Parliament of Ireland was
doomed, while the tramp of cavalry resounded through the
streets of Dublin to warn the indignant that their cause was ]ost
and to admonish the reckless that their courage would not avail.
It was thus that Cornwallis consolidated the British Empire.

" In the case of Ireland," writes the historian of rationalism, " as truly
as in the case of Poland, a national constitution was destroyed by a foreign
power, contrary to the wishes of the people. In the one case the deed was
a crime of violence ; in the other it was a crime of treachery and corrup-
tion. In both cases a legacy of enduring bitterness was the result."

The remaining letters of Cornwallis touching on Irish affairs
are appeals to the British ministers to fulfil his promises made to
the traitors ; to pay the price for which they had sold the consti-
tutional liberty of their country ; and scattered at intervals be-
tween his dignified and often piteous entreaties are coarse de-
mands from his subalterns for money to reimburse themselves or
to deliver to the commoner creatures who preferred cash. Re-
viewing the obstinate refusal of the king to consent to religious
equality in Ireland, which he had promised, and the unfaithfulness
of the ministers in dishonoring his pledges, he writes : " Ireland is
again to become a millstone about the neck of Britain, and to be
plunged into all its former horrors and miseries." The union,
he had felt convinced, would consolidate the empire. Through
after-years of chagrin and mortification his error haunted him.
He was in heart a better man than those who were his masters ;
his private standard of morality was superior to that of the time ;
he gloried, as he had a right to glory, in the grandeur of the
great empire he had served, in camp, on field, in council, and he
served her king and his advisers as he conceived it to be his duty
to do, even in the vile and infamous methods which they pre-
scribed. It is sad to have to remark that he was less revolted by
the methods than piqued and humiliated by their practical fail-
ure. A man who would have scorned a bribe did not hesitate to
bribe others. A man who would have perished rather than take
a -penny that did not belong to him was unmoved in conscience
while causing an entire people to be robbed of their constitu-
tional rights and compelling them to present the thieves with
millions of a cash bonus. The morality of politics cannot be said
to have been lowered since the beginning of the century.

3 14 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hakn-Hakn, by Mary H. A . A Hies.

PART I.— EARLY YOUTH.

CHAPTER IX.

A CONSIDERATE FATHER.

AUREL had remarked with a certain anxiety that ever since his
return from England his father seemed to watch him. Did he,
by chance, suspect his secret ? If he did Aurel hardly knew
whether to be glad or sorry. Sooner or later it would have to
come to light, but in the meantime anxiety of mind more than
balanced his hopefulness. Sometimes he wondered about his
Dublin letter, which Sylvia had never mentioned. But as it had
been an outpouring of love from beginning to end, she might not
have seen the necessity of an answer.

Part of the winter had gone by quietly enough when one
morning Herr Prost summoned Aurel to his private study, and,
seating himself upon the sofa, began, in a solemn tone of parental
authority : " Sit down, Aurel ; I want to speak a word with you
about something very particular."

Aurel did as he was bid in fear and trembling, for he felt that
the critical hour had struck which was to decide his own and
Sylvia's future.

" That time you spent in England, Aurel," said Herr Prost
paternally, " and your way of doing business there for our firm,
make me feel that I can give you my fullest confidence. As long
as you worked under my eye you always showed yourself an
active, toiling man of business. But mere laboriousness is not by
itself sufficient for our extensive connection. It requires shrewd-
ness, forethought, judgment to use and profit by circumstances.
You developed these qualities in England ; hence I conclude that
an independent position is what vou want, and, as you will soon
be four-and-twenty, I look upon it as my duty to give it to you.
I am going to let you represent our firm in Paris."

" O father ! how can I thank you ? " exclaimed Aurel in joy-
ful surprise.

" Don't be in too great a hurry to thank me before I have had

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 315

my say," continued Herr Frost, laughing. " Of course, my boy,
I have remarked your fondness for Sylvia, and a certain letter you
wrote to her to Griinerode fell by chance into my hands and con-
firmed my observation."

" Yes, indeed, father, I love Sylvia, and she loves me," ex-
claimed Aurel, thrown off his guard by his father's apparent
sympathy.

" I am sorry for it, my boy," he said very gently. Aurel's
face sank. " Have you ever promised Sylvia that you would
marry her ? " asked his father.

" Never ! " exclaimed Aurel. " No such promise was needed."

" Come, that is good, for Sylvia can never become your wife.
I will never be induced to- give my consent to your both running
into an unhappy marriage."

" But, father, it is no misfortune to be a little less well off, if
that is what you mean," said Aurel beseechingly.

" Perhaps not a little less well off. But Sylvia is penniless ;
she has hardly enough to buy her trousseau pocket-handker-
chiefs. But this is not the principal difficulty."

" What is it, then ?" asked Aurel breathlessly.

" Sylvia is your cousin, as your mothers were sisters, and
marriages between relatives so nearly connected are most ob-
jectionable. They are contrary to nature, and this is proved —
not always, I admit, but oftener than not — in the children of such
marriages, who are sure to be weak in mind or sickly, or both —
epileptic, in short."

"For pity's sake, father, say no more," stammered Aurel,
turning pale.

" It is a fact, my boy. You may well shudder at the thought
of rearing such children ; so when your father, the church, and
nature's laws are of one mind you should take their counsel.
You may be certain that I am right."

" No, you're wrong — or, at least, you're by no means infallibly
right," exclaimed poor Aurel, hardly knowing what he said. " It
is possible to have a sickly, unhealthy child without marrying
one's cousin."

" You are as well instructed in the laws of the church as I, so
you will know that the church discourages such marriages as
much as possible on account of their results. I wouldn't say that
they inevitably turn out badly, for nature is capricious ; but a
judicious father doesn't trust his children's happiness to such a
feeble chance. Put Sylvia out of your head. I am giving you
a chance by settling you in Paris, and things are so arranged that

316 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

you must start to-morrow evening. This will shorten the pangs
of parting."

"O father! you can't mean to put an end so lightly to a
matter which involves all mine and Sylvia's happiness ? " ex-
claimed Aurel with desperation.

" Come, Aurel, it's no use making a scene," said Herr Prost
coldly. " You know me well enough to be sure that I do not act
Avithout due consideration, but when once a thing is settled in
my mind nothing can deter me from carrying it out. Now, I
have shaped your course for you, and in a year or two you will
thank me for it."

" Never ! I can't and won't give Sylvia up. Let us wait. I
will work — "

" Will that prevent Sylvia from being your cousin ? " said Herr
Prost sternly. " Does every boyish fancy imply marriage ? I
should think not, indeed. Common sense must be consulted ; and
who expects lovers to have common sense ? Every ohe knows
that people in a sound state of mind don't fall in love, and that,
putting aside all question of relationship, love-marriages are apt
to be very wretched — two excellent reasons against you, you see.
In the face of such possibilities prudent fathers are indeed very
necessary to their children to prevent them from making them-
selves wretched for life and from bringing idiots into the world."

" Don't anticipate such dreadful things, father," exclaimed
Aurel, burying his face in his hands.

"I am sorry for }rou, you poor fool," replied Herr Prost;
" but, as I can't alter the laws of nature, it must be as I have set-
tled. See about anything you have to do, and get ready to start
to-morrow evening."

Herr Prost got up and went back to the room where his
large writing-desk stood, which was his way of signifying that,
having settled family matters, he intended business to come to
the fore. Aurel took the hint. He well knew his father's mode
of acting and that stern determination of purpose which left him
no way out of his troubles. It seemed to him that he was in the
position of a man who has only a narrow footpath between two
mountain passes. Perhaps a man of more energetic character
would have rebelled, or taken the matter into his own hands, or
pursued, nothing daunted, his ideal of happiness ; but Aurel had
not the necessary courage or independence. His father had
struck his hopes a withering blow, and had laid before him a
fearful reality in place of his sweet dreams of happiness and
Sylvia.

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 317

Apprised by her husband of how matters stood, Frau Prost
had received strict orders to prevent Aurel from seeing Sylvia
alone before his departure. Accordingly at nine o'clock in the
morning of the day before that event she sent for Sylvia and
said : " I am going to take possession of you for the present, my
love ; so you must put aside your languages and your music till
we have finished doing something which interests me immense-
ly. You see this pretty green leather book ? I mean you to
copy off into it all the items of Valentine's trousseau in your clear,
nice hand. It is convenient to have it all together, and it maybe
useful to me on some other occasion. I will help you to do it in
alphabetical order, and we will begin at once. But first write a
note in French to the Belgian ambassadress, and send her — most
persevering beggar that she is — the twenty-franc piece which is
on the malachite tray on my writing-desk. A year ago when I
bought those pretty monkeys I had to promise her twenty francs
for her Visitation nuns ! Our climate killed the poor monkeys,
but not so the nuns. They are here, and they rob me of my sub-
stance. So, love, sit down and write a pretty note. And before
I forget it, my love, write and tell Mrs. Johnston not to expect
me to-morrow, and that I will go on Saturday to take her to the
flower-show. You can write in English, and this will give you a
double exercise in foreign languages. I will make all the haste I
can to-day with the four pillars of my house, so that we may get
all the sooner to our green book."

Sylvia was used to her aunt's diffusiveness, and, as she always
acted as secretary, she accepted these suggestions as part of her
work ; but she was quite astonished not to see Aurel at luncheon
and to hear Herr Prost say : " Aurel is very busy, as he is going
to Paris to-morrow."

"Is he? Well, I'm very glad to hear it for his sake," said
Frau Prost, true to her part.

Sylvia could not make it out, for Aurel had already spent two
years in Paris. What was he to do there ?

" Yes, children, I am going to let Aurel live in Paris on his
own hook," said Herr Prost. " Listen, all of you. See what it is
to have a good father who is at so much pains about his chil-
dren's future. There is your brother, at his age already his own
master, to do or not to do what he likes in all things reasonable.
See if you can't follow in his footsteps and do honor to your
father's care."

Sylvia listened in a fever of anxiety, for Aurel's independence
might mean something very good. A thousand hopes passed

318 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

through her mind and a thousand misbodings filled her heart.
She was divided between hope and fear, and could hardly con-
trol her feelings so as to appear outwardly calm. Isidora, and
Isidora alone, observed it.

" You must take your singing-lesson alone to-day, Sylvia, and
lay more stress upon the solos. For the present we shall have to
give up the duets."

" Yes, dear uncle," said Sylvia just audibly.

"You've got a headache, love, I'm sure, and won't say any-
thing about it, which is very wrong of you," said Frau Prost.
" The porter shall send the master away. In any case we have
got other fish to fry."

Sylvia had indeed other things to occupy her mind, but she
let circumstances take their course and answered mechanically :
" Very well, Aunt Teresa."

The painful meal came to an end at last, and Sylvia was
going up to her room. There, at least, she would be alone and
free to give vent to her feelings as best she might in tears or
prayers, though she herself hardly knew what to do or to think.

" Where are you going to, love ? " exclaimed her aunt. " Make
haste and get on your things, and you too, Isidora. We will
drive to Mrne. Zephirin, who has just sent to tell me she has
some delightful things from Paris. We must be quick. I am
sure Princess Ygrek is already there."

" And Countess Xaveria and the Russian ambassadress for
certain," added Isidora.

" The carriage is at the door," announced the servant.

Hour after hour went by in looking at the pretty things
which Mme. Zephirin, the first modiste in the place, brought out
and enlarged upon with irresistible loquacity, whilst a dozen
ladies, the cream of the upper ten thousand, admired, fingered,
considered — or did not consider — and purchased.

" What business has that uppish Frau Prost to be here with
us?" whispered Countess Xaveria to Princess Ygrek. " She is so
pushing ! "

"At Mme. Zephirin's it is of no consequence if she is," con-
jectured the princess.

" Why is Mme. Zephirin so very anxious to let the woman
know of her new importations?" said Countess Xaveria. " That's
what vexes me."

Princess Ygrek was delighted to seize an opportunity of giv-
ing her greatest friend, the reigning beauty of the place, a gentle
home-thrust, and she said, laughing : " It's very easy to under-

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 319

stand why, darling. This Frau Prost is a very good customer.
She pays down."

It was said that Countess Xaveria's husband by no means
always relished paying her ruinous dress-bills. But the princess'
hint did not in the least disturb her. She threw her pretty head
back with a pert little movement which was most becoming, and
said: "That's what it is. These people — money people I call
them — spoil everything for us. Thanks to their horrid tin, they
get into our society and ape our ways."

The princess laughed and said : " All the same she gives capi-
tal balls, which are worth the trouble of my speaking to her."

"/sha'n't," said Countess Xaveria, moving towards the Rus-
sian ambassadress, who pretended to be intent on Mme. Zephirin's
costly finery as Princess Ygrek spoke to Frau Prost and inquir-
ed with interest whether she was going to give any more balls.

The whole talk and vanity of the thing were lost upon Sylvia.
She could think of nothing but Aurel and his new position in
Paris, which she knew not how to interpret. She hoped in spite
of herself, because she was in love ; but the way and manner in
which Aurel's father and mother set about his move to Paris
were not calculated to strengthen her hopes.

A long drive followed upon the visit to Mme. Zephirin's shop.
After that cards had to be left at various places, and Frau Prost
came back only just in time to dress for dinner with all the haste
she could muster. When she appeared in the drawing-room
with Isidora and Sylvia the gentlemen invited to dinner were
already there, and they all went at once to the dining-room.
Sylvia gave one look at Aurel, and that told her quite enough :
Paris was to be an exile. His journey was discussed at dinner.
Some congratulated him, and he was obliged to answer and to
act as if he liked it very much. After dinner they went to the
theatre. An interminable opera, lengthened by an endless ballet,
made the evening one of the most painful in all Sylvia's experi-
ence. What had happened ? Why was Aurel sent away so very
suddenly? What a delight it would have been to have five
minutes' conversation with him ! He was at the back of the box,
but it was impossible to get at him, for she was next to her uncle
and behind her aunt. It was eleven o'clock when they got
home.

" You needn't come to tea, my love," said Frau Prost kindly.
" You look tired out. Go to bed and sleep off your headache."

All danger of an understanding between Sylvia and Aurel
was at an end for that day, and consequently Sylvia was allowed

320 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

to go to her room to seek, not comfort indeed, but physical relief
from tears. The following day passed in the same way, except
that Aurel sought out his mother whilst she was engaged in dic-
tating her interesting accounts to Sylvia.

" Just go to the piano in the drawing-room for a minute, my
love. I have some commissions for Aurel," she said as he came
in. Sylvia left her aunt's room and sat down at the piano which
had given her so many happy hours, and whose harmonious
notes had so often served to interpret what was passing in their
hearts. She struck a few sorrowful chords, and began to play
" I send thee to Alexis/' the ballad she had first sung with Aurel ;
but singing then was out of the question. Tears would have
choked her voice.

In the meantime Aurel was trying vainly to gain his mother
over to his side. Though kinder, her tone was much the same
as his father's, and she ended with the comforting assurance that
there were nicer girls than Sylvia in the world.

"Perhaps there are," he said sadly, "but there is only one
Sylvia." Then he begged his mother to let him speak to Sylvia.

" Certainly," she replied, " but it must be in my presence.
" Most likely if you saw her alone you would bind yourself to
her by a formal engagement ; and this is not to be thought of
for a moment. As there can be no question of marriage, there
must be perfect liberty on both sides." Aurel did not care for
an interview in his mother's presence. The day wore on ; the
evening came, and with it the parting hour. Aurel wished them
all good-by. He was too much overcome to trust himself to
speak. Silently he put out his hand to Sylvia, and silently she
took it as her sorrowful eyes alone spoke the love which was in
her heart. Then, making an effort, she said calmly: " When shall
we meet again?"

" That is hidden in the counsel of the gods, you inquisitive
little charmer," exclaimed Herr Prost, laughing noisily ; and Au-
rel whispered, " When it shall please God."

Thus they parted.

" Let us have some music, little fairy," said Herr Prost to
Sylvia, who got up and walked mechanically to the piano. " In
this lower world of ours there is nothing more wearisome than
saying good-by. People ought to say au revoir when they go
away, and ban jour when they come back — quite enough. In
these railway days there is no sense in a sentimental farewell.
Thanks to the steam-engine, we can get anywhere in no time.
What are you doing, Sylvia?" he said, interrupting himself im-

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 321

patiently. " I want something to cheer me up, and you're play-
ing something which sounds like muffled drums."

" It is the ' Dead March in Saul/ " she answered faintly.

" Now, just fancy what a good ear I have ! " said Herr Prost in
a tone of satisfaction ; " it immediately discovered the muffled
drums. But now, child, let us have a polka, or a capriccio, or
something lively."

Instead of obeying Sylvia covered her face with her handker-
chief and ran out of the room.

" Her nose is bleeding," remarked Frau Prost carelessly.

" No, mamma, she is crying because Aurel has gone. Can't
you see that ? " exclaimed Isidora.

" What a senseless question ! " burst out Herr Prost. " Of
course we can see it, and, as you are so very sharp, I'm surprised
you have not also remarked that we did not want to see it. The
best treatment for certain circumstances is to ignore them en-
tirely. They are thus crushed, as it were, in their birth. If you
see Sylvia crying or fainting, or doing any other stupid thing,
you are to put it down to weak nerves, and you 'are never to
mention Aurel's name. Do you understand ? "

" Of course," answered Isidora, with her mother's insensibi-
lity. She was not disturbed by the sufferings of others.

" Let us hope that Aurel will soon make a good match, and
then the whole story will come to a peaceful end." And so Herr
Prost dismissed the subject.

VOL. xxxiv.— -21

322 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

PART II.— YOUTH STEALS ON.
CHAPTER I.

HOW A MAN IS MADE A BARON.

THERE was no doubt that the ball at Baron von Griinerode's
was the most brilliant of the season. The suite of rooms, the
splendid furniture, the lighting arrangements, the refreshments,
the fairy-like conservatory — the whole thing was princely ; and
even if Baron von Griinerode, although by no means a prince, was
one and the same person as Herr Geheime-Commerzienrath
Prost, still he had a princely fortune, could live accordingly, and
* let others, at least, dance at his expense. During the last few
years he had rendered immortal services to country, state, and
humanity by undertaking a railway which was certain to prove
a highly successful speculation. The state, indeed, was bound to
acknowledge the eminent merits of a millionaire otherwise than
by conferring upon him the cross of the blue or gray Vulture.
As he was manifestly amongst the foremost benefactors of his
country, it was fitting that he should belong to its nobility, the
more so that his estate, Griinerode, was an important and com-
plete property with a first-rate house. The railway business had
delivered him from his anxiety about Edgar's not being his own
master — i.e., a rich man — some day, and he trusted to his own
shrewdness and activity to secure the same kind of blissful liber-
ty for Harry. Herr Prost therefore declared his willingness to
be transformed into Baron von Griinerode, and forthwith to adorn
his plate and carriage with a complicated coat-of-arms, in which,
besides the baron's coronet, green and red predominated.

The Baroness von Griinerode submitted to her new title and
dignity with perfect indifference. She thought very little of it,
partly because she belonged to an old, noble family, and partly
because she saw there was nothing to be gained thereby, but
rather that it would bring her an increase of social duties.
Fraulein Isidora von Griinerode, on the contrary, was thoroughly
delighted. She could not explain her elation, for if it was only
because Isidora Prost did not sound so well as Isidora von
Griinerode she would have been ashamed to own to the same.

In high society people took it favorably as soon as Grafin
Xaveria, the leader of tone, had been heard to say : " We must
put up with these people, as they are millionaires. Such are the

i88i.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 323

times ; and as we can't alter them, it is pleasanter to call him
Baron von Griinerode than Herr Frost/'

" I don't think so," said Princess Ygrek. " Jimes may change
— there may be a bankruptcy, for instance, and Herr Prost is
easily dropped ; but it is more difficult with Baron Griinerode."

" Oh ! we should know how to manage," replied Countess
Xaveria, laughing innocently ; " but for the present I would rather
the baron than the plebeian gave us .balls."

At the ball that evening, in the intervals of dancing, Countess
Xaveria took Aurel's arm and said :

"Show me all the rooms. It is a magnificent suite. But
Paris spoils you, doesn't it? The haute finance there is accustom-
ed to tremendous luxury, and, with the footing in it you have,
it must be difficult to be satisfied with anything out of Paris,
isn't it ? "

" You get accustomed to the luxury, and don't even think
about it," replied Aurel, with an imperturbability which would
have betrayed his mother's son had not his sad eyes borne wit-
ness to another meaning.

" And how does your wife like being here ? "

" She is an American, and American ladies are very particular,
countess," replied Aurel in the same tone,

" Well, she has a right to be particular. Such wonderful
beauty as hers has its privileges."

The lady about whom Countess Xaveria expressed herself
with benevolence so unwonted was the centre of attraction to all
eyes not undividedly bent upon their particular concerns. In the
intervals of dancing she kept chiefly to her father-in-law's side.
He introduced the principal gentlemen to her, and she bowed
coldly and stiffly. Hers was no ordinary beauty. She was very
tall and slender, with jet-black hair, dark eyes, and rosy lips
which stood out in strong contrast to a face of marble white-
ness. She wore a dress of white crepe embroidered with silver,
dark-red camellias and butterflies of precious stones in her hair,
and round her neck a choice necklace of pearls. She was cover-
ed with jewels, but still she was not imposing or attractive, and
perhaps this was why Grafin Xaveria had spoken of her in terms
so flattering.

A group of young men were criticising the transatlantic
beauty with all their might.

" I stick to it," said Captain von Tieffenstein, " she is one of
those ivory figures, ornamented with enamel and precious stones,
from the Griinen Gewolbe at Dresden."

324 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

" If I believed in vampires I should say she was one," said an
attach6.

" What ! you wouldn't call her a blood-sucker, would you ? "
exclaimed a good-natured lieutenant.

" Yes, that's just what she is. According- to the legend, a
vampire is a corpse struggling to live, and only succeeding by
sucking the blood of others at night. The deep red lips and
shining eyes — which, however, have no soul — strike me as un-
canny."

" American beauties are said to be very stuck-up," remarked
a fourth ; " perhaps that accounts for her icy expression."

" Well, I know one thing, and if these were the days of chival-
ry I would break a thousand lances over it : this Baroness Grii-
nerode cannot be compared to Fraulein von Neheim," said Cap-
tain von Tieffenstein with deep conviction.

" Nor Fraulein von Neheim to Countess Xaveria," exclaimed
a gentleman.

" As Xaveria is my sister, I'm no judge about her," replied
the captain. " But where is she, I wonder? She shall introduce
me to the fairest of the fair."

Aurel and Countess Xaveria had been into the end room.
Sprouting plants and sweet-smelling flowers had transformed it
into a spring bower.

" This is lovely !" she cried out. " What masses of azaleas
and what enormous gum-plants ! How prettily the cactus shoots
up between the camellias ! And there is nobody to admire this
beautiful anteroom. It's too much out of the way."

" This is sometimes the case in life," said Aurel. " The best
things are not noticed because they are not brought before peo-
ple. But, Sylvia, what are you doing here all alone ? " he ex-
claimed suddenly.

Sylvia, in pale blue tulle, was sitting in the middle of some
sweet jasmine, looking like the nymph of this enchanted garden.
As the countess went towards her she got up and pointed to a
door, saying : " Some ladies wanted to arrange their head-gear,
and I came with them to the green room and am waiting for
them." The door opened and the ladies appeared as Captain
von Tieffenstein came in the other way.

" Has my brother been introduced to you ?" said the Countess
to Sylvia. " If not, I will introduce him myself."

His desire was thereby gratified, and he could approach the
" fairest of the fair " to exchange the usual commonplaces. They
were all standing amongst the flowers when suddenly an impe-

iSSi.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 325

rious voice called out : " Are you there, Aurel ? Oh ! dear, how
I have been looking for you."

"What do you want, Phoebe dear?" he asked, going up to
her.

" I want to go. Be so good as to take me away. It is very
unfitting of you not to trouble yourself a bit about me."

Countess Xaveria, intensely amused by the little scene be-
tween husband and wife, said, laughing : " Don't scold your hus-
band, baroness. It was I who enticed him away."

Phoebe appeared not to hear her at all, and drew Aurel off
with her. In the middle of the second room she uttered a low
cry and sank to the ground before Aurel could prevent her.
But he raised her in haste and disappeared with her, as there
was a sudden rush to the room and many anxious inquiries as
to what had happened.

" It is only a fainting-fit," said Baron Griinerode, senior, in a
very audible tone of voice. " We won't let it disturb us."

He went into the ball-room and gave the orchestra a signal ;
dancing began again, and Phoebe was forgotten by all but Syl-
via, in spite of the lively and brilliant conversation of her part-
ner, Herr von Tieffenstein. As aide-de-camp to a great military
personage he had spent three years in travels and missions hav-
ing military interests for their object. On his return to the capi-
tal a short time previously he found Sylvia a very attractive bit
of novelty. Her beauty no longer bore the impress of youth's
first freshness and joyousness ; a thoughtful earnestness had come
over her which made her less charming but much more interest-
ing. Herr von Tieffenstein had a certain amount of cultivation,
and he could easily see that Sylvia would not care to hear her
own dress praised and other people's dress passed in stern re-
view. So he talked of his travels, of beautiful spots, fine works
of art, and the different characters of different nations.

"Yes," said Sylvia, "but all nations are alike in one capital
point which touches every single individual : they are not perfec-
tion."

" Certainly we must not look for ideal people in this common-
place world of ours," he replied, laughing.

" I'm not looking for them, though I don't deny that I should
like to find them ; and because I know that I can't my pleasure in
ordinary good things is spoilt."

" That seems to me very unreasonable indeed, Miss von Ne-
heim. On the same principle, if you were logical you would
come to give up a nice book because it must end, and you would

326 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

not care for a flower as it must wither. But fortunately Ladies
are not logical."

" Oh ! please rather say men are not logical, and I will agree
with you," exclaimed Sylvia, laughing. " But what you say about
the book and the flower seems to me not quite true, because
both are perfect in their way, and their way is to have an end.
But man stops in his imperfection."

" It is for you to give the world an example of the contrary,"
he replied, laughing.

" I deserve your sarcasm," said Sylvia playfully. " It is one
of my numerous peculiarities never to be so sad as at a ball."

" Probably because it has an end ? "

" No, not for that, but because I cannot help thinking that all
these ball-faces are only masks which hide life's crowd of trou-
bles."

" You talk as if you were a hundred years old, Miss von Ne-
heim."

" Perhaps that is my mask," she exclaimed merrily.

The captain hardly knew what to make of her, but she cer-
tainly interested him. Phcebe did not appear again. Aurel was
from time to time visible in the crowd. But the young couple in
whose honor the splendid ball was given had small pleasure in
it, and Sylvia, strangely divided between sadness and a certain
satisfaction, said to herself: "In spite of Phoebe's beauty and her
thousands Aurel is not happy."

CHAPTER II.

HOW MARRIAGES ARE MADE.

How had all this happened ? How was it that Aurel had left
his father's house devoted to Sylvia, and that he came back to it
at the end of two years as Phoebe's husband ?

For years Baron Griinerode had been planning a connection
between his firm and that of an American house established in
Paris, Grandison by name, and in any case Aurel's move to Paris
would have been effected. Under ordinary circumstances the
baron would have confided his schemes to his son, whereas now
he preserved a discreet silence. So Aurel went to Paris little
suspecting that there was any question of a second connection not
relating to business. His father wrote openly to Mr. Grandison,
expressing the hope that there was nothing to prevent a mar-
riage between their children, and calling attention to Aurel's shy-

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 327

ness, which, though a great merit in one of his abilities, required
encouragement and pushing on in important matters. Mr. Gran-
dison took the hint. He desired the marriage extremely, hav-
ing no son, but only daughters. It was just before the Ameri-
can civil war. Any one acquainted with the state of things
could easily foresee what a mine of wealth might accrue to ex-
perienced speculators from the battle-field. If Mr. Grandison
had been able to leave a trustworthy son-in-law at the head of his
firm in Paris, he would gladly have chosen this time to go to
America, to stay there as long as the war lasted. He gave Aurel
a kind welcome and bade him feel perfectly at home. Phoebe
was then only fifteen. Aurel hardly noticed her at all, though he
saw her every day.

Sylvia heard nothing of Aurel except the commonplace tid-
iiigs which his parents received and sometimes discussed ; but
she believed in him, judging of his feelings by her own. She did
not think to ask herself whether it was all in accordance with
God's will, or whether his father and mother would consent to
their marriage ; she took it for granted.

And whose advice in the matter could she have asked ? She
had no counsellor. If, indeed, as formerly, she had been able to
pour forth her doubts and troubles in the tribunal of penance,
she would have found the main road out of her heart's labyrinth.
But the way thither was blocked up, and consequently she was
deprived of the principal means of spiritual progress, confession
being the best way to come to a knowledge of self. Her spiritual
life was fettered and grew weaker by the very helplessness which
made it an easier prey to worldliness. Sylvia never had an op-
portunity of hearing a sermon, or of spending a quiet hour before
the Blessed Sacrament, or of going to one of those solemn func-
tions in which the church is so rich, and which make us realize
with deep and joyful conviction what it is to be a child of this
divine church. She was restricted to the Sunday Mass — and
rarely did she get in before the Gospel, on account of her aunt's
steady unpunctuality — and to the sacraments at Easter. Then,
indeed, God, his grace, and his love came home to her heart ; but
during the long year nobody spoke to her of him except that
feeble voice in herself, which, amidst the roar of outward things,
could scarcely make itself heard at morning and night prayers.
The attentions paid to her in society were a further bewilder-
ment. She was so pretty, so full of talent, so interesting, so ele-
gant that it was impossible not to be quite charmed with her.
If her uncle, who adored her in his selfish way, had not expressly

328 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

given it out that she had neither money nor expectations she
would have found numerous suitors. As it was, a sensible man
naturally concluded that middling circumstances would be like
a fall into the farmyard to this spoilt bird of paradise. Many
people blamed Sylvia's uncle for bringing up a girl without for-
tune or position on the same footing as his rich daughter. He
said carelessly enough : " If I did not treat Sylvia as my daugh-
ter people would say that I was afraid of her outshining Isi-
dora. People always do grumble. But now I treat my niece
as my daughter, and leave every one to please himself ; one is
pretty and poor, the other is rich without good looks." Thus
time went by for Sylvia. She still had pious feelings, and was
sorry sometimes that she could practise her religion so little ; but
her soul's inner life dried up like the shallow stream when it runs
out of the cool wood into the open field in the heat of summer.

About three months before Aurel and Phoebe came Baroness
Griinerode said one morning to Sylvia : " Sit down at the writ-
ing-table, love ; I have got an important letter to Mme. Daragon
to dictate." Sylvia thought her aunt was going to make another
appeal to her friend's good-nature to do some commission for her
in Paris. But both her hand and her heart trembled as, after the
first few lines, she was told to write: "It is about Aurel that I
am going to speak, my dear friend. An excellent marriage is
talked of for him to Mr. Grandison's eldest daughter, Phoebe.
We know that the young lady is rich and pretty, but you will
understand that in my anxiety as a mother there are other things
I should like to be told. What is she like in character, what are
her tastes? Is she sensible, is she clever? Is she strong and
healthy ? This is an important point in these days, as young
ladies are wont to have such wretched health. I beg of you, there-
fore, my dear friend, to get me an answer to my questions and to
write it to me. Perhaps you know the Grandisons personally,
which would be all the better for me. But, supposing you don't,
it won't be difficult for you, with your large acquaintance, to pro-
cure the desired information." Thanks to the various details and
questions which followed, Sylvia gained sufficient self-control to
say at the end of the letter, in a tone apparently calm : " Do you
think this marriage will take place, Aunt Teresa? "

" I don't doubt it, love, as all parties concerned wish it par-
ticularly."

Here was a withering blight to all Sylvia's quiet hopes, a mer-
ciless frost which came and snapped off her young love's blos-
soms. The most conflicting feelings were at work in her heart.

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 329

If Aurel's love were so weak as to allow him to forget her in two
years, then, indeed, it was not wrorth a tear ! Or had he been
caught and beguiled by an artful beauty or pressed on by his
father's stern wishes, and was he miserable in consequence ? In
this case he was certainly to be pitied, though it was impossible
to feel any respect for such weakness ; and what a humiliation it
was to have fallen in love with a man unworthy of the world's
respect ! After that the further humiliation of being forgotten
by him scarcely went for anything. But in spite of herself the
thought, " He has forgotten me," did nevertheless well up like a
flood of bitterness in Sylvia's heart. Notwithstanding all the
self-control which she exercised, partly out of pride and partly
from the consciousness that no one sympathized with her, her
grief would have betrayed itself had not the baron given particu-
lar injunctions to his wife and daughter to pay no attention to
what he called Sylvia's fit of low spirits. He it was who had
determined upon the letter to Mme. Daragon as the simplest
way of conveying the intelligence to Sylvia, because it was a
mark of confidence.

One morning Baroness Grlinerode appeared with Mme. Da-
ragon's answer in her husband's office. This was an event in it-
self, but it was so aggravated by her state of agitation that the
baron could not repress his annoyance. He took her by the hand
and they went into his private study. There he said shortly :
" What has put you out, Teresa ? "

"Just read this letter," she said, almost gasping, and sank
down on the sofa.

He read it first rapidly, then slowly and as if weighing every
word, after which he tore it up and threw it into the fire, watch-
ing attentively to see that it was all consumed. Then he said
coolly : " Silly woman's gossip. Put it out of your head, Te-
resa."

" No, it isn't silly gossip. How could such a thing be said
without cause ?"

" Phoebe is very pale ; she has grown very fast — "

" So has Isidora, yet nobody dreams of saying that she is epi-
leptic."

" Silence ! " he exclaimed, stamping with his foot. " I won't
hear the calumny, and you shouldn't even mention it."

" But Mme. foaragon is not thinking of a calumny."
4 Then she is thinking of catching Phcebe for a son, nephew,
cousin, relative, or friend."

" You are very unjust, love ; she is only warning us."

330 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

" It's too late."

" Indeed it isn't after this dreadful discovery ! The business
may be put an end to. Why should poor Aurel marry a wife
who is afflicted with this shocking complaint? "

" But Mme. Daragon speaks doubtfully about it," said the
baron, with ill-repressed anger. " She says ' people say,' ' I be-
lieve/ and so on."

" I consider that she leaves no room for doubt."

" Every one says that Phoebe Grandison is subject to dreadful
cramps which — "

" I won't hear the name mentioned," broke out the baron.

" But you can read it in black and white, love."

" The letter is burnt, Teresa. I am sufficiently convinced
that it contained nothing very definite. Phoebe is young ; such
things may be cured — "

" Yes, and in the meantime they are inherited by the children ;
every one knows that."

" Now, my love, be so good as to calm yourself, to be quiet,
and to leave me alone," said the baron icily ; " it's too late in
the day to change our minds, and, supposing it weren't, I would
not do it on the authority of a mere hearsay."

" You are sacrificing Aurel's happiness, love."

" Sacrificing happiness ! — all stuff. Marriage is a highly pro-
saical and matter-of-fact concern with far other ends in view than
the satisfaction of mere sentiment. One woman has headaches,
another cramps ; such things don't affect a man's happiness or un-
happiness. A sensible man will be satisfied with riches and good
looks ; all other considerations are his own lookout. And Aurel
must look at it in this light. I am only thankful that he put Syl-
via out of his head."

What could the baroness answer? Her husband was right to
a certain extent. So, according to her wont, she sought refuge
in his view of the matter, and thereby solaced herself. As it may
be supposed, Sylvia never heard a word of Mme. Daragon's an-
swer, and it was not long before news of Aurel's engagement to
Miss Phcebe Grandison was noised abroad.

" I'm sure you didn't expect this" said Isidora to Sylvia with
ill-concealed exultation.

" I certainly could not expect it when I knew nothing of this
Miss Phoebe Grandison," replied Sylvia very stiffly. She would
rather have died than let Isidora triumph over her humiliation.

Aurel, then, was engaged. His father had allowed him a year
and a half's grace in which to realize the impossibility of marry-

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 331

ing- Sylvia. Then he began to talk to him about the duty of
making a suitable marriage and of having a family, seeing that
he was already a quarter of a century old, that he had a large
firm to represent and a father who was getting into years.
Aurel, indeed, made answer that he was not inclined to marry,
but the baron did not heed him in the least. On the contrary, at
that very time he wrote to Mr. Grandison that his son was too
shy to sue for Miss Grandison's hand because he had already had
a " tender attachment " ; would Mr. Grandison, therefore, help him
on a little ? In consequence of this letter Mr. Grandison said to
Aurel without more ado ; " I have remarked that you like my
daughter. She likes you, too, and, as the parents on both sides
agree in the matter, I look upon you as my son-in-law."

Aurel's surprise knew no bounds. It is true that he had often
sat by Phcebe at dinners, and talked to her as he would to any
other lady, but to be called upon to marry her was more than
he expected, in spite of all that his father had written. Then
Sylvia's likeness rose up vividly before his mind's eye and made
him disinclined to take Phcebe to himself as wife. Sorely per-
plexed, he brought forth some incoherent phrases just to gain
time. " No," said Mr. Grandison; " now is the time. You are
both of you young, and youth helps people to learn each other's
ways, which is important. Besides," he added with a certain
gravity — " besides, your waiting would look rather odd and it
would compromise my daughter, for everybody knows how much
at home you are at my house."

" That is part of our business."

" Oh ! is it ? The world thinks differently, and the world is
quite right. Business transactions are the stepping-stone to ma-
trimony. But come, don't be bashful, my dear fellow. Your
father has told me exactly how matters stand with you."

Not knowing the nature of his father's communications, Aurel
felt more and more perplexed,

" You need not trouble yourself about bygones," Mr. Gran-
dison went on. " Who of us at twenty-two was without his love-
affair, which took its course in one way or another and led to
nothing ? You have been in love once — well, what if you have ?
You haven't incurred any responsibility thereby, which was un-
commonly wise of you. You feel a certain shyness about offer-
ing your heart to another girl, which I could understand if you
were offering your hand without your heart. Marriage is no
romance, so it doesn't require to rest upon such milk-and- watery
stuff as love, sympathy, and such like. In your position you

332 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

must marry sooner or later. Miss Phoebe Grandison and Ba-
(ron Aurel Griinerode suit each other in every way, are both
young, good-looking, rich, well educated. What have you to
say against their marriage ? "

" Oh ! nothing," said Aurel, " only that—"

" Don't let us have any ' onlys,' young man," exclaimed Mr.
Grandison imperiously. " If you refuse to marry my daughter
all business relations between us must stop. That would put
you into a very uncomfortable position and be no end of annoy-
ance to your father. But why need I say all this? You like
Phoebe — well, take her."

Aurel felt as if he were in a snare from which he could not
get loose. He saw that for the last two years his father had
plotted the marriage to Mr. Grandison's daughter. Aurel did
not possess that firmness of character which sets itself against a
thing and takes the responsibility of its opposition upon itself
when it becomes a question of determining a whole life accord-
ing to the pleasure of another. He stooped to his father's will
and gave himself up to what he called his destiny. He engaged
himself, married, and went for his honeymoon to see his father
and mother. Mme. Daragon's piece of information had not been
communicated to him, and perhaps Phoebe's parents themselves
were not quite clear as to the exact nature of what the family
doctor called "nervous attacks." Phoebe was not attractive.
Consciousness of her beauty and of her money made her vain
and haughty, whilst her bodily disorder produced a jealous sus-
ceptibility which was always ready to feel itself aggrieved. Au-
rel found a certain satisfaction in not being happy with Phoebe.
Thanks to his easy-going nature, he discharged his new duties
kindly, but a fixed sadness took possession of him from a secret
feeling of displeasure at his own conduct — a state of mind which
is apt to become morose under the action of time. Pie had
dreaded meeting Sylvia, but his fear vanished before her calm-
ness and the composure with which she put out her hand to
welcome him. Even Isidora's sharp eyes were unable to dis-
cover any emotion in her manner. " No," said Sylvia to herself,
" the husband of another woman can be nothing to me. As he
forgot me, I mean to forget him. What grieves me the most is
my blindness in trusting him. It shall put me on my guard for
the future." She avoided with the greatest tact any allusion to
the past. One day her uncle said : " Now, Sylvia, sing the ' Alexis
and Ida ' songs with Aurel again."

" Oh ! no, dear uncle," exclaimed Sylvia disdainfully. " I can't

i88ij THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 333

go back to those old-fashioned songs ; but if you hate music of the
future as much as I do, and want to hear good old music, I will
sing you Beethoven's ' Adelaide.' '

And she began to sing in a rich and musical soprano voice,
which her lessons had wonderfully developed, to an accompani-
ment which she played herself with taste.

" Well done, little fairy ! You are getting first-rate/' exclaim-
ed Baron Griinerode as the last "Adelaide" died away in a
passionate burst of love. " What do you say to it, my pretty
Phoebe ? Do you still remain cold and insensible ? "

" Yes," said Phcebe shortly. She did not understand how to
take a joke.

Aurel felt that he must say something to Sylvia, who was
sitting meditatively at the piano and letting her hand run melo-
diously over the keys. He went up to it and said : " You have
got on wonderfully, Sylvia, and I — have done nothing but go
back. I should not venture to sing with you now."

" Without practice it isn't easy to sing together," she replied
carelessly.

Phoebe seemed annoyed that Aurel should have eyes for any
one besides herself. She, too, went up to the piano, and, as she
played very well, Sylvia wanted to make way for her. But
Phoebe insisted on playing a duet. If Aurel wished to stay at
the piano she meant to be there too.

CHAPTER III.

AN UNHAPPY WIFE.

VALENTINE had arrived on a visit to make her sister-in-law's
acquaintance — so it was given out ; but the truth of the case was
somewhat different. Herr Goldisch had written as follows to
his father-in-law :

" I am sending Valentine, much against her will, to you for
two or three months. I am very much displeased with her, and
have every reason to be so. Her fondness for display is hardly
credible, but, whether it is play or earnest, her reputation is suf-
fering under it. She never did listen to sensible remonstrances,
and will not do so now. I think sending her away for a time is
my best course, and Aurel's honeymoon furnishes us with a very
good opportunity. Let us hope the season in the capital will
put other thoughts into her head and send her back a sensible
woman."

334 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

But there was small appearance of this consummation. Va-
lentine went to balls and parties with the air of a victim ; wore
her beautiful Parisian dresses, her laces and jewels, as if their
weight oppressed her; did not trouble herself much about her
family, and not at all about Phcebe, and showed a liking- for
Sylvia only, who sat by her side for long hours as she lay on
her chaise-longue, and was initiated into the secrets of what
she called her " miserable marriage."

" What want of sympathy, Sylvia ! " she moaned on the very
first day. " I am lying here quite worn down by my wretched
lot, and there you are painting away at flowers as if you meant
to make the world out a flower-garden."

" I really can't quite believe in your wretched lot, Tini," re-
marked Sylvia, not raising her eyes from her painting.

" Why ! don't you understand that without true sympathy of
hearts there is no such thing as happiness ? "

" Not perfect happiness, perhaps ; but your husband is so kind
that I think you might be tolerably happy with him."

" Tolerably happy ! Well, that is a definition of happiness !
No, I don't want to be ' tolerably happy.' My heart craves for
full and entire happiness. I see it glimmering before my eyes,
but I can't reach it because I am chained down. It is dreadful,
under such circumstances, not to be able to dissolve one's mar-
riage."

" Under what circumstances, Tini?" asking Sylvia, still paint-
ing busily.

" When there is no sympathy between husband and wife,
and one's heart is irresistibly attracted in another direction," said
Valentine, dragging her words out in a tragical way.

Sylvia's paint-brush fell from her hand. She jumped up, sat
down by Valentine, and said earnestly : " You have no right to
have such thoughts, or at least to give way to them, and still less
to talk about them."

" Command the heart to be still," said Valentine sentimen-
tally.

" You can't, of course ; but you can struggle. It is your
duty."

" Love is more powerful than the most important duties."

" Yes, when it is lawful, and this sort of love helps you out
with your duties as wife and mother."

" How very matter-of-fact, Sylvia ! "

" So it may be. I clon't care as long as you understand me."

" That doesn't matter a bit, Sylvia. The thing is for you to

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 335

understand me and my feelings, which are crushed to death in
my wretched state of bondage, so that I can only wish to shake
off a tie which makes three persons miserable."

" Valentine," said Sylvia sorrowfully, with Catholic instinct,
"it would -do you good to go to confession."

" Don't talk such nonsense. Why, what have I done ?"

" Remember the Ninth and Tenth Commandments, Valentine.
They don't speak of our actions, but of our thoughts and state of
mind, which by themselves may be grievous sins."

" May be, but are not in my case."

" Yet you are thinking of leaving your husband," exclaimed
Sylvia sharply.

" It is much better to part from him than to remain with him
loving another. How old are you, Sylvia ? "

" I shall be twenty-two on the ist of May. But that is not to
the point."

" But it is, for I can't understand how people can be so old
without knowing anything about love."

Sylvia blushed. Valentine remarked it and went on : " Per-
haps you may have had some little sentimental affair or other,
but you haven't the least notion what an overwhelming pas-
sion is."

" I am sure I would do my very utmost to fight against an
affection which was out of harmony with my circumstances."

" Circumstances ! " echoed Valentine contemptuously.

" Our duties and our circumstances are very closely connect-
ed ; so now, Tini, do think about yours, and then, perhaps, you
will be quite willing to go to confession."

Valentine got up and said in a drawling tone : " This is very
hard. You are the only person to whom I can speak, and you
shut me up." She stood before the mirror, and, in spite of her
hard fate, the glance which she cast into it was altogether satis-
factory. A white cashmere morning-gown lined with red taffeta
threw a soft light over her pale complexion, whilst her insepa-
rable tresses of dark hair were allowed to flow loosely over her
shoulders and justified her brother Edgar's nickname of weeping
willow. As she stood looking at herself in the glass her thoughts
took a more definite form, the substance thereof being " quite a
tragical apparition." Sylvia noticed Valentine's self-complacen-
cy, and said, laughing : " You know best how to console your-
self, Tini. You don't require me at all."

" You ungrateful creature!" sighed Valentine; and, kissing
Sylvia, she left her, but only for that morning. The next day

336 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

she was back again with her sighs and groans and silliness, and
passionate outbursts which brought many things she had better
not have known before Sylvia. By degrees Sylvia became in-
terested in Valentine's love-affairs. She did not approve, but she
made excuses for her, and she grew careless about her music and
other occupations in order to read with Valentine. They chose
that particular kind of. novel in which love is depicted as something
quite irresistible, as a fate to which man falls a victim in spite of
himself, or as a divinity which exercises supernatural power over
the human will. And whereas fate and divinity are two things
against which human reason and energy are entirely powerless,
men fall without resistance, own themselves vanquished, and al-
lege their very weakness as their excuse. These books made an
extraordinary impression on Sylvia, although they had not previ-
ously attracted her. Her wholesome love for Aurel gave her an
appreciation of genuine feeling, and kept her in a freshness and
simplicity which were impervious to fiction on the stage or in
books. But now, in her perturbed state of mind, deeply wounded
as she was by Aurel's behavior and craving for something to
distract her thoughts, she hailed books that kept her imagination
actively employed. How often, coming home at night after a
ball, did she fancy herself too weary to say her night prayers ; yet
she would read for hours till her eyelids dropped with sheer ex-
haustion. Sleep came, and with it a continuation of her day-
dreams, so that they were still in her mind when she awoke.
She grew more and more inclined to view the mental sickness of
a culpable passion as something both happy and satisfying, and
when spring came she listened to Valentine with far different
ears to what she had done three months, earlier. But Baron
Griinerode at least had no romantic notions on the subject. Be-
fore his daughter had begun to think of her departure he said to
her one day :

" You must go back to your husband this day week, and please
to give him no further cause for displeasure."

" It is impossible. Have pity on me ! " moaned Valentine.

" Silence ! " he exclaimed sternly. " I won't hear a word.
During your visit I have not spoken about your husband's com-
plaints, for I purposely ignore them. You are married people
and must get on together as best you can. Bear this in mind
and behave sensibly, for you may be quite sure that your father
and mother will not support you in your folly. So now sit down
and write to tell your husband to expect you on the 24th. "

Valentine, in a flood of tears, rushed off to Sylvia, saying, as

1 88 1.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 337

she threw herself into her arms : " Oh ! what a cruel father. He
won't be bothered with his daughter's misfortunes. He ignores
her sorrows just to keep comfortable himself. He has no conso-
lation or encouragement or advice to give me. He sends me
back to my husband and gives me up to my fate. And then look
at my mother, Sylvia. I don't know whether she even suspects
what a wretched marriage mine is, but I do know that she is
either my father's shadow or a mere nonentity which only counts
for something as long as it keeps with him. O Sylvia ! don't
you leave me. Come home with me ; then, at least, I shall have a
friend at hand."

Sylvia was quite disposed to follow up a suggestion which
offered her both change and novelty. They went together to
Baroness Griinerode to tell her their plan and to beg her to get
the baron's consent to it.

" I shall miss you very much, love, and I'm sure I don't
know who will write my letters and notes for me," said the
baroness ; " but there is nothing we won't do for our children."
And she was as good as her word, and spoke to her husband.

" My dear," he answered impatiently, " I am very loath to part
with Sylvia, as she knows uncommonly well how to enliven me.
Moreover, I doubt whether it is to her advantage to be thrust
with Goldisch and Valentine. She may find out many things
which will do her no good."

" O love ! just think of poor Tini. She is twenty years
younger than her husband, and has a craving for sympathy."

"My dear, between ourselves 'poor Tini' is a goose with
her craving after sympathy. Let her sympathize with her hus-
band, after her mother's example. On the other hand, she may
possibly bestow her sympathy on Sylvia, and, as Sylvia has be-
haved with great common sense to Aurel and Phcebe, let her go."

" Poor Aurel ! " said the baroness with a faint sigh. " I ad-
mired his patience with that capricious, obstinate Phcebe.
Whether she did or said anything very silly or rude, he quietly
remarked, to excuse her, ' She is American ' — as if Americans,,
one and all, did not know how to behave."

" He was obliged to say something, my dear, so he said that.
After all, I don't think he is to be pitied. Phoebe is a very pretty
young woman and very fond of him, and they live in first-rate
style."

" He didn't strike me as very happy."

"What are all these complaints about, my dear? First it was
' poor Tini,' and now it is ' poor Aurel.' We can't order them a

VOL. XXXIV.— 22 .

338 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Dec.,

life as you can a cake at the confectioner's ; they must take it as
they find it. I am sure we do all we possibly can for them, and
now we are going to give up Sylvia. They ought to be happy
enough out of sheer gratitude to us."

" You are quite right, love ; we are patterns of parents, and set
our children an example of what marriage should be," said the
baroness with conviction.

Sylvia went off with Valentine and became an eye-witness of
the sad state of things for which Valentine's confidential com-
munications had prepared her. Their departure just happened
to fall in Holy Week. The confusion and bustle which it in-
volved successfully banished all thoughts of Easter duties from
both their minds. A little later, indeed, Sylvia remembered the
precept of the church ; but then the Easter-Communion time had
gone by, and she determined to put off her mea culpa till the fol-
lowing year. As to Valentine, it never even entered her head.
She had very little common sense naturally, and her education
had not developed either strong belief or principles which rest
upon a lively faith. She conceived no higher rule of conduct
than that of acting upon her whims and fancies, and she did not
ground a conduct so conceived upon the will of God, but upon
her own inclination, depraved and vitiated by passion as it was.
Thus blindly and heedlessly did she rush on her downward
course.

TO BE CONTINUED.

i88i.] MONASTIC DUBLIN. 339

MONASTIC DUBLIN.

IN the days when England and Ireland, however otherwise
opposed, owned one faith in common, before the benefactions of
generations of pious Catholics were torn from those who had
been chosen as the trustees of their bounty and distributers of
their alms, there were within Dublin, or in immediate proximity
to the walls of Dublin, some ten religious houses of much note.

Admittedly the most ancient of these was that known as the
Abbey of the Virgin Mary, or St. Mary's Abbey, and certain tra-
ditions, of an uncorroborated kind indeed, assign its foundation
to the piety of the Danes of Dublin immediately after their con-
version to Christianity. That this was the oldest of the religious
houses existing in Dublin at the period of the so-called Reforma-
tion is, however, unquestionable, as is also the fact that one Mau-
rice, its second abbot, died on the iQth January, A.D. 998.* At
first this abbey is said to have been in possession of the Cassinese
or black Benedictine monks, but St. Malachy is believed to have,
when acting as papal legate in Ireland, procured its transference
to the Cistercians, a branch of the Benedictine Order for which
he had a great affection. Henry II. of England seems to have
taken upon himself the handing over of this abbey, with all
its lands and appurtenances, to Ranulph, abbot of Bildewas, in
Shropshire, enjoining obedience to such decree upon its monks
and abbot. It appears, nevertheless, that a large amount of in-
dependence was preserved by the Irish house, for under date
A.D. 1 182 we read :

" Leonard was abbot. On the feast of All Saints this year Harvey de
Monte Marisco, having granted to Robert, abbot of Bildewas, the monas-
tery of Dunbrothy, in the diocese of Ferns, with all its lands and appurte-
nances, the said abbot sent thither Brother Alan, one of their convent, and
a discreet lay person, to make proper inquiries concerning it. When they
came to the place they found it to be a waste and desert, whereupon the
abbot of Bildewas made a transfer of his grant to the abbot of St^Mary's,
together with the rights of patronage and of visiting and reforming that
abbey." t

* Archdall's Monasticon Hibernicum, ed. of 1873, edited by the Right Rev. Dr. Moran,
Bishop of Ossory, vol. i. p. 304.
t Archdall, vol. i. p. 306.

34O MONASTIC DUBLIN. [Dec.,

Sufficiently prudent and sagacious, if not too generous, seems to
have been this abbot of Bildewas. In St. Mary's Abbey died
Felix O'Ruanadhagh (O'Rooney), whilom Archbishop of Tuam,
who had succeeded to the archiepiscopal see in 1201. He was, it
appears, a member of the Cistercian Order. When years began
to grow upon him he formed the design of returning to the
peaceful walls wherein he had, perhaps, spent the days of happy
noviceship. He seems to have resigned his archbishopric in
1234 and to have lived but three years longer in the olden abbey
of Our Lady, for the annals record that —

" In 1238 Felix, Lord- Archbishop of Tuam, of pious memory, died, who
caused the church and steeple of the house of Our Blessed Lady near Dub-
lin to be covered with lead, and was honorably buried in the chancel of
the same church, at the steps of the altar, on the left hand."

Thus much quotes the worthy Sir James Ware in his Antiquities
and History of Ireland, and Archdall tells us that in the year 1718
" there was found, in digging in the ruins of this abbey, the
corpse of a prelate in his pontificals, uncorrupted, and supposed
to have been this archbishop ; his coffin was again replaced."

It seems as if the claims of the abbots of Bildewas over St.
Mary's were denied by some of the order elsewhere, and that an
effort was made to prevent the church in Ireland from being de-
graded to a mere portion of the Norman government ; for we
find, under date of 1301, that —

" The contention which had so long subsisted between the abbots of
Saviniac in France, and of Bildewas in England, respecting the right of
filiation of this abbey, was, in a general chapter held this year, determined
in favor of Bildewas by means of William de Ashburne, the monk and proc-
tor of Bildewas, and afterwards abbot of St. Mary's."

What the extension of Norman or English sway over Irish re-
ligious houses and establishments meant has much light thrown
upon it by the abominable statute enacted by the Parliament of
the Pale in their session at Kilkenny in 1367, which runs as
follows :

" Also, it is ordained and established that no religious house which is
situated amongst the English (be it exempt or not) shall henceforth receive
any Irishman to their profession, but may receive Englishmen without
taking into consideration whether they be born in England or in Ireland ;
and that any that shall act otherwise, and thereof shall be attainted, their
temporalities shall be seized into the hands of our lord the king, so to re-
main at his pleasure ; and that no prelates of holy church shall receive any
treoyft (recte tridoyft — i.e., serf or villein) to any orders without the assent
and testimony of his lord, given to him under seal."

1 88 1.] MONASTIC DUBLIN. 341

Far different was the olden customary law of Ireland as ex-
plained and denned in the ancient Brehon law-tract, the Corns
Brescna, and it may not be inapposite to quote the words of
the native legal doctors :

" The enslaved shall be freed, and plebeians shall be exalted, by receiv-
ing church grades and by performing penitential service to God. For the
Lord is accessible ; he will not refuse any kind of person after belief, either
among the noble or plebeian tribes ; so, likewise, is the church open to
every one who goes under her rule."

On the 2/th of May, 1304, the abbey of St. Mary's was nearly
entirely destroyed by fire. In 1311 William de Ashburne be-
came abbot, and we have recorded in 1314 that —

" On the Saturday next before the feast of the Annunciation the Abbot
Ashburne was admitted a freeman of the city of Dublin, at their assembly
held in St. Mary's Chapel in Christ Church ; Richard le Wells, mayor, and
Richard St. Olave and Robert de Morenes, bailiffs."

More than one hundred years later — viz., in 1434 — we read
that—

"On the 4th May Nicholas Woder, the mayor of Dublin, accompa-
nied with the citizens, and walking barefooted, visited the churches of the
Holy Trinity (Christ Church) and St. Patrick, humbling themselves and
doing acts of penance ; they then proceeded to this abbey, craving pardon
for their offences — for attempting to kill their mayor, for violently seizing
the Earl of Ormond and committing manslaughter in the action, and for
breaking the doors of the abbey, forcibly rushing in and laying violent
hands on the abbot, whom they dragged, like a dead corpse, to the gate of
the monastery."

The unfortunate abbot whom these representatives of the Nor-
man colony treated thus vilely was one Stephen Lawless, who
had been appointed in 1431, and who died on the 4th of August,
1438.

Throughout the reigns of the Norman kings St. Mary's
Abbey witnessed many at least equally determined attempts to
coerce and degrade its rulers, and many a harsh interference
with its olden rights and liberties ; for Norman and Plantagenet
monarchs scrupled not to create customs and precedents of their
own, provided custom or precedent might be quoted against
the law.*

* It throws much light upon the almost, if not quite, sacrilegious Statute of Kilkenny to read
the words of St. Thomas a Becket describing to the Sovereign Pontiff the actions of Henry II. :
" Be pleased to read over the bill of those reprobate usages which he claims against the church,
and on account of which I am banished ; and your Holiness will see clearly that before I made

342 MONASTIC DUBLIN. [Dec.,

Another of the great religious establishments of ancient Dub-
lin was the priory of the Holy Trinity, or Christ Church. The
real origin or foundation of this great institution is lost in ob-
scurity. Contradictory statements or traditions ascribe it to the
piety of a converted Danish prince and to that of " divers Irish-
men," to whom, indeed, the most accurate historians assent to the
honor being given. But there is little certainly known except
that for many a long year before the feet of English invaders de-
secrated Irish soil the bells of the cathedral dedicated to the
Holy Trinity called a faithful people to prayer and praise, and
earnest priests preached and taught within its consecrated walls.
In 1163 the sainted Archbishop of Dublin, Laurence O'Tuathal
(O'Toole), according to Archdall, had the clerics in possession of
this priory " made canons regular of the order of Arras, a branch
of the Augustinians." It was in this church that Richard, Earl
Strongbow, was interred, after bequeathing " the lands of Kin-
sali to find lights " for it, and whose death, in their own quaint
style, the Four Masters thus record in their Annals :

"The English earl died in Dublin of an ulcer which had broken out in
his foot, through the miracles of SS. Bridget and Columcille, and all the
other saints whose churches had been destroyed by him. He saw, as he
thought, St. Bridget in the act of killing him "

— this when no doubt St. Bridget's best prayers were being
prayed for the poor sinner whose doughty arm and proof ar-
mor alike were weak defences against that shaft whose keen
point hmd stretched him on his pallet in Dublin Castle.

In this church, with other great relics, was preserved the
miraculous crosier of St. Patrick, the staff of Jesus — that staff
possession of which, according to St. Bernard, in popular estima-
tion at least, almost carried right to the archiepiscopal see of Ar-
magh. Dr. Lanigan supposes this staff to have been carried to
Dublin in 1184, when Philip de Worcester with his Normans
passed the gates of Armagh, and, as was the wont of the con-
querors, "robbed Peter to pay Paul " by carrying off much trea-
sure of various kinds to Dublin. Archdall tells us that —

"The history of this celebrated staff, as delivered by Joceline, is briefly

any stand he had by these same usages stopped the mouths of all who would appeal to your
court ; prohibited all ecclesiastical persons from crossing the sea till an oath had been exacted
from them ; suffocated the rights of elections ; drawn all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, be-
fore his own courts, and run his dagger into every liberty of the church." In Ireland, however,
many things could be done even worse than those Henry worked in England, and assuredly no
Becket was bidden to the Parliament of Kilkenny ; while Henry's successors were but seldom
better than himself.

i88i.] MONASTIC DUBLIN. 343

this : St. Patrick, moved by divine instinct or angelic revelation, visited
one Justus, an ascetic who inhabited an island in the Tyrrhene Sea, a man
of exemplary virtue and most holy life. After mutual salutations and dis-
course he presented the Irish apostle with a staff which he averred he had
received from the hands of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself. In
this island were some men in the bloom of youth and others who appeared
aged and decrepit. St. Patrick, conversing with them, found that those
aged persons were sons of those seemingly young. Astonished at this mira-
culous appearance, he was told 'that from their infancy they had served
God ; that they were constantly employed in works of charity, and their
doors ever open to the traveller and distressed ; that one night a stranger,
with a staff in his hand, came to them, whom they accommodated to the
best of their power ; that in the morning he blessed them, and said, " I am
Jesus Christ, whom you have always faithfully served, but last night you
received me in my proper person " ; he then gave his staff to their spiritual
father, with directions to deliver it to a stranger named Patrick who would
shortly visit them ; on saying this he ascended into heaven, and left us in
that state of juvenility in which you behold us, and our sons, then young,
are the old, decrepit persons you now see.' Joceline goes on to relate that
with this staff our apostle collected every venomous creature in the island
to the top of the mountain of Cruagh Phadruigh, in the county of Mayo,
and from thence precipitated them into the sea."

Be this account of the crosier of St. Patrick correct or not, there
is at all events an overwhelming- Aveight of tradition to prove
that it was the identical one borne by the apostle, that it was
that wherewith he worked some of his most wondrous miracles ;
and even if, like us, one is almost content to believe that the
Sovereign Pontiff blessed and gave it to him, and that it con-
tained some portion of the true and holy cross, we are not less
inclined to style it, as the olden chronicles do, " the staff of
Jesus."

When Henry VIII. developed his designs upon the property
of the church, and embraced those convenient and schismatical
doctrines which commended themselves so well to him, his chief
object was to place in possession of church property and tem-
poralities creatures and followers of his own, men of debased and
lax morals, who, like Cromwell and Cranmer, were well content
to act the part of Judas, if so be a bribe were offered them.
Therefore it was that within less than twelve months after the
murder of Archbishop Allen by the followers of "Silken
Thomas " Fitzgerald there was despatched to Dublin as arch-
bishop, consecrated with such consecration as the hands of
Cranmer could bestow, one George Browne. Browne had
that apparently indispensable adjunct of a reformed bishop, a
wife, and until the reign of Queen Mary, when he was removed

344 MONASTIC DUBLIN. [Dec.,

from the place he desecrated, he enjoyed possession of so much
of the revenues of the see as the king left him. This Browne
seems to have taken a special pleasure in plundering Christ
Church, and to have rioted in the destruction of the sacred
relics preserved therein. The Four Masters tell us :

A.D. 1558 — "And the staff of Jesus, which was in Dublin, and which
wrought many wonders and miracles in Ireland since the time of Patrick
down to that time, and which was in the hand of Christ himself, was burned
by the Saxons in like manner. And not only that, but' there was not a
holy cross, nor an image of Mary, nor other celebrated image in Ireland,
over which their power had reached, that they did not burn."

"Over which their power had reached!" Just so. The foul
heresy was none of Ireland's. Saxon invasion alone made the
polluting footsteps of heresy possible on Irish soil.

It was in this cathedral church of the Holy Trinity, this
very Christ Church, at the meeting of the packed Parliament of
the Pale, that Browne dared to broach the doctrine of the king's
supremacy in these words :

" My Lords and Gentry of this His Majesties Realm of Ireland : Behold
your obedience to your King is the observing of your God and Saviour
Christ, for He, that High Priest of our Souls, paid Tribute to Cesar (though
no Christian) ; greater Honour then surely is due to your Prince His High-
ness the King, and a Christian one. Rome and her Bishops in the Father's
days acknowledged Emperors, Kings and Princes to be Supream over their
Dominions, nay, Christs own Vicars. And it is much to the Bishops of
Romes shame to deny what their precedent Bishops owned ; therefore His
Highness claims but what he can justifie : The Bishop Elutherius gave to
St. Lucius the first Christian King of the Britains ; so that I shall without
scrupling vote His Highness King Henry my Supream over Ecclesiastick
matters as well as Temporal, and Head thereof, even of both Isles, England
and Ireland, and that without Guilt of Conscience or Sin to God ; and he
who will not pass this Act, as I do, is no true Subject to His Highness."

Thus does Ware report Browne, and thus, no doubt, he spoke.
At any rate, packed and terrorized, this Anglo-Irish Parlia-
ment voted " His Majestic " Head of the Church and King
of Ireland ; for up to this time never had monarch of England
claimed this title. Therefore, passing strange as it may appear
to some readers, the statutable right of the rulers of England to
the title of temporal governors of Ireland is just as much, and no
more, as theirs to be the same in things spiritual. Ireland has
never quite owned to one any more than to the other, and we
must be allowed to doubt that it ever will.

Some time afterwards Browne wrote Cromwell that —

1 88 1.] MONASTIC DUBLIN. 345

"The Romish Reliques and Images of both my Cathedrals in Dublin,
of the Holy Trinity and St. Patricks, took off the common people from the
true Worship. . . . The Prior and Dean have written to Rome to be en-
couraged ; and if it be not hindered before they have a Mandate from the
Bishop of Rome, the people will be bold, and then tugg long before His
Highness can submit them to His Graces Orders."

Amongst the other religious houses mentioned by Ware and
Archdall was the nunnery of St. Mary de Hoggis, or Hogges,
a name derived by the antiquarian Lhuyd from the Irish word
oigk, signifying virgin, and by Bishop Moran from the Teutonic
designation for a small hill, the convent having stood in the
vicinity of the present College Green, which at one time, having
been a place of pagan interment, was probably the situation of
numerous tumuli, or burial mounds. This nunnery belonged to
an order following the rule of St. Augustine, and, existing long
anterior to the coming of the English, was only finally suppress-
ed in the reign of Edward VI. The Knights Templars, according
to Archdall, had a house, styled St. Sepulchre's, at a place called
Casgot, on the southern side of the city. The great priory of
All-Hallowes, or All-Saints, stood in Hoggen, or Hoges, Green,
as well as the convent of St Mary, and is said to have been
founded by Diarmid, son of Murchadh (Dermot MacMurrough),
King of Leinster, the munificent and pious prince who endowed
the latter. The property of this priory was, on its suppression,
granted to the city of Dublin, the corporation of which surren-
dered it, through the influence of Henry Usher, for the founda-
tion of Trinity College in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The
abbey of St. Thomas, in Thomas Court, was another ecclesias-
tical institution of great importance, and was founded in Nor-
man days by the lord-deputy, William FitzAdelm de Burgo, a
kinsman of King Henry II. The priory of St. John the Baptist
stood in St. Thomas Street, nearly on the very spot where now,
at the corner of St. John Street, stands the magnificent new
church and handsome convent of the Augustinian friars. To this
religious house, which also was founded in Norman days, was at-
tached an extensive hospital, where were maintained, in the reign
of Edward III., "one hundred and fifty-five sick and poor per-
sons, besides chaplains and converts." Archdall says :

" In this hospital were both friars and nuns ; the vestments for the
friars of Thomas Court, for the Franciscans in Francis Street, and for the
University of St. Patrick were wrought here ; for their labor they had the
tenth of the wool or flax which they spun assigned them when the work

346 MONASTIC DUBLIN. [Dec.,

was finished. The different orders for whom they wrought did visit this
house on St. John's day, when they presented their offerings before the
image of the saint which stood in the great hall ; and on the saint's eve
the mayor and Commons were also wont to visit them, on which a great
bonfire was made before the hospital, and many others throughout the
city."

When the time of " Reformation " came, as a matter of course
the image, the hospital, the priory and all its possessions were
" reformed " out of existence ; though as to what became of the
sick, the poor, and the old tended within its holy walls no
thought was given.

The Dominican friary, St. Saviour's, stood on the north side
of the city, as does in these days the beautiful Gothic church
of the same order. In olden as in modern times the eloquent
Preaching Friars were dearly beloved by the people of Dublin,
and we read that in 1308 —

" John le Decer was this year mayor of Dublin ; he was remarkably
liberal to this monastery : he erected a large stone pillar in the church, and
laid the great stone upon the high altar, with all its ornaments. On the
sixth day in every week he entertained the brethren of this house at his
own table, and in a time of general Scarcity imported from France three
ships laden with corn, one of which he presented to the lord-justice and
militia, another to the Dominican and Augustinian seminaries, and the
third he reserved for the more liberal exercise of his own hospitality and
bounty. These beneficent actions moved the Dominicans to insert a par-
ticular prayer in their litany for the prosperity of the city of Dublin."

This John le Decer was buried during the course of the year
1332 in the church attached to the convent of St. Francis. St.
Francis', which also was established after the invasion, existed
until the time of Henry VIII., when, like the other Dublin reli-
gious houses, the iconoclasm of the period, in its destroying zeal
for "reformation," came to its doors with such warrant as it
could show. In the library of Benet College, Cambridge, is pre-
served the manuscript journal of a pilgrimage made by two
friars of this order and house to the Holy Places in 1322. They
are styled Simon Fitzsimon and Hugh the Illuminator. Hugh
died at Cairo.

1 88 1.] MONTE VERGINE. 347

MONTE VERGINE.

MONTE VERGINE is one of the highest peaks of the Apen-
nine range, that forms the eastern boundary of ancient Campania
Felix, and stands about half-way between Nola and Benevento.
On the top is a large Benedictine abbey famous for its chapel of
the Madonna, one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in
the kingdom of Naples. This monastery is out of the highway
of travel, and therefore seldom visited by the mere tourist,
though the country around is remarkable for the grandeur and
romantic character of its scenery, and the mountain itself has its
classical as well as religious associations. It was known even
in the time of the Romans as Mount Parthenius, or the Virgin
Mount, and was likewise called Mons Sacra on account of its
consecration to Cybele, mother of the gods, who had a vast tem-
ple on the summit, where she was honored with mysterious rites
amid the dense shade of its oaks, and the fir specially sacred to
her, and the pine which recalled her beloved Atys, and where all
the surrounding country sent tributary and votive offerings as to
a protecting divinity. Virgil himself, struck by the prophecies of
the Sibyls concerning the advent of our Saviour, is said to have
come here to consult the oracle of Cybele as to their truth. An
old mediseval chronicle preserved in the archives of the monas-
tery, written on parchment in Lombard characters, by John of
Monte Vergine, says that Virgil lived on the mountain a longv
time. At all events his memory became so associated with it that
in time it took his glorious name, and for centuries was known
as Mons Virgilianus. The priests of Cybele refusing to enlighten
him as to his researches, or being unable to do so, the legend goes
on to say that he had direct recourse to the goddess herself, in-
voking her by means of plants of magic power he had brought
from the East and planted in a garden contiguous to his dwelling
—plants doubtless culled full-bloom by night with a brazen sickle
while still wet with dew distilled from the moon, as Virgil himself
tells us was the custom. Here, doubtless, grew the box of which
to make the pipes used in the service of Cybele, Lethaean poppies
that could appease the very Manes of the dead, herb-marjoram
which Virgil tells us was baneful to serpents, and the magic ver-
vain,

" The sovereig-nest thing on earth
To heal an inward bruise."

348 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

The knowledge of magic plants and medicinal herbs some say
Virgil derived from Chiron, the teacher of JEneas, whose Book of
Might he found under the centaur's head where he lay entombed
in a grotto on Monte Barbaro in Sicily. An old German poem,
however, says that, hearing of a Babylonian prince famous for
his knowledge of astrology and the hidden arts, who foresaw the
coming of Christ long before it took place, Virgil set sail for the
magnetic mountain where he lived and got possession of his
magic scrolls. By some such means the garden he cultivated
on Monte Partenio, to propitiate the Bona Dea, he placed under
enchantment by way of protecting it, and its magic character
seems to have continued almost to modern times. Alexander
Neckham, foster-brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted, says it
was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of air. After the Bene-
dictines took possession of the mountain the monks are said to
have sometimes come upon it by chance in their rambles,
though they could never discover by what path they entered
or how they got out, nor did they succeed in carrying away any
of the plants still growing therein. One monk is spoken of who
got within the enclosure and found himself, as it were, in a laby-
rinth from which there was no issue. Such stones were current
as early as the twelfth century. Perhaps they were a way of ex-
pressing the metaphysical mazes in which some of the monks
became involved by excessive study of the ancient authors.
More than one in those times, we know, sought truth under the
fabulous creations of classical writers, like Abbot Theodolphus,
who says :

" Plurima sub falso tegmine vera latent."

Bartolommeo Caracciolo, in his Cronica di Partenope (1382),
says Virgil's enchanted garden could be easily found by those
who sought it for medicinal purposes, but concealed itself from
those who wished to pillage or destroy. At all events the herbs
once cultivated for mysterious rites in the temple of Cybele were
still potent, it appears, through the medical learning and skill of
the monks, and were regarded by the peasants they healed as still
of magic virtue. All that savored of superior knowledge was in
those davs ascribed by the unlettered to some occult art. This
caused Horace to be spoken of as a wizard around Palestrina,
and Boccaccio to be called a magician by the peasantry of Cer-
baldo. So the ideal Virgil of the middle ages was a necroman-
cer, for he was regarded as the embodiment of all knowledge,

1 88 i.J MONTE VERGINE. 349

even by Dante himself, who, addressing his guide and master,
says:

" O tu ch'onori ogni scienza ed arti," *

though had he looked upon him as a magician he would have
consigned him to the fourth Bolgia of the Inferno with the sor-
ceress Manto, the mythic foundress of Virgil's own city.

In an old life of San Guglielmo, written by Giovanni Nusco
in 1168, this mountain is still called by the name of Virgil, and
Pope Celestin III., in a bull of 1197, calls the abbey already es-
tablished here the Monasterium Sacro-Sanctcs Virginis de Monte
Virgilii, but the mountain had long before begun to acquire the
more Christian appellation by which it is now known. It was
St. Vitalianus, Bishop of Capua, who first dedicated the temple
of Cybele to the holy Mother of God, from which time a higher
worship entirely superseded the dark rites of the heathen god-
dess.

" Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui."

Here took refuge from persecution several of the early apos-
tles of the surrounding country — St. Modestinus and his two
companions, Florentinus and Flavianus ; likewise St. Felix,
Bishop of Nola, and another Felix, as well as Maximus, of the
same place, who were afterwards martyred for the faith. And
here died in the Lord St. Vitalianus himself, who had conse-
crated the mount to Mary Most Pure.

But Monte Vergine received a new consecration, as it were,
when San Guglielmo da Vercelli came here in 1119 and estab-
lished himself in a hermitage. St. William was a nobleman, who
at an early age left home to enter upon a penitential life. , He
visited the tomb of the Holy Apostles at Rome, went on a pil-
grimage to St. James of Compostella, and was on the point of
going to the Holy Sepulchre when he was stripped, among the
mountains of Calabria, of all he possessed, and, taking refuge
with St, John of Matera, he conceived such a love for the solitary
life that he resolved, in obedience to an apparizione del Redentore,
to take up his abode on Monte Vergine. He ascended the
mountain with bare feet, pale with fasting and clad in coarse rai-
ment. White doves flew before him, leading the way, as it were,
but, when they came to a spring of pure water that gushed out
beneath the snow, disappeared. Here St. William built a small

* O thou who every art and science valuest.

350 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

eremo, or hermitage, for himself and a few disciples who joined
him, and the fountain became known as the aqua columbarum.
They also constructed a chiesetta, or small church, out of the
ruins of the temple of Cybele, which was consecrated by John,
Bishop of Avellino. St. William, by divine ordinance, forbade
the use of meat, eggs, and milk on the sacred mount, at least
within a certain radius around the hermitage. Only fish and
vegetables were allowed, and these in limited quantities — a
severe regimen kept up to this day. And his followers were
obliged to fast on bread and water from All-Saints to Christmas,
and from Septuagesima till Easter.

St. William became famous for his miracles, but still more so
for his liberality to the poor, which seemed excessive to some of
his brethren, who counselled him to take thought of the morrow
and reserve a part of the offerings they received for future con-
tingencies. St. William, not wishing to be a rock of offence, ap-
pointed the Beato Alberto, one of his first companions, to rule
over them, and betook himself to a new solitude. Alberto, how-
ever, carried out the wishes of the holy founder, and so increased
the fame of the sacrecl mount that the piccolo cremo grew into a
spacious monastery, and the chicsetta into a large church, which
was solemnly consecrated November n, 1182, by the archbishops
of Benevento and Salerno, attended by thirteen bishops and six
abbots. The abbey was, almost from the first, exempted from
the jurisdiction of the local ordinary. John, Bishop of Avellino,
with the consent of his clergy, renounced all rights over it. This
was approved by the Holy See, particularly by Pope Lucius III.,
who, struck by the sanctity of the monks when he visited the
holy mount, exclaimed : " ludico hos homines angelorum potius quam
hominum vitam agerc" Gravina in similar terms says : " These
men emulate the angels in their lives, living in the flesh without
flesh, frequent in fasts, sedulous in prayer, and obedient to their
chief." Their sanctity, in fact, was proverbial. Urban IV., by a
bull of 1264, declared the abbey immediately subject to the Holy
See, and conferred on the abbot the rights and privileges of a
bishop. The immortal Sixtus V., who received hospitality here
when a mere friar, showed special interest in the house and
maintained its rights.

St. William seems to have acquired the special confidence of
Roger, King of Sicily, over whom he exercised great influence,
and more than once mediated between him and the powerful
Count of Avellino. King Roger called the saint to his court aU
Palermo and endowed several houses of his institute — one for

1 88 1.] , MONTE VERGINE. 351

women at Guleto called San Salvadore, where his daughter, the
Princess Catherine, took the veil. Through St. William's influ-
ence the king also extended his protection to the abbey of Monte
Vergine and its vassals. In those days the power of the barons
often weighed heavily on the people, and many sought refuge
under the paternal rule of the monks. The abbot of Monte Ver-
gine assigned two houses and a garden to such fugitives under
the very shadow of the mountain. This place of shelter grew
into a village and still bears the name of Ospedaletto, or Little
Hospice, the people of which continue to regard with reverence
the monastery that showed so much humanity to their fore-
fathers. The abbey itself became an inviolate asylum.

Documents from King Roger conferring benefits on the
abbey of Monte Vergine are still preserved, bearing his seal with
the legend : Benedictvs Devs et Pater Domini Nostri lesv Christi —
Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. William revisited the holy mount before his death and
spent some time here ; then went to die at Guleto (i 142). He
left no written rule, but Roberto, the third abbot, by the wish of
Pope Alexander III., who canonized St. William, placed the
monastery under the rule of St. Benedict. The monks, however,
retained the white habit given them by their founder in honor of
the Vergine Immacolata, and the rule of abstinence from all ani-
mal food.

Pontiffs and kings seemed to vie with each other in benefac-
tions to the abbey. The Emperor Henry VI. gave it the castle
and territory of Mercogliano. Frederick II., though he declared
. void in general all donations not made with the imperial sanc-
tion, formally excepted those to Monte Vergine, and ordered
that the vassals of the abbey should be free from imposts. Al-
fonso I. of Aragon made the abbot sole judge over his vassals in
civil and criminal cases. King Roger II. gave the abbey the fief
of Mezzioiuso in Sicily, and of Cillano in Barletta. William II.,
surnamed the Good, gave those of Sambuco and Querci in Na-
ples. King Robert the Wise, the friend of Petrarch, gave three
fiefs. Queen Joanna and Louis of Anjou gave nine. Charles of
Anjou assured to the abbey the possession of the whole moun-
tain, as well as the villages at the foot that had grown up, or in-
creased in size under the protection of the monks. And infinite
was the number of gifts from other princes and nobles. A curi-
ous privilege, called il dritto di prelazione, was conferred on the
abbot by Charles Martel, King of Hungary, with the consent of
his father, Charles II. of Naples, to the effect that no kind of salt

352 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

fish should be exposed for sale at the great fair of Salerno with-
out tithes thereof being sent to the abbey of Monte Vergine.
This dritto, or right, lasted till the abolition of monastic institu-
tions in the kingdom.

Besides castles, lands, and villages, the abbot of Monte Ver-
gine had more than two hundred religious houses under his con-
trol, including those of the two Sicilies, besides convents of nuns
filled with ladies of illustrious birth.

The abbey was likewise richly endowed with the more pre-
cious treasures of countless relics, including several bodies of
saints and other holy objects that rendered Monte Vergine one
of the most sacred spots in the Christian wrorld. Many of these
were first brought here for safety in calamitous times, chief
among which was the venerated body of the glorious St. Janua-
rius, patron of Naples, which was brought here from Benevento
in 1156, and remained till 1497, when, at the petition of King
Ferdinand I. as well as the people of Naples, the pope authoriz-
ed the transportation of these sacred remains to that city, then
suffering from the plague. This translation was made with
solemn pomp, January 13, 1497, by Archbishop Alessandro Ca-
rafa amid demonstrations of great joy on the part of the popu-
lace. Only a portion of the skull was preserved at the abbey.

But the great glory of Monte Vergine is the miraculous Ma-
donna brought from the East by Baldwin II., the last Latin Em-
peror of Constantinople, when obliged to flee from his capital in
1261. His grandniece Catherine de Valois, titular Empress of
Constantinople, was his heiress. She came to the sacred mount
in 1310, bringing with her the sacred inheritance of the Madonna,
which she placed in the church, where for nearly six hundred
years it has been held in great veneration.

The first blow to the prosperity of the abbey of Monte Ver-
gine was the appointment of abbots in commendam in the fifteenth
century — a practice strongly censured by the fifth Council of the
Lateran. The consequences were so disastrous that in 1601 only
eighteen houses remained subject to the abbey, which was soon
left with the bare titles to ancient fiefs and hardly any means.
But one pope after another asserted its rights till its yoke was
thrown off, and the house had begun to prosper again when in
1807 came the suppression of the monastic orders. Twenty-five
monks, however, were allowed to remain as custodians of the
abbey and of the archives of the abbot's palace of Loreto, but
they were obliged to lay aside their white habit.

After the restoration of Ferdinand I. to the throne of Naples

1 88 1.] MONTE VERGINE. 353

an appropriation was made for the maintenance of the abbey,
and the monks were allowed to put on again their white gar-
ments. Pope Pius VII. restored its spiritual rights and privi-
leges, appointed Cardinal Pacca its protector,, and in reorganiz-
ing the dioceses of the kingdom in 1818 left that of Monte Ver-
gine intact, saying it ought to remain for ever unchanged with its
little see of seven villages spiritually subject to the abbot.

Within the last few years the congregation of Monte Vergine
has been affiliated to the Cassinese Benedictines, but the monks
retain certain customs peculiar to themselves.

When the monastery founded by St. William at Guleto was
suppressed the monks of Monte Vergine, by dint of persistent
efforts, were at length permitted to take possession of his sacred
remains, which were brought here to the great joy of the whole
region.

In spite of the vicissitudes of the abbey the concourse of pil-
grims to the sanctuary of the Madonna has always been extraor-
dinary, especially at Whitsuntide and Our Lady's Nativity, com-
ing from Naples in immense numbers and from all parts of
southern Italy. Sometimes they arrive at Mercogliano at night
and ascend the sacred mount in the purple darkness or by the
light of torches, which, as they ascend, may be seen like a galaxy
of stars gleaming along the edge of precipices, amid the oaks and
chestnuts, forming a grand and imposing spectacle. And all day
long they are ascending and descending in continuous streams
with picturesque effect, affording admirable studies of costumes,
physiognomy, and manners. They generally go up on foot, some-
times even barefoot, carrying tapers and offerings to the sanc-
tuary, and bringing back colored pictures of the Virgin, boughs
of " the Madonna's tree," rosaries ofhazel-nuts, etc. At the ab-
bey they are welcomed with the ringing of bells, and they enter
the massive portone with child-like joy. It is then the season of
flowers, and the whole country is clothed with inconceivable
beauty quite in harmony with the cheerful piety of the pilgrims.
The mountain is resonant with their songs and loud greetings,
and gay with the brilliant colors they love to wear.

Our pilgrimage to Monte Vergine was in mid-winter, when
the sanctuary is almost deserted. The country, too, has lost part
of its beauty, but the wildness of the mountain is increased, the
awfulness of its precipices, and the tender gloom of the deep,
luxuriant valleys. We started from Naples and left the railway
at Avellino, noted for its hazel-nuts, called in ancient times nuces.
Avellana, and then took a private carriage to Mercogliano (Mer-

VOL. XXXIV. — 23

354 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

curii ara), a rude, straggling village with red-tiled houses, at the
very foot of the mountain, and under the spiritual jurisdiction of
the abbey. A mile or so from this village is the abbot's palace
of Loreto, in a sunny plain, built on the site of an ancient tem-
ple of Apollo. It is a large octagonal building, with an interior
cloister bright with flowers and the southern sun. Here the
greater part of the monks of Monte Vergine now reside in win-
ter— at least the aged and infirm, the temperature being milder
and the regimen less severe. At the gates several hundred poor
people are daily fed, and medical advice and remedies freely
given to all who apply for them. We were received with the
politeness and hospitality that characterize the Benedictines
everywhere. They gave us refreshments and showed us the
house and garden. In the archives are preserved twenty-four
thousand documents relating to the history of the abbey — cartu-
laries, deeds, diplomas, and privileges both spiritual and tempo-
ral— among them three hundred papal bulls and two hundred
historical manuscripts of mediaeval times. These have been
bound in volumes to prevent their loss.

The monks gave us directions as to ascending the mountain,
advising us, however, not to attempt it that day, as it -was already
late in the afternoon and ominous clouds hung about the summit.
But our time was limited, and, returning to Mercogliano, we took
horses and a guide, and set off up the steep, zigzag path hewn
out of the rock. The whole village seemed to take an interest in
our departure, and a fine cavalcade we formed, following our
guide, one by one, up the rough, arduous way like that which
Dante describes :

" Che sarebbe alle capre duro varco"*

Ferdinand II. allowed alms to be collected throughout the
kingdom of Naples to construct this road from Mercogliano to
the abbey, and contributed to it himself. The task was com-
pleted in 1856, after five years' labor. In ancient times the path
must have been only fit indeed for goats to climb.

The view grew more and more admirable in proportion to
our ascent. After a certain height we could look down into
the beautiful valley, the rich winter browns and ambers of which
were lit up by the declining sun. There lay the realm that so
long has owned Mary's golden reign, with its wide stretches of

* Rugged and steep, a path
Not easy for the clambering goat to mount.

1 88 1.] MONTE VERGINE. 355

purple and gold, surrounded by hills crowned with castles and
churches amid which peeped numerous villages from vines, and
olives, and orange groves. Around circled the lofty Apennines.
In the course of an hour the wind began to rise and long, trailing
clouds swiftly descended, through the rifts of which we could still-
see the sun-lit valley ; but we were soon enveloped in mists that
before long deepened into rain, completely hiding the landscape.
The cold began to increase and the darkness to gather. Our
way lay along a frightful precipice that seemed more dangerous
as the rocks grew slipper}7, and the horses could no longer make
sure their footing. They began to stumble, and we to sway un-
der the force of the increasing blasts. It was a relief when the
horses at last refused to go on and we were obliged to dismount.
We then set off courageously on foot through the blinding snow
that recalled the winter storms of New Hampshire. It was pitch-
dark when, chilled to the very marrow and exhausted from wad-
ing upward through the drifts, we arrived at the portal of the
monastery. The two French abbes in our party joyfully struck
up the Magnificat, the effect of which, on this wild mountain
summit, amid the darkness, and pelting storm, and howling wind,
as we stood waiting at the Virgin's gate for the monks to an-
swer our summons, was very grand indeed.

A lay brother at length appeared, who led us across a court
filled with snow, through dark, chilly corridors, into a large room
where a huge brasier of live coals was at once brought, which
we were glad to gather closely around. Several monks hastened
to welcome us, and in due time came smoking dishes of their
Lenten fare — magro stretto indeed. That night stands out in my
memory as the coldest I ever experienced. An immense cham-
ber was assigned me which for chilliness never had a parallel, un-
less in the famous ice-palace of Russia. The bed was a frozen
lake, and the coverings were certainly taken from a glacier. I
heard some of our party in the next room executing a kind of
war-dance (the Madonna and St. William forgive them ! for it
was with no irreverent spirit, I am sure) to get up some warmth
before venturing on the awful plunge. I pitied the poor monks
who had to encounter a whole winter like this in such a profound
solitude, but afterwards learned that they go down to the palazzo
from time to time to be replaced.

The next morning was bright and clear, and we were in the
church at an early hour. It is a large edifice in proportion to
the immense number of pilgrims in the season. It is only in the
Catholic Church we find such vast temples on wild, solitary

356 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

mountains where peak indeed calls to peak, and ice, snow, and
hail, and hoar-frost, and all the elements join in the Benedicite of
the Three Holy Children, as well as all green things that grow
in the valleys beneath.

At the right side as you enter the church is the chapel of Our
Lady of Monte Vergine, paved and lined with marbles, built by
Philip of Anjou. Over the altar hangs the celebrated Madonna
given by his wife, the Empress Catherine. Only the head of this
Madonna was brought to Italy by Baldwin II., it being of course
impossible to transport a large painting on wood when fleeing
from his capital. Catherine de Valois had the rest of the Ma-
donna's figure and the Infant Jesus painted by Montano of
Arezzo, a celebrated painter of the time, whom King Robert
knighted. The head is painted on cedar, and the remainder on
another kind of wood, so, while the Madonna's face remains
fresh, the colors of the rest are greatly sunken.

The Virgin, slender and graceful, is seated on an inlaid throne,
with her right hand calling attention to the Child on her knee,
who is too small in proportion to her large figure. He is clothed
in a red tunic mixed with gold. Two angels swing censers around
the Madonna's head, and six support her throne. Three golden
crowns are fastened to her head after the Italian fashion, one of
which was given by the chapter of the Vatican in 1712, and she
wears a profusion of necklaces, the gifts of her votaries.

In this chapel are the tombs of Catherine de Valois and her
children, Mary and Louis, with their effigies lying on them.
Prayers are still said for them in this chapel by the monks, after
more than five hundred years. There is a votive picture on the
wall of Marguerite, wife of Louis III. of Anjou, who, on the
point of being shipwrecked, invokes the Madonna and is saved.

In another part of the church is the chapel built by King
Manfred, son of Frederick II., for his burial-place; he, as well
as his father, holding Monte Vergine in special favor. And here
is an ancient sarcophagus, popularly called Manfred's- tomb, of
veined white marble with great lions' heads carved on one side,
and two winged heads of Medusa on the other. When Manfred
was slain in battle with Charles of Anjou he was first buried
near the bridge at Benevento, and every soldier of the victorious
army threw a stone upon his grave, forming a great mound.
Dante makes Manfred relate this in the Purgatorio :

l( Yet at the bridge's headway my bones had lain
Near Benevento, by the heavy mole
Protected."

i88i.] MONTE VERGINE. 357

But as he died excommunicated, he was afterwards removed
from the lands of the church and borne with unlighted torches
to the banks of the river Verde, on the borders of Campania,
where " the rain beat on his grave, and the winds swept pitiless-
ly over it." It is pleasant to think that the monks of Monte Ver-
gine, according to their traditions, secretly carried off the body
of their benefactor by night and buried him in his own chapel,
charitably hoping with Dante that

" By the curse he was not so destroyed
But that eternal love might turn,"

and his punishment be

" By prayers of good men shorter made."

In this chapel is an immense crucifix carved out of wood,
with a colossal Christ nailed to it, pale, bleeding, and terrible —
a work of the thirteenth century, if no older — and against the
wall are the marble effigies of two knights in their coats of mail.

In another chapel is the rich marble tomb of Caterina della
Lionessa, of the old Provencal family of Lagonesse, which follow-
ed the Anjou princes into Italy. She lies curiously coifed, her
hands joined, on her cold bed, which is supported b}^ six colon-
nettes. There are other interesting tombs of dames and knights,
among them those of Count Bertrade de Lautrec and his son.
And every one devoutly visits that of Fra Giulio di Nardo, a
holy monk well skilled in music, who, though of noble birth, re-
fused the priestly office and served as a lay brother in this house.
He wished, out of humility, to be buried under the pavement of
the Madonna's chapel,

" That every foot might fall with heavier tread
Trampling upon his vileness."

His body was found incorrupt two centuries after his death, and
placed in an urn.

The beautiful ciborio of Parian marble, inlaid with mosaic
and supported by columns resting on lions, was given by Charles
Martel — the Charles whom Dante finds circling in the third hea-
vens, his saintly light turned to the sun that feeds it,

" As to the good, whose plenitude of bliss
Sufficeth all.''

The chapel of 'relics is curious, reminding one of a columba-
rium with its niches for different saints.

358 MONTE VERGINE. [Dec.,

We looked with interest at a column of porta-santa marble
from the old temple of Cybele. And in one gallery of the clois-
ter are curious simulacra and votive offerings, and fragments
of sculpture, from the same source, forming quite a museum.
Among them is part of a rich sarcophagus on which is carved
the battle of the Amazons.

At the entrance of \heforesteria, or guest-house, is an inscrip-
tion stating that only Lenten fare is permitted in the monastery,
according to the injunction of St. William. The prohibition as to
meat extends half a mile around ; but without the bounds, lower
down the mount, is a small building where it is permitted. The
violation of this rule is said to have often been followed by con-
dign punishment. It was once popularly believed that forbid-
den food brought within the sacred enclosure became at once
corrupt and unfit to eat. And when the hospice was burned
down in 1611, causing the death of four hundred pilgrims, it was
attributed to the impiety of some who brought meat with them,
as no fire had been lighted on the premises.

The abbey stands on a shelf of the mountain near the summit,
and is somewhat imposing from its very size. From the terrace
is a magnificent view extending on one side over fertile Campania,
and on the other to the plain of Benevento, where Manfred fell,
and the famous defile of Caudi, or Caudium, at the foot of Mount
Taburno, where the Roman army was obliged to surrender to
the Samnites and pass under the yoke at a place still called
Giogo (or Yoke) di Santa Maria. From the highest point of the
mountain you can see five provinces, and the view extends from
the towers of Gaeta to the Bay of Salerno, embracing Naples and
its enchanting waters, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Capri, Procida, and
Ischia — perhaps the fairest lands on earth.

We could not look without some emotion at the spot nearer
at hand where stood the ancient temple before whose altar Virgil
once expectant waited, thirsting for the true Divinity. Afar off
could be seen the cliffs that conceal his tomb and the Sibyl's
cave ; but here, on the mount overlooking them, is enthroned
Mary uplifting the divine Child whom they foretold, and before
whom the oracle of Cybele is for ever dumb.

1 88 1.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 359

CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES.

THERE is still preserved at the Vatican a letter from Henry
VIII. seeking the long-desired honor of the cardinalate for his
favorite minister. In this missive to the Roman Pontiff the Eng-
lish sovereign begs His Holiness to pay the same attention to
whatever Wolsey says as if it proceeded from his own Lips ; he
expresses his " extreme anxiety and fervent desire for the day
when he shall see Thomas Wolsey advanced to the rank of Cardi-
nal of York — a dignity he fully deserves for his genius, learning,
and many admirable qualities." The courtly Leo hesitated to of-
fend either the Emperor Maximilian or the French monarch, who
required similar honors for their own favorites. At length the
pope wrote to Henry, saying that he could no longer refuse the
request of so faithful a son of the church as the King of Eng-
land was then universally acknowledged to be. When King
Henry received intelligence of Wolsey 's promotion to be a prince
of the church he was delighted, and, writing to the pope, he de-
clared : " Nothing in all my life has given me greater pleasure
than the brief announcing Thomas Wolsey 's elevation to the Col-
lege of Cardinals. I shall ever regard the distinction your Holi-
ness has conferred upon my most worthy subject as a favor con-
ferred upon myself."

The installation of Wolsey as a cardinal took place at West-
minster Abbey with all the magnificence of the Roman ritual.
Dean Collet preached an eloquent sermon on the occasion. Wil-
liam Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Fisher, Bishop
of Rochester, were the chief officiating prelates. The ceremony
lasted several hours. Peers and Commoners flocked thither to do
him honor ; abbots, bishops, monks, friars, and seculars were pre-
sent on the occasion ; and the proceedings of the day concluded
with a sumptuous banquet at the newly-created cardinal's palace,
at which King Henry and Queen Katharine were present, sur-
rounded by the flower of the English nobility. Nor were the
crowd without forgotten ; they were also regaled with a profuse-
ness most pleasing to the multitude. Modern reflection despises
lord-mayors' gilt coaches, splendidly-dressed footmen, or cardinals'
hats, but the philosophy of the early part of the sixteenth century
was very different. Men delighted in such shows without stop-
ping to reason as to their utility. Even men who cannot eschew

360 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

honors, yet do not care for them, may in time not only accept but
esteem them. Monarchs sometimes acquire honor from the re-
pute of their trusted servants ; and at this period of Henry's life
the king and his illustrious subject might feel gratified with a
concession in whose attainment mutual esteem seemed so largely
to participate. It is not much in the heart of a man of a lofty na-
ture to be insensible of honors on occasions like this. Wolsey
soon loved the dignity, at first for his own and the king's sake,
and then for its authority — perhaps for its splendor. The new
Cardinal of York, recognizing the loftiness of his dignity, was re-
solved to invest his office with a magnificence rarely witnessed,
even on the Continent. The king seconded the cardinal's plans
for a large retinue and superb liveries — liveries which dazzled
and astonished the multitude. Both monarch and minister were
men of refined and elegant taste ; and the people of London and
the metropolitan counties unmistakably felt well pleased, in their
insular pride, at gazing on the pageants issuing in stately splen-
dor from Greenwich and old Whitehall. Even in that age of gor-
geous ceremonial, when records were filled Avith elaborate reci-
tals of cloth of gold, silks, and beautiful tapestries — even then,
amidst jewelled mitres and copes, a cardinal in his scarlet robes
formed a conspicuous object. But Wolsey was in no manner
swayed by the vulgar vanity of appearing grand, in that light in
which the ignorant or the superficial behold the surroundings of
a great man. Magnificent in all his notions and in all his doings
— in the selection of plate, dress, tapestry, pictures, buildings ; the
furniture of a chapel, a church, or a palace ; the arranging of gar-
dens, of flowers, of fountains ; the setting of a ring or the ar-
rangement of some exquisite jewel ; the forms and etiquette of a
congress ; a procession in heraldic order ; or at a sumptuous ban-
quet— there was the same regal and classic taste prevailing, the
same powerful grasp of little things and of great affairs ; a mind,
a soul as capacious as the sea, and as minute as the sand upon
the shore when minuteness was required.

Such was the social and, in part, political bearing of the Cardi-
nal of York. He went far to civilize the British nobles, to elevate
the taste of the commercial classes, and to accustom the people
to distinguish between the barbaric profusion of the past and
the treasures of beauty which Science and Art, working with the
same materials, now opened to their awakening discernment.
On no occasion did the universality of Wolsey 's genius for orga-
nization display itself more signally than at the meeting of the
French and English monarchs on the " Field of the Cloth of

i88i.J CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 361

Gold." There Wolsey was studied by all, and to all seemed in-
exhaustible in the graces of his bearing and the aptitude of his
arrangements. King Henry's retinue at the " Cloth of Gold"
amounted to 3.997 persons and 2,248 horses; the queen's servants
and guards reckoned 1,200, and 840 horses. Wolsey 's attendants
were very numerous and the appointments classic and gorgeous.
Budasus, an eminent Greek scholar and traveller, who was a spec-
tator of the royal meetings, describes the astonishment he felt
on viewing such scenes of unparalleled magnificence.

Of the personal appearance and disposition of Wolsey about
this time (1519), perhaps the despatches of Sebastian Giustiniani
are the most correct.

" The cardinal is now about forty-six years of age, very handsome,
learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability, and indefatigable in carrying
out his projects ; he alone transacts the same business as that which oc-
cupies all the magisteries and councils of Venice, both civil and criminal ;
and all state affairs are managed by him likewise, let their nature be what
it may. The cardinal is pensive and has the reputation of being extreme-
ly just ; he is the councillor who rules both the king and the entire realm ;
his enemies accounted him haughty and imperious, yet much more humil-
ity and moderation than Wolsey possessed could scarcely have escaped the
imputation. Such a sight as this English cardinal presented was not com-
mon to the eyes of Christendom. The great nobles could obtain no
audience of him until after four or five applications — foreign ambassadors
not even then."

" The Cardinal of York is omnipotent," says Erasmus, writ-
ing to Cardinal Grunoni. u All the power of the state is cen-
tred in him," is the observation of Giustiniani ; u he is, in fact,
ipse rex." The people declared he was " moved by witchcraft or
something that no man could discover." Yet, undisputed as
was the supremacy of this great minister, it was surely no more
than might have been expected. In genius, in penetration, in
aptitude for business and indefatigable labor, he had no equal.
All despatches addressed to ambassadors abroad or at home
passed through his hands; the entire political correspondence of
the times was submitted to his perusal and waited for his deci-
sion. Before a single measure was submitted to the Privy Coun-
cil it was first shaped by Wolsey's hands; he managed it, un-
aided and alone, when it had passed their approval.* Foxe (Bi-
shop of Winchester), the only minister of any experience, sel-
dom attended the royal council ; the Duke of Suffolk dared not

* Brewer's State Papers.

362 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

offer him opposition, writes the Spanish ambassador; the Duke
of Norfolk, who had endeavored to thwart the cardinal's author-
ity, and once had partly succeeded, had been defeated, and
yielded : Norfolk was too haughty to conceal a temper not less
imperious than Wolsey's, and wanted the flexibility and cour-
tesy of manner required in a successful courtier. Wolsey was
unpopular with the landed interest, many of the representatives
of which hated him cordially. He also incurred the enmity of
the lawyers for sustaining the part of the poor client, and of the
monopolists and commercial people for checking their dishonest
deeds. It is, however, a pleasing fact to record that the cardinal
was loved and respected by his clergy for the equity and kind-
ness with which he governed the diocese of York. His enemies
were numerous at home and abroad, but Polydore Vergil was
the most malignant and persistent in falsehood. He was deputy-
collector of the pope's annats for Cardinal Hadrian in England,
and Wolsey, having discovered his misappropriation of papal
moneys, and, further, his intriguing with foreign factions, impri-
soned him in the Tower. Hence his virulent enmity.* Polydore
Vergil's imprisonment and subsequent conduct throw fresh light
on the general character of the man. He remained some nine
months at the Tower, where he was well treated and made an
exception to other prisoners. In his captivity he addressed the
most abject letters to Wolsey for mercy. He told the cardinal,
with blasphemous servility, that " he had heard with rapture of
his elevation to the cardinal's high estate, and whenever his emi-
nence would allow him an opportunity to present himself he
would gaze and bow in adoration, and his spirit should rejoice in
him as in God his Saviour "/ In another letter Polydore prayeth
that his "punishment might be wholly remitted, and Wolsey's
gifts be perfected in him, even as he himself was perfect." A
few months subsequent (1516) Polydore Vergil was liberated by
the cardinal ; he then retired to Hereford and characteristically
began inditing a series of attacks on the character of Wolsey.
He affected to sneer at his birth ; charged him with ingratitude
to his friends ; described his buildings as those of a person pos-
sessed of no refined taste ; imputed base or sordid motives to him
as a judge ; ridiculed his cardinal's hat and his gorgeous live-
ries ; represented him as an ambitious priest, successful only be-
cause he was unscrupulous; distinguished merely for his under-
hand intrigues in banishing Dr. Foxe and Archbishop Warham
from the council chamber; he was neither a scholar nor a gen-

* Brewer's State Papers of Henry's Reign.

1 88 1.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 363

tleman, but a respectable sort of hedge-priest ; a blusterer in Chan-
cery, whose administration of justice was a shadow ; a vulgar
upstart, intoxicated with dignities undeserved; aparvemi, whose
brain was turned by his gilded chair, the gold fringes of his
cushion and table-cloth ; his cardinal's hat, which was carried be-
fore him by some tall man in his livery, and placed conspicuous-
ly on the high altar in the Chapel Royal when Mass was sung,
was another proof of his vanity and hypocrisy.* In this strain
Vergil writes of the man whom but a few months before he de-
clared to be endowed with every virtue that could adorn the
state or the church.

Many statements have been chronicled of the " low birth and
presumption of the butcher's dog." Lampoons and caricatures
were circulated by Wolsey's contemporaries, describing him as
the son of a " petty butcher." But these stories had no founda-
tion in fact ; his father, Robert Wolci, was what would be
styled nowadays "a grazier " ; he fed on his own land some two
hundred head of cattle, which were purchased by the butchers
of the neighboring towns. In one year a number of his cows
died of distemper, which for a time embarrassed the family.
The Wolcis were never rich, but the family was always respec-
table and loyal to the Plantagenets and their successors. There
is an entry of an " offering " extant which was made at St. Law-
rence's Church, Ipswich, " to pray for the sowls of Robert Wolci
and his wife Joan, the father and mother of the Dean of Lincoln,"
which shows that the family were far above the rank of a
butcher — a class who were, in those days, considered " lowly
and mean." Besides, the father of the future churchman made a
will, in which there is no mention of the occupation of a butcher.
Polydore Vergil reiterates the assertion of Skelton and others as
to the " saucy son of the greasy butcher " ; yet in a letter to
Cardinal Hadrian Polydore declares that he " heard from an old
inhabitant of Ipswich that the cardinal's father was a poor gen-
tleman who sold cattle to butchers." Anthony Wood, an excel-
lent authority on this disputed question, indignantly denies that
Wolsey was a butcher's son. He says that the " family, however
reduced in circumstances, made a shift to maintain at Oxford
young Wolsey, where he became a Batchelor of Arts at fifteen
years of age (1485), having made a wonderful progress in logic
and phylosophy." Skelton, a friar, was one of the most persis-
tent in traducing Wolsey's character. Skelton was the friend of
the noted Simon Fish, which is sufficient to enable us to form an

* Brewer's State Papers on Wolsey's Times..

364 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

estimate of his merits. Giustiniani says that two brothers of
Wolsey " were presented to lucrative livings in the English
Church under discreditable circumstances." Mr. Brewer does
not believe this allegation. • " I have found/' says he, " no notice
of either brother or any other member of Wolsey's family, with
one exception, receiving livings. There is a petition to the car-
dinal from one John Fayrechilde, son of Elizabeth Wolsey, the
cardinal's sister, desiring some small place as comptroller of the
works at Tournai ; but the applicant's name does not occur
again in connection with any office."

There seem to be mystery and inconsistency in the conduct
of Wolsey regarding the divorce of Queen Katharine. It is
quite impossible to defend his conduct in this case. If Wolsey
held no political office under the crown the pontiff might have
placed more confidence in him as a churchman ; but both pope
and cardinal were politicians of a high and intellectual school,
and one cannot help reflecting Jiow much the spiritual interests
of the church were neglected, and the virtue, truth, and honor of
her ecclesiastics injured, by intermingling in the turmoil and
deceit of politics.

I cannot omit noticing, however briefly, a few of Wolsey's
contemporaries. Another clerical diplomatist enters upon the
scene in the person of Richard Pace. Dr. Pace was one of the
remarkable men connected with the early government of Henry
VIII. , and was long employed in foreign diplomacy. Historians
make little mention of the name of Pace, and he is seldom no-
ticed, except to be described as " a knave or a fool." He was
far from being either. He was faithful, honorable, and patriotic
as an English diplomatic agent ; yet several historians question
his integrity and show little real knowledge of the man. Ber-
genroth, a very reputable authority, says that Pace was friendly
to the Emperor Maximilian, and subsequently became the secret
agent of the intriguing and restless Charles V. These declara-
tions rest upon a memorandum, found at Corunna, of the empe-
ror's council, in which it was proposed to offer Wolsey " a sop in
the mouth," and, " if he accepts it, a pension to Dr. Richard
Pace." * There is no evidence produced by Bergenroth to show
that these offers were ever made, still less that they were accept-
ed. A distinguished commentator upon the correspondence and
secret foreign papers of those times presents an ably written
memoir of the diplomacy, tact, and rare ability with which Pace
and Wolsey maintained the interests and the honor of England

* Bergenroth's State Papers of England and Spain, vol. ii.

1 88 1.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 365

on the Continent. Notwithstanding the friendship which existed
between the Cardinal of York and Dr. Pace, a failure in some
diplomatic affair brought upon the latter from the strong hand of
Wolsey a consignment to the Tower for two years — a proof that
no skill, no previous accord, condoned mistakes made in certain
kingdoms.

During the meeting of Henry, Francis, and their queens at
the " Cloth of Gold " Dr. Pace, as the Dean of St. Paul's, preached
before the allies the Latin sermon in the royal chapel. In his
discourse he congratulated France and England on the meeting
of their sovereigns, and made an eloquent oration on the bless-
ings of peace. The religious ceremony on this occasion was
grand and imposing. Two cardinals, two legates, four archbi-
shops, and ten bishops were in attendance on Wolsey, who sang
the High Mass. The air was perfumed with incense and flowers;
the altars of the church were hung with cloth of gold tissue em-
broidered with pearls ; cloth of gold covered the walls and desks ;
basins and censers, cruets, and other vessels of the same mate-
rials lent a lustre to its service. On the grand altar, shaded by a
magnificent canopy of large proportions, stood twenty-four enor-
mous candlesticks and other ornaments of solid gold. Twelve
golden images of the apostles, as large as children of four years
old, astonished the sight of the English visitors. The copes and
vestments of the officiating prelates were cloth of tissue pow-
dered with red roses, wrought in the looms of Florence and
woven in one piece, thickly studded with gold, precious stones,
and pearl-work. The seats and other appointments were of cor-
responding taste and splendor. A proud contemplation to the
English onlooker to behold Thomas Wolsey, as the Cardinal of
York, standing at the great altar of this regal chapel, pronounc-
ing the benediction, surrounded by four archbishops, two legates,
ten inferior prelates, two kings and their queens, with the nobles,
grandees, and fair dames of England and France kneeling in the
royal presence ; then, as they rose, the sudden burst of enchant-
ing music, the roar of artillery, and the acclamations of the mul-
titude without.

On this memorable occasion there knelt behind the French
queen a sweet-featured maiden, then in the early spring of life,
whose mind seemed engrossed with pious influences ; wrapped in
devotion, she appeared all unconscious of her beautiful presence,
her speaking hazel eyes turned heavenwards, and her rich black
hair reaching in silken ringlets to her girdle. This, the fairest
amongst the galaxy of beauty present, was Nan de Boulein, the

366 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

beloved maid of honor to Queen Claude of France, little dreaming
then of her wayward fate.

A few words more as to that worthy priest and faithful diplo-
matic agent of England, Richard Pace. He was born in Hamp-
shire in 1482 ; received his early education at Padua, and subse-
quently was graduated at Oxford ; next he held the office of
Latin secretary to Cardinal Bainbridge, and resided in Rome for
some time ; when recalled by his sovereign he entered on the
diplomatic service. In this department of government he was
eminently successful. At a later period he was appointed Dean
of St. Paul's. Both in matters of church and state his adminis-
trative powers were considerable. He was a man of stern prin-
ciples, courtly and elegant in his address, unostentatious, bene-
volent, affable, and condescending. He was an uncompromising
enemy of the " Reformation " movement, and wrote a book on the
Laivfulness of Queen Katharine ' s Marriage. Knowing what would
be the consequences of such a publication, he resigned his livings
in church and state and retired to Stepney, where he passed the
remainder of his days " amidst books and flowers." He stood in
the front rank of Queen Katharine's early friends. After a few
days' illness he died in 1532, enjoying to the last the friendship
and esteem of such men as Archbishop Warham, Fisher, Collet,
and More.

Next in importance to Pace stood Sir Robert Wingfield, who
had been a long time ambassador at the court of the Emperor
Maximilian. He was more remarkable for fidelity to his coun-
try and for his own personal integrity than for diplomatic sub-
tlety. He was no match for the wily and eccentric German
monarch in the person of Maximilian, who was able to read the
mind of the envoy and improve the knowledge to his own ad-
vantage. Sir Robert Wingfield belonged to a class of statesmen
then rapidly disappearing before a younger, more versatile and
expert generation, of whom Wolsey might be considered the lead-
ing spirit. Wingfield speaks of himself as living in' the days of
Henry VI., and of his long experience as a negotiator in Ger-
many, and the many strange people he met with on the Continent,
amongst whom was De Rossol, the celebrated Flemish chess-
player, and story-teller to Louis XII. King Louis assured Carlo
Logario " that the society of De Rossol drove away his pains
and made him feel young again." De Rossol's anecdotes of
Louis, Maximilian, and Wingfield would be a rich melange, if
preserved. If there were any creature in the world that Wing-
field abhorred and detested it was a Frenchman. He devoutly

1 88 1.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 367

believed that the French had been at the bottom of all the evils
that had happened in Christendom during the four hundred
years preceding-. Maximilian, though no genius himself, found
little difficulty in managing such an envoy as Wingfield. Both
were eccentric and attached friends. When Wingfield was re-
called by Wolsey after his long services, he was appointed to the
office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, which position he
held up to his death in 1525, and was succeeded by Sir Thomas
More. Like his friend Pace, Wingfield was devotedly attached
to the olden creed, and wrote a little Latin book against Luther
which is only traditionally known.

The personal friends and political agents of Wolsey were now
disappearing from the scene. The divorce question in the case
of Queen Katharine became a dreadful scandal to the state ; and
unfortunately the leading churchmen of the time were enlisted
on the side of the king. A distinguished Protestant jurist is of
opinion that, " according to the then existing canon law of Chris-
tendom— a law which was undisputed — the pope could not legiti-
mately pronounce a divorce in the case of Katharine of Aragon." *
Many of the most learned lawyers and theologians at home and
abroad held similar views on the subject. I must here remark
that no man could possibly be placed in a more embarrassing
position than Wolsey was by the ventilation of the divorce ques-
tion. He was at once the servant of the crown and of the
church. He essayed to do justice to both, and he failed. He
was certainly the enemy of the queen, and in her secret corre-
spondence to Spain she speaks of Wolsey with great bitterness
and describes him as a hypocrite in religion.

There has been immense misrepresentation as to the exact
facts bearing upon the divorce litigation. Burnet, a very notable
writer upon the Reformation epoch, presents a mass of well-ar-
ranged falsehoods, which have been " re-dressed by subsequent
* historians,' " so that it requires more than ordinary research to
discover the real facts, which are only to be found in the State
Papers and records of the times. Burnet, to whom I have just
referred, contends that the king used " no menaces with the
Oxford professors to send forward a favorable opinion upon the
divorce question." It happens, however, that at the very time
Gilbert Burnet made this deliberate assertion there were to be
seen in the archives of the University of Oxford three letters, in
the handwriting of Henry Tudor himself, to certain Oxford divines,
demanding in very menacing language a decision in his favor.

* Lord Campbell's English Chancellors, vol. i.

368 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

Burnet boasted frequently that he was well acquainted with
King Henry's writing, yet he did not, in his many searches
amongst the MSS. at Oxford, discover those three letters.
Honest Henry Wharton, Burnet's contemporary, saw the letters
in question and read them through. He says: " Considering the no-
tions of the writer, a tenth part of what he said would be enough
to terrify his readers [the professors]." * Although the bishops
visited the university to advocate the king's cause, nevertheless
men of high principle still remained firm ; but the timid wavered
and gave an assent, and those who could be purchased were
quickly tempted. Gold from the royal treasury was liberally
supplied to the relatives of some ; and in many cases the pro-
fessors received the " golden angels " themselves. Yet there were
a few honest men remaining, and their lot was a hard one ; for
they were marked out for persecution, and when the supremacy
agitation began they were the first to feel the royal vengeance.
A reign of terrorism prevailed in Oxford and Cambridge, and it
became impossible to know what were the opinions of those
seats of learning. The government spies were to be found in
every nook of the universities.

The divorce litigation was protracted for several years and
was the subject for discussion in all the courts of Europe.
Queens and noble ladies denounced King Henry as " a licentious
and abominable person," who was setting the worst of examples
to his subjects. At last it was agreed that the question should be
tried in London before the papal legate, Cardinal Campeggio,
and Wolsey — Wolsey, of course, representing the king. Dr.
Gardyner was the leading counsel for the king, and Bishop
Fisher for the queen.

The advent of Campeggio was the occasion of the last na-
tional reception given to a papal legate in England ; for, al-
though Cardinal Pole was royally received by Queen Mary and
Philip, he found a divided nation, and the glories of his outward
reception were confined to the demonstrations at Southampton,
Winchester, and London. The progress of Campeggio was a
continued ovation from his first step on English ground. He
landed at Deal on the 23d of July, 1528, and was received by
Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Cobham, and several
other notable men, who escorted him to Sandwich. On the fol-
lowing day he made his public entry into Canterbury, where the
corporation, clergy, Archbishop Warham, Fisher, Bishop of

* Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII. ; Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv. ; Hallam's
Constitutional History ', vol. i. p. 61 ; Anthony Wood ; Dodd, vol. i.

1 88 1.] CARDINAL V/OLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 369

Rochester, and three lord-abbots in full pontificals received
him at the gates of the cathedral. The people expressed great
reverence for the legate, especially the women, who brought
forth their children along the route from Deal to London to re-
ceive the apostolic benediction. Stopping two days in Canter-
bury, he proceeded on his road to Rochester, accompanied by a
guard of honor numbering five hundred and fifty horsemen. In
Rochester the legate was entertained at a banquet given by
Bishop Fisher. From Rochester he was escorted by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury at the head of one thousand horsemen in
armor, all wearing gold chains. This body of English gentle-
men, all devoted sons of the church, excited the admiration of
the multitude. On the fourth day of the procession Cardinal
Campeggio reached Blackheath, where he was received by the
Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, Lord Darcy, and the
Bishops of Durham and Ely. Twenty-four trumpeters on horse-
back, dressed in buff jackets and crimson velvet caps, rode before
the Bishop of Rochester and his clergy. At this point of the
procession a lively scene took place. Some six thousand matrons
and their daughters entered an appearance, and were most vehe-
ment in their acclamations for Queen Katharine. " No Nan Bo-
leine for us ! " was the indignant shout of the virtuous matrons and
their fair daughters. " No for a queen " was on every Eng-
lishwoman's lip. The " divorce agents " of the king, who were
present, felt disconcerted at the conduct of the women, and Lord
Surrey waved his hand in disapproval of these manifestations,
which were met with renewed cries of " No Nan for us ! " About
this time the women of the middle and lower classes took a lively
interest in Queen Katharine's cause. They spoke with contempt
and scorn of the granddaughter of " a London alderman aspiring
to the position of a queen by such unworthy means. She was
no better than themselves, and they would not respect her as a
queen." Anna Boleyn was, however, the victim of her ambitious
father and of those clerics and nobles who sustained the wicked
king in all his proceedings. I refer the reader to vol. i. of the
Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty for a detailed account
of the " rise and fall " of Anna Boleyn, who has been exceedingly
misrepresented both by Catholics and Protestants. She was the
victim of the ambition of a base father, who, under the mask of
piety, brought ruin upon his family and his friends. Anna Bo-
leyn's early youth was highly interesting, and her last days were
truly grand. The whole case has been falsely represented to pos-
terity. Anna Boleyn was no Lutheran. She detested and ab-
VOL. xxxiv.— 24

370 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

horred Protestantism. In fact, there was no Protestantism in
England for many years after her death. It has been insinuated
that Wolsey secretly promoted the Reformation, but the records
of the times prove that he was an uncompromising enemy of the
" German heresy," as he described Protestantism. The king and
all his subjects professed to be Catholic at this period ; but they
were very indifferent in practice, and many of them who were
loud in denouncing the "new heresy" would have had little
scruple in plundering the church and the monastic houses which
fostered and sheltered the poor and the unfortunate.

Despite all the evidence on record of popular hostility to the
divorce of Queen Katharine, Mr. Froude contends that " the na-
tion was thoroughly united on the divorce question." The con-
scientious and truthful Dean Hook judges of this case, not from
the pages of Burnet or such notorious false .witnesses, but from
contemporary evidence. The dean eulogizes the conduct of the
women of England on the occasion of the divorce of Queen Ka-
tharine. " The matrons of England," he observes, " rose up in
chaste indignation at King Henry's treatment of his wife — an
indignation imparted to their children, and handed on from gen-
eration to generation, until it has covered with everlasting in-
famy the name of a once popular king."

To return to the public procession of the legate. In a mea-
dow some three miles from London a tent of cloth of gold had
been erected for a kingly reception and the presentation of nota-
ble persons to the legate. After an hour's delay the procession
was re-formed for London, where " excitement, religious enthu-
siasm, and perhaps curiosity had now become as boundless as
they might have been in the days of Edward IV., when the peo-
ple rejoiced in public processions and gloried in the honors
offered to the Catholic Church and its illustrious dignitaries."
The nobility rode in advance; then came Cardinal Campeggio
in magnificent clerical costume, glittering with jewels and pre-
cious stones; his retinue numbered nearly three hundred; his
liveries were superb. The procession is described as two miles
long — an extraordinary number of people in those days. The
number of women was immense. Logario says that five thou-
sand young virgins walked six deep, all dressed in white ; and
there were at least twenty thousand matrons from the surround-
ing counties.

From St. George's Church to London Bridge the road was
lined on both sides by monks and clerics, dressed in their vari-
ous habits, with copes of cloth of gold, wearing gold and silver

i8Si.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 371

crosses, etc. As the legate passed they threw up clouds of in-
cense and sang hymns in a most effective chorus. At the foot of
Old London Bridge four bishops received the cardinal, the peo-
ple shouted with joy, whilst the roar of artillery from the Tower
and the river forts rent the air, to use Wolsey's own words, " as
if the very heavens would fall." " Hundreds of church and ab-
bey bells," writes Thorndale, " poured forth their clangor with
the deeper bass of Old St. Paul's." In Grace Church Street the
London city companies joined the procession ; at Cheapside the
lord-mayor and corporation of London offered their congratula-
tions to the illustrious representative of the Roman Pontiff. On
this occasion Sir Thomas More — the greatest lay Catholic of the
age — delivered a Latin oration of much eloquence. When the
procession reached St. Paul's another grand spectacle was pre-
sented. The bishops of London and Lincoln, surrounded by
some hundreds of priests, conducted the Roman legate to the
high altar, which was magnificently decorated, the month of July
having largely supplied the gifts of Nature.

Incense, delicious music, the ringing of silver bells inside the
grand old cathedral, outside the thunder of artillery and the
prolonged shouts of the multitude, closed the proceedings of
the day.* This was one of the last great Catholic demonstra-
tions which took place in England in connection with the occu-
pant of St. Peter's Chair. The reception was magnificent be-
yond precedent. There had been nothing like it seen in Eng-
land within the reach even of tradition. It must be gratifying
to the many admirers of Wolsey to learn that the whole affair
had been suggested, prepared, and finally carried out at the sole
expense of the great master-mind of the Cardinal of York. But
there was one presence wanting to complete the splendor of the
ceremony — that was his own. Old state forms or political con-
siderations might have accounted for the absence of the mon-
arch and his minister. In the case of the coronation procession
of Katharine of Aragon, and nearly twenty years later in that
of Anna Boleyn, the king took no part in the public demonstra-
tion, but left it in the hands of the people, who always delighted
in such pageants.

Five days later another imposing ceremony took place on the
presentation of the legate to the king. All parties seemed pleas-
ed, the king and his advisers expressing their willingness to
abide by the decision of the court of Rome. Wolsey was then
at the pinnacle of his power, and the king esteemed him as a

* Brewer's State Papers.

3/2 CARDINAL WOLSE Y AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

great and equitable minister. All promised fair ; but there were
some who could, aware of the mutability of the king's temper,
pierce the dark cloud which was gathering in the distance. In
fact, the Cardinal of York was standing on a mine whose explo-
sive elements were the fierce desires and the prodigality of the
monarch, on whose honor it was perilous to rely.

Lingard says that the profound knowledge of canon and civil
law evinced by Cardinal Campeggio proved him to be a match
for all the acquirements of Wolsey, Gardyner, and the king. " In
the legate's private interview with Queen Katharine he urged
a compromise and advised her to retire to a convent. The
queen was justly indignant at such a proposition. She contend-
ed that she had been a lawful and a faithful wife for twenty
years, and there was no power on earth that could dissolve her
marriage." *

Every day the web became more entangled ; evidence, docu-
ments, and theological opinions were multiplied ; but little faith
could be placed in any of them. The long-expected trial at last
took place (June, 1529) in the Parliament Chamber, Blackfriars.
The character of the witnesses appealed to, the mode of proceed-
ing, and the evidence — mysterious and unconnected as it was —
would have been rejected at once by a common-sense jury of the
present day. The king and queen appeared in court, the latter
protesting against the form of the trial and those who were to
be her judges. King Henry sat in state at the right hand of
Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, the queen on the left. Dr.
Gardyner was the leading counsel for the king. That honest
and unbending prelate, Dr. Fisher, was the q.ueen's principal ad-
vocate. At the conclusion of Dr. Gardyner's long and labored
address in favor of the king's " serious conscientious scruples "
the queen rose. All eyes were fixed upon the injured wife, the
noble and dignified queen. A thrilling murmur ran through the
Justice Hall, filled with the sobs and cries of the honest wives of^
London. The queen advanced towards her husband's chair, and,
throwing herself upon her knees, addressed him in a most elo-
quent and pathetic speech, and concluded her address by an ap-
peal to the good feeling and equity of the court. " If there be any
offence which can be alleged against me" she concluded, " / consent
to depart in infamy ; if not, then I pray you, in the name of the Holy
Trinity and the high court of heaven, to do me justice / " In Dodd's

* Carlo Logario's Notes on the Divorce Litigation. Logario was the Spanish physician to
Wolsey, and resided many years in London. He was an admirable story-teller and chess-player,
and had access to the best society in England.

1 88 1.] CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. 373

Church History the reader will find the addresses of both Katha-
rine and Henry at full length, and somewhat modernized in lan-
guage. The Latin speech of Dr. Gardyner has not been pre-
served in a correct form. Logario says that all the speeches were
in Latin, whilst Polydore Vergil's account is different. Campeg-
gio could not speak English, and I question if he knew French.
Fisher and Gardyner must have addressed the court in Latin, or
else the legate could not discover the arguments put forward at
both sides. Gardyner was, perhaps, the greatest linguist of all
concerned in this odious mockery of a judicial inquiry.

The queen retired amid the applause of the spectators ;
whilst the populace, who crowded the streets, were vehement in
cheering the queen, and the words, " Down with old Hal ! " were
upon the lips of thousands. The crowds of women were espe-
cially indignant against the king.

King Henry could at once perceive that the queen had made
a powerful impression both " within and without " the Justice
Hall, so he at once attempted a plausible explanation. " The
queen," he said, " has always been a dutiful and a good wife, and
that his present suit did not proceed from any dislike of her but
from the tenderness of his own conscience ; that his scruples had not
been suggested, but on the contrary discouraged, by the Cardi-
nal of York ; and that they were confirmed by the Bishop of
Tarbes ; that he had consulted his confessors and several other
bishops, who advised him to apply to the pontiff, and that in
consequence the present court had been appointed, in the deci-
sion of which, be it what it might, he would cheerfully ac-
quiesce." * When Henry made this apparently honest declara-
tion he had the most assured confidence in the secret tactics of
his unscrupulous agents. Whatever he might at that time be
deficient in devising, those about him were marvellous in sugges-
tion ; for, with them, conscience never hesitated.

The queen, protesting against further proceedings, would not
appear in court, and was pronounced " contumacious." The
" trial " was still protracted amid the general indignation of the
country. Yet we are informed by Puritan writers that the nation
were desirous of setting the queen aside because she was a
papist. It is lamentable to see the amount of falsehood printed
as " historical facts " with regard to the reigns of Henry VIII.
and his children.

* Cavendish, Hall, Herbert, and Burnet. Cavendish was present at the trial, and in attend-
ance on Wolsey ; it is possible that Edward Hall was there as a judge. He was one of a court
clique in whom Henry had immense confidence.

374 CARDINAL WOLSEY AND HIS TIMES. [Dec.,

On the 23d of July (1529) the king's counsel demanded the
judgment of the court in this long-litigated scandal.

Cardinal Campeggio would not be dictated to by the court
party. He informed the crown lawyers, almost in the king's pre-
sence, that the judgment must be deferred until the whole of the
proceedings had been laid before the pontiff ; that he had come
there to do justice, and no consideration should divert him from
his duty. He was too old, weak, and infirm to seek the favor or
fear the resentment of any man living. The royal defendant had
challenged him and his learned brother, the Cardinal of York,
as judges, because they were the subjects of her opponent.*
To avoid any error they had therefore determined to consult the
Apostolic See, and for that purpose did then adjourn the court
until October.f

The Duke of Suffolk, evidently at the suggestion of his royal
brother-in-law (Henry), striking the table, exclaimed in a ve-
hement tone that the old saw was now verified : " Never did
cardinal bring good to England." Campeggio looked with
withering scorn at Suffolk. In a few minutes Wolsey rose ; a
breathless silence ensued ; all eyes were now turned on the Car-
dinal of York, when in that well-known deep and solemn voice
he addressed the Duke of Suffolk.

"My Lord of Suffolk," said he, "of all men living you have the least
reason to dispraise cardinals ; for if I, an humble cardinal, had not been, at
a certain critical period of your life, you would not at this present moment
have had a head upon your shoulders wherewith to make such a brag in
disrepute of us who have meant you no harm and have given you no cause
of offence. If you, my lord, were the king's ambassador in foreign parts,
would you venture to decide on important matters without the knowledge
of him from whom our authority proceeds ? Therefore do we neither more
nor less than our commission alloweth ; and if any man will be offended
with us he is an unwise man. Pacify yourself, then, my lord of Suffolk
and speak not reproachfully of your best friend. You know what friend-
ship I have shown you ; but this is the first time I ever revealed it, either
to my own praise or your dishonor." \

Cavendish, who was present at this scene, relates that the
Duke of Suffolk was struck speechless, and by his silence ac-
knowledged the justice of Wolsey 's rebuke for his ingratitude.
There is now in the archives of the British Museum a letter in

* Campeggio, although an Italian cardinal, filled the office of Bishop of Salisbury, and
was therefore in the position of being a subject of the English monarch and at the same time
owing temporal as well as spiritual fealty to the Roman Pontiff. Henry did not directly at-
tempt to coerce Campeggio ; but the fate of Wolsey was in the "scales."

t State Papers (Domestic) of Henry's Reign.

J Brewer's State Papers.

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 375

the handwriting of the Princess Mary — the beloved Mary, as she
was styled in England — declaring that her husband owed his life
to the friendly offices of Wolsey ; and in one of the cardinal's pri-
vate letters he declares that the king was strongly inclined to dis-
solve his sister's marriage by cutting off her lover's head. At
the time of Suffolk's denunciation of the Cardinal of York the
letter in question was in Wolsey's possession. The cardinal was
not the only man to whom Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
proved most ungrateful.

The trial fell through ; but the litigation assumed another
form, and one far more expensive and corrupt. Thomas Cran-
mer had not yet come upon the scene.

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART VI.— A.D. 456-1882.

ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OP THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES— SUCCESSORS OF JUVENAL— PER-
SIAN AND MOHAMMEDAN CONQUESTS — ST. SOPHRONIUS — VICISSITUDES BEFORE THE CRU-
SADES—THE LATIN KINGDOM — VICISSITUDES FROM THE RECONQUEST UNTIL THE PRE-
SENT— WORK OF THE CONGREGATION OF OUR LADY OF SION — FUTURE PROSPECTS OF
CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

THE successor of Juvenal of Jerusalem was Anastasitis.
During the times of the patriarchs who ruled between John
and Anastasius several remarkable scholars and saints flourished
in Judaea. Hesychius, a native of Jerusalem, after passing some
time in the desert, was ordained priest by Bishop John, who ap-
pointed him to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and made him
custodian of the archives. He was very renowned in his own
day as a theologian and preacher, and passed his whole life in
prayer, study, writing commentaries on the Holy Scripture, and
instructing the faithful. He died in 438. Palladius, a native of
Galatia, was for a long time a recluse on the banks of the Jordan,
and later bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia. His Lausiac His-
tory, dedicated to Lausus, a magistrate under Theodosius the
Younger, is a collection of lives of anchorites, many of whom
had been his companions.

Euthymius, a native of Melitene in Asia Minor, came to Jeru-
salem in 406, being then twenty-nine years old. He lived for
five years in the Laura of Pharan, which was founded by St.

376 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

Macarius on the road to Jericho, a few miles from Jerusalem.
In 410 he retired to a solitary cavern near by, where a monas-
tery and church were afterwards erected. Withdrawing from
this place also, he founded a new Laura and church in the desert
of Ziph. Great numbers were converted to Christianity by his
preaching and example, and very many were induced by his in-
fluence to embrace the religious state. He died during the reign
of Anastasius, in 474, at the age of ninety-six.

Two of his disciples, Martyrius and Elias, were taken from
the Laura by Anastasius to be made priests of Jerusalem, and they
both succeeded him on the patriarchal throne. The Patriarch
Elias was one of the great stays of the orthodox faith against the
Eutychian heresy, which was ravaging the East. Disorder, re-
laxation, and heresy had crept in among the cenobites and ancho-
rites of Palestine, many of whom became violent partisans of
Eutyches. The great reformer and restorer of orthodoxy and
discipline among the monks of Palestine was St. Sabbas, the
second founder and father of the monastic institute in the Holy
Land. He was a native of Cassarea in Cappadocia and a disci-
ple of St. Euthymius, and he lived almost a century, dying in the
year 531. His colleague was St. Theodosius, likewise a Cappa-
docian and a disciple of St. Euthymius, and one of his most fa-
mous disciples was St. John the Silent, who had been consecrat-
ed bishop, but concealed the fact and lived as a lay monk, attain-
ing the age of one hundred and four years.

The last of the patriarchs of the fifth century was Elias, who
lived eighteen years into the sixth, and was succeeded by Sallus-
tiusin5i8. The rest of this century furnishes nothing new in
regard to Jerusalem and Palestine of sufficient importance to de-
tain our attention. We pass on, therefore, to the great and la-
mentable events of the seventh century, the era of the Persian
and Moslem invasions, when the long period of twelve centuries
of misery and desolation for Jerusalem began, which has not yet
been finished, but is still running on toward the close of the thir-
teenth, and we hope the last, of these disastrous ages.

The three centuries of prosperity of the church of Jerusalem
came to a close. In looking back upon its history during this
period it presents a favorable contrast to that of any of the other
Eastern patriarchal sees. Although the Thirty-nine Articles say
that " the church of Hierusalem hath erred," we do not find
the charge justified by facts, in such a sense that the episcopal
chair of the church of Jerusalem ever became the seat of heresy.
Heretics were sometimes violently intruded into the place of the

i S 8 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 3 77

legitimate orthodox patriarch. But in the long line of the suc-
cessors of St. James, although we find some who were involved in
the measures of heretics, there is not one who is marked in his-
tory as a heretic. Heresies made ravages in Palestine, but the
record of the church of Jerusalem is one of constant, unbroken
steadfastness and fervor in the profession of the Catholic faith.

The disasters which fell upon the church of Jerusalem and
Palestine do not appear to have been deserved in any notable
way by relaxation and corruption in discipline and morals. Pal-
estine was necessarily involved in the common misfortunes
which overtook the Eastern empire. The Western had already
crumbled to pieces. The Eastern empire was weak and on the
way to dissolution. The Christianity of the Eastern patriarch-
ates was generally degenerate, and the terrible chastisement
which fell upon the empire was deserved. The innocent and the
good were necessarily involved in the common ruin with the
guilty.

But besides this reason for the inevitable downfall of Chris-
tian Jerusalem, we think there were others in the mysterious
providence of God. The church of the Holy Land in the period
of its prosperity was only a province of Gentile Christendom.
Judsea and Galilee belong to the Jews, and the most probable
interpretation of prophecy points to their eventual restoration.
A permanent prosperity of the Holy Land in possession of Gen-
tile Christians would not be in harmony with the grand designs
of Him who came, first of all, as the Messiah of the Jews, though
also as the Christ of all men and the expectation of all nations.
Moreover Jerusalem is the Holy City, EL KHODS, for all the
Asiatic tribes who fell under the sway of Islam. Fidelity to
their religious instincts necessarily impelled them to seize upon
it. The chapter of its history between Constantine and Herac-
lius we have been narrating was but an episode. It had to come
to an end, to make way for what was to follow — a series of un-
exampled events, whose outcome is not yet accomplished and is
connected with the destinies and the consummation of the world.

Contemporary writers, quoted by Baronius, speak of por-
tents, and heavenly warnings received by saints, which heralded
the coming disasters. The Persian invasion was a. part of the
general war waged by Chosroes against the Roman Empire. In
June, 614, the Persian army took Jerusalem by storm and slaugh-
tered thousands, including many priests, monks, and consecrated
virgins. There were twenty-six thousand Jews in the army, who
were more furious than the Persians. The rich Jews of Galilee

378 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

ransomed ninety thousand prisoners and put them all to death.
The churches at Gethsemani and the Mount of Olives, Constan-
tine's basilica, and the chapels over Golgotha and the Holy Sepul-
chre were destroyed. The Patriarch Zacharias with many others
was carried into captivity, and the holy cross, with the other
treasures of the sanctuaries, including- many sacred things from
the ancient Temple which Belisarius had brought back to Jerusa-
lem, were carried away to the Persian capital. During the ab-
sence of Zacharias, Modestus, abbot of the monastery of St. Theo-
dosius, governed the church. He travelled through Syria and
Egypt, making collections for the rebuilding of the churches,
which was effected during the years 616-626. In 628 Chosroes
was murdered by his son, whom he had set aside from succession
to the throne, and who, having become king, concluded a peace
with the Emperor Heraclius, in virtue of which the true cross
was restored. On the I4th of September, 629, the emperor, clad
in sackcloth and walking barefooted, bore the cross on his
shoulder in procession through the gate of the city to the Church
of Golgotha. Zacharias was restored to his see when the treaty
of peace was made, and was succeeded by the Abbot Modestus,
at whose death St. Sophronius, an Alexandrian monk, was elect-
ed patriarch, A.D. 634, and he was in one sense the last of the pa-
triarchs ; Jerusalem, as well as Antioch and Alexandria, having
sunk down after the Saracen conquest into the condition of mere
provinces inpartibus infidclium of the patriarchate of Constantino-
ple, and become at last involved with it in the lamentable schism
of Photius and Michael Cerularius. After Sophronius, Christian
Jerusalem existed no more, except during the ninety years of the
Latin kingdom of the Crusaders. He was worthy to close its
glorious line of patriarchs and to sit on the Theadelphic throne
of St. James, St. Macarius, and St. Cyril. Sophronius is one of
the most illustrious ornaments of his age in the Catholic hier-
archy. He was a man of high mental gifts, of great theological
learning, of heroic Christian virtue and remarkable practical abil-
ity and prudence, which he manifested in times of great trial and
disaster. The evils which threatened the church from the By-
zantine emperors and patriarchs, and from the degeneracy in
faith and morals which had infected all Eastern Christendom,
were far worse than the temporal disasters of Persian and Sarace-
nic invasions. In fact, we may regard the downfall of the Ro-
maic empire in the East as a real blessing, in view of the far
worse evils which would have followed had the ambitious de-
signs of the emperors and of the patriarchs of Constantinople

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 379

been successful. The Emperor Heraclius was in many respects
an estimable man, yet he was bitten with the common mania of
Byzantine emperors for usurping the office of the pope by decid-
ing- the dogmas and regulating the discipline of the church. The
patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch were in
league with him to effect a compromise between the Catholic
faith and the Eutychian heresy, by means of the new Monothelite
heresy, which was equally destructive of the mystery of the In-
carnation. Pope Honorius, though an able, pious, and orthodox
pontiff, in his haste and credulity suffered himself to be entrap-
ped into conniving at this heresy by the subtlety and deceit of
Sergius of Constantinople. At this juncture Sophronius of Je-
rusalem was the only great and firm pillar of Catholic faith
among the chief prelates of the church. At his consecration and
enthronization as patriarch of Jerusalem, in 634, he held a sy-
nod of the assembled bishops, in which he produced a luminous
exposition of the faith, especially in respect to the Incarnation,
against all heresies down to this new one which denied the dis-
tinct and human will co-existing with the divine will in the per-
son of our Lord. Shortly before his own death and that of the
Emperor Heraclius and Pope Honorius, which occurred about
the same time with each other, he deputed Stephen, Bishop of
Dora, after making him swear fidelity on the tomb of Christ,
with written and verbal messages to the pope, intended to make
known to him the true state of the case. Honorius was dead
when Stephen reached Rome, but the next pope did what his
predecessor had failed to do — condemned the new heresy, which
was again condemned and the faith defined by the Sixth CEcu-
menical Council, where the authority and influence of St. Sophro-
nius, through his writings, were predominant.

In 636 the generals of Omar, the third Moslem caliph, appeared
before Jerusalem, which capitulated after an obstinate resistance
of four months. Sophronius negotiated the capitulation with
Omar in person. Omar, like Haroun-al-Raschid, Saladin, and sev-
eral other great Mussulman chiefs, was a man of excellent and no-
ble qualities. Mohammedanism as a whole is an essentially bar-
barous and immoral system, founded on falsehood, absurdity, and
diabolical imposture. Yet it has elements from the ancient, pa-
triarchal monotheism, and a tincture of Jewish and Christian be-
lief, which partially counteract its debasing influence on the mind
and character ; and under this system human nature has been
able to produce some good intellectual and moral fruits. The
humanity of Omar preserved the Christians of Palestine from the

380 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

worst results which have often followed upon conquest, and ren-
dered their condition somewhat tolerable. Sophronius did not
long survive the lamentable event which made the religion of
the false prophet dominant in Jerusalem, and caused the site of
God's ancient Temple to be desecrated by the erection of the
great mosque whose proud dome, surmounted by the crescent,
still domineers over the Holy City. It is probable that a great
number of Christians withdrew to the mountains of Libanus,
and there helped to form that community of Maronite Catholics
which has always remained in communion with the Holy See.

From the seventh until the twelfth century the condition of
the Christians of the Holy Land exhibits alternations of a more
or less supportable servitude and misery. The frequent changes
of dynasties among the Mussulmans, and the different character
of individual rulers, brought changes for better or worse into the
condition of the Christians under Moslem rule. The influence of
the Greek and Western sovereigns, and the liberality of the faith-
ful in Christian countries, brought also relief and succor to these
oppressed worshippers of Christ in the land of his enemies, which
had once been the scene of his own life and of his triumph. They
were the watchers over the holy places, and on this account, chiefly,
an object of the Christian sympathy of their brethren in the faith.
The Ommiades observed the terms of the treaty of Omar so long
as they remained possessed of the caliphate. So also the Abbas-
ides, who wrested from them the sovereignty. Embassies were
exchanged and presents between Haroun-al-Raschid, who showed
himself mild and tolerant towards Christians, and Charlemagne.
The Patriarch Thomas sent, in 807 the keys of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre to the latter, and Haroun formally confirmed his
protectorate over the holy places. In 869 we find a procurator
of the patriarch present in Constantinople at the Eighth (Ecu-
menical Council, where Photius was condemned and St. Ignatius
reinstated. The downfall of the Abbasides brought with it a dis-
astrous change in the treatment of the Christians of Palestine.
The Fatimite caliphs were fanatical and cruel. When Jerusalem
was stormed by the Caliph Moez in 969 the churches were
burned, and the patriarch, John IV., perished in the flames. A
more complete and thorough destruction was accomplished un-
der the cruel tyrant Hakem in 1010, incited by letters from the
Saracens of Spain and the Jews of France, in which the Jews of
Palestine took part with the Mohammedans, desiring to efface
completely all the memorials of the life, death, and resurrection
of Christ, and to take away all motive for pilgrimages. Ha-

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 381

kern's son, Daher, permitted the rebuilding of the sanctuaries,
which was completed, by means of abundant gifts from all parts
of Christendom, about 1055. In 1077 the Turks conquered Pal-
estine and a new, bloody persecution of Christians took place.
The Emir Iftikar called together a sort of Mohammedan congress
in the court of the great mosque, in which it was proposed to
destroy the Church of the Resurrection from its foundations, to-
gether with the Holy Sepulchre itself, and to effectually put a
stop to all future pilgrimages of Christians to Jerusalem. These
pilgrimages had continued ever since the capture of Jerusalem
by Omar, and had greatly increased during the tenth and elev-
enth centuries. The Crusades were their natural outgrowth,
and the immediate stimulating cause of the great crusading
movement was in the new and more fierce onslaught of Islamism
upon Christendom, both in the West and at the birthplace of
Christianity.

On the 6th of June, 1099, the Crusaders beleaguered Jerusalem,
and on the I5th of July they took it by storm. The Latin king-
dom was founded, which lasted for ninety years. It fell because
it had not the necessary elements in it of perpetual stability. Its
brief history is full of a captivating interest. Under the La-
tin kings and patriarchs, the Church of the Resurrection, as well
as many others in Jerusalem and Palestine, were rebuilt with
greater magnificence, and gave the models and examples of the
grand architectural achievements for which the later mediaeval
period is famous. The basilica of Constantine stood from 326-
614, the church of Modestus until 1010, the new church of Con-
stantine Monomachos until 1130; the great minster of the Cru-
saders remained almost uninjured until the great fire of 1808,
and still constitutes the basis of the restored church which was
immediately reconstructed in a far inferior style by the Greeks
and Armenians, and remains until now.

The great mosque El Sachra, on the site of Solomon's Tem-
ple, was given by Godfrey de Bouillon to the Augustinians, and,
after great and costly improvements, was solemnly consecrated
by the papal legate. Long after the downfall of the Latin king-
dom the Greeks, and even the Franks, were permitted to celebrate
Mass within its precincts, and it was only in 1244 that Christians
were definitively expelled from it, and even forbidden to enter it —
a prohibition which even now remains in force. Particular per-
sons can, however, of late, obtain permission to enter, and we
have recently heard a friend describe a visit to this mosque and
mention the great politeness of a Mohammedan official who ac-

382 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

companied him during his inspection of the building. The same
friend confirms the judgment of Dr. Sepp that it is a jewel of
architecture.

The Emperor Justinian in the year 530 built a church dedi-
cated to the Blessed Virgin on another part of the ground adja-
cent to the Temple. The costly vessels of the ancient Temple
which Titus carried to Rome, and Genseric afterwards conveyed
to Carthage, were recovered by Belisarius, and by him sent to
the emperor at Constantinople, who placed them in this church,
the richness and splendor of whose furniture is described in glow-
ing language by contemporary writers. They were stolen by
the Persians at their conquest, and from that time disappeared
finally, having probably been melted up, as Heraclius recover-
ed nothing but the holy cross. The Mohammedans changed this
Justinian church into a mosque called ever since Medschid el
Achsa. In the adjoining palatial buildings the Prankish kings
established at first their own residence, but afterwards gave over
the place to the Knights Templars, who derive their name from
it, and the adjoining Church of the Temple where they resorted
for the divine service, apparently in common with the Augus-
tinians. How far the Church of the Blessed Virgin, turned by
Omar into a mosque, remained as distinct from the buildings
given by King Baldwin as a residence to the Templars is only ob-
scurely indicated in the accounts we have read. The present
mosque El Achsa dates from the time of Sultan Selim in 1517,
and -is wholly Saracenic in style, retaining no trace of the original
structure of Justinian in its interior form.

The Crusaders restored also the Church of the Coenaculum,
which has at different times borne the names of the Holy Sion,
the Church of the Apostles, and the Church of the Holy Spirit,
and founded in connection with it an Augustinian monastery. It
is situated on Mt. Sion over the tomb of David. St. Epipha-
nius testifies that this Coenaculum where the Lord instituted the
Blessed Eucharist was the first and mother church of the disci-
ples after the Resurrection ; that it remained undestroyed at the
second destruction of Jerusalem under Adrian, and was reoccu-
pied by the Christians when they returned from Pella. It is
mentioned by St. Cyril, St. Jerome, Antoninus in the seventh
century, Willibald in the eighth, and Bernard the Wise in the
ninth. After the expulsion of the Crusaders it was occupied
by the Franciscans, who were only finally dispossessed in 1561.
The motive of the Mohammedan usurpation of the right of pos-
session of this holy place was the existence of the tomb of

iSSi.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 383

David under the church, which had been forgotten during the
middle ages. The church has been turned into a mosque
which, with the subterranean sepulchre, bears the name of En
Neby Baud.

We do not propose to follow the history of the Catholic
Church in Jerusalem and Palestine through the vicissitudes of the
last seven centuries, or to enter into the details of its present
condition.

The question of absorbing interest now is, Will there be a
resurrection of Christian Jerusalem and Palestine in the future,
and what will it be ? This is closely connected with the question
of the future destiny of Constantinople and all those regions of
which Constantine made it the capital city. The downfall of
the barbarous and decayed Turkish Empire cannot be far distant.
It is to be hoped that the disappearance of the religion of Islam
from the world will follow in due time. We must ardently de-
sire to see the cross restored to the dome of Justinian's basilica
of St. Sophia, to the summit of his church on Mt. Moriah, to the
desecrated hill of Sion, and to the superb Kubbet es Sachra.
which from the central Rock of Solomon's Temple domineers
over Jerusalem. But it would be even worse and more disas-
trous for this sacred sign to be made a symbol of the triumph of
schism than for Islamism to continue to flaunt its crescent in the
face of Christendom. The renovation of Jerusalem and Palestine
through the dominant power of the Christian religion and civili-
zation may be hoped for and anticipated in either one of two
ways : colonization from western Europe, or the conversion and
restoration of the Jews. Without pretending to interpret pro-
phecy or make positive prognostication of future events from any
kind of causes which are actually working, we may be allowed
to express the sentiment that the latter way is most desirable and
presents the most fitting consummation of the history of the Holy
City and the Holy Land. They are in a special manner the royal
domain of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, is the
King of the Jews. He has banished them from their glorious land
and from Sion, the city of David, in punishment of their rebel-
lion. But when their rebellion ceases their right to the land
which God gave them in perpetuity will revive. The senti-
ment of animosity toward the race of Israel and of despair of
their conversion is neither reasonable nor Christian. The truly
Catholic spirit is that with which St. Paul and St. Bernard were
filled — a spirit of good-will and of hope. Nor are there wanting
signs which encourage us in the belief that a day of grace is

384 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

already beginning for this incredulous people. The little mag-
azine entitled Annales de la Mission de N. D. de Sion en Terre
Sainte, in its number for December, 1879, contains the following
extract from the Jewish review Archives Israelites :

"What is the reason that almost all the rich Israelite families have
been converted during the past fifty years ? For instance, in Germany,
the Arnsteins, Pereiras, Heniksteins, Lowenthals, Neuwalls, Liebenbergs,
Kaaris, Karises, Eskeleses, Mayer-Rauschenbergs, Joelsons, have been
converted en bloc. Of all the descendants of Moses Mendelssohn there are
none who resort to the Jewish worship ; likewise, the children of Meyer-
beer are Christians, as well as the families of Bernay, Gumpel, Warsham,
Loebreich, and Simon, of Konigsberg ; Ebers and Eberty, of Breslau ; Op-
penheim, of Cologne ; Stieglitz, of Hanover ; Haber, of Carlsruhe ; Bene-
dict, of Stuttgard ; Normann, of Dantzic ; and a crowd of others. Frankfort,
which thirty years ago counted within its bosom a quantity of Jewish fami-
lies very distinguished by their position in society and their education, has
beheld these gradually changing their religion, so that this society has
completely disappeared, and of that Pleiad of Speyers, Flersheims, Gersons,
Creizenachs, Reisses, Schusters, Stiebels, Brauns, Hochstetters, and Getz-
es there scarcely remains an Israelite representative. In Poland and
Russia, as soon as an Israelite acquires a fortune he changes his religion ;
and so it is that the Kronenbergs, the Lessers, the Fraenkels, the Rosens,
the Laskis, of Warsaw ; the Raffaloviches, of Odessa, no longer remember
that they are Jews ; just as, in England, the greater part of the families of
Spanish origin — the Disraelis, the Ricardos, the Samudas, the Bernal Os-
bornes, the Manasses, the Lopezes — retain nothing except the name of
Israelite ; and likewise the great manufacturers, Salis Schwabe, Samuelson,
Siltzer, and the principal merchants of wealth at Manchester, Bradford,
and Leeds. In France who are left of the Foulds, the Worms de Romilly,
the Ratisbonnes, the Halevys, and the Cremieux ? "

" Has not this avowal," the writer in the Annales goes on to say, " in
the mouth of a Jewish publicist a surprising value ? He might have added
to his list of rich converts thousands of other names besides those of opu-
lent bankers and merchants, which he has collected out of all the countries
of Europe. Why has he forgotten to inscribe in his catalogue so many
physicians, painters, advocates, renowned writers, government officers,
manufacturers, generals of division, officers of all arms, common soldiers,
artisans of all kinds, even venerable and learned rabbins — such as a Drach
whom Gregory XVI. made librarian of the Vatican and named a well of
learning ; a Simeon who was baptized at the age of eighty years ; a Lieber-
mann whom Pius IX. declared Venerable,* and who founded a congregation
of apostolic workmen ; a Father Hermann, restorer of the order of Carmel
in France and England, who died in the odor of sanctity, a victim to his
zeal and charity ; a Father Gustave Levy, Dominican missionary in Meso-
potamia and martyr of the faith ; an Abbe Olmer, well known in Paris,
whose honorable family have all become Catholics, and whose two sisters
are religious ; the Abbes Lehmann, twin-brothers, whose writings and ser-

* And who will probably be canonized.— NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 385

mons are full of light and eloquence ; the two Abbes Level, the elder of
whom, the worthy and saintly Mgr. Jules Level, died at Rome, rector of
S. Louis-des-Frangais ; a Father Veith, a Dominican, and the most illus-
trious preacher in Austria, etc., etc. ?

"The CEuvre N. D. de Ston alone, during the forty years since its founda-
tion, has baptized more than seven hundred Israelites, from all classes of
society, among whom are some entire families. Sometimes poor and yet
respectable working-men, anxious for the future of their children, and pre-
ferring to have their daughters brought up Christians rather than to see
them exposed to become opera-dancers, cafe-singers, or worse, have brought
them to us, and these young girls have become the apostles of their fami-
lies, gaining their parents, their grandparents, and all the rest to Jesus
Christ.

"At the present time these conversions are multiplying indefinitely; in
all parts of. Europe Israelites living in the midst of Christian society reject
the old, ridiculous cast-off garment of Judaism ; but, since the offspring of
the Father of the Faithful cannot live a long time without faith, religion, or
worship, and far from God, they seek ; and when upright hearts seek, they
find."

The; most remarkable of all these conversions was the miracu-
lous conversion of Father Alphonse Ratisbonne himself; and of all
the good works and religious establishments in Palestine for the
preservation of what is left of its ancient Catholicity and the
recovery of what has been lost by the invasion of infidelity and
schism, the one which appears to have in it the germ of future
growth most fitted to the sacred soil is the work of Father Ratis-
bonne. The first sum of money given for its foundation, a gift
of six thousand francs, was contributed by a Jewess, Father
Ratisbonne's sister Ernestine, just when his elder brother and,
superior had ordered him to give up the enterprise and return
to France. A converted Israelite, going as a Catholic priest to
Mt. Calvary, there to seek to expiate the crime of the Jewish
priesthood and people by leading his brethren by race to Christ,
seems to our mind as the precursor of a work of grace which
shall eventually fulfil the prophecies of St. Paul.

There is a touching incident related by Father Ratisbonne
which symbolizes beautifully what we hope will be this fulfilment
of the prophecies concerning the ancient people of God :

"His Excellency .the Patriarch had appointed me to preach at Calvary
on Good Friday (of the year 1858). This great day having come, I went to
the venerable basilica at the appointed hour, my heart filled with unuttera-
ble emotion. While I was following the solemn procession of the Francis-
can Fathers which departs from the Magdalen Chapel for the different
stations enclosed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, through an immense,
VOL. xxxiv.— 25

386 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Dec.,

and dense crowd, I suddenly felt a little hand slide into mine ; it was the
hand of a young Israelite whose two sisters were educated by the Daugh-
ters of Sion. Frightened at finding himself alone in the midst of such a
crowd, Abraham Mourad wanted to place himself under my protection. 1
was deeply touched by this rencontre in such a place and on such an oc-
casion.

" I held the dear child by the hand as far as Calvary ; but when I arrived
there I was obliged to leave him, in order to place myself near the altar of
the Crucifixion, which belongs to the Greeks. It is there, on the very spot
where the Virgin Mary stood, with transpierced heart, at the foot of the
cross, that on Good Friday of every year the priest must lift up his voice
and speak of Jesus crucified, in the midst of the tumult and disorder of the
crowd which remind him of the day of our Lord's final sufferings. Since
that day for ever execrable when the Jews, my ancestors, uttered their dei-
cidal imprecations on Calvary, they have never more troubled the silence
of that terrible place ; never has the voice of any Israelite there resounded.
What could I say there, trembling and with a tearful heart ? What, except :
Father, forgive t Item, for they know not 'what they do !

" My discourse was not long ; and I soon came down to take my little
Abraham again by the hand and go on with the procession."

We must here bring to a close this sketch of the history of
Christian Jerusalem, leaving many things unsaid. The world
waits for the completion of its history in the future. The end
will disclose how far the prophecy will have a new and literal
fulfilment : SURGE, ILLUMINARE JERUSALEM ! QUIA VENIT LUMEN

TUUM ET GLORIA DOMINI SUPER TE ORTA EST.

In a future number we propose to furnish a supplement to the
early history of the church of Jerusalem in the form of an exhi-
bition of the witness and tradition of this apostolic church in
respect to certain Catholic doctrines, taken principally from the
writings of the Patriarch St. Cyril.

THE END.

iSSi.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 387

A JESUIT IN DISGUISE.*

ii.

FATHER GERARD by no means confined his ministrations to
the Wiseman family. He made frequent excursions even to dis-
tant parts of the kingdom, especially in the North. " On the
way," he writes, " I had to pass through my native place and
through the midst of my kindred and acquaintance ; but I
could not do much good there, though there were many who
professed themselves great friends of mine." He travelled as a
gentleman, attended by a confidential companion who passed for
his servant, and for some years he used to carry with him a set
of vestments and altar furniture : " In this way I used to say
Mass in the morning in every place where I lodged, not, how-
ever, before I had looked into every corner around, that there
might be no one peeping in through the chinks." After a while
most of the Catholic families with whom he stopped procured
whatever was necessary for the celebration of Mass, and he was
able to dispense with this perilous sort of luggage. Part of his
disguise seems to have been a frequent change of name. On the
Continent, as we saw awhile ago, he called himself Thomson,
and thus he was generally known during the latter part of his
life. In Norfolk he was called Starkie ; in Suffolk, Standish ;
and at various times he went by the pseudonyms of Tanfield,
Brooke, Staunton, Lee, Harrison, Nelson, and Roberts. It was
a custom of the hunted Jesuits to call themselves after persons
for whom they had a particular respect. Thomson was the
name of a martyred priest whose execution Gerard had witness-
ed at Tyburn before he entered the society. The two brothers
of Sir William Wiseman, after they became Jesuits, called them-
selves respectively Starkie and Standish out of regard for Father
Gerard, and at the same time they changed their Christian
names, Thomas calling himself William after his eldest bro-
ther, and John taking the name of another brother, Robert,
who, like the rest of the family, had been in prison for his re-
ligion. The nature of Father Gerard's missionary operations

* The Life of Father John Gerard, of the Society of Jesus. By John Morris, of the same
Society. Third edition, rewritten and enlarged. 8vo, pp. xiv.-524. London : Burns & Gates ;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Company. 1881.

388 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

varied with the localities which he visited. In some places there
was a large Catholic population, consisting chiefly of the com-
mon people, who dispersed under persecution, and reappeared in
surprising numbers as soon as the fury of the storm was spent.
In Lancashire, for instance, our missionary sometimes preached
and said Mass before a congregation of as many as two hundred.
In such places it was easy to make converts. Elsewhere there
were hardly any Catholics, except among the gentry, and it was
necessary to proceed with the utmost caution. " The way of
managing in such places is first to gain the gentry, then the
servants ; for Catholic masters cannot do without Catholic ser-
vants." We have an anecdote of Father Gerard's adroit use of
the opportunities offered by a hunting-field for the conversion of
a gentleman who had married his cousin. The missionary, of
course, was still acting his part as a man of the world :

"The hounds being at fault from time to time and ceasing to give
tongue, while we were awaiting the renewal of this hunter's music I took
the opportunity of following my own chase, and gave tongue myself in
good earnest. Thus, beginning to speak of the great pains we took over
chasing a poor animal, I brought the conversation to the necessity of seek-
ing an everlasting kingdom and the proper method of gaining it— to wit,
by employing all manner of care and industry ; as the devil, on his part,
never sleeps, but hunts after our souls as hounds after their prey."

The venture begun in this original manner was successful : the
gentleman became a very zealous Catholic.

Several times every year Father Gerard visited his superior,
and twice a year all the Jesuits in England used to meet and re-
new their vows. Father Garnet's ordinary abode had been for
some time at the house of a widow in Warwickshire ; but Father
Southwell had a house in London, which he was enabled to sup-
port by the liberality of the Countess of Arundel, and here the
superior used to lodge when he had occasion to go up to town.
When Father . Southwell was arrested in 1592 it was necessary
to find another place of meeting, and opportunely about this time
a considerable sum of money was put at the disposal of the Jesu-
its by the Mr. Drury and Thomas Wiseman already mentioned.
Father Garnet was thus supplied with means to hire two or three
houses, flitting from one to another as the pursuit waxed hot. On
one occasion there gathered at the Warwickshire resort no fewer
than nine or ten Jesuits, several other priests, and some fugitive
lay people. It was agreed that so many ought not to be to-
gether, and as soon as the ceremony of renewing the vows was

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 389

over several of the party hurried away. There remained Gar-
net, Gerard, Southwell, Oldcorne, one other Jesuit, two secular
priests, and two or three laymen, when at five in the morning,
just as Father Southwell was beginning Mass, the pursuivants came
thundering at the door. The servants managed to delay admit-
ting the officers for a few moments, and meanwhile the house
was made ready for the search. The altar was stripped, beds
still warm were turned over, and the priests ran to their hole,
which was a hiding-place under ground where they must stand
with their feet in water. The pursuivants spent four hours ran-
sacking the house, but they failed to find what they were after,
and " at last they took themselves off, after getting paid forsooth
for their trouble." By an ingenious refinement of injustice the
victims of these domiciliary visits were obliged to pay the
fees of the searchers, even when nothing compromising was dis-
covered. The government spies made frequent report of Ger-
ard's movements. There is a letter in the Public Record Office
from an unfortunate priest named Young, who, having been
lodged in jail, tried to buy his liberty by betraying his breth-
ren, and offered to be the means of capturing Garnet and "some
other of the chief of them " when they next assembled in Lon-
don. The principal danger threatening Father Gerard at this
time was from a source which he could hardly have suspected.
Thomas Wiseman, before he left England to become a Jesuit, had
a confidential servant named John Frank, whom on his departure
he recommended to his father and mother. Frank had often
been at Braddocks ; he had seen enough of Father Gerard to
suspect that he was a priest ; the missionary had lodged with
him in London ; and he was aware that a house had recently been
hired in Golding Lane for the use of Gerard and William Wise-
man. He went to the magistrates and offered to sell his informa-
tion, and they instructed him to find out all he could about the
practices of the family. To appreciate the extent of his infamy
we must remember that for the crime of harboring priests, of
which he proposed to convict his good friends the Wisemans,
the penalty was death. The first result of his treachery was the
fruitless raid upon the widow Wiseman's house at Northend, of
which we have already given some account. Next a descent was
made upon the house in Golding Lane on a night when, as
Frank ascertained, the missionary had appointed to be there ; but
Father Gerard had been detained elsewhere, and the officers only
got his servant, Fulwood, and three other laymen. The next day,
however, William Wiseman came to the house, in ignorance of

390 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

what had happened, and was at once arrested. Father Gerard
went to Braddocks to console the Wiseman family in their trou-
ble and settle with them what was to be done. The traitor
Frank, whose crime was still unsuspected, presented himself
there after a few days with letters from the prisoners. His ob-
ject was to see whether Father Gerard was in the house. Close
upon his heels came the pursuivants ; and the priest had barely
time to hide when the door was broken down and the officers
" spread through the house with great noise and racket." First
the mistress and her daughters were locked into a room ; the
Catholic servants were similarly imprisoned in various apart-
ments ; and then the search began. Father Gerard's placfc
of concealment was a small recess built into the wall of
a chimney, just behind a carved and inlaid mantelpiece.
It was entered from the chapel in one of the upper
stories by removing a number of bricks under the fire-place,
where the apparently firm hearth covered a sort of trap-
door. Wood was always kept in the fire-place, but it was never
lighted for fear of burning through the false hearth. The pur-
suivants spent two days in their search, sounding and measuring
the walls, breaking down places that they suspected, lifting the
tiles of the roof, and even hammering at the very chimney in
which the priest lay hid. They concluded at last that the Jesuit
had got away, and the chief officers departed, leaving instruc-
tions to their subordinates to put a guard over the premises and
convey the ladies to London. This order filled Mrs. Wiseman
with dismay. Father Gerard had already been two days shut
up in a narrow slit in the wall with nothing to eat but a biscuit
or two and a little jelly which she had thrust into his hand at
the last moment, and there was danger of his starving. But
John Frank was to remain with the guard, and, as he had made a
great show of opposition to the search, she resolved to trust the
secret to him. He was to go into a certain room as soon as the
coast was clear, and call the priest by his wonted name, and he
would be answered from behind the lath and plaster. If Frank
had followed these instructions Father Gerard would doubtless
have been taken. But instead of doing that he informed the
guard ; the magistrates were called back ; and the search was
renewed with more fury than before. It lasted another two
days. Wainscots were ripped off, especially in the room to
which Frank was directed ; but, strange to say, the hiding-place
was still not found. At night the guard kindled a fire in the
chapel to warm themselves ; the bricks were loosened ; burning

1 88 1.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 391

embers fell almost upon the priest's head ; and if the officers had
looked into the fire-place the next morning they would have
seen Father Gerard through a hole in the hearth. But they
were thrown off the scent by discovering another hiding-place
with a good store of provisions in it, and, supposing that the
priest had been there and escaped, they released the ladies of the
house and went away. When Mrs. Wiseman liberated the " four-
days-buried Lazarus " he was emaciated with hunger and want
of sleep, and she, who had fasted during the whole time, was so
changed that one would not have known her except by her
voice.

Father Gerard remained concealed for a fortnight in another
country-house. " Then," he says, " knowing that I had left my
friends in great distress, I proceeded to London to aid and com-
fort them." He was kindly entertained by Father Southwell's
friend, the Countess of Arundel ; but it was necessary that he
should have a lodging of his own, where people might come to
him. A house was hired with the aid of a pious attendant of
Father Garnet's named Nicholas Owen, commonly called " Little
John," famous for his skill in constructing hiding-places, and the
builder, indeed, of the one which served Father Gerard so well at
Braddocks. This stanch and heroic companion often appears in
the course of the Narrative. He bore imprisonment with invinci-
ble constancy, and died at last under the torture. Before Father
Gerard was fairly settled in his new lodging the priest-hunters,
directed by Frank, were upon him again. This time he was
caught. The officers found him and " Little John " in bed, and
dragged them off to prison. After lying one night in irons
Father Gerard was taken before the commissioners, the chief of
whom, afterwards Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, was a renegade
Catholic. Determining to be open in all that affected himself,
but to say nothing that could implicate others, he answered
readily that he was a priest and a Jesuit, that he had been in
England six years, and that his superiors had sent him into the
realm to make converts to the faith:

" ' No, no/ said they, ' you were sent for matters of state, and to lure
people from the obedience of the queen to the obedience of the pope/

" 'As for matters of state/ I replied, 'we are forbidden to have anything
to say to them, as they do not belong to our institute. This prohibition,
indeed, extends to all the members of the society ; but on us missioners it
is particularly enjoined in a special instruction. As for the obedience
due to the queen and the pope, each is to be obeyed in that wherein they
have jurisdiction ; and one obedience does not clash with the other, as
England and all Christian realms have hitherto experienced/

392 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

" ' How and where did you land, and where have you lived since your
landing? '

" ' I cannot in conscience answer any of these questions,' I replied, ' es-
pecially the last, as it would bring mischief on others ; so I crave pardon
for not satisfying your wishes.'

" ' Nay/ said they, ' it is just on these heads that we chiefly desire you
to satisfy us, and we bid you in the queen's name to do so.'

" ' I honor the queen,' said I, 'and will obey her and you in all that is
lawful, but here you must hold me excused ; for were I to mention any
person or place where I have been lodged, the innocent would have to
suffer, according to your laws, for the kind service they have done me.
Such behavior on my part would be against all justice and charity, and
therefore I never will be guilty of it.' "

Persisting in this refusal, Father Gerard was committed to a
prison called the Counter, and thrust into a little den just under
the roof, the door of which was so low that he had to enter on
his knees. There he remained in fetters for three months.
Several times he was re-examined before the magistrates. He
was confronted also with the notorious Topcliffe, who tried to
terrify him into signing a false declaration, and once sought to
shake his constancy by pretending that Father Southwell had
yielded and was going to recant — a lie to which the wretch even
made solemn oath. But all was in vain. Richard Fulwood and
" Little John " were put to the torture, but nothing could be ex-
tracted from them ; and Father Gerard records with great satis-
faction that of all the servants whom he employed from time to
time — for his assumed position and mode of life made it necessary
that he should always have an attendant — not one proved un-
faithful. Neither was evidence obtained from the servants at
Braddocks ; and as for the spy Frank, it was perhaps thought
best not to spoil him for other uses by putting him forward as a
witness. In the course of time some of our missionary's friends
bribed the magistrate, Young, to transfer him to more decent
quarters in the Clink prison, where a great number of Catholics
were confined for their religion. " It seemed," writes Father
Gerard, " like a change from Purgatory to Paradise. Instead of
lewd songs and blasphemies the prayers of some Catholic neigh-
bors in the next room met my ear." The chains were removed
from his limbs (we learn by a letter of Garnet's that he suffered
for a long time afterward from the injuries caused by the irons),
and by giving money to the keepers he secured many religious
privileges, as in the days of his confinement in the Marshalsea.

The account of his life in prison is a curious illustration of the
manner of administering the penal laws, when the rigor of pur-

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 393

suit outside the jail was not more remarkable than the laxity of
discipline within. Priests and harborers of priests were hunted
with savage eagerness ; recusants were arrested and unmerciful-
ly fined ; magistrates were not ashamed to resort to the most dis-
creditable tricks (such as the fabrication of false confessions) to
entrap the accused into criminating their supposed accomplices ;
and the torture was freely applied to wring from these unfortu-
nate victims the names of those who had befriended them. Yet
inside the prisons the most extraordinary indulgences were some-
times purchased. Priests who had been arrested for saying Mass
continued to say Mass in their cells. The government, which
was putting forth all its strength to suppress Catholic worship
throughout the realm, could not prevent the celebration of Catho-
lic worship inside its own jails. The explanation of this anomaly
is to be found in the abuses which then distinguished the whole
prison system. There was little restraint upon the power of the
keepers. When the ruling passion of these* men was cruelty the
lot of the prisoners was dreadful indeed. But in many cases
their principal desire was to plunder the persons committed to
their custody, and then they cared little what was done, so that
they were well paid and that nobody escaped. Thus Father
Gerard found that in the Clink the Catholic prisoners had the
means of communicating pretty freely with one another and with
their outside friends. Some of them came to his door — he was
locked up in a cell — and let him know that through a hole in the
wall, covered by a picture, he could talk with his next neighbor,
Ralph Emerson, an excellent lay brother of the society, who had
already been about six years in prison, and was destined to remain
six or seven more. Emerson was allowed to have visitors in his
cell, and thus Father Gerard was enabled to confess and receive
communion through the hole in the wall, as well as to confer
with his own friends, who came as if to see Brother Emerson.
Before long a key was fashioned which would open Father Ger-
ard's cell ; " and then," he says, " every morning, before the jailer
got up, they brought me to another part of the prison, where I
said Mass and administered the sacraments to the prisoners
lodged in that quarter ; for all of them had got keys of their
cells." On Good Friday (1595) the imprisoned confessors even
ventured to celebrate the solemn office of the day, and to admit
a number of Catholics from without to join in their devotions.
They were all assembled in a room over Father Gerard's cell,
and the priest had gone through all the service up to the adora-
tion of the cross, when they were interrupted by the head jailer

394 ^ JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

knocking at the door below. Father Gerard removed his vest-
ments and went down to the officer ; and " as I knew the nature
of the man," he says, " I pretended to be angry that one who pro-
fessed to be a friend should have come at such a time as that,
when, if ever, we were bound to be busy at our prayers."

Brother Emerson's cell continued to be the resort of Catho-
lics from outside who wished to consult with our missionary or
to make their confessions to him ; and " there were often," he
says, " six or eight persons at once waiting to see me." He re-
conciled a great number of " schismatics " to the church ; he con-
verted eight or ten heretics, including one of his jailers, who
straightway gave up his office and afterwards became a prisoner
for religion in the same jail ; he sent several young men abroad
to join the Jesuits, and boys to be educated at Catholic semina-
ries ; and he even found means to provide for priests of his acquain-
tance who had occasion to come up to London, and for newly-
ordained missionaries who arrived from the Continent with in-
structions to seek him out. With the help of his friends he hired
and furnished a house for the accommodation of these clergymen,
and placed in it, as the ostensible tenant, a devout widow of good
family named Line, who had already suffered a great deal for
the faith. A few years afterwards (1601) Mrs. Line was arrested
just as Mass was about beginning in her house, and, although the
celebrant was not found, she was hanged for harboring a priest.

The expenses of the establishment maintained under the
charge of this good lad3T, as well as the cost of supplying the
new-comers with suitable clothing, horses, and other necessaries,
were defrayed from the alms bestowed upon Father Gerard by
rich Catholics. " 1 did not receive alms from many persons," he
writes, " still less from all that came to see me ; indeed, both out
of prison and in prison I often refused such offers. I was afraid
that if I always accepted what was offered I might scare from
me souls that wished to treat with me on the business of their
salvation, or receive gifts from those that could either ill afford
it or would afterwards repent of it. I made it a rule, therefore,
never to take aims except from a small number of persons whom
I knew well. Most of what I got was from those devoted friends
who offered me not only their money but themselves, and looked
upon it as a favor when I took their offer." When Father Ger-
ard was removed from the Clink to the Tower he had about
.£130 in money, besides papers, etc., put away "in some holes
made to hide things." Brother Emerson secured this store and
sent it to Garnet, who continued to supply Mrs. Line until Ger-

1 88 i.J A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 395

ard was at liberty. Mr. Wiseman, for several months after his
arrest in Golding Lane, had been kept in close confinement, nei-
ther his family nor any of his friends being- allowed to see him,
but finally he obtained his freedom on the payment of a large
sum of money. His devoted wife, in the meantime, had taken a
house near the Clink prison, in order that she might communi-
cate freely with Father Gerard and supply his wants, and there
the husband joined her on his release.

The fresh troubles shortly brought upon the good Jesuit were
occasioned by one of his fellow-prisoners, a priest named Atkin-
son, of whom the revelations of the State Paper Office inform us
that, having apostatized, he subsequently had the almost incredi-
ble wickedness to offer to poison the Earl of Tyrone in a conse-
crated Host. This Judas reported to the magistrates that Ger-
ard had received letters from Rome and Brussels, and had given
them to " Little John," who, having obtained his liberty, was
then acting as a servant of Garnet. Gerard was immediately
conveyed to the Tower, and thither after two days came the
lords commissioners, one of whom was Sir Francis Bacon, and
the attorney-general, Sir Edward Coke, to examine him touch-
ing the persons for whom the letters were intended, and espe-
cially concerning the whereabouts of Garnet. He admitted re-
ceiving letters from over sea many times, some for himself relat-
ing to the maintenance of scholars on the Continent, and some
for other persons, but he stoutly refused to tell who these other
persons were or to give any information about Garnet. " I do
not know where he is," was his answer, "and if I did know I
would not tell you." Hereupon a warrant was produced for
putting him to the torture, and the whole party marched in a
solemn procession, led by attendants with lighted candles, to a
dark chamber underground, a place of great extent with " divers
sorts of racks and other instruments of torture ranged about it."
Again the Jesuit was urged to answer the questions, but he re-
fused as before and fell upon his knees in prayer.

" Then they led me to a great upright beam or pillar of wood which was
one of the supports of this vast crypt. At the summit of this column were
fixed certain iron staples for supporting weights. Here they placed on my
wrists gauntlets of iron, and ordered me to mount upon two or three wick-
er steps; then, raising my arms, they inserted an iron bar through the rings
of the gauntlets and then through the staples in the pillar, putting a pin
through the bar so that it could not slip. My arms being thus fixed above
my head, they withdrew those wicker steps I spoke of, one by one, from
beneath my feet, so that I hung by my hands and arms. The tips of my
toes, however, still touched the ground, so they dug away the ground be-

396 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

neath ; for they could not raise me higher, as they had suspended me from
the topmost staples in the pillar.

" Thus hanging by my wrists, I began to pray, while those gentlemen
standing round asked me again if I was willing to confess. I replied, ' I
neither can nor will,' but so terrible a pain began to oppress me that I was
scarce able to speak the words. The worst pain was in my breast and
belly, my arms and hands. It seemed to me that all the blood in my body
rushed up my arms into my hands ; and I was under the impression at the
time that the blood actually burst forth from my fingers and at the back of
my hands. This was, however, a mistake ; the sensation was caused by the
swelling of the flesh over the iron that bound it.

" I felt now such intense pain (and the effect was probably heightened
by an interior temptation) that it seemed to me impossible to continue en-
during it. It did not, however, go so far as to make me feel any inclina-
tion or real disposition to give the information they wanted. For as the
eyes of our merciful Lord had seen my imperfection, he did ' not suffer
me to be tempted above what I was able, but with the temptation made
also a way of escape.' Seeing me, therefore, in this agony of pain and this
interior distress, his infinite mercy sent me this thought : ' The very furth-
est and utmost they can do is to take away thy life ; and often hast thou
desired to give thy life for God : thou art in God's hands, who knoweth well
what thou sufferest, and is all-powerful to sustain thee.' With this thought
our good God gave me also out of his immense bounty the grace to resign
myself and offer myself utterly to his good pleasure, together with some
hope and desire of dying for his sake. From that moment I felt no more
trouble in my soul, and even the bodily pain seemed to be more bearable
than before, although I doubt not that it really increased from the con-
tinued strain that was exercised on every part of my body.

" Hereupon those gentlemen, seeing that I gave them no further an-
swer, departed to the lieutenant's house, and there they waited, sending
now and then to know how things were going on in the crypt. There were
left with me three or four strong men to superintend my torture. My
jailer also remained, I fully believe out of kindness to me, and kept wip-
ing away with a handkerchief the sweat that ran down from my face the
whole time, as indeed it did from my whole body. So far, indeed, he did
me a service ; but by his words he rather added to my distress, for he never
stopped entreating and beseeching me to have pity on myself and tell these
gentlemen what they wanted to know ; and so many human reasons did
he allege that I verily believed he was either instigated directly by the devil
under pretence of affection for me, or had been left there purposely by the
persecutors to influence me by his show of sympathy. In any case, these
shafts of the enemy seemed to be spent before they reached me, for, though
annoying, they did me no real hurt, nor did they seem to touch my soul or
move it in the least- I said, therefore, to him : ' I pray you to say no more
on that point, for I am not minded to lose my soul for the sake of my body/
Yet I could not prevail with him to be silent. The others also who stood
by said : ' He will be a cripple all his life, if he lives through it ; but he will
have to be tortured daily till he confesses.' But I kept praying in a low
voice, and continually uttered the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.

" I had hung in this way till after one of the clock, as I think, when I

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 397

fainted. How long I was in the faint I know not — perhaps not long ; for
the men who stood by lifted me up, or replaced those wicker steps under
my feet, until I came to myself ; and immediately they heard me praying
they let me down again. This they did over and over again when the faint
came on, eight or nine times before five of the clock. Somewhat before
five came Wade again, and, drawing near, said : ' Will you yet obey the com-
mands of the queen and the council ? '

" ' No,' said I ; 'what you ask is unlawful, therefore I will never do it/

" ' At least, then,' said Wade, ' say that you would like to speak to Se-
cretary Cecil.'

"' I have nothing to say to him,' I replied, ' more than I have said al-
ready; and if I were to ask to speak to him, scandal would be caused, for
people would imagine that I was yielding at length, and was willing to give
information.'

" Upon this Wade suddenly turned his back in a rage and departed,
saying in a loud and angry tone : ' Hang there, then, till you rot !'

" So he went away, and I think all the commissioners then left the
Tower ; for at five of the clock the great bell of the Tower sounds, as a
signal for all to leave who do not wish to be locked in all night. Soon
after this they took me dowrf from my cross, and though neither foo.t nor
leg was injured, yet I could hardly stand."

The torture was repeated twice the next day in the same
manner, and when Father Gerard was carried back to his cell
the very jailer was in tears. • It was three weeks before he could
move his fingers, and five months before he recovered the sense of
touch. Meanwhile he received notice from Garnet that the gov-
ernment meant to enforce against him the full penalty of the law.
The attorney-general examined him in preparation for the trial,
and in his replies the prisoner acknowledged that he had come to
Eng.land as a priest and Jesuit, that he had reconciled persons to
the pope, and had "drawn them away from the faith and re-
ligious profession which was approved in England." All these
were capital crimes; but for some reason not explained the trial
was deferred, and the confessor lay in his cell, in what was
known as the Salt Tower, in the southeastern part of the fortress,
for more than three months. The keeper who had charge of
him was a well-disposed fellow, not unwilling to grant a few in-
dulgences, especially when he was paid for them ; and so the
prisoner established communication with friends outside, writing
and receiving letters apparently quite harmless, but with a hid-
den text penned in orange-juice, which showed when the paper
was held to the fire. Father Gerard says that orange-juice was
the best medium for certain kinds of writing, because when it
had once been made legible by heat it could not be hidden again ;
those who received the letter could always tell, therefore, if it had
been intercepted and read on the way, and sould govern them-

398 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.

selves accordingly. Lemon-juice was used for circular letters to
be passed from hand to hand ; the writing- became visible upon
dipping the sheet in water, and vanished again when the paper
was dry.

In a small structure called the Cradle Tower, separated from
the Jesuit's place of confinement by a garden, and overhanging
the moat, was a Catholic gentleman named Arden, who had been
there ten years on a charge of treason. After much persuasion
Father Gerard got the keeper to consent to his surreptitiously
visiting this gentleman — a privilege of which he availed himself in
order to say Mass, the necessary vessels being smuggled in by
Mr. Arden's wife. He had no other purpose than saying Mass
when he planned the visit ; but a slight inspection of Mr. Arden's
quarters satisfied him that from this spot it might be possible to
effect an escape. There was access from the prisoner's chamber
to the roof of the Cradle Tower. Below, as \ve have said, was
the moat, here only thirty feet wide ; beyond that, and separated
from it by a wall nearly as high as the Cradle Tower itself, was
the open quay known as the Tower Wharf ; and beyond that
again was the river Thames. The prisoners soon arranged their
plans, and Father Gerard undertook to communicate with the
outside friends upon whose aid they depended. It was through
Mr. William Wiseman that all the arrangements were made, and
it was agreed that on a certain night a boat should be at the
Tower Wharf with a stout rope long enough to reach from the
quay to the top of the Cradle Tower. Our Jesuit obtained leave
to lodge with Mr. Arden that night, as he had done before, and
at evening the two prisoners were locked up together, the jailer
taking the precaution, however, to fasten the door that led to the
roof. This difficulty they overcame by loosening with their
knives the stone that held the bolt of the lock, and at last they
crept upon the roof, not daring to speak above a whisper, for
there was a sentinel in the garden behind them. About mid-
night the boat appeared. There were three men in it. One was
Father Gerard's faithful servant, Richard Fulwood. The second,
John Lilly, had been Gerard's fellow-prisoner in the Clink ; his li-
berty was purchased after eight or nine years' confinement, and he
became Father Gerard's most trust}7 attendant, risking his life for
him more than once, and finally entering the Society of Jesus as
a lay brother. The third confederate was no other than one of
the keepers of the Clink, a " schismatic " who had conceived a
great affection for the Jesuit, and who often proved his fidelity
by sheltering him and his friends in his own house. Before the

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 399

boat reached the appointed place it was hailecj by some one on
the Tower Wharf who took it for a fishing-boat, and the party
were obliged to keep off until the coast was clear, whereby so
much time was lost that the venture became impossible of ac-
complishment before daylight, and they turned back. In pass-
ing under London Bridge the rushing tide swept them upon
some piles, and they were with difficulty rescued from drowning.
Not discouraged, John Lilly sent word that a second attempt
would be made the following night, and with great ado Gerard
obtained leave to remain again with Mr. Arden, the jailer fortu-
nately not discovering that they had tampered with the fasten-
ings of the roof-door. This time all went well. The boat reach-
ed the wharf without being observed ; the ends of the rope were
made fast to a stake, and the bight, being drawn up to the top
of the Cradle Tower by means of a cord attached to a leaden ball
which the prisoners threw from the roof over the moat and wall,
was there secured to a gun. Here, however, occurred an unex-
pected trouble. The prisoners had counted upon sliding down ;
but the wall was so high that the rope hung almost horizontal,
and after Mr. Arderi had worked his way across it sagged so
much that Father Gerard, who was a very tall and heavy man,
stuck fast in the middle of the slack and nearly lost his hold.
With several pauses and much struggling he reached the wall at
last, feet foremost, and John Lilly, having somehow got on top,
pulled him over, so much exhausted that he was unable to stand
until some restoratives with which the party had fortunately
provided themselves were applied. Then they hastened to the
boat and pulled away. Arden and Lilly went to the house of
Father Gerard's kept, as we have seen, by Mrs. Line. Gerard
and Fulwood proceeded to a certain house in the suburbs, where
horses were in waiting, and thence Gerard rode with " Little
John " to a place in the country occupied at that time by Father
Garnet. Fulwood remained behind to provide for the safety of
the obliging jailer in the Tower ; for Father Gerard took care
that this man, to whose complaisance he owed so much, should
be warned of the escape in time to make off before the matter
was discovered by his superior officers, and also provided a place
of refuge for him. He was supported by Gerard for the rest of
his life, and after a while he became a Catholic. Lilly was taken
some time later, having sacrificed himself in order to promote
the escape of Father Gerard from a search-party, and was cru-
elly tortured in the Tower, being hung up by the hands as his
master had been.

400 A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. [Dec.,

Father Garnet would have sent Gerard abroad after this ; but
the gallant priest begged to be retained in England, and for nine
years longer he labored on his dangerous mission, moving from
place to place, sometimes lodging in London, almost in the
shadow of the Clink prison, and for a brief period taking up his
quarters with his old friends the Wisemans. His last refuge was
with a devout widow, Elizabeth Vaux, mother of the fourth baron
of that name (then a child), and a near connection of a lady who
had been Father Gerard's hostess at an earlier period of his
career. In her country-house he had a commodious apartment,
a chapel, rich vestments and altar furniture, a good store of
books, and the company of another Jesuit ; and, what was still
more important than these things, " Little John " built for him an
ingenious hiding-place, as he had done elsewhere. We should be
glad, if space allowed, to rehearse a few of the incidents of these
last nine years, some of them thrilling and some of them droll. In
one family he carries off his worldly disguise so well (though known
as a Catholic) that he is suggested as an eligible match for a mar-
riageable young lady. In another house he plays cards with a
heretic doctor of divinity who has recently published a book
against the Jesuits Gerard and Southwell, and so pesters the un-
suspecting man with his sharp remarks on religious topics that
the hostess, who is in the secret, can hardly keep her counte-
nance. Meanwhile he travels far and wide on his apostolic er-
rand, and numerous conversions reward his zeal. We should
be glad also, if space allowed, to review at some length a ques-
tion which was much discussed in Gerard's own time, a propos
of his judicial examinations, and is much discussed still — to wit,
how far it is lawful to go in baffling an unjust inquirer by equivo-
cal replies. In all that concerned themselves the Jesuits spoke
frankly. Asked if they were priests, if they had celebrated Mass,
if they had received converts, the}^ readily answered yes, al-
though the penalty was death. The difficulty occurred when
they were interrogated about others. The question, Were you
ever harbored at the house of So-and-so ? was usually put, and
could not be evaded. To refuse to answer would be equivalent
to saying yes and would condemn an innocent person to the gal-
lows. Was it the priest's duty to inflict such grave injury upon
his benefactor by giving the persecutors, either tacitly or express-
ly, information which they had no moral right to demand ? Fa-
ther Gerard's mode of proceeding in such cases is shown in the
account of his examination before the Dean of Westminster, Top-
cliffe, and others, when he was confronted with Mrs. Wiseman, the

i88i.] A JESUIT IN DISGUISE. 401

elder, and asked if he did not recognize her, the object being to
convict that lady of the capital offence of harboring: "I an-
swered, * I do not recognize her. At the same time, you know
this is my usual way of answering, and I will never mention any
places, or give the names of any persons that are known to me
(which this lady, however, is not), because to do so, as I have told
you before, would be contrary both to justice and charity.' ' In
other parts of the examination he insists earnestly in impressing
upon his examiners, over and over again, that when he says he
does not know So-and-so they must remember that he would
make the same reply even if he did know that person ; and he
argues with his examiners that such a denial is not a falsehood,
the questioners being fairly warned that they are not to trust it.
For the further consideration of this subject, however, we must
refer the reader to Father Morris' book, or, better still, perhaps,
to the Apologia of Cardinal Newman.

The history of the Gunpowder Plot belongs to another work
than the one before us. There never was any ground for sus-
pecting Father Gerard of complicity in it ; but as some of the
conspirators were known to be his friends, a proclamation was
issued against him and a general search was set on foot. Some
information was obtained as to his haunts, and a party was sent
to Mrs. Vaux's with orders, if they did not find their man, to
stay in the house until recalled, to post guards all around, and to
watch every road for a distance of three miles. " Little John,"
however, had done his work so well that all this was futile, and
after remaining nine days the officers went away. Father Gerard
was in the house all the time, " shut up in a hiding-hole where he
could sit, but not stand upright." Food was regularly brought
to him after dark, and occasionally, when the vigilance of the
guards began to relax, he was taken out at night to warm him-
self at a fire, for it was wintry weather. He continued to live-
in London for some time longer, and even wrote a public letter
in his own justification, which he put in circulation by causing
numerous copies to be dropped in the street before daylight.
Several times he narrowly escaped capture. Most of his friends
were in prison, or dead, or so sharply watched that they could
do little to aid him ; his mission was arrested ; it was useless to
remain in England ; and he fled to the Continent, making his
escape across the Channel in the suite of the ambassadors of
Spain and Flanders, on the very day that Father Garnet was put
to death in St. Paul's churchyard.

VOL. xxxiv.— 26

402 IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC.

IT was on an evening in early summer when first through
the gathering darkness we s'aw from beyond the river the
gleaming lights bespeaking the approach to Quebec. Presently
the lights grew more distinct, the noise and hubbub increased,
and we were whirling through the suburbs of St. Roch's into
the ancient, historical city. Gradually, and in dim glimpses at
first, Quebec was unfolded to our view — its narrow, hilly streets,
its time-worn walls, its broad Esplanade, its grass-grown glacis,
its gates beneath which had passed many a stately band, alter-
nately flushed with victory or wan and worn with defeat. A
bare, uninteresting piece of ground was pointed out as the site
of what are known as the Jesuits' barracks — dwellings once the
property and possession of the Society of Jesus, but having been
since converted into military lodgings and stores. A little far-
ther and we were upon the Place d'Armes, hard by which had
once stood the famous Chateau or Fort St. Louis. One glimpse
of the adjacent river, the shaded little garden in the centre of
the square, the two cathedrals, Catholic and Anglican, closely
adjoining, and we were housed for the night in our quarters
upon the Place d'Armes.

But while fancy was busy with us, and our minds were full
of all the divers thoughts awakened there by this our first sight
of the fortress city, an awful reality dispelled all other thoughts.
An alarm was heard, too familiar, alas ! to the hapless denizens of
Quebec. It portended the worst of all their foes — fire. There is
no need to tell again the tale of the fearful progress of the con-
flagration. All night long the fire raged, and by morning the
suburbs of St. John's were a heap of smoking ruins. Something
the aspect they had of a deserted town or village. Whole blocks
up and down, as far as the eye could reach, in street after street,
were rows of ghastly, blackened, walls, surrounded by piles of
dust and rubbish, while above on the Plains of Abraham was
encamped the most mournful army, of many mournful ones, that
had ever pitched tents there. Women, children, old men and
young sought shelter within sight of what was so lately their
home. Truly a sad and pitiable spectacle — homeless, foodless, in
all things destitute and needy ! Innumerable were the tales of

1 88 1.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 403

misery told in Quebec, in connection with that fatal night, heart-
rending and most melancholy. Nor was sympathy wanting ; for,
from the highest in the land to the poorest, all showed their
kindness in a practical manner by remaining during the night,
rendering all the assistance in their power, and, when the danger
was past, largely subscribing' for the relief of the sufferers.
Alarm and regret reached a climax when it was found that the
Church of St. John, a noble structure, must share the common
fate. At two o'clock A.M. on that memorable and eventful 8th-
Qth of June the cure of the parish celebrated Mass for the last
time within that building which it had been his pride and joy
to erect and beautify. It was a solemn and impressive ceremony,
that more than midnight Mass, with the red glare of the con-
flagration shining in at the windows and upon the haggard, care-
worn faces of the assistants. Thither — touching sight ! — many
homeless ones had brought their rescued goods, believing them
safe in the shadow of the sanctuary. Scarcely was Mass con-
cluded when it became evident that there was no farther hope
for St. John's. The cure waited no longer. Already the flames
played around the doomed building, darting in and out at the
windows. The priest came forth, bearing aloft in the eyes of the
multitude the Blessed Sacrament. There was a sudden, deathlike
hush, and every head, Catholic and Protestant, was uncovered,
every knee bent. At the same moment the bells overhead, silent
awhile, tolled for the last time and fell crashing from the belfry.

Has any one ever forgotten the gray old enclosure of the Ur-
sulines, dim with many memories, redolent of quiet, cloister-life
amid the havoc and din of war ? — the burial-place of Montcalm,
the theatre of Mme. de la Peltrie's toils, of Marie de 1'Incarna-
tion's virtues, of many strange episodes and incidents ; the refuge
of the wounded, the temporary place of confinement for prison-
ers of war, the winter-quarters of Fraser's gallant Highlanders —
peaceful now, as if war and peril had never lurked about its
walls, as if dusky savages or British or French combatants had
never brought their fierce and stormy dissensions to its very
doors. The chapel is most beautiful ; the massive gilt altars and
ornaments strike one with their look of antiquity, their memorials
of a past that has not been unalloyed peace. On either side of
the choir arise gratings to remind one of the cloister-life that
had grown and flourished while the solemn years stilled the fiery
hearts of the foemen and swept from the scene the trappings
and pageant of war. Within the gratings we caught glimpses of
the nuns, in their picturesque garb, reciting the afternoon office.

404 IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

The walls are adorned by pictures, many of which are admirable,
especially that of " The Saviour at Meat in Simon's House." It is
a most pleasing and powerful representation of this familiar sub-
ject, by Champagne, the Flemish artist, afterwards painter to the
Queen of France. The figure of the Saviour is life-like, full of
dignity and sweetness ; around him are the apostles and other
sharers in the festivity, while dark-skinned, oriental fruit-bearers
stand here and there in the apartment with their vessels of
tempting ware, and attendants pour water into huge earthen jars.
Amid the group the eye seeks out the tender, graceful figure of
Magdalen, in complete abandonment, pouring out her woman's
full-hearted tenderness at the feet of Christ. There is a " Mater
Dolorosa " by Vandyke ; a full-length portrait of the Saviour
by Champagne ; the " Redemption of Algerine Captives," by
Restout, the famous historical court-painter ; " St. Nonus ad-
mitting the virgin, St. Pelagia, to penance," by Prud'homme.
This last is a pleasing conception, with its sombre, neutral color-
ing and the graceful attitudes of the group. It is referred to
1730. There are many others of the Spanish, Florentine, and
French schools of art, all of which date back a hundred years at
least, and some to remoter times. In a word, the pictures in the
Ursuline chapel are of uncommon merit, and harmonize well
with the temper and character of their surroundings. Upon the
right wall is the monument to the heroic and magnanimous Louis
de St. Veran, Marquis de Montcalm, erected A.D. 1859. ^ bears
the simple yet eloquent inscription, composed by the French
Academy :

" Honneur a Montcalm,
Le Destin, en lui derobant

La Victoire
L'a recompense par
Une mort glorieuse."

There is a memorial slab also to the illustrious Frenchman, placed
therein by Lord Aylmer in 1831; for within those calm and
hallowed precincts, in their hush and their dimness, the great
Montcalm sleeps, awaiting the resurrection. The chapel likewise
contains some precious relics, such as the body of St. Clement
from the Catacombs in Rome, sent thither in 1687 ; the head of
St. Ursula, sent to the Ursulines in 1675 ; and the head of St.
Just, in 1662. For the coming of the Ursulines to Quebec, and
their first foundation there, was as far back as 1641.

Leaving the sacred edifice, we paid a visit to the chaplain,

1 88 1.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 405

who raised a drapery from a glass case standing in his room
and showed, O ghastly trophy ! the skull of the chivalrous Mont-
calm. Appalled we gazed upon it. Was this, indeed, the sole
remains of the noble, the gifted, the daring, the generous Louis
de St. Veran, the fame of whom, even in childhood, was wont to
fill our eyes with tears and our hearts with admiration ? As we
turned silently away the chaplain called our attention to a spe-
cies of map or colored drawing of the old convent of the Ursu-
lines. This sketch being a famous one, and, no doubt, the oldest
in existence of old Quebec, we examined it with interest. St.
Louis Street, which becomes St. Louis Road after the gate is
passed, is now one of the most populous and popular thorough-
fares of Quebec. How strange, then, to find it in the picture but
a simple forest path, winding through masses of foliage and
meeting in its course a little brook meandering between this
road, now St. Louis Street, then known as the Grande Allee, and
a smaller and more devious path called Le Petit Chemin, and
running straight through what is now the choir of the present
church ! There wrere no dwellings nor other signs of civilization
upon this Grande Allee, but between it and its lesser neighbor
stood, as in the picture, the first convent of the Ursulines in Que-
bec, a square, massive building two stories only in height. Hard
by the little stream is the home of Mme. de la Peltrie. Beside
her very door are the wigwams of the Indians, the smoke of
which rises into the green arches of the overhanging boughs.
Nor is the picture all still-life, for we have the figure of the il-
lustrious foundress herself coming forth to confer with the gover-
nor and his attendant cavaliers. Mme. de la Peltrie is of noble,
erect, and stately carriage, in contrast to a savage who seems of-
fering some tribute to the white chief. The figures of the cava-
liers as they come riding through the parted foliage of this west-
ern forest are careless, gay, and graceful, as beseemed those gal-
lant knights of France, as ready to die for a woman's smile as for
a soldier's ribbon of honor. In the shadow of an ancient tree is
Marie de 1' Incarnation instructing savages. Further on is Mere
St. Joseph teaching catechism to the Hurons, and Mere Ste.
Croix, accompanied by a young Canadian girl, going to visit
the wigwams.

Tourists, sight-seers, " chance acquaintances " have all ex-
hausted themselves in their descriptions and impressions of the
cathedral of Quebec. Built in 1647, consecrated in 1666, it is one
of the oldest churches in North America. Without, it is a curious
and somewhat inelegant structure ; within, its altar and choir

406 IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

are massive and richly decorated in solid gilt, with an indescrib-
able quaintness and an old-time air about them that transport
us out of ourselves and back to the days of its pristine worship-
pers. Over the altar, and thrown into strong relief by the white-
washed walls, are pictures, many of them masterpieces of art.
Conspicuously so is the Crucifixion, by Vandyke, which is con-
sidered one of the finest works on this continent. At the foot of
the cross kneels a tiny, weeping angel, and angels hover in the
ambient air, celestial witnesses of the great atonement. But the
sacred expiring figure, with its warm and vivid flesh-tints, strikes
the imagination, holding it fast. " The Immaculate Conception,"
by Le Brun ; " The Saviour tended by Angels after the Resur-
rection," by Restout ; " The Birth of Christ," a copy of Annibal
Carracci ; " The Flight of Joseph," a copy of Vanloo, which
forms the altar-piece ; " The Baptism of Christ," by Claude Gui
Halle ; " The Annunciation," by Restout ; " The Miracles of St.
Anne," by Plamondon, a Canadian artist, are a few only of the
many before which we paused, eager to observe them all. In the
sacristy we were shown the celebrated vestments, of which the
most interesting is that set presented by Louis XIV. to the illus-
trious Laval. Thus it is two hundred and five years old and is
most curiously wrought, in gold that has become tarnished and
colors that have become dim.

The Seminary naturally followed the cathedral, and here, too,
were hosts of memories and dim shades obscuring, as it were,
the broad nineteenth-century light. It is a plain, unpretentious
building, but large and of fine proportions. The chapel is in
much the same style as the cathedral, with gilt altars and reli-
quaries, carved doors, and the like. But it is rich in its works of
art as well as many sacred relics, of which we may mention the
body of the martyr St. Laureatus, of St. Zeno's Military Legion in
Rome, lying under the altar of the right lateral chapel in all the
splendor of warlike accoutrements. Here, too, are relics of St.
Clement and St. Modestus, martyrs, and two wooden busts on
either side, the one of St. Francis de Sales, containing a portion of
his rib; the other of St. Paul, containing a link of his chain.
Here, likewise, is a wonderful picture of the Crucifixion, by
Monet ; we say wonderful, for it struck us with a peculiar force.
The intense gloom over it ; the awful darkness visible, shrouding
the dim hills of Judea ; the absence of all figures save that One
divine ; its excruciating agony, its terrible reality, seemed to cast
a hush upon the very air around. Above the main altar is Van-
loo's celebrated picture of the " Flight of Joseph," a copy of

1 88 1.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 407

which is in the cathedral. Champagne is represented by the " Day
of Pentecost," an Ascension, and u St. Jerome Writing." " The
Saviour's Interment " is by Hutin, " St. Peter's Deliverance " by
De la Fosse, " Hermits of the Thebaid " by Guiliot, and there
are many others well worthy of attention. This chapel with sol-
emn, old-time look is a hundred years in existence. The Semi-
nary itself was liberally endowed by the great Laval, one of the
earliest and most celebrated bishops of Quebec. Like all the
monuments in Quebec telling of its day of glories past, this insti-
tution has historic interest. There the gallant American officers
were imprisoned while Arnold and Montgomery were thunder-
ing outside the city's walls, making valiant but unavailing efforts
to carry the place by assault.

The Ladies of the Congregation, daughters of the saintly and
heroic Marguerite Bourgeoys, have recently erected a new and
splendid convent, Notre Dame de Bellevue, situated on a most
charming spot some two miles outside the city. It is a branch
of the ancient establishment of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1659.
The new building is large, imposing, and stately, while the old
stands in a densely-wooded nook, both having charming views
on all sides of them.

On the St. Louis Road is the Convent of Jesus et Marie,
more familiar to Quebeckers as that of Sillery. It is likewise a
fine and extensive establishment, and most delightfully situated.
Recalling Quebec and our sojourn there, we positively fly from
the* host of institutions that arise to our minds — the Hotel-Dieu,
oldest and most venerable of all ; the General Hospital, under
Nuns of the Sacred Heart, where Arnold was carried when
wounded at the siege of Quebec ; St. Bridget's Asylum, of much
more recent date, a refuge for the infirm and destitute, in connec-
tion with St. Patrick's Church ; the Convent of the Good Shep-
herd, which strikes the eye gazing from the bastion at the Cita-
del down into the valley of the St. Charles. Jails, workhouses,
hospitals, orphanages, Catholic and Protestant, seem to multiply
as we proceed: the famous Beauport Asylum for the Insane,
with its beautiful situation and faultless surroundings ; the new
jail, replacing the old, which, by the way, bore a singular Latin
inscription signifying, " May this serve to separate the evil from
the good " ; and, last but not least, the far-famed University of
Laval. This institution has become more than ever renowned
by having been for so long the subject of a most curious discus-
sion. Laval would give Montreal a branch to supply the want
of a Catholic university there, none of her colleges having power

408 IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

to confer degrees ; Montreal declines to receive the branch, de-
claring that when necessary she can supply herself with an in-
dependent establishment of the kind. So runs the dispute be-
fore the Provincial Parliament, before the Legislative Assembly,
before the civil courts, before the ecclesiastical authorities, be-
fore the court of Rome itself. Each side has many and devoted
partisans, many and apparently unanswerable arguments, and
how it will end is the common topic of the day. Meantime La-
val itself — the Quebec Laval — is a magnificent building. Its pic-
ture-gallery is most interesting. Among its treasures of art are
five or six Teniers, some two or three of Salvator Rosa, one of
Vandyke, Nicolas Poussin, Tintoretto, Lanfranc, and others of les-
ser note. The picture of an aged monk studying by candle-light
is a most pleasing one, leaving an impression upon the mind long
after, though the name of the artist is not given, or, if given,
escapes our memory. In the library, a splendid and spacious
apartment, we found, among all the countless volumes repre-
senting the literature of every country, an ancient, richly-deco-
rated missal of the hapless and beautiful Mary Stuart. It was
embroidered in myriad colors upon silk, the borderings of each
page highly and exquisitely illuminated.

A word here of the new Parliament buildings which, under
the regime of the present government, have been added to Que-
bec. They stand upon the St. Louis Road, and, though not yet
completed, are already imposing. They will front upon the
Esplanade — a circumstance which will make their situation the
finer and more commanding. They are of the solid gray stone
observable in most of the public edifices in Canada, being best
suited to withstand the fierce inclemency of the winter.

It was with something like disappointment that, on inquiring
for the Jesuit church, we were shown the unpretentious struc-
ture fronting the Esplanade. Strange instance of the vicissitudes
of time : they, the dauntless missionaries, the early pioneers, the
first pastors of Quebec, the spiritual fathers of countless Indian
tribes — they who sailed in the war-canoe far up the mighty St.
Lawrence, who roamed the trackless Canadian forests and per-
ished at burning stakes in the deep wild-woods of the westland,
the friends and companions of Champlain — are, as regards the
size and appearance of their chapel, least known, most obscure,
in the city with which their deeds are entwined, by their mar-
tyred sons made illustrious.

St. Patrick's Church, built in 1831 by the Irish residents of
Quebec, is a fine, substantial building of stone, handsome and

1 88 1.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 409

richly adorned both within and without. Last, but not least, of
the churches there is a small and curious edifice, dating back to
the years 1690-1711, which confronts the visitor in the square of
Lower Town. It is known now, as it was to generations past, as
Notre Dame de Victoire, so called to commemorate victories ob-
tained by the French. It is a plain, somewhat rough building
without, having queer little windows containing jardinieres of
flowers, and in each corner of the wall a small recess or alcove
which, to our astonishment, we saw was occupied as a shop
wherein various wares were exhibited. The unpretentious square
upon which the chapel stands is thronged with busy people, and
quite filled up by odd little booths or stalls where merchandise
is displayed. Interiorly the church boasts an altar at once
unique and beautiful. The base of the altar seems of precious
marbles — jasper, porphyry, and the like ; the superstructure is
three rows of towers of a rich brown color, profusely gilded,
and these, diminishing in size upwards, are surmounted by a
single tower upon which stands the image of Mary with the in-
vocation, " Turris Davidica " — Tower of David.

Going forth from the little temple, we traversed some of the
curious, narrow streets of Lower Town. The smoke-blackened
wharves stretch out and around in all directions, with the blue
water playing in and out among them, and the summer sunshine
softening them into something like beauty. And such wharves,
after all, have their own beauty about them, and poetry too ; for
there are many quaint histories among them — simple stories of
those who have lived and died among them, and of the great ships
that have gone thence over the main, and of their cargoes, animate
or inanimate. But there are dilapidated, tumble-down dwellings
beside them and in the shadow of the lofty eminence above and
the walls of the city proper, or Upper Town, as it is called ; and
there are custom-houses, and banks, and warehouses down there
amid the poverty and squalor of the place ; and it all seems very
old and unlike anything else whatsoever on this continent. For
there is a peculiarity in two cities, as it were, lying thus side by
side, skirting both the solemn river, hurrying past to swell the
mighty Gulf Stream. Above, at a giant height it seems, looking
up from Lower Town, is a fair, placid place, environed by its
gray, ancient walls, with its towering Citadel, its broad, handsome
Terrace or promenade, and below is the dusky, dingy place we
have described. There is an elevator — a curious enough machine,
bringing one up an almost perpendicular slope — which, it appears,
is never used in winter, so that the visitor has then no option but

410 IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

the long, never-ending flights of steps leading first to Mountain
Hill, and next to Upper or Lower Town, as the traveller is
ascending or descending. On either side of the steps, up and
down, are rows of indescribable little shops sharing the air of
antiquity which is everywhere around, and which we do not
leave behind us in Lower Town. All this time we were still
looking forward to climbing the loftiest height of all, and finding
ourselves within the gray and warlike enclosure of what is world-
famous as the Citadel of Quebec. Its first beginning dates back
to the time of the founder of the city, Samuel de Champlain, and
its subsequent history and process of erection include the regime
of many governors, French and British. We passed up the
winding path that gradually brought us between the walls, in the
broad ditch cut from the glacis, and before long found ourselves
at the Dalhousie Gate, where we were joined by a soldier, who
led us everywhere, pointing out walls and fortifications, and,
with a grim sort of satisfaction, the cannon taken from the Ame-
ricans at Bunker Hill. From every point of the bastion we
looked down upon the city, and we stood for some time upon
the King's Bastion, where rests a giant gun which cannot be fired
without breaking every window in the vicinity. The. view
thence is indescribable, and on a clear day a distance of nearly
thirty miles is discernible by the naked eye. Innumerable sails
glided down the St. Lawrence as we watched ; the water rippled
on, majestic and unruffled. Beyond us was Point Levis, spire
and roof aglow with the afternoon's gold ; below us was the
broad plateau, with long flights of steps leading thither, and far
down in black and dingy depths the everlasting smoke and din of
Lower Town ; above us the flag upon the highest point of the
Citadel proper.

Meanwhile our eyes, like our thoughts, went down to the
ever-memorable, the historic, the fatal Plains of Abraham, with
their tales of war and of deadly suffering, of numbing cold, of
merciless inclemency. Many a noble heart perished there ; many
an eye was closed in sight of the fortress so often assailed and
never taken ; many a proud cavalier of France, many a gentleman
of England, many a plaided hunter from the Highland hills,
many an Irish exile, engaged on either side, found the hour of
reckoning there. What muster of gallant regiments they have
seen, what waving of plumes, what flashing of swords, what
bravery of Highland tartans, English scarlet, or Indian war-
blankets ! A stirring and a melancholy history have these mourn-
ful Plains. There amid their verdure a rock is pointed out as

1 88 1.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 411

being the identical one upon which Wolfe expired, and a well as
being that whence water was brought to him. Upon a slight
eminence stands now the monument which bears his name with
the simple but glorious inscription :

" Here Wolfe died victorious."

Montcalm, his magnanimous foe, was carried from the field and
subsequently buried in the Ursuline precincts. Whether his
death took place at the little house in St. Louis Street which is
still pointed out as being that to which he was conveyed, or at
the convent, is not positively known.

And as we have spoken of monuments, and of that endless
theme of war which Quebec furnishes, we must not omit brief
mention of the beautiful monument which stands at some dis-
tance out upon the Ste. Foye Road and in one of the most charm-
ing spots imaginable. The monument is in bronze, surmounted
by the martial goddess, Bellona. It was erected by the St. Jean
Baptiste Society of Quebec, and commemorates a thrilling epi-
sode of the ancient wars. Upon this site was fought the battle
of Ste. Foye, a splendid and daring attempt upon the part of
L6vis, the French general, to recover possession of the town.
After a series of brilliant charges and a long and desperate con-
flict the British, under General Murray, were completely routed,
leaving arms and ammunition upon the field. But the French,
unable to pursue their advantage, gave the British time to re-
cover themselves, and the chance of retaking the city was lost.
The legend upon the monument tells its own story :

' Aux Braves de 1760, edge

par la

Societe St. Jean Baptiste
de Quebec, 1860."

On either side are the names " Murray," " Levis," surmounted each
by the insignia of the sovereign he served. A windmill also
figures upon the monument, in allusion to an incident of the war
which recalls the old legends of the Scottish Border. The mill
was the scene of a hand-to-hand encounter between a portion of
Fraser's Highlanders and some French grenadiers, who were,
more's the pity, cut to pieces. Three alternate times was the
mill taken and retaken by the conflicting parties, the sons of the
heather, hardy and agile as the red deer of their native Highlands,
yielding nothing to the brilliant grenadiers of France. All at once
through the valley of the St. Charles below them echoed rude,

412 • IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

harsh, but not unmusical sounds, full of a wild and soul-thrilling
inspiration. It was the pipes — the old pipes of Celtic Scotland,
heralds of a hundred wars, minstrels of a hundred tunes, now
wild, now wayward, now tender and mournful. An old pipe-ma-
jor, who had been confined near by for some breach of discipline,
thus encouraged his compatriots with the strains to which a
Highland — or an Irish — heart is never closed. There is another
monument in the small square known as the Governor's Garden,
and it is sacred to the memory of the immortal twain whose
names, inseparable, live in the very air that surrounds this city.
Upon the side fronting the river is the name of Wolfe with an
appropriate Latin inscription ; and on the reverse side is that
of Montcalm, facing the town which he vainly gave his life to
win, and beneath it likewise some Latin memorial.

The old Chateau St/ Louis, pr its site, is still pointed out to the
curious. There tribute was paid, a curious feudal ceremony, and
there, too, balls were given. And the post-office has its history—
not, indeed, the present building, but that which it replaced — hav-
ing been the dwelling once of the Philiberts, who were rich and
powerful burghers of the bygone. And one of these Philiberts
in some way — his reason is neither how nor where, for it is only a
snatch of the old legend that has reached us — had a mighty quar-
rel with the Intendant Bigot, the same whose great doings are
for ever on the old people's tongue. But as might was right,
poor Philibert had the losing side, and, revenge being impossible,
he placed above his door the figure of a golden dog with the ap-
propriate inscription, but in old French characters :

" Je suis un chien qui ronge 1'os,
En le rongeant, je prends mon repos.
Un temps viendra, qui n'est pas venu,
Quand je mordrai ceux qui m'auront mordu." *

This ancient inscription is now replaced over the door of the
new post-office — curious memorial of strife and hatred long
perished in the quiet of nearly two centuries.

The gates of Quebec, some of which had been destroyed, or
were at least in a dilapidated condition, have recently been re-
built, improved to meet present requirements, and embellished
with Norman turrets. St. John's, St. Louis, the Kent and Dal-

* " I am a dog who gnaws a bone,

And, gnawing it, I take my rest.
' A time is coming, though not yet come,

When I shall bite all who have bitten me."

1 88 i.J IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. 413

housie Gates, leading to the Citadel, are already repaired and add
much to the appearance of the city. Of the ancient entrances
Palace Gate was the most remarkable, dating back even to the
French days of the old cavalier regime. Mention is made in
some contemporary accounts of Quebec of an old shield sent
thence to the borough of Hastings in England. It is described as
being of oak, bearing a crown in precious stones, the fleur-de
lis and Order of the Saint-Esprit in green and gold upon a dark
background. It had probably been taken by the English at the
final surrender of the city, and placed thus as the spoils of vic-
tory.

During our stay we did not neglect visiting the House of
Parliament, where debates of much interest were in progress.
We left the heated Parliament House and walked upon the Ter-
race, where it was silent and moonlight. And this leads us to
another feature in the new, prosperous, and peaceful life that has
replaced the old. This is the Dufferin Terrace, a broad and de-
lightful platform, going round a considerable portion of the
walls beneath the Citadel. It is, of course, upon the river, giving
a broad and extended view in all directions up and down the
great St. Lawrence, and a nearer and almost bewildering insight
into Lower Town, which lies at a great depth below. It is a
wonderful place ; perhaps no such promenade is to be found in any
other city in the world. For, with the natural advantages offered
by the scenery, the distance-empurpled view of the Laurentian
mountains, the calm, peaceful nearness of the great river, and the
majesty of the solemn Citadel towering overhead, Quebeckers can
enjoy delightful and informal meetings with "auld acquaintance"
or with the stranger newly come amongst them. For young
and old, grave and gay alike seek this beautiful promenade in
the calmness of the early summer evening, and there loiter away
the dreamy hours till the gun from the bastion overhead warns
them of half-past nine. It is a curious sight to a stranger, seeing
grave politicians, staid men of business, learned judges mingling
with the frivolous stream of fashion and the hum of endless
chatter which breaks upon the stillness of the hour. Occasion-
ally the band of the battery from the fortress above comes
down to charm the multitude, sending snatches of familiar old
airs, strains of the loved and the lost, echoing over the plain of
waters to the dwellings of Pont Levis on the farther shore.

And thus we see history and legend, poetry and romance are
not the only charms Quebec can boast, especially when spring
and the early summer-time come gently over the hills, besieging

4H IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC. [Dec.,

their old enemies, frost and snow, and capturing from their grasp
the invincible city. Then the breath of these sweet neighbors
and allies is gently blown over the mighty fortress, lofty hill and
deep valley, and ice-bound river alike, and they start into a life
rich in loveliness, so that at every street, in every nook and cor-
ner of the city, passers-by catch wonderful glimpses of scenery
that is a surprise and delight. The drives upon the Ste. Foye
and St. Louis Road are simply charming — broad views of deep,
luxuriant valleys full of golden rifts of sunshine, and a warm,
mellow haze tempering the glare of noonday ; the valley of the
St. Charles, with villages, giving it life and animation, with
mountains in the shadow of which seems to dwell a perpetual
gloaming, and rivers, like the pale, silvery streams of fairyland,
brightening the masses of dark foliage. Along these roads are
many handsome and elegant dwellings ; in fact, their number
and beauty strike the beholder with astonishment. Among all
these princely homes of luxury and affluence occasionally we
came upon an ancient-looking farm-house or cottage where
generations of hardy tillers of the soil had made their home. In
one instance we observed — not an unfrequent sight in Lower
Canada — four generations of a family represented upon the porch
or gallery fronting the road. There was the ancient gran-
dam, her son, daughter, and daughter's daughter, with wee,
toddling bairns who formed the fourth generation. It was a
Sunday afternoon, and there was wonderful peace and quiet in
that little picture of humble, rustic life. Great shade-trees arose
about the porch — trees which had, perhaps, shaded remoter gene-
rations, who had stolen away one by one from their home in that
pleasant solitude ; flowers, simple and rustic as their owners,
bloomed around in the soft grass ; flagrant lilacs filled the air
with balm. Sunbeams played in and out untroubled in the
long grass and trees, and even the merry voices of the children
seemed hushed as they stood silent awhile with the sudden,
transient pensiveness of childhood, leaving birds in the trees
around to break the Sunday stillness. Such fair scenes meet the
eye frequently along the route, only that, perchance, in some in-
stances, neighbors or rustic acquaintance swell the group -upon
the hearthstone, and we are reminded of Benedict Bellefontaine,
and Basil the blacksmith, and the lovely maiden in Norman cap
and kirtle, and Gabriel, whose coming, foretold by the beating of
the maiden's heart, completed the simple and kindly company.

It was evening when we passed through the toll-gate upon
the Ste. Foye Road and were within the walls. Truly the luxu-

i88i.] IMPRESSIONS OF QUEBEC.

rious homes, the fashionable promenade— all this is of the new life
that has come to shadowy old Quebec, and in it there is neither
the stern austerity of the primitive, warlike days of Champlain
nor the gorgeous and all but oriental splendor of the Intendant
Bigot, whose doings and sayings, power and magnificence, ty-
ranny and crimes are still told in whispers among the people
or chronicled in the pages of historian and romancer, more par-
ticularly in that celebrated novel which gives so true an insight
into early Quebec life — namely, the Chien d'Or, so called in allu-
sion to that figure transported from the ancient Philibert man-
sion to the new post-office.

And still the streets and squares of the fortress city are
peopled, to the mental eye, in solemn moonlights with hosts of
gay cavaliers and ladies bright. There the powdered locks and
plumed hats of the French cavaliers, the bonnets of the Highlan-
ders, the triple cocked' hat of the British officer of long ago are
intermingled with newer uniforms — newer, and yet old to us ;
and the beaux yeux of the Canadian lasses, and the smiles of the
grandes dames of the ancien regime of Louis the Magnificent,
seem in the pale ray of the moon to blend half sadly, half blithely,
and to disappear as the roar of cannon and the stormy voice of
war shake the city to its foundations, while without the walls
Huron and Algonquin, the dusky children of the soil, linger yet
in the outlying forests, the spoil and the prey of the more pow-
erful Iroquois. But long ago their wigwams vanished from the
hunting-grounds of their fathers, their red watch-fires were
quenched in the light of the new day, and the great prophecy of
their wise men, their powows, that pointed to homes in the land
of the setting sun has been literally fulfilled. Few, peaceful, and
inoffensive, a handful of their descendants still dwell in the little
Indian village of Loretto, lying near the celebrated Falls of
Montmorency. Our visit ended, the old gates are closed upon
us, the old walls, like a city of the mist, have vanished from our
sight. But its old-world memories, its varied store of mingled
legendary and historical reminiscences, of which the stranger
catches only the disjointed fragments, will fill many a twilight
or moonlight reverie, giving scope for the imagination and ma-
terial for thought.

416 PURGATORIO. [Dec.,

PURGATORIO.

CANTO TWENTY-FIRST.

TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.

IN the preceding Canto, Dante has been startled and astounded by a phenomenon thus
described :

" When suddenly — as some great thing were falling,
I felt the mountain tremble ! Such cold chained
My limbs as takes a man going forth to die.

Sure Delos was not with such violence riven
Before Latona found, wherein to lie,

A nest for nursing those twin eyes of heaven.
Then forth from every side went up the cry
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO 1 "...

This earthquake and this burst of exultation were inexplicable to Dante, and he comes into
this present Canto thirsting to know the reason of the trembling, and the meaning of that great
shout, which just arose from the rejoicing spirits. His eagerness for this information makes him
lament the haste with which they were obliged to traverse the cornice among the crowd of souls
prostrate in their penance. Statius explains to him that the trembling of the mountain is not
due to such natural causes as affect the earth ; but solely to that joy which is felt, not only in
heaven, but in this realm of penance also, " over one sinner that repenteth."

The natural thirst which never is allayed
Save by that water grace whereof to taste

The lowly woman of Samaria prayed
Troubled me now ; and vexed me too the haste

Wherewith o'er that packed shelf my way I made
Behind my Leader, pitying that just doom :

And lo ! as Luke describes how Christ once showed,
When freshly risen from the sepulchral gloom,

Unto those two disciples on the road,
So, coming after us appeared a shade,

Eyeing the crowd amid whose forms he trod ;
Nor took we note of him until he said

" My brothers, be with you the peace of God ! "

Virgil and I turned suddenly, and he

Returned the greeting with response benign,
Then added this : ' May peace thy portion be

In the blest council of Truth's Court Divine
Whose doom to endless exile bindeth me.'

He answered, matching Virgil's pace and mine,
' If ye are souls whom God disdains on high,

* Who led you thus far up his heavenly stairs ? '
* If thou regard,' my Teacher made reply,

1 88 1 .] PURGA TO RIO. 4 1 7

' What sword-marks from that Angel's hand he bears
Well mayst thou note he with good souls must reign.

But since that maid who spinneth day and night
Had not yet drawn for him the distaff's pile

Which Clotho portions for each living wight,
His spirit (thy sister and mine own), the while

He came above, could not ascend alone
By reason that it sees not in our style.

Hence from the ample gullet I was drawn
Of Hell to show unto this living man

The things of this place, and shall guide him on
To show him more things, far as my school can.

But if thou know'st, give us the reason why
The mountain trembled so just now, and all

Even to its watery base raised such a cry? '
Mine own desire his question did recall,

Threading it so that hope of the reply
Stayed my thirst somewhat. He thus broke the pause :

* 'Twas naught irregular : this holy Hill
Moved not from the religion of its laws

In way unusual ; It remaineth still
Free, subject ne'er to any altering cause ;

No reason else then why it trembled so
Save that Heaven s will some soul to heaven doth call :

Since never tempest, rain or hail or snow,
Dew nor hoar-frost upon this Mount doth fall

Above that short flight of three steps below.
No clouds come there, nor any wandering mist ;

No meteor's gleam, nor lightning, nor the bow,
Daughter of Thaumas (oft from East to West

Changing position). Vapors dry with heat
Pass not those steps whereof before I spake,

And on which Peter's Vicar plants his feet.
Lower down it haply more or less may shake ;

But from wind pent— how, I could not declare —
Within the earth, this part did never quake.

With us this mountain trembleth whensoe'er
Any soul riseth, feeling purified,

Or moves towards heaven, to enter heavenly fair!
The sole sign of a spirit's purity

Is when a will, all free to change abode,
Seizes the soul, assisting it to fly.
VOL. xxxiv. — 27

4 1 8 PURGA TORIO. [Dec.,

Justice Divine its first desire for good
Restraineth by the same propensity

For penance here that erst for sin it showed.
And I, who in this misery have lain

Five hundred years and more, felt only now
Free will that better threshold to obtain.

Hence was this earthquake : for this reason thou
Heardst thro' the mount the spirits in this glad strain

Glorify God : soon may he them invite ! '
These things he told us ; and as thirst's excess

Gives to the sense of drinking more delight
What good he gave me ne'er could I express.

* Then,' said the sapient guide, ' I fathom quite
The nature of the net which holds you here ;

How you escape it, whence this trembling rose,
And you exult so, plainly doth appear.

Now may it please thee unto me disclose
Who thou wast once? And tell the reason why

So many a century thou hast lain with those? '

STATIUS.

* When the good Titus, helped by the Most High,
Avenged those wounds from which the life-drops came

Which Judas sold ;' the Spirit thus made reply,
' Famous I was, by that most honored name *

And most enduring ; yet no faith had I.
So sweet my vocal genius was that Rome

To herself called me, meriting to wear
My temples myrtled, from Toulouse, my home :

Statius the people call me still down there.
Of Thebes, then great Achilles, did I sing ;

But on the way fell with my second load !

The sparks that kindled me, and were the spring
Of all the heat wherewith my genius glowed,

From the divine flame rose whence many more,
More than a thousand, have received their light !

I speak of that ^Eneid which of yore

A mother was, and nursed my gift to write :

I, without that, had scarce a drachma weighed ;

* Of Poet.

l88l.] PURGATORIO. 419

And to have lived on earth when Maro lived
Here, under ban, I willingly had stayed

Beyond my term, one sun more, unreceived.'

These words made Virgil turn towards me his head,

With silent look, that seemed to whisper, * Hush !'
But power to do, and will, are not one thing ;

For tears and laughter oft so fleetly rush
After emotions from whose force they spring,

In men most true they least obey the will :
I slightly smiled, as one who winketh might ;

Wherefore the Shadow ceased from speech ; but still
Gazed in mine eyes, where most one reads men right,

Then spake : ' Say, wherefore on thy face ere while
(So may thy great work to good end be brought !)

Did I perceive the lightning of a smile? '

Equally thus on both sides I am caught :

' Silence ! ' my Guide bade : ' Speak ! ' implores the Str^~ ;
Therefore I sigh — which Virgil understands.

" Answer then freely ; be thou not afraid
To speak," he said, " but all that he demands

With so much earnestness at once avow."
Then I : " Perchance thy wonder it did wake

To note my smiling: ancient Spirit! now
Thine admiration I would greater make.

He who thus guides mine eyes on high, know thou
Is Virgil's self — the source whence thou didst, take

Thy strength of old for singing those famed lays
Of men and gods. If other cause thou dream

The smile had, drop that error ! 'twas the praise
Implied in those words thou didst speak of him."

Already kneeling, he had fain embraced
My Teacher's feet, but he said : ' Brother, no !

Thou art a shadow, and a shadow see'st.'
Then the Shade rising : ' Now behold what glow

Of love towards thee my nature still doth warm !
When I forget our emptiness, to throw

Mine arms round thee as round a living form.'

END OF THE CANTO.

420 ' WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO? [Dec.,

WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO?

WHEN the Spaniards made the conquest of Mexico they
found among the Aztec population many religious practices
which resemble greatly our Christian rites. The same practices
have been found in Lower California and in a great measure in
Cozumel, about Yucatan. Great was the respect for the cross ;
honor and worship were given to it in the whole Mexican em-
pire. A temple, called the " Temple of the Holy Cross," was
considered as the oldest place of worship in the country. The
fact is related by Veytia in his Ancient History of Mexico.

Clavigero and Acosta relate that at the time of the conquest
were found monastic establishments for men and women equally
worthy of consideration for their purity and austerity of life. The
principal among those religious orders seems to have been that
of the god Quetzalcohuatl, of which we will speak more after-
wards, and that of the goddess Ceutcotl, or " Our Mother." All
the religious lived under the obedience of their respective supe-
riors, were occupied in serving the temple of their god, praying,
singing hymns, maintaining the perpetual fire, and other func-
tions of that kind. Their vows were either perpetual or only for
a certain time. The women were obliged to cut their hair at
their entrance into religion.

These religious held many and long fasts. One of them,
which lasted forty days, coincided with our Lent. But among
all the remarkable religious ceremonies there was a kind of bap-
tism which differed exceedingly little from the one practised in
the Catholic Church. Veytia, whose exactitude as a historian is
well known, expresses himself in the following manner on this
point: " It is known that through all the country was estab-
lished a kind of baptism which changed, as to the ceremonies, in
various places, yet remained the same everywhere in all essen-
tials— a bath of natural water, reciting over the baptized some
formulas, such as prayers and orations, imposing a name ; and all
this was considered as a rite of religion." All professed for this
baptism such a devotion and reverence that no one neglected to
receive it. It was considered as a new disposition to become
good, the means of escaping damnation and of gaining an imper*
ishable glory.

In Yucatan was commonly practised a sacred ablution, called
by the people ' the new birth," by the means of which they hoped

1 88 1.] WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO f 421

to gain the kingdom of heaven. This rite was administered
sometimes by infusion, at other times by immersion. In the
prayers which accompanied it let us note these expressions:
" This bath cleanses the faults which thou hast carried since the
womb of thy mother. ... I pray that these heavenly waters
may destroy and separate from thee all the evil and sin which
has been given to thee before the commencement of the world,
since we are all under its power, being all the sons of Chalchivit-
lycuc."

We know also that at the time of the conquest, in Mexico as
well as in Nicaragua and Peru, auricular confession was in prac-
tice. " No less worthy of remark," says Veytia, " was the cus-
tom they had established (in the Mexican dominions) of confess-
ing their sins to the priests, relating all that they considered
as faults, and accepting the penance which was imposed. . . ."
" It is worthy of notice," observes Prescott, " that the priests ad-
ministered the rites of confession and absolution. The secrets of
the confessional were looked upon as inviolable."

Among all the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, the one
which called most for attention was the consecration of bread and
wine, which resembled in a singular manner the holy sacrifice
of the Mass and Holy Communion as they are practised in the
Catholic Church. The ceremony was performed at the feast of
the god Huitzlipochtli, which coincided with our Easter. Hear
Father Sahagun: " Exactly and at the same time in which we
celebrate the Pasch the Mexicans celebrated theirs, after a fast
of forty days, during which they abstained from flesh-meat and
from the use of matrimony. A public penance preceded the
celebration of the feast. . . . The water was blessed solemnly, as
we Catholics are accustomed to do on Holy Saturday."

Veytia, whose historical exactitude we have already men-
tioned, says : " Nothing is better known than that the offerings
are made of bread and wine — that is, bread from flour without
fermentation, and that what was drunk was wine." He relates,
besides, that the Mexicans celebrated a solemn feast in honor of
the god of wheat, and that they celebrated it by forming the
body of that god into the shape of the human countenance, with
a pedestal made of flour unleavened mixed with certain herbs.
After having baked it, on the day of the feast they carried it in :
procession. Around the statue of the god they placed a great
quantity of particles of the same composition, which being
blessed by all the priests with certain formulas and ceremonies,
they believed that it was changed into the flesh of that god. At

422 WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO? [Dec.,

the end of the ceremony the bread was distributed to the peo-
ple. All, children and adults, men and women, rich and poor,
came to it, receiving with great veneration, humility, and tears,
saying that they were eating the flesh of their god.

As to the state of souls in the other world, Torquemada says
that their ideas were in a great measure in harmony with the true
doctrine of the church. The same thing is related by Prescott
in his History of Mexico, and by Father Gleason in his History of
the Catholic Church in California.

After reading the preceding statements, made by authors of
undoubted veracity, no good thinker can fail to find in those reli-
gious practices a singular resemblance with those practised in the
Catholic Church, and naturally he will be desirous of knowing
what can be their origin. Were they Christians from the com-
mencement, or were these simply the effect of hearts inclined to
religion ? Both opinions have had their adherents. In our hum-
ble opinion, nothing can explain satisfactorily such religious prac-
tices except the opinion that true faith was implanted among
the old Mexicans. The learned Father Gleason examines the va-
rious explanations given on the subject, and arrives at this con-
clusion, that " one of the apostles of our Redeemer, in his zeal to
fulfil the obligation of teaching the nations, visited these coun-
tries."

The arguments with which he proves his thesis are worthy of
consideration, and our intention is simply to copy them. He
amply demonstrates that the apostles, by themselves, fulfilled the
command of our Lord, " Go and teach all nations."

It is the opinion of the most learned doctors of the church
that this precept of our Lord was understood in a general and
not in a particular sense, as concerned their ministry. See these
words of Jesus Christ : " You shall be witnesses unto me in Je-
rusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the utter-
most parts of the earth" (Acts i. 8) ; and these other words
of St. Paul : " Verily, their sound hath gone forth into all the
earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world " (Rom.
x. 1 8). " Continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and im
movable from the hope of the gospel which you have heard,
which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven "
(Coloss. i. 23).

Among the Mexican hieroglyphs we find the record of a
great solar eclipse and of a terrific earthquake, which, after mak-
ing the difference which exists between the various systems of

i88i.] WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO? 423

chronology, seem to coincide with the wonders which happened
at the death of our Saviour.

From the same source we find that some years after these
events a renowned personage came into the country from the
north, represented as a white man, with a flowing beard, a large
mantle adorned with crosses spread over his shoulders, with his
head uncovered, his feet bare, and carrying a staff in his hand.
This was Quetzalcohuatl, the most notable personage of the Mexi-
can mythology. According to the universal tradition of the
country, he was a holy and venerable man, who taught the people
an admirable doctrine — the abolition of incontinence and the love
of virtue, the worship of an only God, the mysteries of the Holy
Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, his birth of a virgin
and his death upon a cross, the practice of confession, the annual
fast of forty days, religious continence, with all the religious ob-
servances mentioned above. Some Catholic historians have pro-
nounced Quetzalcohuatl an impostor, because the Spaniards found
in Mexico his name mixed with some idolatrous customs. But this
judgment, in our opinion, is too severe. There is nothing strange
that in the lapse of many centuries his doctrine might have been
adulterated and confounded amidst idolatrous practices. It is
rather to be wondered at that so many true dogmas have been
preserved. We must remark also that these traditions were not
confined to Mexico alone, but were greatly spread over all that part
of the two American continents wThere his name became known,
and which it is probable he visited, in which places both the
man and the doctrine which he taught preserved a most admira-
ble sameness.

In the national histories of Mexico it was affirmed that Quet-
zalcohuatl had promised that his followers, also white men, would
come to that country and would venerate the cross. Shortly be-
fore the arrival of Cortez there existed throughout the empire of
Mexico a common belief that the time had come when the fol-
lowers of Quetzalcohuatl should arrive in the country.

It remains now to be demonstrated that this Quetzalcohuatl
was no other than the apostle St. Thomas. We shall simply ex-
pose the reasons which render this opinion most probable, if not
absolutely certain.

I. In the Mexican and Peruvian annals the names of all re-
nowned personages were allegorical. Now, the name Quetzalco-
huatl signifies the serpent, royal peacock. The feathers of the royal
peacock were in great demand and of much use as head orna-

424 WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS /A MEXICO? [Dec.,

ments, and the serpent, in all ages, has been considered as the
symbol of wisdom. So with the two words they made one
which signifies eminent merit and wisdom, as Chrysostom and
Chrysologus signify the golden eloquence of both the saints who
received such names.

2. Moreover, Louis Bercero Tanco says that the word cohuatl
in the Nahuatl dialect signified by allegory a twin — in Spanish
mellizo or gemello — supposing that the serpent hatches always
two eggs at a time. Therefore, according to Bercero Tanco, the
name Quetzalcohuatl would signify the illustrious or glorious
Twin. Now, it is well known from the Gospel that St. Thomas
was called Didymus — that is, the Twin.

The historians of the country tell us that after Quetzalcohuatl
had for some time preached the faith in that territory he was
persecuted by Huemac, king of that place, who, after having
embraced the faith, had again apostatized and put to death many
of his disciples. On account of this persecution Quetzalcohuatl
fled to Cholula, and thence passed into Yucatan, where he left
four of his disciples in order to preach his doctrine. He tra-
velled afterwards through the neighboring islands, which from
that time have been known by the name of the islands where the
Twin hid himself.

The religious who formed the monastic establishments
found by the Spaniards at the time of the conquest were called
in the Aztec dialect the Twins, because they had been founded
by the illustrious Twin, in the same manner that the disciples of
St. Francis are called Franciscans, and those of St. Dominic, Do-
minicans.

3. In confirmation of this opinion Dr. Sigiienza wrote a book,
which is now lost, but from all we know of it from those who
saw it it was a most learned work, and in it he proved in the
most satisfactory manner that Quetzalcohuatl was the apostle St.
Thomas.

4. Father Kircher, in his Illustrated China, says that upon the
tomb of the apostle at Meliapore, in the Indies, was represented
a peacock carrying the cross in its bill. Also, Calanche and
Obalde assert positively that in various phonetic Mexican writ-
ings the true name of St. Thomas has been preserved.

5. Lastly, the character of Quetzalcohuatl, as we find it in the
legends of the country, corresponds perfectly with that of St.
Thomas. As we have seen above, they picture him as a venerable
man, carrying the cross on his garments, barefooted, with a staff
in his hand. He travelled through that country in the year 63 of

i88i.] WAS THE APOSTLE ST. THOMAS IN MEXICO? 425

our Lord, and was accompanied by many disciples. He was for
a time the high-priest of Tula, or Tollan, a city situated north of
the Mexican valley, and at one time the capital of the empire of
the Toltecs. From that city he sent his disciples through all the
neighboring provinces, in order to preach a new and admirable
law, whose principal points seem to have been the prohibition of
idolatry and of human sacrifices, the knowledge of the Holy
Trinity — a God in three divine persons, named in the Mexi-
can language Tzeutcatl, Huitzlipochtli, and Tonacoyohua — bap-
tism, confession, penance, fasting, etc. He suffered persecutions
for his religion ; some of his disciples were put to death. Banished
from the country, he went preaching the Gospel about the coasts
of the Pacific Ocean as far as Peru, as monuments show. The
Peruvian Virachoco and the Mexican Quetzalcohuatl are evidently
the same person, and both the Mexican hieroglyphs and the
Peruvian guipas attribute to him the same ideas and practices of
religion.

After some time he returned to Mexico ; but finding that his
followers, pressed by the persecution, had more or less forgotten
his institutions, he directed his steps towards other lands, pro-
phesying before leaving that his brethren in religion, white men,
would come one day into that country to rule the people and
preach the faith. Boturini assures us that the time announced
by the apostle, and mentioned in the Mexican hieroglyphs, was
the one in which the Christians arrived. We have already re-
marked that in Montezuma's time, on all the confines of Ana-
huac, prevailed a general feeling which accorded with the jour-
ney of Quetzalcohuatl and the full accomplishment of his promise.

Sahagun, who wrote at the time of the conquest, speaks of
that event, and assures us that at the arrival of the Spaniards on
the coast the natives went to meet them in canoes and prostrat-
ed themselves before them, believing that the god Quetzalco-
huatl, along with his followers, whom they expected every day,
had come to visit them. Boturini says that the year ceacatl was
the one announced by Quetzalcohuatl, and that in that very year
the Spaniards landed in Mexico.

Such are the arguments which tend to prove that St. Thomas
was in Mexico and announced the faith in those American coun-
tries. It might be asked by what route he left this continent.
Was it through Sumatra and the Philippine Islands, where it is
said he preached, or by some other route? We will only say
that there are good reasons to believe that before the fifth cen-

426 To THE BLESSED GIUSEPPE LABRE. [Dec.,

tury there existed relations of commerce between China and
Mexico, and also between India and this part of the world. The
testimonies of Plato, Theopornpus, Aristotle, Diodorus of Sicily,
and others, show plainly that before the establishment of Chris-
tianity America was known in Europe as an island covered with
forests and navigable rivers, more extensive than Libya and Asia,
from which it was easy to pass over to other islands, and from
these to the continent situated north of these islands.

We do not pretend that the arguments here given are incon-
trovertible. But it cannot be denied that they give to this opin-
ion such a degree of probability that, until stronger arguments
are produced against it, it cannot justly be underrated.

It is just also to mention that several of the arguments here
produced were some years ago published in Spanish by the Re-
vista Catolica of Las Vegas, New Mexico, in a learned disserta-
tion on the subject. We have not been able to examine the quo-
tations of a few authors mentioned in this little work, such as
Clavigero, Acosta, and Boturini ; we quote them on the authority
of the Revista Catolica. Torquemada is cited by several writers,
but we have not been able to procure his book. Prescott and
Gleason can be consulted with fruit in this study.

TO THE BLESSED GIUSEPPE LABRE.

POOR wanderer, I have loved thee from the first

When in Rome's countless churches everywhere

I saw thee painted, wan and pale but fair,

Worn with the long-endured hunger and thirst.

I loved thee ere I heard thy woes rehearsed —

Woes, but thou didst make of them a gain,

Coining eternal treasure from the pain

Of loath and wrong and all the world thinks worst.

They set no glory-halo round thy brow,

Only the paleness on the sore-stained cheek,

Only the ragged coat to show that thou

Wouldst put aside thy glory and be meek

Even in thy saintdom, if the ray

Of such gained glory could be put away.

1 88 1 .] NEW PUBLICA TIONS. 427

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE BEAUTIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ; or, Her Festivals and her
Rites and Ceremonies Popularly Explained. Translated and adapt-
ed from the German of the Rev. H. Himioben, by the Rev. F. J. Shad-
ier. With an introduction by the Rt. Rev. P. N. Lynch, D.D., Bi-
shop of Charleston, S, C. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet &
Co. 1881.

The condition of the Catholic Church in English-speaking countries
for more than two centuries was such that the splendor of Catholic wor-
ship had become almost unknown to many devout souls. Very often
the most that could be looked for was a Low Mass in a poor and humble
edifice and the administration of the sacraments. The great body of
Catholics, though carefully trained in the faith and zealous in professing
it — all the more zealous from the risks and sacrifices they were obliged
to undergo for that faith — had in .the course of a few generations lost the
ready intelligence of the grand functions of the church that is to be found
in the countries where Catholicity still remained the prevailing religion.
But the church, for English-speaking Catholics, has once more come out
from the catacombs, and her beautiful and instructive ceremonies are there-
fore an important object of curiosity and study, as well as of veneration.
Something has been done of late years by writers in this country and in
Ireland and England towards a popular exposition of Catholic ceremonies.
A most successful and satisfactory effort in this way was a recent publica-
tion, A History of the Mass and its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western
Church, by the Rev. John O'Brien, A.M., which deals with the liturgy of the
Mass from an historical point of view and with regard to its variations in
the different Christian rites, orthodox and schismatic.

In The Beauties of the Catholic Church Father Shadier has translated and
adapted an old and excellent German book to the needs of American read-
ers. This book had scarcely made its first appearance in Germany when it
became a favorite with all German Catholics, and it has so well maintained
its position that quite recently it appeared in its eighteenth edition. A
book that has for so long a time enjoyed the favor of the reading public
must possess peculiar superiority. Ample matter, thorough instruction,
clear, popular, and warm-hearted language — these constitute the charm
which so rapidly and so permanently gained for it the favor of Catholic
Germany. Canon Manzi, of Rome, recognized its worth, and made it avail-
able for his countrymen by translating it into Italian. The Abbe Goschler
rendered a similar service to France.

It is written in the alluring form of familiar conversations between a
village parish priest and some members of his flock, one of whom, a veri-
table doubting Thomas, by the way, who has travelled much and read much,
jauntily prances out now and then with the strongest of the usual ob-
jections heard against the Catholic ceremonial. The worthy and learned
priest in simple and straightforward language meets these objections. Still,

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

this book is not controversial, though convincing enough. In the thirteen
conversations, which are distinguished as chapters, the ceremonies con-
nected with the feasts of the church and with the administration of the sac-
raments are treated in an admirably clear and interesting manner, and are
accompanied by doctrinal exposition. The fourth chapter — that on Good
Friday and Holy Saturday — is one of the most beautiful expositions of its
subject to be found in the language. The book is made all the more con-
venient for use by an alphabetical index.

INSTITUTIONES THEOLOGIC^E IN USUM SCHOLARUM. Auctore J. Kleut-
gen, S.J. P. I. De Ipso Deo. Ratisb., Neo-Ebor., Cincinn.: Fr. Pustet.
1881. Vol. i. pp. 751.

Why has Father Kleutgen undertaken a new theological text-book
when we have such a number already ? Is it merely to do the same work
over again in another but similar form ? It appears not. What specific
object, then, does the author propose to himself ? He explains this in the
preface. The encyclical sEterni Patris caused him to reflect on and exam-
ine into the practical feasibility of making the Summa of St, Thomas the
text-book for classes in theology. Having arrived at the conclusion that,
taken just as it stands, it is not adapted for such a purpose, he was led to the
further conclusion that it is desirable to prepare a Summa or compendium
according to the plan and mind of St. Thomas, similar to the famous work
of Billuart. We have now in convenient shape and excellently printed
the first of the four parts of the compendium he has undertaken to com-
pose.

We are well acquainted with Father Kleutgen's Philosophie der Vorzcit
and his most able tract on Ontologism. His Theologie der Vorzeit we
have not read, but come in contact with him as a theologian now for the
first time. As a philosopher he is, remarkable for originality of thought
and a thorough knowledge of modern systems. In this new work we find
him distinguished from the general run of authors by his metaphysical way
of handling his topics, and his abundant use of that special knowledge
which he has shown in his Philosophie der Vorzeit. The utility of this new
compendium as a text-book in the ordinary course of theology will, after
it has been completed, be subjected to practical tests, and time will show
what degree of favor and success it will secure. Our first impression is
that it is too difficult for beginners, but is likely to prove extremely well
fitted for students in a more advanced course, and for all who, having been
through an elementary curriculum of study, desire to review their theology.

LEAVES FROM THE ANNALS OF THE SISTERS OF MERCY. In three volumes :
I. Ireland ; II. England, Scotland, and the Colonies ; III. America. Vol-
ume I., Ireland: containing Sketches of the Convents established by
the Holy Foundress and their earlier Developments. By a Member of
the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catherine McAuley, Life of
St. Alphonsus, etc. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.
1881.

December 12, 1831, Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of
Mercy, made her religious profession. The fiftieth anniversary of that in-
teresting event is celebrated by the publication of this first volume of the

1 88 1 .] NEW PUB Lie A TIONS. 429

Annals of the sisterhood, and a most interesting volume it is. Somewhere
in the earlier pages the author speaks of the work being intended espe-
cially for the Sisters themselves, but certainly it is pleasant as well as in-
structive reading for any one. This first volume opens with a rapid sketch
of Mother McAuley's early life — her later life is found through all the
pages of the volume in the work of establishing and perfecting the new
sisterhood — and then details the progress which the new order made in Ire-
land, the obstacles it met with, and its final complete success. The pages
are full of anecdote, of sage reflections, and occasionally most amusing in-
cidents are recorded — as, for example, the reception which the " movin'
nuns," as the Sisters of Mercy were popularly called, met with from the
poor people of Charleville, in the County Cork : " ' Johnny, avic,' said a
venerable matron, whose comely countenance was caressed by snow-white
ruffles of enormous dimensions, 'get up an' go near the blessed nuns.
Sure if ye only stand in their shadow, alanna, ye'll never get the sickness
that's goin' — the Lord betune us an' all harm, praises to his holy name.' "
And excellent grounds had the poor for loving and venerating these angelic
women who brought spiritual and physical comfort to them in their great
distress.

Within the fifty years since the beginning of the Order at Dublin the
Sisters of Mercy have spread out into Ireland, Great Britain, New Zealand,
and other British colonies, while in the United States they count their
establishments by the hundred — convents, hospitals, boarding-schools, par-
ish schools, reformatories, and industrial schools : one more telling evidence
that the Catholic Church is able to provide most useful employment for the
charity of Christian women.

THE POETS AND POETRY OF IRELAND. With Historical and Critical Essays
and Notes. By Alfred M. Williams. Boston : James R. Osgood & Co.
1881.

It is often forgotten that until the last century English was a foreign and
almost unknown tongue to the greater part of the Irish people, and that
even the later really Irish poetry— developed, it is true, during a period of
almost constant wars, disasters, and consequent poverty — was very differ-
ent from anything English. What this poetry, and Irish literature in
general, might have become under a happier political condition it is, of
course, useless to discuss. The Gaelic, though a language of masculine
and majestic phraseology, is also, with true Keltic inconsistency, as some
critics might be tempted to say, very agile, and it is apt for rhyme and
alliteration. And, by the way, it has been maintained, and with plausible
enough arguments, too, that rhyme is of Gaelic origin, and that it was in-
troduced by Irish monks into the mediaeval Latin hymnology, and from
that was naturalized in the vernacular languages of Europe.

The more important, because less known, poems in this new anthology
of Irish poetry are those which Mr. Williams has classed under the heads
of " The Bards," " The Hedge-Poets," and " The Street Ballads." Following
these come poems, among others, of Moore, Callanan, Banim, Gerald Griffin,
Frances Browne, Thomas Davis, James Clarence Mangan, Allingham, Au-
brey de Vere, Irwin, Ferguson, Kickham, Denis Florence MacCarthy, and
Mr. Graves — the last well known for his remarkable contributions of late to

430 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec.,

the London Spectator. The essays on the bards and their lineal literary
descendants — like their country, fallen in fame and fortune — the story-tellers,
hedge-poets, and street-singers, are extremely interesting and form one of
the most valuable parts of this excellent volume. Readers of THE CATHO-
LIC WORLD will recognize in these essays much of what Mr. Williams has
contributed to its pages in a series of articles extending over the last two
years. The translations of the bardic poetry are from Sir Samuel Fergu-
son, W. M. Hennessy, Mangan, Hector MacNeill, Edward Walshe, and
others.

Mr. Williams has well appreciated the Gaelic spirit and method, though
of course he has had to give in an English dress the Gaelic poems with
which his volume opens. Mr. Williams is not an .Irishman, but a busy New
England journalist who was in Ireland during the Fenian outbreak as cor-
respondent of the New York Tribune, and has since given a good deal of
his leisure to the study of Irish poetry. In making his selection his aim
has been, he says, "to make it as completely national as possible, excluding
everything not distinctively Irish in theme or dialect " ; and, acting on this
idea, he has omitted Swift, Goldsmith, and many later poets whom every one
will miss, and has, as we think, with excellent judgment, given but little of
Moore. Why, then, find space for Ferguson's poem, " The Widow's Cloak,"
which certainly is not Irish in any sense, though by an Irishman who has
done much to illustrate the literature of his country ? It is a fulsome and,
on the part of the distinguished Irish poet, an uncalled-for tribute to the
reigning British sovereign — a woman whose stolid and hateful attitude to-
wards the Irish people has been sharply criticised by Englishmen even.

Mr. Williams is to be congratulated on the general excellence of his
collection. His essays and his division of matter will no doubt be the sug-
gestion of still further, though perhaps hardly more successful, efforts in
the same direction. In this handy volume is contained enough to furnish
any one a correct idea of the spirit of the Irish poetry of the last three or
four centuries.

MAIDENS OF HALLOWED NAMES. College of the Sacred Heart (Jesuit
House of Studies), Woodstock, Md. 1881.

There is nothing so attractive in the life of St. Jerome as the kind and
affectionate manner in which he undertook the education of his spiritual
daughter, the illustrious young Roman maiden, Eustochium. It is after
his example that the authors of the neat little volume before us have found
time amid their severe studies in science and theology to prepare and send
it forth, intended, as the preface says, " almost exclusively for young la-
dies," meaning evidently by this term all young girls old enough and sen-
sible enough to enjoy such a book, as well as those who are more strictly
entitled to the appellation. It contains thirteen lives of well-known fe-
male saints, with some introductory and concluding remarks and a few
practices of devotion. The fact that eight thousand copies have been al-
ready sold indicates that it finds favor with the youthful feminine readers
to whom it is addressed ; and this is really the only sure test of success in
such an attempt.

"Young ladies " are a class of auditors difficult to please, especially in

1 88 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 43 1

the matter of religious instruction, whether oral or written, given formally
or in the shape of stories, historical or fictitious. It is well worth the trou-
ble of endeavoring to please, and by pleasing to benefit their minds and
hearts. The treasures of learning, of intellect, of eloquence, and of the rhe-
torical and poetic art are well employed in a work such as St. Jerome did not
disdain to undertake for the incomparable virgin Eustochium. And they
are well appreciated by the young people, in proportion to their adapta-
tion to various ages and grades of intelligence and culture among them, of
which the almost idolatry of Chateaubriand by the youth of France is one
instance in proof.

Unfortunately, the majority of young people and children, of both
sexes, though fastidious in respect of a more wholesome juvenile literature,
are greedy of romantic fiction and not generally discriminating in their
taste. Consequently they are exposed to incur great intellectual and
moral damage from indulgence in this dangerous luxury. The best pre-
ventive of this mischief is to furnish them with the romantic realities of
history and biography, and with other palatable and yet wholesome food,
not for the intellect alone, but for the imagination and the heart also.

What is more romantic and captivating than certain portions of Catho-
lic history and biography, when narrated, not drily or with prosy didactic
comments, like an intellectual Scotch porridge with milk which is fre-
quently skimmed and sometimes sour, but in the charming style of which
some writers possess the secret ? What can compare with the life of St.
Agnes, St. Genevieve, Joan of Arc, St. Teresa, or John Sobieski ? What
historic pictures surpass those of Montalembert and Cardinal Newman ?
These latter are, indeed, only suitable for those who are already grown, or
nearly so, out of their juvenile age. But the same or similar subjects can
be adapted to younger readers. If we restrict our attention to feminine
characters alone, there are many, unknown as yet to any but close readers
of history, and these not all nuns or unmarried women, some of whom
have figured in great events, waiting for the limners of their portraits and
the narrators of their lives. The mine from which some specimens have
been taken in Maidens of Hallowed Names is an extensive one with many
rich shafts unworked, inviting further labor from the same workmen and
others also.

THE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION,
JOINT FOUNDRESS AND FIRST SUPERIOR OF THE URSULINES OF QUEBEC.
By a Religious of the Ursuline Community, Blackrock, Cork. Dublin :
James Duffy & Sons. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This is, apart from its religious atmosphere, one of the most interesting
and well-written biographies of late years. Of course, to the Ursulines
and the thousands of persons who have especial love for this admirable
order the book has a particular value. But, as throwing side-lights on early
Canadian history, it has all the interest of those charming memoirs which
have so recently made many of us revise our impressions of French his-
tory. The usual religious biographer often falls into the temptation of
adopting a goody-goody style which sometimes savors of cant, but the re-
ligious who gives us this excellent biography has evidently more qualifica-
tions for the post of biographer than those merely of love and reverence

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 1881.

for the subject of her biography. There are some minor inaccuracies —
principally verbal slips which would pass unnoticed by anybody not to the
" manner born " on American soil. The letters of Mother Mary are full of
interest and of a naive charm which the biographer at times very appro-
priately reproduces in the narrative.

TUTTI-FRUTTI. A Book of Child Songs. By Laura Ledyard and W. T.
Peters. Designs by D. Clinton Peters. Cover and title-page by A.
Brennan. New York : George W. Harlan. 1881.

A very daintily illustrated quarto of thirty-four pages of baby poetry,
each page having a quaint illustration. The design of the cover is particu-
larly striking, though delicate and tasteful. If only the youngsters should
appreciate all this art as well as some of their elders do, the work would
be a successful book with children.

SUNDAY EVENINGS AT LORETTO. By M. G. R. Dublin : M. & S. Eaton. 1881.

A QUARTER OF AN HOUR'S SOLITUDE. Take and read. Read and reflect. Baltimore : John
B. Piet. 1881.

LIFE OF ST. FREDERICK, BISHOP AND MARTYR. By Frederick G. Maples, Missionary-aposto-
lic. London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

THE EXPLANATORY CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, for the use of children in Catholic
schools of the United States. Boston : 1881.

ANGLICAN JURISDICTION: is IT VALID ? A letter to a friend. By J. D. Breen, O.S.B., au-
thor of Anglican Orders : are they Valid ? London : Burns & Gates. 1880.

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES. Transmitted to the
Legislature January 20, 1881. Albany : Weed, Parsons & Company, Printers.

MANUAL FOR COMMUNION, containing Meditations and Prayers in the form of a retreat before
First Communion, adapted to the use of all classes of persons. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son.
1881.

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD. By Sister Mary Francis
Clare. London : Burns & Gates, 17 Portman Street; Dublin : Gill & Son, 50 Upper Sack-
ville Street. 1881.

PROVE ALL THINGS, HOLD FAST TO THAT WHICH is GOOD. A letter to the parishioners of
Great Yarmouth on his reception into the Catholic Church. By J. G. Sutcliffe, M.A.
London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

ORIGINAL, SHORT, AND PRACTICAL SERMONS, for every Sunday of the Ecclesiastical Year.
Three Sermons for every Sunday. By F. X. Weninger, S.J., Doctor of Theology. Cin-
cinnati: C. J. H. Lowen. 1881.

THE THEORY OF OUR NATIONAL EXISTENCE, AS SHOWN BY THE ACTION OF THE GOVERN-
MENT OF THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1861. John C. Hurd, LL D., Author of the Law of
Freedom and Bondage in the United States. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1881.

FOR IRELAND. Discourse pronounced in the Church of the Madeleine, in Paris, on the i8th of
April, 1880. By the Rev. P. Monsabre, of the Order of Preachers. Translated from the
French by J. P. Leonard, by special permission. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1881.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Dr. H. von
Hoist, professor at the University of Freiburg. Translated from the German by John J.
Lalor and Paul Shorey. 1846-1850. Annexation of Texas-Compromise of 1850. Chicago:
Callaghan & Co. 1881.

OUR PRIMATES. Sermon preached in St. Peter's Church, Drogheda, by the Rt. Rev. Patrick
F. Moran, D.D., Bishop of Ossory, on the Second Centenary of the Primate Oliver Plun-
ket's Death for the Faith at Tyburn, the nth July, 1881. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son, 50
Upper Sackville Street. 1881.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIV. JANUARY, 1882. No. 202.

THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN.

THIRTY-SEVEN years ago— the soth day of May, 1844— Ireland
saw her idolized Liberator incarcerated in the city prison of
Dublin, officially known as Richmond Bridewell, situated on the
South Circular Road within five minutes' walk of Mount Jerome
(Protestant) Cemetery— wherein repose the remains of Thomas
Davis, the first of Ireland's poets during the last half-century.
O'Connell was sentenced to an imprisonment of twelve months
and to pay a heavy fine. His offence was a misdemeanor. The
misdemeanor was that he proposed to hold a great meeting on
the plain of Clontarf — the field from which " Brien drove the
Dane" in the year 1014 — and there protest against English mis-
rule. The whole country was aroused. The people came from
the north and south ; but the authorities took possession of the
historic field, and therefore no meeting was held. On the 6th of
September, 1844, O'Connell was liberated on reversal of judg-
ment on appeal to the House of Lords. It was on this occasion
that the eminent jurist, Lord Denman, characterized O'Connell's
conviction as " a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The august
prisoner was allowed to see his friends almost daily, and enjoyed
the privileges of the governor's apartments.* To the day of his
death he bitterly referred to " his hundred days," as he called the
time he was in prison.

During the late summer of 1848 John Martin, now dead, and
Kevin Izod O'Doherty, now an esteemed member of the medical

* Mr. Parnell, on the contrary, is shut up in a common cell, No. 3.
Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1882.

434 ' ' THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN. [Jan.,

profession in Australia and the husband of the famed poetess. of
the Dublin Nation, " Eva " — nte Kelly — were prisoners in Rich-
mond Bridewell, each under sentence of ten years for " felonious
publications." At the end of the same year, pending their ap-
peal from the sentence pronounced upon them at Clonmel assizes
in October, William Smith O'Brien, T. F. Meagher, T. B. Mc-
Manus, and Patrick O'Donoghue were prisoners there.* On
the 5th of July, iS49,*Messrs. O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and
O'Donoghue were informed that their sentences had been com-
muted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land, whither they
were conveyed from the Richmond Bridewell on board of
H.M.S. Swift, then lying at Dunleary, the place which Dublin
flunkies had in 1821 named Kingstown in honor of George IV.'s
visit in that year.

The next state prisoner of importance confined in Richmond
Bridewell was the Fenian " Head Centre," James Stephens, who,
however, escaped from his jail on the morning of the 24th of
November, 1865.

This now famous prison was built in 1813, and stands in one
of the most healthful parts of the city. It is a circular building,
with small yards within attached to each of the wings. These
wings are divided into adults' and boys' departments for felonies
and for misdemeanors. It has a large garden attached to it on
the west. Outside of the jail proper there is an open space
twenty feet wide, which is surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet
high. In point of security, before the Model Prison f of Mount-
joy was erected it was considered the first in Ireland. A small
tower and weathervane crowns the centre of the front building,
under the cornice of which is cut in the stone the words, " Cease
to do evil ; learn to do well." The entrance is through the outer
wall and a double- doored porch or lodge, which is exteriorly a
massive door of iron and wood, interiorly a barred door, each
bar about six inches thick. Over the entrance, upon a broad, oval
shield, are the arms of the city — three towers. The motto is :
" Obedientia Civum ; Urbis Felicitas." This was the prison of
Daniel O'Connell thirty-seven years ago.

About two miles due west from the general post-office of

* Their sentence is here reproduced for remembrance: "The sentence of the court is that
you and each of you be brought back to the place from whence you came, and from thence
be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck until you
are dead, AND YOUR BODY TO BE DIVIDED INTO FOUR PARTS, to be disposed of as her ma-
jesty may think fit ; and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul " (State Trials, Clonmel, Tip-
perary, Commission, October, 1848).

t Prisons for persons sentenced to seven years and over.

1 882.] THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN. 435

Dublin, at the extreme limit of the city, is the small village of
Kilmainhara, which modern improvements have placed partly in
the city and partly in the county. The part in the city is known
as Old Kilmainham, the other as New Kilmainham. There are
few places in the vicinity of the ancient city so conspicuous in
its annals, especially in those relating1 to religion. As early as
1174 Strongbow founded the priory of Knights Templars a few
hundred yards east of the present jail, and upon the site of which
was built in 1680 the present Royal Hospital for disabled sol-
diers— a small imitation of the hospital at Chelsea, England.
The priory passed through many trials from its foundation to its
translation to the Knights Hospitallers in the year 1314; nor was
its subsequent career up to its suppression in 1541 by Henry
VIII. any less stormy.

For three hundred and sixty-seven years — from 1174 to 1541 —
the prior of Kilmainham exercised an influence over religious and
lay matters .that at this day appears phenomenal. We find the
Archbishop of Armagh, on " an invitation given by King Edward,
1 promulgating ' the privileges of his see in the presence of the
lord chief-justice, the prior of Kilmainham, and the other peers
who were in attendance." The two former, however, opposed him.
Arriving at Drogheda, the archbishop' excommunicated all who
resisted him. Prior Keating, falling sick the same year, sent mes-
sengers to the Archbishop of Armagh to obtain absolution. In
the meantime the prior died. Until it was known that Keating
had died penitent, and until his friends had promised that they
would never question his primacy, the Archbishop of Armagh re-
fused him .Christian burial. The friends of the prior made the re-
quired promise, the prior was' absolved, and his body was then
interred with the rites of religion. This is an episode of the
controversy between the sees of Armagh and Dublin as to the
right of precedence.

The Templars of Kilmainham, like their brothers on the Conti-
nent, became the objects of suspicion, as well as, perhaps, of envy
for the wealth which they possessed. The prior had lands not
only in Dublin, but in Galway and Meath. According to a spe-
cial decree, he was elected with the consent of the king, and, after
1314, of the grand master of Rhodes also, and it was required
that he should be an Englishman.* This ordinance was confirm-
ed by a more solemn enactment in the following year, 1495, in the
famous Poynings' law. Poynings' law, by the way, also decreed

* Archdall, Monasticon Hibernicum.

436 THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN. [Jan.,

that twenty-six shillings and eightpence should be paid as a tax
on every one hundred and twenty acres of ecclesiastical land.*

The King of England, like his cousin of France, was active
against the Templars, and he accordingly issued orders to his jus-
ticiary at Dublin to have them seized in Ireland on the same day
as in England. They were kept in honorable custody for three
years, and at last had a trial at Dublin, where, whether guilty or
not, they soon found their condemnation. Their annihilation as a
religious body was resolved on, and they were thrust into mon-
asteries. In the year 1314 the Hospitallers, or Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem, acquired possession, and retained it until the
time of that august " Reformer/' Henry VIILf

In 1446 Thomas Fitzgerald, prior of Kilmainham, having ac-
cused James Butler, Earl of Ormond, of treason, offered a trial
by combat at Smithfield, about a mile northeast of the priory,
on the north bank of the Liffey. The king took up the quarrel,
and consequently the bellicose prior and the proud earl did not
fight.

Perhaps the most prominent, as he certainly was the most
audacious and pugnacious, of all who held the office of prior was
Sir James Keating, who, as early as 1482, was accused of steal-
ing property of the priory. He was excommunicated by the
grand master of Rhodes. He had heard, however, of his degra-
dation before his successor appeared. He had him apprehended,
and took the deeds confirmatory of the appointment from him
and sent him a prisoner to a priory at Kilsaran, County Louth,
where the commandery took charge of the unfortunate man,
whose name was Lomley. The king — Henry VII. — and the
grand master fell into a towering'rage as soon as they heard of
this. But Keating gave not the least attention to them. They
issued orders to degrade him from his office, but for answer he
clapped irons on the person of Lomley, who was held a prisoner
in spite of all the Archbishop of Armagh could do. During the
reign of Henry VII. a large body of the Irish Pale were in fa-
vor of the House of York, and among them the restless Keating.
Perhaps the king had an inkling of the priors unfriendliness,
when with the grand master of Rhodes he deposed him. The
leader of the York faction was the redoubtable Earl of Kildare.J
The king, suspecting the earl's loyalty, sent for him, as if to
consult on business. The Geraldine was not so easily caught.

* Leland. f Bowling's Annals.

% This is one of the titles of the present Duke of Leinster, and dates from 1316. The first
and oldest dignity of this respected Irish family is Baron of Offaly, 1205.

i882.] THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN. 437

The Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, the Bishop of Meath,
four abbots, and a prior drew up a memorial representing that the
earl's presence was necessary to the well-bqing of the state. In
the meantime Prior Keating and others were busily engaged in
hatching the Lambert Simnel conspiracy. When Lambert Sim-
nel landed in Ireland the Archbishop of Dublin and the Bishops
of Kildare and Meath, as well as Prior Keating, favored the rebel-
lion. On the reconciliation of the Earl of Kildare, all the lords,
spiritual and temporal, who had taken part in this movement were
pardoned, even Thomas Plunket, Chief-Justice of the Common
Pleas, with the exception of the unfortunate prior of Kilmainham.
The earl used all efforts to accomplish the pardon of Keating,
but he failed. Stripped of his possessions, Keating died in pov-
erty ; but he has left behind as romantic a history as ever such an
officer did leave, and he gave the priory of which he was so long
ruler, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, a notoriety
that neither the priories at Conal, Corbally, or Newtown envied ;
but they were, of course, inferior in rank to that of Kilmainham,
which was, in age, wealth, and dignity, the first in Ireland.

The valley of the Liffey is on the north, that of the Cammock
on the south, side of Kilmainham Jail. The bridge connecting
the south side with the ridge upon which Kilmainham stands, and
under which the Cammock runs brawling from its birth-place*
to the Liffey, was built in 1578 by Sir Henry Sidney. Upon the
southwest corner of the ridge, facing this bridge, stands the
County Sessions Court ; and west of this latter building, and con-
nected with it, is the gloomy granite jail itself. It is built upon
the southern side of the declivity, where its foundation-walls
can be seen as one passes to the west along the low ground, in
the centre of which runs the Cammock, and which serves as a
sort of kitchen-garden and orchard. It is damp and old-fash-
ioned, and looked upon with awe by the people on account of
its solemn, massive exterior. From its second story projects a
funereal iron balcony, in the centre of which is an iron grat-
ing known to the initiated as the trap, for hanging criminals, f
The huge prison has so harrowing an appearance that it used
to be nothing uncommon to see men and women, boys and girls,
make the sign of the cross, inaudibly repeating the words : " May

* This river is called the Sladeat Glen Saggard, some seven to nine miles from Kilmainham.
It flows through the rich plain of Clondalkin, and, after turning several large mills in the south-
ern vicinity of the city, falls into the Liffey, under the name of the Cammock River, near the Roy-
al Hospital.

t It is remarkable, though true, that in neither the county nor city of Dublin has there been
an execution for murder since the execution of Delahunt in 1841.

438 THE ENGLISH PRISONS OF DUBLIN. [Jan.,

God in his mercy keep me and all belonging- to me from all
harm ! Amen," as they passed in view of the " black trap " upon
which the victims— deserving or not — of English law had met

their fate.

O'Connell's labors abolished the infamous imposition of tithes
to uphold a worthless Protestant oligarchy. He did more than
any one .person or a dozen to carry Catholic Emancipation in
1829. He sowed the seed for a repeal of the Union — " the union
of the shark with its prey " — and spent one hundred days in
Richmond Bridewell for so doing. Parnell, when the loud cry
of hungry tenants in Western Ireland arose to heaven for bread,

"was the thunder,.his the avenging rod,
The wrath, the delegated voice of God,
Which shook "

the greedy, grasping system of Irish landlordism, and branded
it, in the face of the Christian world, as the curse of the fair and
fruitful land ; and for so doing and saying he was immured in
Kilmainham Jail. And this under a minister whose eloquence
some years ago drew tears of pity for the political prisoners of
Naples, whose admiration for Garibaldi was unbounded, and who
was very ardent in declaring his sympathy with what were sup-
posed to be the aspirations of our own people of the South dur-
ing the Civil War!

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 439

A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES.

CHRISTMAS dramas are said to owe their origin to St. Francis
of Assisi. Before his death he celebrated the sacred Birth-night
in the woods, where a stable had been prepared with an ox and
an ass, and a crib for an altar. A great number of people came
down from the mountains, singing joyful hymns and bearing
torches in their hands ; for it was not fitting that a night that had
given light to the whole world should be shrouded in darkness.
St. Francis, who loved to associate all nature with his ministry,
was filled with joy. He officiated at the Mass as deacon. He
sang the Gospel, and then preached in a dramatic manner on the
birth of Christ. When he spoke of the Lamb of God he was
filled with a kind of divine frenzy and imitated the plaintive cry
of the sacrificial lamb; and when he pronounced the sweet name
of Jesus it was as if the taste of honey were on his lips. One soul
before the rural altar that night, with purer eyes than the rest,
saw the Divine Babe, radiant with eternal beauty, lying in the
manger.

The order of St. Francis has always been noted for its devo-
tion to the Holy Infancy. St. Anthony of Padua, the favorite
saint of the Italians and Spanish, is usually represented with the
Holy Child in his arms. It was Fra Jacopone di Todi who wrote
the Stabat Mater speciosa — the Stabat of the Manger :

" By the humble manger standing,
Joy her tender breast expanding,
The fair Mother watched her Child."

And the touching practice of erecting a manger at Christmas
time has been perpetuated by the Franciscans, particularly in
Italy. You see the Infant on the straw between the two beasts
of burden, Mary and Joseph bending near, the shepherds kneeling
in adoration, angels hovering above singing the Gloria in excelsis,
and in the distance the Magi with their long caravan winding
through the defiles of the mountains. Those who have visited
the Ara Coeli at Rome at this season will remember the beautiful
Presepio entirely occupying one of the side chapels. This church
stands on the spot where the Emperor Augustus had the cele-
brated vision of the Virgin standing in a luminous circle in the

440 A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

heavens with the Child Jesus in her arms, and heard a voice ex-
claim : " Hac ara Filii Dei"— This is the altar of the Son of God.
The devotion of St. Francis to the Holy Infancy made it particu-
larly appropriate that this edifice should be given to his order,
which was done by Pope Innocent IV. in 1252, twenty-six years
after the saint's death. In this picturesque old church you see a
little temple on the spot where the emperor had the vision of the
Incarnate Word. At Christmas time crowds come to see the
Presepio and hear the children make their speeches (for it is the
feast ^of Holy Childhood) at the end of one of the aisles, just as
Hans Christian Andersen makes little Antonio do in The Impro-
visatore, standing on a carpeted table to repeat what he had
learned about the beauty of the Child Jesus and the Bleeding
Heart of the Madonna. In this -church is kept the holy Bam-
bino, carved from a tree that once grew on Mt. Olivet

" Among the sad gray olives where our Lord was sold."

At Christmas time this miraculous image is placed in the scenic
recess of the Presepio, and before the Flight into Egypt takes
place the superior of the Franciscans comes forth at the head of
his friars, bearing the holy Bambino, and, standing in front of the
church at the top of the one hundred and twenty-four marble
steps, gives his blessing to the immense crowd that covers the
sides of the Capitoline Hill.

The custom of erecting the manger was carried to other lands.
The Creche became common in France. The Nativity used to be
represented by figures of colored wax at one end of the bridge of
the Hotel Dieu at Paris on the 25th of December, as well as in
other cities. In Flanders it was called the Betliem. In Spain,
to this day, every household has its manger, and booths are erect-
ed on the public squares for the sale of shepherds, Magi, angels,
the Holy Family, and all the accessories.

Christmas dramas, too, were everywhere popularized by the
Franciscans. Sometimes they merely depicted the Scriptural
account of the Nativity. Others embodied ancient traditions,
and even the legends and pious imaginings of those who tried to
picture to themselves all the discomforts and supernatural occur-
rences at Bethlehem. One of these old mediaeval plays makes St.
Joseph go to a blacksmith's to beg a little fire, but he is regarded
with suspicion and ordered away :

" Fuiez d'icy, sire vilains,
De mal talant estez touz plains.
Je croy que vous estez espic "

i882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 441

— " Away from here, sirrah, full of evil designs as you are ! I be-
lieve you are a thief," cries the smith. St. Joseph tries to ap-
pease him. He makes known their destitute condition, and says
they have not even a light. " For poor enough we are, and fa-
tigued, and in trouble " :

" Assez avons de povrete,
Et de paine, et de travaill."

The blacksmith threatens him, and says none of his fire shall he
have unless he will carry it away in his mantle. St. Joseph ac-
cepts the offer :

" Je le veult bien certaynement,
Sy vous plaist icy m'en donnez."

The blacksmith throws the fire into his mantle, and, seeing the old
man carry it away without burning his garments, feels he is under
the divine protection. He hurries to overtake him and beg his
pardon.

St. Joseph having returned to the cave with the fire, Mary
asks him to go in search of Dame Honestasse. He obeys. Dame
Honestasse is a poor old woman who has two stumps only for
hands. She holds them up to show that she can be of no use.
St. Joseph, beside himself with anxiety, insists, and the dame fol-
lows him, saying to herself:

" C'est charite a Dieu plaisans
Aidier auls povres passans "

— " It is charity pleasing to God to aid poor passers-by."
When they arrive they find the Child Jesus born. Dame Hon-
estasse hastens to take him, and as she extends her arms they
lengthen, hands grow out, and fingers are formed. She recog-
nizes the promised Messias, and falls down to adore him. While
aiding to wrap the Child in swaddling-clothes the angels above
sing the Veni Creator, and statues of the false gods are seen to
fall down along the highways and in the towns. This mystery
begins with a sermon and ends with the Te Deum.

Sometimes a Franciscan is made to sing the Magnificat in the
stable of Bethlehem — another amusing anachronism, probably a
reminiscence of the Franciscan origin of these plays, and similar
to that of the old painters who represent the mediaeval saints as
figuring in Bible scenes, perhaps to show that these scenes be-
long not to the past alone, but to all time, at least in their

442 , A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

effects. We find this custom referred to in an amusing old
Christmas carol of Gascony :

" Un Capucin scarrabillat
Bo canta, lou Magnificat.
Penden qu'es coumposo la noto
Jousep lou prend per la caloto :

' Chut ! chut ! chut ! chut !
L'anfan dort, pas tant de brut ! ' " *

Sometimes the animal world takes part in these dramas, and
is made to hold a curious dialogue similar to that to be seen
painted on the walls of an old church in Sussex, England, where
the animals have scrolls issuing from their mouths concerning
the Nativity. A cock f crows : " Christus natus hodie ! " An ox
lows: "Ubi? ubi f '" A sheep bleats reply : " In Bethlehem" A
drake quacks: "Quando? qiiando?" A raven croaks: "In hac
node."

This may appear somewhat grotesque to modern eyes, but
the people took all kinds of liberties at the divine manger with-
out any idea of irreverence. Holy Mother Church does not
frown on the naive extravagances of her children — " enfants sou-
mis qui se permettent toute espece de niches sur les genoux de
leur Mere," as M. Sainte-Beuve says.

Christmas plays, composed by the peasants of Bigorre and
Beam, are still represented here and there in the Pyrenees,
though by no means frequently. They used to be sometimes
performed on the village square, but are now confined to rural
churches, and take place at, or after, the midnight Mass. Those
in the Gascon tongue are of inimitable religious simplicity,
quite lost in a translation. They have, however, some touches
of poetry, and are always expressive of fervent piety. And
the solemnity of the hour and place, the religious earnestness
of the rustic actors, and the rude music of the mountains, all
combine to produce a certain effect, even on the cultivated
spectator, if one there happens to be. But neither the dramas

* " A Capuchin quite wide awake
Prepares to sing Magnificat.
While loud he hums to pitch the note,
St. Joseph grasps him by the coat :

' Hush ! hush ! The Holy Child 's asleep.
Wake him not lest he should weep ! ' "
t " Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long."

— SHAKSPERE.

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 443

themselves, nor the acting, nor the costumes, nor the scenery
have any artistic merit, as in the Passion Play of the Tyrol.
They are merely the peasant's conception of the Nativity,
but, such as they are, they speak forcibly to a pastoral people,
many of whom are shepherds and herdsmen who live on the
rough mountain sides, familiar with winds and tempests, and ac-
customed to lone night-watches beneath the stars that look down
on the Cave of the Incarnation at Bethlehem.

One of the most complete of these dramas has been described
by M. C6nac-Moncaut, who supposes it to have come down from
the middle ages, though it has evidently undergone from age to
age many changes in the words and music. The performance
takes place in the church, which is crowded with peasants in the
garb of these mountains. The men wear their capes Bigorraises —
the hirsuta Bigerrica palla of the time of Venantius Fortunatus.
The women have on white or scarlet capulets, otherwise called
sags — a word evidently derived from the Latin sagum ; but some
are veiled in the long black capuchon which falls gracefully
around the entire form like an Oriental garment. Many have
candles in their hands, which twinkle with fine effect along the
dim aisles, and you hear the constant clink of their rosaries as
they drop bead after bead of the Joyful Mysteries.

The bells cease ringing the moment the clock strikes twelve,
and the vested priest, standing at the foot of the altar, imme-
diately begins the midnight Mass. He stops at the Gospel. At
that instant a young matron dressed in a white robe, represent-
ing the Holy Virgin, appears at the end of the nave. She is ac-
companied by St. Joseph, who wears the dress of a mountaineer
and has a leather apron on and a hatchet in his hand. The suisse,
or beadle, opens a passage for them through the crowd by means
of his halberd, and as they make their way towards Bethlehem —
that is to say, towards the chancel — the Virgin recites a plaintive
couplet or two, the naivete of which is faultless in the eyes of the
peasantry

"Joseph, my faithful guide,

The night is coming on ;
Let us some shelter seek

Before my strength is gone.
The time foretold by seers

I feel is drawing near ;
The Dayspring from on high

Will soon to us appear,"

St. Joseph replies in a tone of encouragement, and, after looking

444 ' A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

about, leads her to an arch of foliage in the sanctuary represent-
ing a stable wherein is a manger. Here she reposes from her
fatigue, and a little crib adorned with ribbons and lace is brought
from the sacristy, and the image of the Babe therein is taken out
and placed on the straw at her feet. At that moment an angel,
represented by a little boy in a surplice with wings of crimped
lawn attached to his shoulders, is raised on a chair, by means of
a cord and pulley, to the very arch of the sanctuary, where he
sings in a clear, loud voice :

" Shepherds, hasten all
With flying feet from your retreat ;
On rustic pipes now play
Your sweetest, sweetest lay ;
Together sing this happy night.
Behold ! — O wondrous, wondrous sight ! —
In yonder cave is Mary, the Virgin Mother meek and mild,
And the mighty King of Heaven, who has just been born a child."

The angel is right in saying "rustic pipes," for the orchestra
concealed behind the high altar is composed merely of a flute, a
violin, and a bagpipe, all of which unite in giving sonorous effect
to this pastoral drama.

The summons of the angel from the clouds resounds among
the mountains — that is to say, in the gallery, where a group of
shepherds and herdsmen have betaken themselves for repose.
At the sound of the angel's voice they awake and rise partly up.
Their first astonishment is marked with a certain incredulity;
but one of them springs up, exclaiming in the patois of this re-
gion:

" What heavenly voice is this I hear?

It is, I think, an angel singing.
Get up, my friends, and lend an ear;

Who can tell what news he's bringing ?
Quick ! I hear it louder ringing;
It fills me both with joy and fear."

One of his companions, of a more indifferent nature, turns over on
his pillow of turf and replies :

" Lechom' droumi ! —

Let me sleep !
Your racket splits my head,
Your noise and heavy tread.

Let me sleep !

1 8 82.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 445

Abput your business go,
Your news I would not know ;
For all you have to tell
To-morrow '11 do as well.
Let me sleep ! "

The angel once more sings, not in patois, but in pure French :

"At news like mine awake,
Your joyful part to take.
Your pipes and voices raise
In loudest notes of praise.
Christ the Lord make haste to sing
Till the very mountains ring."

Another shepherd, of a sceptical turn, pretends he does not
understand a language so different from that of his valley, and
begs the angel to express himself more intelligibly. The an-
gel feels the justice of the observation. He is wrong to speak
French to poor herdsmen who have never learned the language,
and hastens to say in their own idiom :

" Come, ye shepherds from the wild,

There's nothing to affright ;
Come and see the wondrous Child,

Lord of glory, power, and might,
Who, the world to bless and save,

, This night is born in yonder cave ;

Born to be poor sinners' friend,
Them when weak his strength to lend.

Come, ye shepherds, hasten all,

Listen to the angel's call."

At this more comprehensible language the greater part of the
shepherds hesitate no longer. Enlightened as to the grandeur
of the event that has occurred, they joyfully cry in a loud

voice :

" This blessed summons from afar,
It seems to come from yon bright star ;
The tones are wondrous strange and sweet.
We must obey : it is but meet.
We'll haste this new-born Child to see,
And worship, angel bright, with thee."

But there are des esprits forts in every condition of life, even
among shepherds. They are guided by reason and common

446 ' A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

sense only, and never allow themselves to be influenced by what
is marvellous. Hardly is the Nativity announced before one of
this class suggests that it would be more prudent to give no heed
to so improbable a statement, but attend, rather, to their own
business :

" No, Guilhem, rather let us keep
Good watch this night around our sheep.
Hungry wolves are prowling round ;
They're howling with a threatening sound.
If we're away they would devour
Our choicest lambs before an hour."

But he encounters an adversary. Three loud raps from a crook
shakes the floor of the gallery, and an old man with stentorian
voice cries shame on those who would regard the safety of their
flocks when a heavenly messenger assures them the Divine Being
himself has come down to be the shepherd of the human race.
The man of prudence is silenced. Another cries in animated
tones :

" Quick ! our best garments let us find.
About our flocks why do you mind ?
We'll drive them into a safe fold
Where they'll be sheltered from the cold,
And go to Bethlehem this night,
Of this fair Babe to get a sight."

An angel now appears to guide the shepherds to the manger.
They descend from the gallery to the outer porch, where the door
closes on them, the church thus becoming the inn at Bethlehem.
They knock loudly at the door and say to the innkeeper :

"Pray, good master of the inn,
Open the door and let us in.
We've come the royal Babe to see,
If his blest Mother's will it be."

This is the most striking part of the drama. The voices of the
shepherds, who are twenty in number, though uncultivated, are
manly and sonorous, and come ringing through the nave with
religious effect, causing every breath to be suspended in the
church. But such a number of strangers alarms the vigilant St.
Joseph. He feels the responsibility of his mission, and, wishing
to shield the Child Jesus from all danger, hastens to say, in a tone
of naivete that cannot be rendered :

i882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY /,v THE PYRENEES. 447

" Tell whence you come and who you are :
You may be brigands from afar.
Dare not disturb the Infant's rest,
If through his birth you would be blest."

The shepherds reply :

" Good master, open the wicket and see
The letter an angel good gave me
As a sure passport to the manger.
Take and read it ; fear no danger."

St. Joseph in return says :

" What's that you say ? A letter, indeed,
To one who knows not how to read !
Only a carpenter poor am I.
Begone, my friend, you are a spy ! "

The case becomes critical, and an angel now interposes in the
guise of a tall young acolyte in a surplice, with long white
wings, who leaves the sanctuary, followed by two little angelic
choristers. He addresses St. Joseph somewhat as follows :

9 " Fear not the door to open wide ;
I myself will be their guide.
Shepherds are they. No harm they'll do.
Jesus they wish to worship too."

St. Joseph's fears being allayed, he follows the angel to the
porch, the suisse preceding them to clear the way, and says as he
opens the door :

" Enter : the Babe Divine behold !

See in what royal state he lies !
His palace is a stable cold,

The cattle's crib a throne supplies.
The only hangings on the wall
Are golden straw out of their stall."

As the shepherds enter, flourishing their long crooks adorned
with festive ribbons, they exclaim : t ,

" Could no better place be found,
In the country all around,
Than a stable and cold ground
For a Babe Divine like this,
Over whom angels sing with bliss
The Gloria in excelsis ? "

448 A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

St. Joseph replies :

" No other house would us receive,
No one our sore distress relieve.
This stable rude we found at last
To shield us from the winter blast."

After several other couplets, in which amazement is mingled
with moral teachings, the shepherds proceed towards the sanc-
tuary. Among them is a huge, awkward mountaineer, coarsely
clad, with a woollen cap on his head, and wooden shoes, out of
which straw protrudes, on his feet. He bears a sheep on his
shoulder, which he thrusts right and left against the people who
obstruct the way. His companions look at him and nudge him,
as if addressing him in the words of the old French carol :

" Hush ! he is sleeping.

Mind how you thump.
Take care of the nails,

You awkward lump —
The nails, the nails, the nail§

Of your coarse shoes —
Lest the nails of your shoes

Awake the Child Jesus

And rouse all the Jews."

The shepherd deposits his sheep before the manger as an offering,
and then joins the others, who, kneeling around, begin to sing the
hymn intoned by the angel :

" Gloria in excelsis !

O Domine, te laudamus.

O Deus Pater, Rex coelestis !

In terra pax hominibus ! "

After paying their homage to the Child Jesus and the Lady Mary
the shepherds exchange several other verses with St. Joseph on
the coming of the Messias, and then retire to the other end of
the church, singing as they go some lines evidently French, but
very much disguised by their uncouth pronunciation :

" Let us praise God for such a grace,
For having seen his dear Son's face ;
That to us the angels bright
Came, surrounded by great light,
To proclaim this wondrous Birth
First to us in all the earth."

i882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 449

They continue to sing in this joyful strain till they arrive be-
neath the gallery. It is now the turn of the shepherdesses to
adore the Infant Saviour ; for the sexes are separated in this pas-
torale, as they are always in some of these mountain churches,
particularly among the Basques.

Three young girls dressed in their gayest holiday attire, .and
carrying distaffs streaming with bright ribbons, now come for-
ward to pay homage to the Messias, and as they leave the man-
ger a band of maidens appears beneath the gallery opposite the
shepherds, singing a graceful air :

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
Where have you been ?
What have you seen ? "

The three girls, as they advance a step or two in the nave, reply :

" We've come from a stable
Where, this very morn,
Among the cattle lowly
Christ Jesus was born."

The others, again making an advance towards the sanctuary, re-
sume :

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
What more have you seen
Where you have just been ? "

The three, advancing another step, reply :

" On the wheat straw dry,

In the middle of the cave,
The little Child doth lie,
Sinners come to save."

The others, slowly advancing :

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
This new-born Child, is He
Fair and beautiful to see ? "

The three, with another step :

" His golden hair lights up the place,
Streaming around his lovely face ;
His eyes, with tender, radiant light,
Are dazzling to the very sight."
VOL. xxxiv.— 29

450 A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES.

The others again ask :

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
With eyes so keen
What more 've you seen ? "

[Jan.,

The three :

The others :

The three :

The others :

The three :

The others :

St. Joseph guards him, bending low
As he passes to and fro.
With virgin lips to his brow pressed,
His Mother takes him to her breast."

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
You make us more keen
To hear all you've seen."

In the stalls on either hand
Two dumb beasts of burden stand ;
As if to warm the Babe, they bend,
Their fragrant breath round Him to send.

" Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
What more have you seen
Where you have just been ? "

' Shepherds on the mountains cold
Leave their flocks at once in fold,
Come swiftly down the arduous way
Their homage to the Child to pay."

' Dear little shepherd maids,
In your best plaids,
Tell, tell what more you've seen
In the wondrous place you've been ?

The three.:

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. 451

" Thousands of angels from on high

Fill the air with songs of bliss.
Glory to God they ever cry-
Gloria in excelsis ! "

The two groups, having advanced a step or two at each stanza,
now meet, and they all go to the manger together, singing the
same air the shepherds had previously sung :

" Shepherd girls, to your infant King
All your choicest offerings bring :
Sweetest fruits with generous measure,
Your hearts, too— a greater treasure.
Lowly bending, him adore
As you offer your best store."

Arrived at the stable, they make their offering, setting up a
pavilion, or tent, prettily ornamented with flowers and ribbons,
gay as the German Christmas tree, in which blackbirds, thrushes,
turtle-doves, and partridges flutter about at the end of the cords
to which they are fastened. There are also bunches of purple
grapes, rows of yellow apples, chaplets of dried prunes, and
heaps of walnuts and chestnuts. Having tastefully arranged
these rustic offerings, the shepherdesses return, singing as they
go:

" In Bethlehem at midnight
. The Virgin Mother bore her Child
This world contains no fairer sight

Than this fair Babe and Mary mild.
Well may we sing at sight like this
Gloria in excelsis !

" Hanging o'er the gloomy cave,

A dazzling star points out the way
To all pure eyes that would behold

The spot where our blest Saviour lay.
Come join the angels' song of bliss :
Gloria in excelsis ! "

The scene now changes from the stable of Bethlehem to the
palace of King Herod, who is seated in an arm-chair behind the
baptismal font. Two ministers stand beside the throne, and
three doctors of the law are seated around a large table. The
star in the east is represented by a taper that slides along a cord
extending from the gallery to the arch of the sanctuary. The
Three Kings are approaching. In a few moments three loud

452 9 A CHRISTMAS PLAY IN THE PYRENEES. [Jan.,

knocks are heard at the outer door. The suisse, who has been
enticed into the service of King Herod, opens the door and finds
the three illustrious pilgrims on the steps, clothed in garments of
somewhat Oriental style, with turbans of gay foulard silk, and
wide pantaloons with shawls for girdles. To the " Qui va Id, ? "
of the suisse they reply :

" We come from the bounds of Aurora afar,

Lit up by her earliest rays,
To see the young Child. Of yon radiant star
We have followed the luminous blaze."

The object of their journey is communicated to Herod, who ad-
mits them to a special audience. One of them makes him an
address quite Oriental in its imagery, and asks leave to pay their
homage to the Messias with an offering of gold, frankincense,
and myrrh. Herod, who is evidently not enlightened as to the
mystery of the Nativity, prudently answers that he will consult
the prophets as to the part of his kingdom in which it should
take place. The doctors of the law search their rolls, they dis-
cuss and argue, and at last find a passage on which they found
their reply :

" According to the prediction of the prophet Michea(s)
The Messias should be born in Bethlehem of Judea."

" You hear," says Herod to the Magi. " Go, therefore, to
Bethlehem, but fail not to return and tell me as to the truth of
this miraculous Child." The Three Kings make a profound in-
clination and proceed towards the sanctuary, joyfully singing as
they follow the moving taper.

While they are adoring the Messias the priest continues the
sacrifice of the Mass. The actors, who have manifested such
touching piety in the performance of the drama, all receive Holy
Communion, as well as the greater part of the spectators. After
the Mass the following scene takes place — the closing one in the
play :

The angel, still seated in the chair up in the arch, warns the
Magi not to return to the palace of King Herod, and they pru-
dently hasten away under the guidance of the star. One of
Herod's spies informs him that, notwithstanding his injunction,
they have gone home by another route. Herod cannot restrain
his anger. He makes a loud crash as he rises, and, pointing to-

1 882.] WHO SHALL SAY? 453

wards the sanctuary, orders his guards to go to Bethlehem and
there

" Massacre at once the children small
Of two years and under, one and all."

The sergeant draws his sword and sets out at the head of the
soldiers. The angel now warns Mary and Joseph of the king's
barbarous design, and counsels them to make their escape into
Egypt with the Child. They obey and take refuge in the sacris-
ty. Herod's soldiers arrive too late. Their search is in vain,
and the play ends with the massacre of the Innocents — the first
to shed their blood for Christ.

WHO SHALL SAY?

*' The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind." — WILLIAM HABINGTON.

THE haunting harmony of thy sweet verse
Breathes not the music of the heavenly spheres !
The lesson thou essay 'st to teach is good,
Yet its perfection thou dost sadly flaw.
If one should sd live that, when he has died,
Those whom he knew shall say, with one accord,
" The world is better that this man has lived,"
Then who may truly speak thy words of him :
He does not " leave a rack behind " ? Be sure
That as the long years add themselves to that
Which we are pleased to call eternity,
Such life shall be as seed which multiplies,
And shall bring forth a glorious meed of good
Through all the years this nether world shall last.
And if, in God's own time, its end shall come,
Who then shall say that, in another sphere,
We may not reap the fruit of Christ-like deeds
With which this world by faithful souls was blest?
Though good thy purpose, no less false thy words.
For all the good our lives in this world show,
Ourselves, and those we love, shall count the gain
In realms where there is no oblivion nor loss.

BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS.

THE church in the United States is deep in debt to France.
From the year 1612, when two Jesuit fathers founded the mis-
sion of St. Sauveur on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of
Maine, down to the close of the first half of this century, it at-
tracted thence an army of holy men and women who came to
these shores to bring the blessings of civilization and the graces
of the Gospel to its inhabitants. Nothing could keep them
away ; nothing could daunt them here. They broke every tie
that attached them to home ; they faced every hardship that ever
confronted missionaries of the cross. They prayed, and suffered,
and labored, and triumphed, and in the work which they accom-
plished they builded for themselves an imperishable monument.
They left no part of the country unexplored. They trod the
snows arid braved the storms of the far North ; they penetrated
the savannas of the South ; they traversed the prairies and
crossed the mountains of the West. They discovered rivers,
and 'hills, and valleys. Everywhere they were the pioneers.
They were not content to remain in the white settlements ; while
some of them stayed, others pushed out into the trackless regions
where roamed the nomadic and barbarous aborigines. They
went from tribe to tribe. Where one of them fell tomahawked
or tortured to death another proceeded, until the war-dance
gave way to the Corpus Christ! procession and the chant of
blood was abandoned for the Ave Marts Stella. They sought the
most distant lodges, and there smoked the pipe of peace as a pre-
liminary to preaching the Prince of Peace. Armed only with a
crucifix, they conquered the savages, and their victories were
completed by the sisters who followed their course, and with
their beads and their books gave a Christian education to the
dusky papooses who thronged about their knees and learned to
love them second only to the cherished Blackgown. When the
savages outnumbered the immigrants they often protected the
latter from the wrath of the natives, and when the scales turned
they were the stanch friends of the wronged Indians. Side by
side these saintly men and women toiled. Whether in the
forests primeval, or in the log-cabins of the hamlets, or, later, in
the magnificent institutions which they themselves had raised,
they lived and died for God. Everywhere they erected churches,

1 882.] BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. 455

and schools, and hospitals, and asylums for all classes of suffering
humanity. Most of them are resting in the sleep q| peace. A
few still survive. These are called on many times a year to wel-
come from their native land coadjutors and successors, who, true
to the traditions of their race and charmed with 'the example of
those who have preceded them in these fields, come to share in
the pains of harvest, in order that they may also partake of the
reward of the faithful laborers.

Among the host of heroes who in the last century left France
to evangelize this country was John Dubois. He was born at
Paris on the 24th of August, 1764. He was the son of respecta-
ble parents, who belonged to the middle class and were in com-
fortable circumstances. When he reached a suitable age he en-
tered the College of Louis le Grand, in which the illustrious
Charles Carroll of Carrollton had received his education.
Among his schoolmates he had Robespierre and Camille Des-
moulins. After completing his course there he went to the
Seminary of St. Magloire, conducted by the Oratorians, where
he studied theology. In his twenty-third year he was ordained
priest and appointed assistant pastor of the parish church of
St. Sulpice.

Full of zeal, he set to work. But he was not destined to spend
his days in his native land. The Revolution which had broken
out in 1789 aimed its blows at the altar as well as the throne.
Its leaders framed sacrilegious constitutional oaths and proposed
them to the clergy. To their everlasting honor one hundred
and thirty-one out of one hundred and thirty-five bishops re-
mained steadfast in their duty and peremptorily refused the un-
lawful pledge. In this constancy they were imitated by nearly
all the priests, and among these by the Abbe Dubois, who was
forced to exile himself to save his head from the guillotine.
Having made his preparations for flight, he sought out his friend,
the immortal Lafayette, and from him obtained not only a pass-
port, but also letters of introduction to some of the prominent
.citizens of the United States. In disguise he quit his native
city, journeyed to Havre, and embarked for America.

When the sun of July, 1791, was making the Southland a field
of gold the Abbe Dubois first saw the shores of the New World,
and shortly afterwards landed at Norfolk, Virginia. He soon
made known his presence to Bishop Carroll, who received him
with open arms and authorized him to exercise his ministry first
in the city of his arrival, and afterwards in Richmond and the
surrounding country.

456* BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

So strongly worded were the letters which he brought to
James Monroe, Patrick Henry, the Lees, the Randolphs, the
Beverleys, and other families that he was hospitably welcomed in
the most refined circles, and won the esteem and affection of his
entertainers by his virtues, his profound learning, his courtly
manners, and his intense devotion to his duties. So very far, in-
deed, did the cordiality of his reception go that, as there was
then no church in the place, he was allowed to say Mass in the
very capitol, and thus consecrated a State which was one day to
be ruled over by a bishop of his training, and was to produce the
hero who broke the backbone of " the damnable heresy of Know-
Nothingism." The graciousness of this act is amazing, con-
sidering the intolerant spirit of the age and the previous doings
in the commonwealth, which had persecuted dissenters of all
kinds, and in the name of the God of peace and charity had put
some of them to death. It is all the more surprising in view of
the fact that Father Frambach, the predecessor of the abbe in the
pastorate of Frederick, had to conceal his identity when he visit-
ed the faithful in Virginia, risked his life every hour that he
stayed among them, was several times all but caught, usually
slept in the stable, and once was so closely followed that but for
the fleetness of his horse he would not have lived to tell the
story of his hairbreadth escape.

For three years Father Dubois attended to the spiritual wants
of the few Catholics in Richmond, and supported himself by teach-
ing French, while he himself was learning English. In this
study he received several lessons from Patrick Henry and made
rapid progress. In 1794 he was called to Montgomery County,
Maryland, and took up his residence in Frederick. That town
was his headquarters, but he made frequent excursions over a
wide stretch of country, hunting up strayed sheep, visiting the
sick, teaching children the catechism, adjudicating difficulties
among neighbors, keeping alive the fire of faith in lonely cabins,
and kindling it in others in which it had gone out or had never
burned. For long he was pastor of Western Maryland and all.
Virginia, and for some time was the only priest between Balti-
more and St. Louis. His labors were herculean. Every day
was rich in good works. His health was robust and he taxed it
unsparingly. Summer's sun beat down upon him toiling over
the mountain passes, but neither it nor winter's snows and bitter
blasts could prevent him from his journeys. He was indefatiga-
ble. The days were not long enough for him. The midnight
stars often shone upon him bearing the Viaticum to the depart-

1 882.] BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. 457

ing. He was a faithful shepherd, tender and true, and prepared
at all times to spend himself in order not to lose one of the souls
entrusted to his care.

"On one occasion," says his panegyrist, the late Very Rev. Dr. McCaf-
frey, "he had just arrived at Emmittsburg, much fatigued, on a Saturday
afternoon, and was going to the confessional, when a distant sick-call came.
Before leaving Emmittsburg he directed the usual preparations to be made
for the celebration of Mass on Sunday, saying that he would be back in time.
He returned to Frederick, and thence proceeded to Montgomery County,
administered the consolations of religion to the dying person, and, after a
journey of nearly fifty miles, after twice swimming his horse across the
Monocacy — the last time at the risk of his life, for wearied nature caught a
nap of sleep while the noble animal was breasting the angry stream — he
was again in the confessional at nine o'clock on Sunday, without having
broken his fast, and sang Mass and preached as usual at a late hour in the
forenoon, and with so little appearance of fatigue that the majority of the
congregation never even suspected that he had stirred abroad in the in-
terval."

But, sturdy worker as he was, he could not do the impossible,
and sometimes his heart grew heavy as he surveyed the immense
harvests and the lack of laborers. The country then drew its
missionaries from France and Italy, but the supply was neither
regular nor adequate. If ever the needs of the people were to be
met a native priesthood must be formed. A seminary was in-
dispensable, and, as a feeder to it, an academic school had to be
started. For long years he cherished the idea of being the fa-
ther of a host of Levites. But he kept the thought hidden in his
breast. It was his companion by day, his dream by night. After
much deliberation the project took shape.

While he was pastor of Frederick he was wont to visit Em-
mittsburg once a month to say Mass alternately in the church in
the village and in a room in the Elder homestead, about a mile
from the site of Mount St. Mary's College. Here in a bare lum-
ber-room, on a rude table, he offered the Holy Sacrifice and broke
the Bread and spoke the word of life. In August, 1776, the Bill
of Rights had been adopted, which, among the other benefits it con-
ferred, abrogated the law of William and Mary passed after the
Protestant Revolution of 1690, and which forbade the erection of
a Catholic church in the province of Maryland. Taking advan-
tage of the Declaration, Father Dubois — who when in the neigh-
borhood on his missionary tours frequently ascended the hill on
which the college now stands, and from that elevation enjoyed the
beauty of the wide prospect spread out -before him — resolved to
build a church on the mountain-side which should dominate the

458 BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

whole valley and be a constant reminder of heaven to the inhabi-
tants. They, however, were startled by the boldness of the plan.
They dreaded failure. But they furnished the means to begin the
work, and continued their contributions until it was completed.
He himself chose the site. The spot was then a wildwood,
abounding in trees, swamps, underbrush, and rocks, pathless,
rugged, and forbidding. He superintended operations, and with
his own hands helped to clear the way, lay the foundation, and
raise the structure. Soon the noble building crowned the hill
and stood a beacon of the better world to all the country round.

In 1808 he quit Frederick and took up his residence in the
Elder place. He at once opened school, which he held in a brick
building in the vicinity. In a few months he bought a farm-
house with some twenty-five acres about the site of the college,
and removed to it with his pupils. Among his first scholars
were James McSherry, Charles Carroll, father of the ex-governor
of Maryland, John Lilly, John Hickey, who became a priest,
James A. Shorb, Charles White, Francis, Henry and Frederick
Chatard, William and Richard Seton, James D. Mitchell, Jerome
Bonaparte, and Charles Harper. His quarters soon became too
scant, and another log-house was put up for his accommodation.
The school at once began to prosper, and as the number of boys
increased additional huts were built. In the year following the
opening he received sixteen students who had been pursuing
their classical course in an academy at Pigeon Hill, near Abbots-
town, in Pennsylvania, started by the Baltimore Sulpicians to
prepare youths for their seminary. In two years he had forty
pupils ; in three, sixty ; and in five, eighty.

The project was a success. Father Dubois was no longer
looked on as a visionary. The Lord had made him to rejoice,
the father of children. Log-house after log-house was put up
until there were two long rows of them running up and down
the hillside along where the Junior Department is now located.
Children were sent from all parts, and the fame of the rising in-
stitute was in the mouths of the people.

In June, 1809, Mrs. Eliza A. Seton, the foundress of the Sisters
of Charity in the United States, left Baltimore with her children
and first two associates, and went to Emmittsburg to take pos-
session of St. Joseph's. While the frame house which was to be
their home, and which still stands, was building, she and her
companions accepted the hospitality of Mount St. Mary's, and for
some weeks dwelt in the' second log-house on the hill, which Fa-
ther Dubois vacated for the seminary that stood below it. The

1882.] BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. 459

same lowly roof was, therefore, the first shelter of the two foun-
ders when beginning- their great mission, and from that day to
this the histories of their institutions are linked together at many
points. The esteem and kindly feelings mutually entertained by
the two servants of God have continued with their successors,
and the two houses have gone on fulfilling side by side the grand
work of education.

The forest had been felled, the tangled underbrush cleared,
the swamp drained, the rocks pulled up and carted away. The
wilderness had been turned into a garden of fruits and flowers.
The secluded situation, the bracing air, the growing reputation
of the school filled its classes with promising youths. The semi-
nary began to furnish laborers for the Lord's vineyard. Pros-
perity smiled on the place. The rows of cabins did not afford
sufficient room, and the time had come for a more enduring nur-
sery of scholars and saints. Father Dubois, with his usual mag-
nificence, drew up the plan for a large three-story building. He
laid off the site. It was located just above where the present
college stands. The work was commenced. The seminarians
and the pupils all lent a helping hand. It was a pleasure for them
to aid in the construction of their future home. At the beginning
of June, 1824, it was nearly finished. On the night of the 6th of
that month it was beautiful in the moonlight. In the early
morning it was wrapped in flames. By noon of the 7th it was
a black and shapeless mass of ruins. While students, professors,
and neighbors were rushing about the burning pile, excited by
the sudden, startling, and overwhelming calamity, one person
was cool and collected. Father Dubois calmly cbntem plated the
destruction of his labors. " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away : blessed be the name of the Lord," he said. While
there was hope of saving the building he gave orders in a low
but firm tone. When that hope was gone he stood with pale
face and set lips regarding the conflagration. Dense volumes of
smoke rose and spread in the air, and the heavens were lighted
with a lurid glow. As the walls fell in with a mighty crash he
turned from the spot and proceeded to the chapel, remarking as
he went : " There were defects in this ; I will remedy them in the
next." O great heart, now at rest for ever, strong in the thick
of disaster, cheery in tribulation, peaceful in storms, trustful in
God, bitter was thy trial in that hour, and like refined gold didst
thou come forth from the crucible !

The loss of the stately college was sufficient to crush any man
situated as was Father Dubois. For he was very poor, and,

460 BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

worse still, he had had to go into debt to pay for the building
just destroyed. Besides, the faithful in the province were few
and not burdened with this world's gear. But the stones were
scarcely cold before the work of reconstruction began. The site
was chosen a little further down, and the uninjured materials of
the burnt edifice were used in the structure of its successor. A
more commodious design was adopted. The foundations were
laid, and rapidly the sides rose until they were crowned with the
roof. Well-wishers from far and near helped on the undertaking
with sympathy and money." Anonymous gifts were received,
and friends unknown till the hour of distress came forward with
substantial tokens of regard. The neighbors, too, were most
kind. Regardless of creed, they contributed what they could,
and those who could give no cash, or not enough to suit their
wishes, assisted with labor and goods. In 1826 the' new college
was completed. It stood in all its grandeur, one of the finest
buildings in the State, and even now rears itself aloft, a solid
monument of the heroism of its founder and the generosity of his
co-operators.

Father Dubois was now sixty years old when a new trial was
sent to him. A shepherd had to be supplied for the growing
metropolis of the republic, and the ruler of the Mountain was
deemed most worthy. He was too old to begin to learn how to
disobey, too inured to self-sacrifice to entertain regrets. The
episcopacy was then no bed of roses, and the diocese of New
York was singularly in need of a prelate patient, prudent, strong.
Giving up his office to his associate, Father Brute, he left his be-
loved hillside. On Sunday, October 29, 1826, in the cathedral of
Baltimore, he was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Marechal
in the presence of an immense concourse of the clergy and laity.
He was presented with his cross and ring by Charles Carroll
of Carrollton, and received his robes and crosier from other
friends. Three days later he took up his residence in his cathe-
dral city.

As soon as Bishop Dubois had taken possession of his see his
troubles began. They had their sources in five quarters — his na-
tionality, the lack of priests, the want of a college and seminary,
the fanatic opposition of the " Native American " Protestants, and
the trustee system under which the temporal affairs of the church
were mismanaged.

As the vast majority of the Catholics in New York were of
Irish and English descent, and as quite a number of them were
natives or had resided there for many years, they were dis-

i882.] BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. 461

pleased at having a Frenchman to rule over them as bishop ;
nor did they hesitate to murmur their dissatisfaction where it
would be heard. When the bishop learned of the prevalence of
this sentiment he issued a pastoral in which he maintained that,
as he was a naturalized citizen who had lived here for some thir-
ty-five years, no one could charge him with being a foreigner ;
and then, turning the tables, he referred to the abuses which had
grown up in the diocese, and mentioned the reforms which he
proposed to institute. This document made a favorable impres-
sion, and this was deepened by his subsequent actions, which
speedily won for him the respect and esteem of all the well-dis-
posed persons in his flock.

His second cause of anxiety was the scarcity of priests. He
estimated the number of the faithful in the city at that time at
thirty-five thousand, and in the rest of the diocese at one hundred
and fifteen thousand. To minister to them he had only eighteen
priests. He had four churches in the city, and nine other build-
ings used as churches in other localities throughout the vast ter-
ritory under his care, which comprised the whole State of New
York and a portion of the State of New Jersey. So urgent and
numerous were the calls on his clergy that he himself had " to
fulfil at the same time the duties of a bishop, parish priest, and
catechist," as he wrote to a friend. He first made a visitation of
his diocese to become acquainted with its wants, and then he
went in 1829 to France and Rome to procure aid. He returned
in the following year, bringing home with him gifts from the
Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Congregation
of the Propaganda. He worked night and day to cultivate his
part of the vineyard, and succeeded so well that when he trans-
ferred its care to his successor he could count twenty-two
churches, twelve stations, fifty priests — of whom he had himself
ordained sixteen — several schools, conducted by Sisters of Char-
ity, in New York and Albany, and four orphan asylums.

His third occasion for worry was the absence of a training-
school for priests. He tried, therefore, to found an academy
and seminary. He first made the attempt at Nyack-on-the-Hud-
son, where he laid the corner-stone on May 29, 1833 ; but before
the building was quite ready for occupancy it was burned to the
ground by an incendiary, prompted to the commission of the
crime by religious animosity. His next venture was at Brooklyn.
When all the preliminaries had been arranged, and some of the
materials, brought to the spot selected, the gentleman who had
offered the ground for the site proposed conditions which were

462 BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

too onerous, and the bishop abandoned the project then and
there. The third trial was made at Lafargeville, in Jefferson
County, where the domain known as Grovemont was purchased
and a school begun. But the location was too remote and the
access to it too laborious. So the institution soon collapsed.
These failures had one good result : they paved the way for the
success of St. John's College at Fordham, which was opened June
24, 1841, with Father— now Cardinal — McCloskey for its first
president.

The anti-Catholic feeling was rampant fifty years ago. The
pulpit, the press, and the platform were used to defame the Cath-
olics. The most bitter attacks were made by clergymen, who,
in the persecution they carried on, stopped neither at calumny
nor forgery, but counselled violence to individuals, and social
ostracism and political disfranchisement to the mass of their
opponents. They concocted filthy stories about monasteries and
convents, and put into circulation the villanous book by Maria
Monk. They succeeded in several places in exciting riots. On
one occasion they stirred up a mob to wreck the cathedral. The
Catholics heard of the threatened danger ; they prepared to give
their assailants a warm reception. The paving-stones in the
street before the sacred edifice were taken up for missiles, to be
hurled from the windows of the adjacent houses. The cathedral
itself was placed in a state of defence, with its doors barred and
its windows bolted, and a picked guard of men with muskets
was stationed within the churchyard to protect at all costs the
sanctuary of the Lord. These arrangements disconcerted the
wretches who had assembled to commit the sacrilege, and, with-
out risking a conflict with the Catholics, they slunk away from
the scene of the contemplated disorder. Their leaders who con-
tended with intellectual weapons met doughty antagonists in Dr.
Varela, Dr. Power, Father Schneller, Dr. Pise, and Dr. Hughes,
who by their controversial writings and sermons made many
converts and confirmed the faith of the weaker brethren.

But the most harassing vexation that fretted the bishop was
the trustee system. By it the finances of the churches were
in the hands of a set of laymen chosen by the congregations.
These laymen acted as if they were monarchs of all they sur-
veyed. By their incompetence, their carelessness, and their ex-
travagance they bankrupted nearly all the churches they con-
trolled, and by their disrespect and disregard of authority they
gave grave scandal on more than one occasion. They assumed
to act without any accountability to the bishop ; they pretended

1882.] BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. 463

to hire the priests who ministered to them ; they drove away
pastors who did not please them ; they forced upon the bishop
such clergymen as they became attached to; they selected as
educators of their children teachers who would do their bidding ;
they bought what they liked for the sanctuary ; and in a general
way they conducted the temporal concerns of the churches to
suit themselves. Once, when the bishop had silenced the rector
of the cathedral for disobedience, they sided with the delinquent,
continued to support him, and declined to pay any salary to his
successor. Still further, they made him manager of the school,
and when he ordered out a teacher appointed by the bishop they
upheld him and got a police officer to eject the teacher. The
bishop, exasperated by this outrage, addressed a letter to the
members of the congregation, in which he said :

" The trustees seem to think that they are at liberty to employ what-
ever power they can extract from the charter, or obtain from the civil laws
as a corporation, in a kind of perennial conflict with and against the ec-
clesiastical authority and the discipline of the church, which they should
be the firmest and foremost to uphold, as Catholics first, and as trustees
afterwards. It is possible that the civil law gives them power to send a
constable to the Sunday-school and eject even the bishop himself. But if it
does, it gives them, we have no doubt, the same right to send him into the
sanctuary and remove any of these gentlemen from before the altar. And
is it your intention that such power be exercised by your trustees ? If so,
then it is almost time for the ministers of the Lord to forsake your temple
and erect an altar to their God, around which religion shall be free, the
Council of Trent fully recognized, and the laws of the church applied to the
government and regulation of the church. . . . Do not suppose that the
church of God, because she has no civil support for her laws and disci-
pline, is therefore obliged to see them trampled on by her own children,
without any means for their preservation. She has means ; and it is neces-
sary that her discipline be restored and the abuses on the part of your
trustees, to which we have alluded, be disavowed and removed."

The trustees, however, were not conquered. They persisted
in their demand for the restoration of the suspended rector, and
they waited on the bishop in a body to enforce their wishes.
They made known the object of their visit, and then informed the
venerable prelate that, as the representatives of the people out of
whose pockets the money to support the church came, they could
not conscientiously vote his salary unless he gave them such pas-
tors as were agreeable to them. He listened to them patiently,
and then showed them the door, saying in memorable words :
" Gentlemen, you can vote the salary or not, just as seems good

464 BISHOP JOHN DUBOIS. [Jan.,

to you. I need little. I can live in the basement or the garret.
But whether I come up from the basement or down from the
garret, I shall still be your bishop." At length the priest at
fault yielded so far as to retire from the unseemly contest, and a
year or two afterwards was relieved from ecclesiastical censure.
But the system which had encouraged his insubordination out-
lived the bishop who had tested his obedience and found it want-
ing. It remained a thorn in his side during his whole episcopal
career, and was only despatche.d when the vigorous arm of his
successor came to the rescue of his tottering frame.

Bishop Dubois was always a hard worker, and he did not
change his ways when he took <up the pastoral staff in New York.
He made several visitations of his vast diocese, and administered
the sacraments to tens of thousands. At home he labored like
the youngest of his curates. He kept at his tasks till his grow-
ing infirmities admonished him to seek rest to make final prepa-
rations for the grave. Worn out with toil, he solicited a coadju-
tor, and obtained his request in 1837 in the person of the Rev.
John Hughes, a former pupil of his at Mount St. Mary's College,
^nd then pastor of a church in Philadelphia. He himself con-
secrated his successor January 9, 1838. In a fortnight he was
stricken with paralysis, from which he never completely recov-
ered. He lingered on for four years, with an unclouded mind
and a cheery heart. On December 20, 1842, he calmly expired,
and his beautiful soul is with God. His remains were interred
at his own request under the pavement immediately in front of
the main entrance to his cathedral.

A portrait of him, done in oil by the artist Paolino Pizzala in
Italy in 1830, is in the parlor of the college which he founded, and
another one is in the possession of his Eminence the Cardinal
Archbishop of New York.

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY.

THE FALL OF WOLSEY.

IN 1529 the political enemies of Wolsey had nearly completed
their organization. It was rumored in Paris, Venice, and Rome
that some trouble was in store for the English Church, but,
with that fatal confidence in their "inner strength " which so oft-
en characterized English churchmen, they paid no heed to the
" signs of the times."

The crowd of unprincipled nobles and " fast-living squires "
who were ready to join in any movement to obtain a confiscation
«f the monastic property beheld the great barrier to their pro-
ceedings in the person of Thomas Wolsey. This combination
was composed of strange materials, for they personally hated one
another : jealous prelates and abbots, disappointed placemen, ig-
norant nobles, treacherous courtiers, and suspended priests were
the most persistent in bringing about the fall of the great minis-
ter. They were jealous of his genius and the results of his bril-
liant statesmanship ; they envied him the greatness to which he
had been elevated in the estimation of princes and diplomatists ;
yet not one amongst them possessed in any measure his adminis-
trative talent.

The Boleyns performed a subordinate part at this time,
but were energetic in fabricating slanders against the Cardinal of
York and conveying them to the king, who still hesitated as
to what course he should pursue. Le Grand considers the plots
against Wolsey to have originated with the Boleyn family. Anna
Boleyn, however, was in France during the greater part of those
proceedings, and had nothing to do with the movement ; but her
father (Sir Thomas Boleyn) was one of the conspirators against
Wolsey, and acted with the Suffolks, the Russells, the Clintons,
the Grays, and the Cobhams — all unprincipled and needy men.
For some time the general topic of conversation amongst the
nobles and squires was the confiscation of monastic and church
property, and many creditors' claims were postponed until the
much-desired object was achieved.* It was feared that the king
would never consent to such measures whilst Wolsey was his
councillor, and in this opinion they were partly correct.f
''These noble lords imagine," writes the French envoy, " that,

* Thornd ale's Memorials.

t Le Grand's Secret Despatches to the French Government.
VOL. XXXIV. — 30

466 ' THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

the Cardinal of York once dead or ruined, they will inconti-
nently •plunder the church and strip it of its property." Yet
those enemies of Wolsey were all opposed to the Reformation,
and at this period'cast ridicule upon its German founders ; they
still professedly adhered to the olden religion of England, and their
hostility to the pope was purely of a political character, and if the
pontiff had granted Henry a divorce the Reformation would have
been crushed by the very men who subsequently promoted it. The
nobles and many of the laity quarrelled, as they often did before,
with the monks and secular clergy ; nevertheless, they responded
to the Vesper bell ; they heard the Latin Mass, as their fathers
had of yore ; they dined at the abbeys and " made merrie in the
bishop's banquet-hall " ; but at the same time they hungered for
the well-cultivated manors, the inviting gardens, the orchards,
the shady groves, the murmuring streams, the cattle, the gold
and silver of the abbeys and convents, and they were determined
to possess them by any means, even by misrepresentation, per-
jury, fraud, or violence. Their- religious belief was, as already
stated, wholly unchanged, and no casuistry can set aside that fact.
An absorbing desire of possessing their neighbors' goods led to
the revolution in property, which ultimately resulted in the Re-
formation movement as the surest mode of retaining the lands
which had just been taken from the lawful owners. In fact, the
subsequent change of religion was made to confirm, if not sancti-
fy, the previous confiscation of the property of the church and of
the poor. The Rev. J. H. Blunt, in his work upon the Refor-
mation, puts the question as to the " motives " of the Reformers
with direct and simple force. " Few," he writes, "cared for refor-
mation ; many cared for destruction." This is the result of the long
researches of a learned and truthful Protestant clergyman ; he
has furnished the world with the " motives " of those who im-
posed the " new order of things " upon England. But I must re-
mark that to plunder the church was an old besetting sin in that
nation ; and we find in the days of the Venerable Bede there
were " church-robbers just as unscrupulous as the Russells or
Brandons of the days of the eighth Henry," * of " blessed me-
mory."

The first turning-point in Wolsey's fortunes occurred about
the period of the departure of Cardinal Campeggio. The king
took leave of the legate at Grafton, where Wolsey was also pre-

* I refer the reader to vol. ii. p. 80 in the Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty for a
series of well-authenticated facts bearing upon the mode by which the monastic confiscations had
been accomplished.

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 467

sent ; and it was then bruited that the cardinal had nearly lost
the royal confidence. Those reports came from the Brandons, the
Grays, the Howards, and the Boleyns — all implacable enemies of
Wolsey. So marked was the ill-feeling exhibited towards him by
the courtiers that the king checked it by speaking in a friendly
tone to his old favorite ; nevertheless, Wolsey was not invited to
the king's table that day (September 19). In the evening he 'had
another interview with his sovereign in the royal closet, which
lasted three hours ; and having bid Wolsey " a friendly good-
night," Henry requested his attendance at nine of the clock on
the following morning. This long conference alarmed the ene-
mies of the cardinal, and that night several communications
passed between the courtiers. The Boleyn family were, as usual,
malicious in fabricating falsehoods. Anna Boleyn's father re-
minded her of the deception practised by the cardinal, " wishing
to make her a mistress, but not a queen." * It did not require
much incentive to excite the enmity of Anna in this case ; and it
was difficult to expect that she could forget Wolsey's conduct
in relation to her lover, Lord Percy, whose story is one of the
darkest pages in the cardinal's life.

The enemies of the fallen statesman turned every incident to
account. The morning came, and with it a fresh storm of disas-
ters ready to burst upon the cardinal. He waited on the king,
as arranged the night previous, but was surprised and mortified
to find his highness on horseback and surrounded by a crowd
of courtiers, amongst whom were Anna Boleyn, her father and
brother. The king spoke in a friendly manner to Wolsey and
bade him "good-morning." The Boleyn family coldly saluted
him, "which," observes Thorndale, "evidently displeased the
king, who, on riding off from the courtyard, waved his hand
twice to Wolsey." The scene was altogether remarkable. The
king and his great minister never met again.

In a few days subsequent to this unexpected " leave-taking " —
on Wolsey's part, at least — the attorney -general filed two bills
against the cardinal in the Court of King's Bench, charging him
with having, as legate, offended against the statute of the i6th
of Richard II. known as the statute of Prcemunire. This pro-
ceeding caused a sensation in London ; and even the time-serving
lawyers became outspoken, and several of them declared that
this mode of action was at once " arbitrary, despotic, and illegal."
One of the judges told the attorney-general that the Legatine
Court could not be brought within the operation of the law.

* Brewer's State Papers.

468 ' THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

"The cardinal," writes the learned judge, "had on former occa-
sions obtained the king's license, and was, therefore, authorized
to hold the court." Wolsey offered no opposition and made no
defence ; he resigned the great seal, and placed the whole of his
personal property, estimated at five hundred thousand crowns, at
the king's disposal. " All I possess," said he, " I have received
from the king's highness, and I now return all with pleasure to
my benefactor." But the " benefactor," or his prompters, were
not satisfied ; a demand was made "for everything he possessed''
He now surrendered all, " keeping not even a blanket or a shirt"
He was commanded to retire to Esher, a country-house attached
to the see of Winchester. But his fallen condition did not yet
satisfy the malice of his enemies. From the courtiers down to
the turbulent canaille all classes attended in vast numbers to
witness his departure from London, to " hoot and insult the
fallen minister." * But as Wolsey had the forethought to take a
different route from the one expected, his feelings were spared
humiliation, and the fickleness of human favor another shameful
display of its traditional worthlessness. The Bishop of Bayonne,
who visited Wolsey before his departure from the metropolis,
draws a melancholy picture of his forlorn condition. " I have,"
he says, " been to .visit the cardinal in his distress, and have wit-
nessed the most striking change of his fortune. He explained to
me his hard case in the worst rhetoric that was ever heard.
Both his tongue and his heart failed him. He recommended
himself to the pity of the king and madame (Francis I. and his
mother) with sighs and tears, and at last left me without having
said anything near so moving as his appearance. His face is
dwindled to one-half its natural size. In truth, the cardinal's
misery is such that his enemies, Englishmen as they are, cannot
help pitying him ; but their sympathy is only like the passing
winds, for it is evider?* that the court party and others, who are
still concealed beneath a mask, are determined to accomplish his
ruin — yea, to send him to the scaffold, if possible. As for his
legation, the seals, etc., he thinks no more of them. He is will-
ing to give up everything, even the very shirt from his back, and
to live in a hermitage, if the king would desist from his dis-
pleasure." f

Henry, strange to say, at this time sent secret messages to the
fallen minister, assuring him of his friendship. The cardinal had
the weakness to believe in those professions, but he was soon con-
vinced of the motives which prompted them. Henry did not

* Brewer's State Papers on the Fall of Wolsey. t Le Grand, vol. iii. p. 37.

i882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 469

wish Wolsey to die until he had at least attempted to prove that
he deserved death.

Lord Herbert, the king's panegyrist, does not believe the
charges preferred against the cardinal, and Cavendish and Le
Grand are of the same opinion. The articles of impeachment
were forty-four, and were signed by fourteen peers, amongst
whom were the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. These articles
were carried in the Lords ; but the king, curious to relate, in-
structed Thomas Crumwell, then in the Commons, to have them
rejected. Thorndale states that he was present at Crumwell's
speech in favor of his old master. He spoke with deep sympa-
thy ; his voice faltered several times when he said " he should
never meet his like again in this world." *

Wolsey 's health was now giving way, and he was attacked
with fever (about Christmas). Hearing of his illness, Henry ex-
claimed in the presence of his courtiers : " God forbid that he
should die ! I would not lose him for twenty thousand pounds."
He ordered three of the court physicians to go immediately to
Esher to attend him ; he also sent a special messenger to " assure
Wolsey of his love and esteem for him." In his anxiety about
his old favorite the monarch induced Anna Boleyn to send a
tablet of gold as a memorial of reconciliation and good feeling.f
But the "night crow," as Wolsey styled Anna, had not yet for-
gotten the injury the cardinal inflicted on her future happiness in
the case of Lord Percy.

With the fall of Wolsey the mainstay of the papal power in
England was rudely shaken, but not destroyed. The priesthood,
whom he had elevated to the highest positions in the state, and
whose secular privileges he maintained with a high hand, were
now about to share in his change of fortune. They envied him
for his greatness, and disliked him because he told them of their
neglect of the various flocks of which they had charge. They
had not the foresight nor the wisdom to hearken to his advice ;
they did not "set their house in order, to meet the coming
storm," but became in some instances defiant. And, again, high-
placed ecclesiastics appeared as " forethoughtful sycophants,"
begging for mercy before they were impeached, indulging in
the delusion that they could, with gold, conciliate Thomas Crum-
well and his ecclesiastical inquisitors, who accepted their offer-
ings and still pursued the " thoughtless givers," as Bishop Fisher
called them. Lingard remarks that " instead of uniting in their

* Letters of Thorndale to Bishop Fisher.

t State Papers (Domestic) of Henry's Reign, Cavendish, and Le Grand.

470 ' THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

common defence they seem to have awaited their fate with the
apathy of despair." At a later period they lost all fitting cour-
age. " The clergy and monks," observes Blunt, " fell into an
utter panic, and the great body of the latter especially were
ready to lie down like an unarmed peasantry before a troop of
Cossacks." The terror-stricken nuns, who were cruelly treated,
may be excused for adopting such a course. Although there were
hundreds — perhaps thousands — amongst the monks and friars
who would cheerfully have ascended the scaffold, there were few
who had the vigor to speak at the "right time or in the right
place " ; and when the hour of trial came there were not many
Forrests, Petos, or Elstons to confront their unscrupulous ene-
mies. The bolder course was the safest. If the regulars had
appealed to the love and religious feelings of the multitude, to
whom their predecessors had acted in the spirit of faithful guar-
dians for centuries, the country would have pronounced in their
favor. They were a well-organized and a powerful body in the
state. The mothers and daughters of England, too, stood up for
the religious orders with a devotion and courage unprecedent-
ed in the history of nations. And good reason they had to re-
gard with enduring gratitude the meek and humble occupants of
the convents and abbeys. Judging from the many State Papers
which I have consulted, both at home and abroad, there can be
no doubt that nine-tenths of the English people would have suc-
cessfully taken up their defence. Behold, for example, the heroic
conduct of the never-to-be-forgotten Pilgrims of Grace, who,
many years later, fought with such fearful odds against them.
But the religious orders of men, at the unhappy juncture of which
I write, became divided by local and petty jealousy, and the
rivalry of precedent and quaint discipline caused long and bitter
disputes ; besides, they made few advances in the social progress
which Time had brought within every man's purview. In the
words of Thorndale, "they became obstinate and panic-stricken,"
and then the infamous Thomas Crumwell, and his more infamous
monastic inquisitors, triumphed.

To return to the narrative of the fallen statesman. A dawn
of hope appeared in the horizon, and the few remaining friends
of Wolsey seemed to imagine that a reconciliation was at hand.
He was allowed to exchange Esher for Richmond, where he
spent much time with the fathers of the Charter-house. Here
he " discoursed with great earnestness on the necessity there
existed for frequent preaching and instruction to the people."
Those " heretics," said he, " are smart, intelligent men, and they

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 471

may possibly find their way into England. We should be pre-
pared for them." * Wolsey's visits to the Charter-house were
not calculated to please men like Suffolk and Clinton, and in a
few weeks a fresh conspiracy was organized, the result of which
was that the cardinal was ordered to retire two hundred miles
from London ; but upon the intercession of the king's sister
(" Mary the beloved ") Henry wrote letters to several nobles and
squires in the North, recommending them to visit his " old friend,
and to be civil to him and ask him to make merrie at their
homes."f Crumwell likewise sent words " of comfort to his good
master of former days." All looked assuring ; but the heart of
the great man was crushed. His altered mien, his generosity and
urbanity, won the esteem of -the people of the northern districts.
He did not appear at their banquets or make merry, as they ex-
pected. The hunting-parties to which he was invited, and once
enjoyed so much, he now declined, stating that " such amuse-
ments were not suitable for a priest." He gave himself up al-
most wholly to spiritual matters, and on every Sunday and holy-
day he rode to some village church, where he celebrated Mass ;
he frequently preached twice a day to the peasantry, and heard
the confessions of " outcasts and outlaws " ; he enjoined the
priests to preach sermons on holydays as well as on Sundays, and
to explain to their flocks the history of the Catholic Church. He
made minute inquiry as to the good or bad feeling that might pre-
vail in rural districts ; he went to the humblest cottage, the low-
liest homestead, on his missions of charity, and reconciled those
who had been long at enmity. One remarkable case has been re-
corded. Sir Richard Tempest and a squire named Hastings had
been long in a state of deadly enmity, and, according to the cus-
tom of the times, the retainers and tenants of both parties adopted
the " angry mood " of their respective masters. Many conflicts
took place. The cardinal, however, undertook a reconciliation.
He invited the chief combatants and their " men-at-arms," num-
bering in all eight hundred, to a banquet arranged in a field,
where wine and beer preceded the dinner, and the cardinal
caused all parties to shake hands. Three days later Tempest,
Hastings, and many of their followers went to confession and
received Holy Communion at the cardinal's hands.

The licentious and the dishonest became reformed through
his admonitions ; the unfaithful and harsh husband appeared al-
tered in his domestic relations, and publicly confessed that " the

* Carlo Logario's Notes on his Master's religious Opinions,
t Brewer's State Papers on Wolsey's Fall.

THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

cardinal had taught him to be what he should be to his family."
Wolsey's labors at this time were unceasing, and he seemed al-
most to excel Bishop Fisher as a priest : he sent provisions and
words of comfort to widows and orphans, and preached especially
to " young maidens to preserve their chastity ; that all beauty
faded and perished when virtue fled.'' * He recommended early
marriages to those who had sufficient means, and delivered special
discourses to " young married people on the duty they owed
to one another." In the few months he spent in the North he ac-
complished more for the practice of religion than perhaps he had
ever before done during the twenty years of his busy political life.
" In his domestic intercourse," writes Oldgate, " he became won-
derfully changed ; the proud cardinal had vanished from the
scene." His hospitality about this time was large and kindly, but
there was no manifestation of splendor or extravagance ; every
squire in the district was welcome to his dining-hall whenever
they chose to visit him ; " apartments were also set aside with
right merrie cheer for the yeoman, and even the peasant," and a
considerable number of women and children received food daily.
The cardinal conversed in brief words and friendly tone with al-
most every one who approached his house and grounds, inquir-
ing as to their mode of life, their families, etc. ; he employed three
hundred mechanics and laborers in repairing the churches of the
diocese and the houses of the clergy, to whom he was kind and
considerate. The more he was known the more he was loved ;
those to whom, in the days of his prosperity, he had been an ob-
ject of hatred now spoke well of him.f Perhaps the most cor-
rect account of his conduct is to be found in Thomas Crumwell's
letters, which present him in an amiable light, "performing so
many good offices for the people with so little means." The king
heard those accounts with apparent satisfaction, and sent Wolsey
money, which was not "expended on " luxuries," as has been al-
leged, " but in assisting the destitute and the unfortunate, espe-
cially poor widows and orphans, of whom there were many in
those turbulent times."

A Puritan writer presents an interesting picture of Wolsey's
retirement at Cawood when relieved from the burden of the
state : " None was better beloved than the cardinal after he had
been there awhile. He gave bishops a good example how they
might win back the stray sheep. There were few holydays but

* Carlo Logario.

tSee Grove's Life and Times of Cardinal Wolsey, vol. iv. ; Strype's Memorials, vol. i. ; His-
torical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, vol. i.

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 473

he would ride five or six miles from his house, now to this parish
church, now to that, and thence cause one of his priests to make a
goodly sermon unto the people. He sat among them for a while,
and then celebrated Mass before all the parish. . . . He brought
his dinner with him, and invited many of the people of the parish
to partake of the same. He inquired if there was any grudge or
ill-feeling between neighbors ; and, if there were, after the dinner
was over he sent for the parties to meet him at the church, where
he made them all friends again." In the absence of the parish
clergy the cardinal walked on foot, sometimes amidst snow or
rain, to attend the death-bed of persons in fever and other infec-
tious diseases.* He procured pardons from the king for outlaws
who subsequently became good members of society.

Stephen Gardyner, then Secretary of State, was a member of
the council which offered so many insults to the fallen cardinal,
who had formerly been his kind benefactor. Never was any
great man more abandoned by friends than Wolsey had been at
the time of his overthrow.

The winter advancing, the council desired to hasten the car-
dinal's journey to York ; therefore, leaving Scroby for Cawood
Castle, he stopped two nights and a day at St. Oswald's Abbey,
where he confirmed the children of the neighborhood in the
church from eight in the morning until noon ; and then, so intent
was he on this holy labor that, after a short dinner, he again be-
gan a little after one of the clock. At length the cardinal became
so fatigued as to find it necessary to call for a chair ; yet he
would not desist, but proceeded until six in the evening before
he could complete the duty ; so many applicants were for Con-
firmation. On the ensuing day, whilst travelling towards Ca-
wood, he stopped at every church on his way, confirming nearly
one hundred children on that day alone, even before he reached
Ferrybridge, where, on an extensive plain about a quarter of
a mile from Cawood, there assembled upwards of five hundred
children round a great stone cross. The cardinal immediately
alighted from his horse, and, having put on his vestments, aided
by three priests, he confirmed all that were presented to him ;
and it was a late hour before he reached Cawood, quite exhausted.
Some thousands of parents accompanied him to his residence on
the night of this most edifying day. Logario says that Wol-
sey's sermons to the children were most affecting ; and his ap-
peals to the mothers on behalf of the olden religion were long
remembered in the North.

* Carlo Logario's Narrative.

474 THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

In his zeal for religion the cardinal entered into correspond-
ence with the pope. Cavendish says that his letters to the pon-
tiff were intended to promote a reconciliation between the king
and the head of the church. But those who projected the mon-
astic confiscations represented the matter in a different light to
Henry, who suddenly issued a mandate for the apprehension of
Wolsey. He was arrested at Cawood on the 4th of November
(1530). He betrayed no appearance of having offended against
the laws of the land, or the " king's mandates," which were more
terrible still. " The kings highness" said the cardinal, " has not a
more loyal subject in his realm than I am. There is not living on earth
a man who can look me in the face and charge me with untruth or dis-
honorable dealings. I seek no favor but to be at once confronted with
my accusers" Logario, who was present at the above declara-
tion of the cardinal, states that it was evidently the protest of an
innocent and much-injured man. " Whilst I live," writes the
faithful Logario, " I shall never forget the style in which my
grand old master [the cardinal] addressed those who came to
arrest him. ' Let me be at once confronted with my enemies ' was
pronounced in words so simple yet so powerful that all present
believed in his innocence, yet no one dared give public expres-
sion to his convictions." Wolsey was never confronted with his
accusers. The iniquity of the Star-Chamber procedure, and the
greater iniquity of the monarch and his advisers, would not per-
mit this act of simple justice to take place. The policy of the
crown in this case robbed "justice " of its majestic surroundings
and enshrouded in darkness and mystery all that should have
been light and open to the world.

Little is known of the real charges against Wolsey. They
were set forth, and of course sworn to by the suborned witnesses
of the crown. Lord Herbert's knowledge of the manner in which
evidence was prepared for the Star Chamber and other courts
brought him to the conclusion that there was no one circum-
stance on which to base the accusation of high treason against
the cardinal. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, too, gave no
credit to the charge of treason against their former friend.
These noblemen, be it remembered, were both enemies of Wol-
sey, and at that period in the exercise of vast power at court — a
power which was rarely exercised in the cause of mercy.

The king kept up the delusion of " a reconciliation " to the
last. A few days before the arrest he sent Sir Henry Norris
with a ring as a token "of returning friendship." The scene
between Wolsey and Norris was distressing. The cardinal's

i882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 475

hopes revived for a moment, but only to disappear. " Gentle
Norris," said he, " if I were lord of a realm the one-half of it
would be an insufficient reward to give you for your pains and
words of comfort. But, alas! I have nothing left me but the
clothes on my back ; therefore take this small reward," giving
him a little chain of gold with a cross. " When I was in pros-
perity I would not have parted with it for one thousand pounds ;
wear it for my sake, and remember me when I am gone." The leave-
taking between the cardinal and Sir Henry Norris was described
by a spectator " as most affecting."

A tragic fate awaited Sir Henry Norris. He was one of the
witnesses to the clandestine marriage between Henry VIII. and
Anna Boleyn, and was known to the king from childhood. At
the fall of Anna Boleyn he was one of the three gentlemen charg-
ed with the treason alleged against her. Those accusations were
all concocted by the relatives of Jane Seymour. Norris, like his
companions, perished on the scaffold. Sir Henry Norris was a
blunt, brave, handsome young man, expert in all manly exer-
cises, and possessing a vein of pleasantry and uncultured but
ready wit peculiarly acceptable among the DV no means fastidious
habitue's of a court like that presided over by King Henry. The
beautiful little children of Norris were thrown in the monarch's
way to beg their father's life ; they held on by the royal robes ;
they cried, they sobbed — but all in vain : the brutal king dashed
them aside with a fearful oath. Sir Henry Norris, like his com-
panions, died bravely. He was true to the olden religion of
England to the death.* Happily for Wolsey, he did not live to
witness the terrible calamities that so quickly followed upon the
track of the iniquitous judgments pronounced by Thomas Cran-
mer.

Wolsey made a present of his " court fool " (Patch) to the
king. " I trust his highness will accept him well ; for surely for
a nobleman's pleasure he is worth one thousand pounds." The
fool left his good master with great reluctance, for it took six
yeomen to carry him away. The king treated Patch with kind-
ness, often speaking to him of the cardinal with reverence and
seeming affection. The fool's real name was Williams. In the
reign of Edward VI. he became a preacher amongst the early
Dissenters, but was not considered of much account. Daniel
Dancer, himself a preacher, states that "the late fool-" thought
of little else but." good belly cheer " — the favorite phrase of those
times.

Historical Portraits of the 7^udor Dynasty, vol. i. p. 419.

4/6 THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

To few men is accorded the stoicism of confronting good and
evil fortune with a mind unmoved. The histories of Greece and
Rome, in the days of their heroes, present a few such noble ex-
amples, and amongst Christian martyrs have been found most
edifying instances. But the temperament of the cardinal was
not so loftily unyielding. When he became fully alive to his al-
tered condition and the exaltation of his enemies he " sobbed
like a child." Such is the description of Father Longland, who
told him " to take comfort, and remember he was a priest of God,
and could now labor to save souls for the King of kings ; that he
should cast away worldly pride and vanity, and become a mis-
sioner in the vineyard of the Lord Jesus ; that his pride brought
him to his present changed fortune." There was a time when no
man, not even a Carthusian father, might have addressed the
Cardinal of York in the words of Longland ; but incurable mis-
fortune is a strong aid to conviction, and the inevitable a potent
support to philosophy. So Wolsey accepted the situation, and
sought peace in the performance of duties whose importance he
had never, even in the very zenith of his political power, seemed
willing to ignore.

It was gratifying to the inhabitants of Southwell and the sur-
rounding country to have their prelate amongst them. His
house was soon frequented by a large number of the country
squires, their wives and daughters, and the cardinal, who was
always profuse in his hospitality — on this occasion with reduced
means — provided the best cheer he could devise. His gentle
and familiar manner caused him to be greatly beloved and es-
teemed throughout the country. He felt the value of those soft-
ening qualities and manners which impart a humanly gentle grace
to the moral beauty of virtue. Other attributes are more sub-
lime and distinguishing ; but the kind and courteous voice, the
benign amenity, the benevolent feelings, and the unassuming
conduct never fail to awake our most ardent and endearing sym-
pathies, to connect heart with heart, and soul with soul, in bonds
of mutual gratification and genial regard, and to attest that inner
loveliness of character which attracts the esteem of intellect and
sensibility by a social magnetism that every age and rank feel
and welcome.*

The cost of Wolsey 's different establishments at a previous
period had been upwards of thirty thousand pounds per annum
— an enormous sum at the commencement of the sixteenth cen-
tury. He had eight hundred servants in various stations, and

* Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, vol. i.

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 477

employed some two thousand artisans and laborers, all of whom,
according to Thomas Crumwell, were treated in a liberal and
kindly manner.

Wolsey's endowments at Oxford and Ipswich evidence his
love of learning. He gave some three thousand pounds a year
in gratuities to men of learning at home and abroad. " Who-
ever," writes Erasmus, "was distinguished by any art or science
paid court to the cardinal, and none paid court in vain."

Giustiniani, who was no friend or admirer of Wolsey, has left
his opinion on record of the cardinal's merits as a judge. " He
has, "observes that acute diplomatist, " the reputation of being ex-
tremely just ; he favors the people exceedingly, especially the
poor, hearing their cases and seeking to despatch them quickly.
He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for very poor suitors
who have no money." " In matters of judicature," writes Fuller,
" he behaved himself commendably. No widow's sighs nor or-
phan's tears appear in our chronicles as caused by the Cardi-
nal of York." Some English writers, amongst them the author
of The English Chancellors, allege that Wolsey " neglected his du-
ties as chancellor ; that his decisions were whimsical, arbitrary,
and in ignorance of law " ; and " that he had no pity for the poor
suitor." A distinguished legal commentator on the English
judges makes the opposite statement, and points out the sec-
tarian leaven that prevails throughout Lord Campbell's Chan-
cellors. That able and discriminating prelate, Edward Fox,
Bishop of Hereford, who was long acquainted with the Cardinal
of York, declares that he had never known so painstaking a
judge ; that he was "always on the side of the poor man when op-
posed by the rich or unscrupulous"; and that when he decided
against the claims of a poor man, or of a widoiv, or of orphans, he in-
variably gave them assistance in money or employment* Who can
question the testimony of Sir Thomas More, who, like Dr. Fox,
speaks of Wolsey from personal knowledge ? " No chancellor
of England," writes More, " ever acted with greater impartiality,
deeper penetration of judgment, or a more enlarged knowledge of law
and of equity." This testimony is little less than sacred, coming
from the pen of the stainless and martyred chancellor. It seems
strange that Lord Campbell, who reverences and extols the char-
acter of More, should have passed over that great and good
man's evidence as to the merits of his predecessor in the Great
Seal. The evidence of a contemporary, and one, too, who prac-
tised as an advocate in Wolsey's court, should have more weight

* Thorndale's Anecdotes of Edward Fox, Bishop of Hereford,

478 THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

with posterity than that of a biographer who wrote three centu-
ries later and in part derived his knowledge from the " smoke
of sectarian fires."

" Ambition leaves an odious mark upon history only when it
has been accompanied by wrong and bloodshed ; but not a sin-
gle public act of Wolsey as a judge or a statesman can be proved
to have been unjust " * — so writes an eminent Anglican cleric.
Brewer traces the slanders on Wolsey's character to Polydore
Vergil. " My only surprise," he says, " is that every historian
in succession should have accepted Polydore Vergil's statements
as a true picture of the Cardinal of York. Each has added a
little to the original story or caricature. Edward Hall took his
portrait from Polydore Vergil ; Foxe [the mendacious martyro-
logist] from Hall ; Burnet and Strype from Foxe ; Hume from
his countryman, Burnet, and so on to the end of the series."

I could not desire to have a higher authority on the question
raised than Mr. Brewer. Although Hume quotes Polydore Ver-
gil, he has still the candor to inform his readers that " Polydore's
narratives of Wolsey are very suspicious." In fact, he raises the
question as to Vergil's " motives " in this case. It seems, how-
ever, to be the fate of most public men to be more or less misre-
presented for a time. Many statements have been made as to
the envy and jealousy of Wolsey towards some of his eminent
contemporaries. The fact is, the cardinal might have said with
Petrarch : " Of all vices envy is the last of which I could be
guilty."

No great soul has ever envied in another the possession of
genius or virtue.

1 now approach the closing scenes in the great minister's
career. The cardinal's health had been declining for some time.
He was laboring under dropsy, a weakness of the limbs, and a
general prostration ; but the vigor of his mind was still unim-
paired. 'He was not, however, in a condition to travel with ex-
pedition in the cold, damp days of November. Upwards of three
thousand persons assembled at Cawood to see him a prisoner —
not, as in London, to exult, but to pity and to bless him for all
the good offices he had rendered them. His spirits became quite
fallen, yet he seemed soothed by the good nature of the people—
the men, the women, and the children. " They cried with a loud
voice," writes Cavendish, " ' God save your grace ! The foul evil
take them that hath taken you from us ; and we pray God that a
vengeance may light upon them all.' Thus they ran crying after

* J. H. Blunt's Reformation of the Church of England, vol. i.

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 479

him through the town of Cawood, they loved him so well."
Such is the description of the scene by an eye-witness. When
Wolsey reached Sheffield Park he manifested a change for the
worse. On the following morning, at an early hour, Cavendish
found him seated on a chest with his beads in hands. The news
of Kingston's arrival from London caused him to shudder. He
dropped the beads from his hands. Logario handed them to
him in a moment, when, in gentle accents, he said : " ' God bless
and preserve you, my son, from the snares of this wicked world ! '
He spoke something kindly to Cavendish, remarking, ' You will
not have your poor old master long.' " * He was next informed
that the constable of the Tower desired to have an interview
with him. The excitement returned. He cried and sobbed,
then in a mournful accent exclaimed : " Well, as God willeth, so be
it. I am quite prepared to accept such ordinances as God hath
provided for me." Shortly after a distressing scene occurred on
the entrance of Sir William Kingston and the Earl of Northum-
berland— once known as Lord Harry Percy, the quondam lover
of Anna Boleyn and the deadly enemy of the fallen Wolsey.
The conduct of Northumberland on this occasion indicated the in-
tensity of his hatred to the cardinal.f It was bruited that the earl
was sent, at the suggestion of the Marchioness of Pembroke
(Anna Boleyn), to arrest the cardinal, in order to add to his an-
guish of mind. If she did so it is a mere question whether Anna
or her old lover displayed the greater -amount of implacability.
What a strange meeting ! Cavendish relates that when Northum-
berland entered the room he trembled and stepped back ; then,
advancing, he laid his hand on the right shoulder of the cardinal
and said : " My Lord Cardinal, I arrest thee, in the king's name,
for high treason." Next the Earl of Shrewsbury (afterwards so
infamous as the unmanly jailer of Mary, Queen of Scots) en-
tered, and placed his hand on the cardinal's left shoulder, repeat-
ing the words of Northumberland. The cardinal, smiling, silently
bowed to both. Sortie minutes elapsed before either party spoke.
All the dignity and courage of the cardinal returned ; and, as far
as Kingston was concerned, no jailer could perform his unwel-
come office with more delicacy, thus presenting a striking contrast
with the bearing of Northumberland, who treated his prisoner
with every indignity and desired to have him tied on horseback

* Carlo Logario's Narrative.

fin Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. i. p. 638, the scene between Wolsey and
Northumberland is printed. See Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., p. 342; likewise Lloyd's
State Worthies.

480 THE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

with heavy ropes ! Kingston expressed his indignation at such a
proposal, and desired that there should be no interference on the
part of any one present.

A few days before his death Wolsey received a message from
the king, stating that his highness was informed by a " trusty
agent " that the cardinal had a large sum of money buried in a
garden, and the king demanded the said money. The story was
the pure invention of some courtier.

" Maister Kingston," said Wolsey, " my disease is such that I
cannot live. I have a flux with a continual fever, and if you see
no alteration in me soon there is no remedy but death."

The court party became impatient at the time consumed in
conveying the object of their hatred to London, and as soon as
he was able to get on horseback the cardinal was compelled to
proceed. Along the road the yeomen and peasantry came forth
to meet him, expressing in their simple sincerity their heartfelt
sympathy. The harsh, cold days did not prevent the wives and
daughters from " appearing on the highways to wave their hands
and give looks of sorrow." To all the cardinal said : " May God
preserve ye in his holy religion, my good people ! " He did not
proceed far until his strength began rapidly to decline.

Arriving at the Abbey of Leicester, about four of the clock on
Saturday evening, he was met at the gate by the abbot and the
brotherhood, when he exclaimed : " Father Abbot, I am come to lay
my bones amongst you'' Logario and Thorndale were both in at-
tendance, and the courtesy and kindness of the abbot and the
monks were worthy of their virtuous and hospitable home.

And here, as we are at the gates of this once celebrated home
of piety and learning, let me digress to mention a few facts but
little known concerning it. The records of Leicester Abbey con-
tained many most interesting facts as to the history of the old
monastic times, its hospitality, and the rank of its many visitors,
ranging over centuries. The abbey was rich in endowments be-
stowed by the pious and the humane of many generations in the
bygone. For a long period Leicester Abbey supported a large
number of the poor of that locality, and orphans were specially
succored. The revenue of the abbey amounted to one thousand
and sixty-two pounds per annum ; and I may add that the ten-
ants had the " most kind-hearted landlords in England." One
of the rules of this monastic house was hospitality to travellers,
who were both fed and lodged there on their journeys. .Many
English kings during their northern visits resided at Leicester
Abbey. The records of the abbey presented a long account of

1 882.] THE FALL OF WOLSE.Y. 481

the visit of King Richard II., his young queen, and a numerous
retinue of courtiers, amongst whom were the Duke of Ireland,
the Earl of Suffolk, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many
other great personages. The abbey was subsequently granted to
William Cavendish, Wolsey's friend, who became the recipient of
monastic plunder in the latter days of Henry VIII. During the
civil wars of the reign of Charles I. this once magnificent abbey
was burned down by the Puritan vandals of the rebel Parlia-
ment.

The cardinal was immediately carried to bed, from which he
rose no more. On Sunday he seemed to be fast sinking, but
rallied for a time. His beads were constantly in his hands. " He
prayed with great fervor," observes Dr. Logario, " making the
sign of the cross many times." He described himself as "a most
lowly creature and a wretched sinner ; that his vanity and pride
were now justly punished. He spoke frequently of his firm be-
lief in, and adherence to, the Catholic Church, and warned his
attendants against the new heresy which was secretly creeping
into the land."* .. <

The last days were now approaching. Sunday and Monday
passed in suffering resignation. On the latter day the cardinal
told his attendants that he would live " till eight of the clock on
the following morning," which proved prophetic. At six on Tues-
day morning (November 29, 1530) he made a declaration of his
religious belief in the presence of the abbot and twelve monks.
" I shall never forget this scene," writes Thorndale to Bishop
Fisher. Then, with becoming solemnity, the cardinal received
the last rites of the church. At its conclusion he remained silent
for some time. In one hour later his memorable address to Sir
William Kingston was delivered with unusual emotion. Thorn-
dale assured Sir Anthony Brown " that if the king could have
heard that last farewell speech from the cardinal all his enmity
would have vanished, and the load of reproach which the king's
subsequent actions cast upon his memory might, perhaps, never
have been deserved." f

The end was now rapidly approaching. The cardinal's voice
suddenly faltered, but his eyes still retained their intelligent

* Thorndale's Notes on the last days of Wolsey. Thorndale was one of the cardinal's per-
sonal friends, like Logario, the Spanish physician.

t Wolsey's address to Kingston has not been preserved, and the versions published are not
correct. Kingston took down his words most accurately, but it is highly probable that the cour-
tiers never permitted the king to see it ; for Henry was deceived by almost every one around him.
Shakespeare's version, however good, is but imaginary. It is also incorrectly given as addressed
to Crumwell, who had deserted his good master at the first frown of adversity.
VOL. XXXIV. — 31

482 T.HE FALL OF WOLSEY. [Jan.,

brightness. John Longland, a Carthusian confessor, stood beside
the death-couch whilst Mass was being celebrated at the high
altar in the church ; and just as the bell of the abbey tolled for
the raising of the Host the Cardinal of York closed his eyes
upon all the fleeting honors and transitory splendors of the
state, as well as upon the deceit and wickedness of human am-
bition.

And now in memoriam. When the interests and the honor
of England were concerned this remarkable man was energetic
and fearless ; yet he waged no war of blood or plunder. His
wars were the contests of diplomacy ; his fortresses the laby-
rinths of dominant astuteness ; his triumphs the victories of in-
tellectual supremacy. As a politician of the period in which he
lived he played his part with a degree of proud frankness and
honor seldom to be found in diplomatists of any time. In his fall
he evinced more magnanimity than at the zenith of his greatness.
It is at length time that the truth should be vindicated ; that the
ignorant or malignant narratives so often presented to posterity
as biographies of Thomas Wolsey should be controverted, and
the real character elicited of a man who, in ideas as well as ac-
tions, was the greatest minister that Europe had produced up to
his epoch. Those who are not well acquainted with the Home
and Foreign State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII. can form
no accurate opinion of the greatness of the Cardinal of York as a
minister of the crown. Those students of history who have had
the privilege of examining the voluminous State Papers bearing
upon the long career of Wolsey as a minister of the crown must
look upon the closing scene of his life with mournful emotion.
Sharon Turner observes that our " moral taste " must regret that
" one who had, for nearly twenty years, been acting so grand a
part in the sight of all Europe did not fall, like the setting sun,
with a majesty correspondent to the character he had been repre-
senting." Far more comforting to the Christian heart than the
idea of " moral taste " that the illustrious cardinal humbly and
fervently recurred, in the decline of his earthly magnificence, to
the overruling Arbiter of all greatness.

An interesting question has been raised several times by stu-
dents of history as to whether Wolsey ever used the memorable
words attributed to him by William Cavendish : " Had I but
served my God as diligently as I have served my king He would
not have given me over in my gray hairs." The saying is traceable
to an earlier date than that of Wolsey. " If," said De Berghes to
Lady Margaret, "Land Kenner had served God as we have served

i882.] THE FALL OF WOLSEY. 483

the king1 we might have hoped for a place in Paradise."* Similar
words are attributed to the wealthy Duke of Buckingham at the
scaffold in 1521 : " If he had offended no more unto God Almighty
than he had done to the king's highness, he should die as true a
man as ever was in the world." f Buckingham was not a man of
fine or delicate sentiment or of much education. As to Wolsey,
when misfortune struck him down he was still too proud to de-
scend in his last memorable saying to take his text from De
Berghes or from the Duke of Buckingham, whom he had de-
spised and ruined. It is very possible that William Cavendish,
who delighted in sensational gossip; imported a flourish of senti-
ment into his narrative in this instance, as he has in other matters
indulged in imagination on matters concerning the Cardinal of
York. Cavendish could not induce the constable of the Tower
to corroborate his statement, because Sir William Kingston was
quite deaf; his evidence is, therefore, unsupported. Besides, Dr.
Logario is silent as to this remarkable " speech of Wolsey," so
often declaimed by youths at school, having been made at all.

In forty-eight hours subsequent to the moment of dissolution
the remains of the cardinal were placed in an humble deal coffin
and consigned to an obscure grave, unwept and unlamented, ex-
cept by the few tried friends who, to the honor of human nature,
amidst so much of baseness, greed, ingratitude, and cruelty, re-
mained loving and faithful to the last.

No memorial marks the spot where the dust of Thomas Wol-
sey lies buried. Even tradition can scarcely trace the where-
abouts of his sepulture. Such has been the case with the mortal
frames of many of the " immortals " of antiquity. But the great-
est and the noblest monument that can be erected to Genius and
Virtue is that which the truth and equity of History, in its stern
and impartial judgment, award to the actions and the motives
of those who have done the " state some service."

* Brewer's State Papers, vol. iii. p. 21.

t The Duke of Buckingham's " last words " OB the scaffold at the Tower Hill.

484 THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. [Jan.,

THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU.

IT has been repeatedly declared that America sooner or later is
destined by its example to revolutionize Europe and effect such
a change in its affairs as will convert the Old World into a new
United States. This may be true as to forms of government and
social arrangements. In a political sense Europe may approxi-
mate to America ; but in the physical sphere there will always
be a wide difference.

The mountain ranges of the Old World, for instance, run east
and west. The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas stretch right
across that world. The mountain ranges of America, on the
other hand, extend north and south along the length of the
earth. There will be no alteration here. The revolutions which
America is destined to work in Europe will not extend to its
mountain ranges. The Alps and the Himalayas, we may rest
assured, will never wheel round, shift their position, and stretch
their ponderous magnitude from north to south in imitation of
the Rocky Mountains. In this respect America must prove in-
imitable.

As every one knows, the Rocky Mountains are the backbone
of North America. These mountains swell up to an enormous
magnitude and lord it over the surrounding country in the
north. But when they reach the south they seem to fall pros-
trate before the sun and shrink into a huddle of dwarf hills. But
they start up once more into prodigious magnitude after passing
the Isthmus of Darien and reaching South America, where,
under the name of Andes, they tower to a great elevation which
was regarded during centuries as unequalled on earth.

The Andes may be described as a gigantic wall which rises
to the height of twelve thousand feet ; it is from forty to four
hundred miles thick and upwards of forty thousand miles long.
Crowned here and there with enormous towers and pinnacles
that stand like ruined castles, it is the most compact mountain
system on earth.

Between this majestic wall and the Pacific Ocean lies Chile, a
territorial selvage or strip of coast fifteen hundred miles long.
It may be described as an immense vale, hemmed in between the
mountains and the sea, which is streaked here and there by lon-
gitudinal valleys, and thus rises into platforms and terraces like

1 882.] THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. 485

steps of stairs until it reaches and rests upon the immense wall
of the Andes. On the summit of that wall, wrapt in clouds,
storms, and darkness, Winter sits enthroned in all its terrors,

"While Summer in a vale of flowers
Is sleeping rosy at its feet."

Advancing towards the south, the Andes bend westward,
and thus compress the vale into a narrower compass. In that
region, beyond the frontier of Chile, the wintry ocean assumes a
terrible aspect, and the mountains, crumbling away under the
vehement lashing of the impetuous storms, dispart their rocks
and come tumbling in stony avalanches to the plain. Lowering
their elevation and spreading out into Patagonia, the Andes reach
the Straits of Magellan, which may be regarded as the end of the
world. Nature on the northern frontier of Chile assumes an en-
tirely different aspect, but one no less dreary, repulsive, and dis-
heartening. In toiling over this dismal waste the traveller might
well be pardoned if he fancied himself penetrating into the bor-
derland of the infernal regions. Parched, sunburnt, barren, and
dismal, it presents such a heart-breaking appearance of monotony
that it may well be termed, in biblical language, " a howling wil-
derness." The chirp of an insect, the twitter of a bird, a single
blade of grass, the slightest trace of vegetation, is never encoun-
tered. But the sandy waste is broken occasionally by heavy flats
of lava, spreading like petrified rivers, black and ponderous, in
the lifeless solitude. The plain at first sight seems to be perfectly
level, but it is really broken into waves of sand, as if it had been
once a billowy ocean, converted, in archaic times, by the wand
of an enchanter into dry land. The scene is interrupted here and
there by colossal rocks towering in the plain to an immense
height. They resemble huge castles, scarred by lightning and
blasted by tempests, but still massive, lofty, and formidable.

There is no country in Europe which Chile resembles so much
as Italy. Chile, however, is once and a half as large as that
peninsula. But, equally beautiful, equally fertile, in productions
and climate it may be regarded as the sister, or at least the
cousin, of that

" Parent of our religion, whom the wide
Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven."

There is a difference, however, in point of population. Every
square mile in Italy contains two hundred and forty-eight in-

486 THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. [Jan.,

habitants. Not so in Chile, which has but ten inhabitants to the
square mile. But if Chile is deficient in population it abounds
in all the raw elements of future multiplicity. " Its teeming
furrows float with yellow corn," and it may be termed " the
fruitful mother of flocks and herds." Its fields swarm with
lowing oxen and are mantled with golden grain. Nor is this
all. Its mineral treasures surpass its superficial opulence. Its
rocks produce iron, lead, coal, copper, and silver. Its long sea-
board is indented with deep, capacious, and well-sheltered har-
bors. From every point of the compass merchantmen come
crowding in and cast anchor in Valparaiso, Concepcion, Co-
quimbo, Talcahuana, and Valdivia, etc.

Owing to the gifts which Providence has bestowed on Chile
it is at once an agricultural, commercial, and maritime country ;
but only one-quarter of its surface is cultivated, and its popula-
tion is barely two millions and a half. The ocean which washes
its long extent of sea-coast may be regarded as an immense high-
way that Nature has thrown open for the convenience of the in-
habitants when desirous of passing from one district to another.
Backed as Chile is by the Andes, and flanked by deserts on the
north and south, an enemy can attack it by sea only.

The ocean enables Chile to import the productions of foreign
countries and export its own. It gives it an introduction to
every maritime nation on earth. Accordingly all the industry of
the inhabitants has taken a maritime direction. Their darling
object is the multiplication of their shipping and the augmenta-
tion of their maritime power. They believe that the trident of
Neptune is at once the sceptre of the world and the birthright of
the people of Chile.

It has been often remarked that the physical geography of a
country— its mountains, rivers, harbors, and mineral resources, its
climate and configuration— determine the manners and mould
the moral character of the inhabitants. They resemble more or
less the mother that gave them birth. If a country abound in
coal the inhabitants have smutted faces and black hands ; they
love to bury themselves in the bowels of the earth and grope
in the black depths of the under-world. If a sea-coast, lashed
with storms and beaten with billows, form the selvage of their
fatherland, it swarms with boatmen having tarry hands, weather--
beaten faces, and waddling gait. If mountains tower above it
the inhabitants follow cattle like the Swiss or pursue game like
the Tyrolese, while rich plains, undulating in luxuriant ver-
dure, convert them into prosperous farmers. The natives of

i882.] THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. 487

Wicklow, in Ireland, differ as much from the inhabitants of
Meath as does the soil of their respective counties. It is
true that man exerts a powerful influence on external nature.
He modifies its features to suit his industrial purposes, tames it
to subjection and compels it to comply, ransacks its centre and
makes war on the wilderness. But nature in its turn exerts a
tyrannical influence on man, makes him its slave, and forces him
into fellowship with itself. This fact is in Chile more obvious,
perhaps, than in most other countries.

The English have repeatedly informed the French that they
are bad colonizers. The colonies which France has given birth
to, they politely assure their neighbors, have always proved mis-
erable abortions. But if this be true of France (and we beg leave
to deny it) it is certainly false of Spain. Of all the nations on
earth Spain has been the most successful colonizer. On her
colonial empire the sun for ages found it impossible to set.
Patient, brave, sober, and long-suffering, emigration to the New
World has not stripped the Spaniard of the virtues which honor
and distinguish him at home. Into the soil which the heroic
courage of his victorious ancestors three hundred years ago
ploughed with the sword and watered with their blood he seems
to have shot an eternal root. He has grasped the ground with a
tenacity which no human strength can eradicate. With all its
power the United States could not wrench Florida from his
clutch without counting down the price of it. The houseless
wilds of Texas and California cost this great republic a long and
arduous struggle. The Spanish race in Mexico hold a magnifi-
cent empire with a firmness of grasp which nothing can loosen,
neither foreign war nor civil tumult, neither financial disorder
nor governmental confusion. Nothing can dispossess those
legitimate heirs of their magnificent inheritance. In Central
America, under the burning ardors of a tropical sun, the Spanish
colonist retains the conquests of his ancestors; South America
belongs exclusively to his race ; and from the plains of Missouri
to the snows of Cape Horn his language alone is heard ; and,
despite the mistakes of the mother-country, Cuba still continues
Spanish.

It is upwards of fifty years since Chile flung off the yoke of
Spain and national independence became the reward of military
victory. Then the fierce and savage factions which the terrors of
revolutionary conflict had cowed and silenced during the struggle
came out, lifted their heads, and barked, and roared, and rent one
another, and filled Chile with confusion and disorder. This is a

THE LATE WAR BETWEEN- CHILE AND PERU. [Jan.,

species of political disease which every nation that obtains liberty
by war must suffer from. Each faction would fain be first. All
would command, none obey. Many a nation, in passing through
this agitated period of storm and disaster, has been shipwrecked
and gone down into a gloomy abyss of ruin and destruction
"deeper than plummet ever sounded." Not so Chile. She
emerged from this interval of chaos and distraction beautiful and
terrible. She succeeded in establishing a regular government
which was acceptable to all, and which introduced order into the
finances and security into the administration. She organized an
army, and sent it out to lend aid to Peru ; and in the bloody
battle of Ayacucho this auxiliary army was mainly instrumental
in crowning South America with independence.

At peace with her neighbors, from whom she was separated
by natural barriers, Chile was able to apply herself to labor, to
cultivate her soil and develop her resources, and enjoy as the
fruit of her industry a degree of tranquillity and prosperity
wholly unknown to the other Spanish-American states.

The discovery of gold in California had a cheering and ani-
mating effect on the commerce of Chile. The living torrent of
emigration which rushed breathless from Europe round Cape
Horn, and sought in any way, at any cost, to reach the gold-
fields, gave an impulse to the traffic of Chile and poured such life
into all its industries as was entirely unprecedented. Every
vessel that rounded the Cape on its way to the " diggings " was
obliged to put into Valparaiso to effect repairs, take in provisions,
consult the doctors, or obtain a hand or two. In that long, peril-
ous, and stormy voyage not one escaped without the loss of spars,
rigging, hands, or stores. From 1848 to 1852 money seemed to
rain upon Valparaiso. Its commerce increased a hundred-fold.
There was a demand for everything in Chile, and Chile supplied
everything — not merely to the shipping, but to California itself,
which produced nothing but gold ; and, beautiful as it is, men
cannot eat that precious metal. Ships crowded the harbors of
Chile ; emigrants arrived in thousands, all eager to buy. There
was a continual fair in every port, full of hurry, bustle, and dis-
traction. Chile enjoyed a complete monopoly of this roaring
trade. All the bakers were busy, all the butchers employed, all
the sail-makers at work. There was any price for cordage.
Fruit, corn, food of every kind, provisions of every description,
were in constant and eager demand. Chile grew rich. Much of
the gold which was dug in California was spent in Chile. The
miners who worked like horses to exhume the gold spent it like

1882.] THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. 489

asses after it was exhumed. The population was increased by
crowds of discouraged emigrants who visited the diggings in
search of a golden fleece and returned shorn and naked. Many
who sought treasures in California were glad on their return to
find employment in Valparaiso.

This flourishing condition of affairs was not doomed to be
eternal. A day came when appalling news reached Chile. A
railroad was being constructed at Panama. Lines of steamers
were plying between Europe and the United States, and between
New York and Aspinwall. The tide of emigration would now
be diyerted into a new channel and visit Chile no more. This
was melancholy news, but it was not the worst. A railroad was
being constructed across the entire continent which would carry
the whole army of emigrants overland to California.

But Chile was not long disheartened. Prosperity had intro-
duced audacity. The gold which for years had been showered
upon her people had fructified in her soil and mantled her ter-
ritory with the wide bloom of cultivation. Every flag in the
known world had ruffled for years in her harbors, and she could
not give way to despair. A glorious future burst in all its splen-
dor on her ambitious hopes. She had profited by her brilliant
but ephemeral prosperity — " had made hay while the sun shone."
She had built or bought whole fleets of merchant vessels. Her
naval armament was well appointed. Her numerous mines were
worked with handsome profits. Her finances were in a sound
condition, and all her circumstances justified vast, expectations.
Her army was well disciplined and her public credit unimpaired.
She had little to fear, much to hope, in the future.

Still, she was not satisfied. She felt " cabined, cribbed, con-
fined " within her present frontiers. She panted for more room
—a wider range of territory. On the east she was compressed
by the Andes, on the west by the ocean, on the south by the dis-
mal wastes and howling wildernesses of Patagonia. She burned
for expansion. The north alone lay open to her. As the Yan-
kees went west with the axe, she would go northward with the
spade. In moving northward she must approach the great tide
of emigration which rushed like a torrent across the isthmus.
She must contemplate, if not enter, that great maelstrom of
European life. This was her darling object.

At this time a wonderful change took place in the houseless
wilds and barren deserts of Atacama; Instead of being an object
of dread and abhorrence they became an object of devouring
avarice and greedy speculation. They were teeming, it was said,

490 THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. [Jan.,

with the raw materials of fabulous riches. Under a thin layer of
sand and gravel immense accumulations of saltpetre were dis-
covered— enough to make all Chile wealthy. The salts of soda
intermixed with sand, and forming hard incrustations, were found
dotting the wilderness in every direction. A spade, it was al-
leged, was all that was necessary in order to accumulate a for-
tune. The discovery of gold in California did not agitate New
England with a greater fever of mining enterprise than was pro-
duced in Chile by the wonderful discovery of the beds of Anto-
fogasta. They seemed to be equally lucrative and inexhaustible.

Antofogasta is situated in the desert of Atacama, which
separates the northern frontier of Chile from the southern fron-
tier of Peru. When the republics of Chile and Bolivia estab-
lished their independence this " pathless desert dusked with
horrid shade" was despised by both. Neither set any value on
the unprofitable sands. It served as a boundary to separate
them, not as a prize to awaken their avarice and anger. How
much of it belonged to Bolivia, and how much to Chile, and how
much to Peru was never clearly determined. It never dawned
upon their minds that so worthless a territory could ever be-
come a subject of dispute. In 1866, however, Chile and Bo-
livia came to an understanding, made mutual concessions, and
signed a treaty which fixed the boundary of the two states at
the twenty-fourth degree of southern latitude. This was ow-
ing to the discovery of saltpetre.

This was not all. They agreed to act as partners, and go
share and share alike in the receipt of the duties exacted from
the miners who should work in the territory lying between the
twenty-first and twenty-fifth degrees of southern latitude. Now,
Antofogasta lies between these parallels. It stands twelve
leagues north of the twenty-fourth degree, and, consequently, on
Bolivian territory, and it was the Bolivian government which
conceded to that of Chile the right to levy an impost on the
produce of the mines of Antofogasta.

In consequence of this treaty the inhabitants of Chile began
to traverse the desert and to explore it in every direction. They
soon discovered new deposits of saltpetre, which they worked
with their accustomed energy, and which proved eminently pro-
fitable. As a consequence new settlements arose in the wilder-
ness, new centres of commercial life sprang into active existence,
especially on the coast. Little creeks and insignificant inlets
which were wholly unheard of yesterday became on a sudden
famous harbors. The facilities of transport which these estuaries

1 882.] THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. 491

furnished rendered them precious in the eyes of the companies.
Indeed, it was only in proximity to the coast that the works
could be carried on with profit.

The jealousy of Bolivia was excited by the profitable industry
of Chile. She looked as black as midnight on the prosperity and
progress of her rival. Nothing could reconcile her to such un-
tiring energy. She found fault with her rival, started objections
and difficulties without number, and was for ever grumbling and
complaining. It was to no purpose that Chile labored to soothe
her anger and appease her exasperation, appealed to the treaty
and proved that she had complied with all its conditions, and con-
formed to all the rules which Bolivia had laid down to regulate
the working of the mines. Bolivia would not be satisfied. Anto-
fogasta was becoming daily more prosperous and daily more
Chilian. Twenty thousand hands were busily working her
mines. The authority of Bolivia was fading away and vanish-
ing, while that of Chile was rising upward and onward to a de-
gree that maddened the Bolivians. This was the trouble.

In short, Bolivia was somewhat like the dog in the manger.
She could not or would not work the mines herself, but she
turned livid with envy when she saw others working them.
She could not gratify her feelings by marching an army into
the desert and arresting the works. The country was too bar-
ren, waste, and unproductive. Water could be procured by dis-
tillation only. All the other necessaries of life must be im-
ported, and the only fuel was the secretions of quadrupeds dried
in the sun. Her only resource was to remonstrate with Chile
and snarl at a progress which she could not hope to approach.

Bolivia was not the only republic that took umbrage at the
progress of Chile. Peru was likewise mortally offended. The
reason of this was very obvious : the latter was poor ; Chile
was wealthy. The financial condition of Peru had long been de-
plorable. Her pecuniary necessities compelled her to borrow,
and she was brought to the verge of bankruptcy by the terms of
the loans. A queen in natural productiveness, she was a beggar
in monetary arrangements. Her resources were magnificent,
but her extravagance was boundless. The enormous beds of
guano which filled the Chincha Islands were to Peru what Peru
itself had been to Spain. With her rich mines of silver and im-
mense deposits of guano the condition df Peru seemed the most
enviable in the world. But her boundless opulence begot bound-
less indolence, sloth, neglect, misery, and final ruin. She squan-
dered money without reckoning it, and mortgaged the future

492 THE LATE WAR BETWEEN CHILE AND PERU. [Jan.,

without calculating the consequences. The guano-beds sanction-
ed every folly, satisfied all demands, and excused every extra-
vagance. But these deposits themselves finally became exhaust-
ed and ruin was the result.

It was perfectly natural that the prosperity of Chile should
prove intolerable to Peru. She had no patience with such a
busy republic. But after some expostulations she determined
herself to grow rich. For this purpose she levied high dues on
the exportation of saltpetre from her own ports. This proceeding,
however, had not the desired effect. It had an opposite tenden-
cy. It caused buyers to quit her markets and flock to those of
Chile. It gave a new impulse to Chilean exportation and para-
lyzed her own. European vessels avoided the ports of Peru and
cast anchor in those of Chile. They shipped their cargoes in
Mexillones and Antofogasta, where saltpetre was cheaper because
lighter dues were imposed by the authorities. In this way Peru
was killing the goose which laid the golden eggs.

In the capital of Bolivia meantime society was sadly disturb-
ed, alarmed, and perplexed. The worst anticipations crowded on
the public mind. In the horoscope of Bolivia there was nothing
but disaster, according to her soothsayers. The president himself,
they were persuaded, was false to the public interests, in league
with the enemy to ruin his native land. Chile would reduce Boli-
via to vassalage, shut her out from the ocean, and compel her to
frequent Chilean harbors for the exportation of Bolivian produce.
The latter would not be able to wash her hands in the sea with-
out the permission of Chile.

Artfully availing herself of this public dissatisfaction, Peru
went to work to make & cat's-paw of Bolivia. As the territory
on which Antofogasta stood really belonged to Bolivia, Peru
clandestinely persuaded her to compel Chile (who might be con-
sidered as her tenant) to raise the dues on the exportation of salt-
petre. This was contrary to treaty. But, in the exasperated
state of Bolivian opinion, Peru found little difficulty in rendering
Bolivia subservient to her purposes. She entered into a secret
treaty with Peru, persuaded that Chile would not dare to go to
war with two such formidable republics.

This outrageous violation of international obligation on the
part of Bolivia excited no little exasperation in Chile. The whole
republic was in a ferment. Scorn excited by perfidy was blend-
ed with anger aroused by the suspension of industry and dimi-
nution of profit. The Chilean ambassador in the capital of Boli-
via protested in the most vehement manner against this shame-

i882.] THE END OF THE WORLD. 493

less breach of public faith. But all to no purpose. Bolivia had
recourse to procrastination. The consumption of time became
the darling object of the perfidious republic. " To-morrow, and
to-morrow, and to-morrow." But while Chile was publicly pro-
testing the confederates were secretly arming, manning their
war-steamers and augmenting their land forces, and making se-
cret preparations for the supreme moment.

Finally war, between Peru and Bolivia on one side and Chile
on the other, was publicly proclaimed — war which ended, as
all the world is well aware, in the overwhelming defeat of the
allies and the triumphant success of Chile.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

THE year through which we have just passed has, if we may
judge from newspaper paragraphs and popular rumor, been re-
garded with a certain amount of superstitious dread as the one
in which the world was to come to an end ; and in some minds
this vague apprehension was perhaps increased by the extraordi-
nary character of its seasons, and by the visit to our system dur-
ing it of two comets of considerable magnitude, the first of which
was specially startling, not only by its size and sudden appear-
ance in this hemisphere, but also by its arrival at about the time
which had been commonly assigned for the final consummation.

Of course no bne could really have given any solid reason,
even to himself, for this fear which has been more or less prevail-
ing ; and yet we doubt not that there are some, and perhaps many,
who in their secret hearts will give a sigh of relief as this omi-
nous year comes to its close ; and though for a time their belief in
the final destruction of this world may be weakened when this
cry of wolf proves a false one, yet the readiness with which it
was listened to shows how strong and permanent is the expecta-
tion, even among those who have no real Christian faith, that
what was feared this year will at some time actually come.

That it will come at some time is no doubt evident from the
teachings of faith, and is held by most Protestants as well as Ca-
tholics, since Scripture is quite clear on this point, notably in
the third chapter of St. Peter's second epistle. But we do not
propose to treat the subject from a theological point of view, but
rather to show that science itself must allow the possibility, nay,
even what we may call the probability, of a catastrophe to this
earth at some future period, and of the kind described by St.

494 THE END OF THE WORLD. [Jan.,

Peter ; so that we are not obliged to resort to a miraculous inter-
position of divine power to bring about the end of the world,
since it may well result from the forces now in action in the uni-
verse, and from the movements which these forces are constant-
ly producing and modifying.

We say a catastrophe of the kind described by St. Peter ; that
is, a destruction of the earth by heat. To bring about this result,
for example, it only would be necessary to stop its motion in
space. It is well known that the energy of a mass of water mov-
ing at the velocity of two hundred and twenty-three feet a second
will, if converted into heat by the stoppage of the motion, raise
the temperature of the water by one degree Fahrenheit ; also
that as the velocity increases the energy and the amount of heat
equivalent to it increase as the square of the velocity ; and, fur-
thermore, that any other substance would be more heated than
water. Now, the motion of the earth in its orbit is about ninety-
seven thousand feet a second, or four hundred and thirty-five
times two hundred and twenty-three ; hence the heat developed
by its stoppage would be more than the square of four hundred
and thirty-five times enough to raise it one degree in tempera-
ture. But the square of four hundred and thirty-five is about
one hundred and ninety thousand ; hence, speaking roughly, we
may say that the earth would be heated more than one hundred
and ninety thousand degrees by being stopped — that is, it would
at once become more than sixty times as hot as melted iron.*

It may, however, be said that there is very little probability,
even in the case of a collision with some other body, of the earth's
absolutely stopping. That it should do so would require great
cohesion of its parts and peculiar conditions of impact. But,
granting this, still it is plain that we have ample margin. A
diminution of its velocity by one-hundredth part of its present
amount would diminish its energy of visible motion by one-fif-
tieth ; and if this should be converted into heat, as it probably
would be for the most part, there would still be enough to melt
iron, and of course sufficient to set all substances commonly re-
garded as combustible on fire.

But how about collision ? For in no other way is it likely
that the earth's motion will be arrested or diminished, except
with an accompanying increase of potential energy, as it is called
(or, as we may term it, mechanical advantage of position, such as
occurs when our planet, with gradually diminishing velocity,

* We leave out of this calculation, as being somewhat uncertain, the probable motion of the
solar system as a whole. This, if the usual estimate of it is correct, would add about one-fif-
teenth part to the average actual energy of the earth.

1 882.] THE END OF THE WORLD. 495

moves to the point of its orbit most remote from the sun), which
potential energy stands in the place of the actual energy of mo-
tion or of temperature. Is, then, a collision with any heavenly
body probable, or even possible?

To this we may answer that no collision between the planets
properly so called (except of one asteroid with another) can oc-
cur under the sole influence of the law of gravitation, which is,
as far as the nicest observation indicates, the only cause of their
present orbital movements. There is no certainty, however, that
the enormous forces potentially lodged in them, and especially
in the sun, may not at some future time develop so as materially
to increase or diminish the results of gravity alone, and in this
way to produce collision of the planets with each other or with
the sun. It is not, however, necessary to suppose this. For there
are bodies which, though not planets strictly so called, are con-
tinually entering our planetary system, and of which some are
even permanently attached to it. Of course we mean the comets.
Now, it is not probable, we grant, for any particular comet, that
it will collide with the earth ; we may feel confident, even before
its path has been calculated, that the chance of collision with it
is next to infinitesimal. Still, there have been some comets, even
in historic times, which have given us rather a narrow berth, as-
tronomically speaking. And it must be remembered that when
we say that the chance against an event happening is a million to
one it by no means follows that we shall have to wait a million
times before it does actually happen.

But, supposing that a collision does actually occur, is the
mass of comets sufficient to seriously interfere with the motion
of the earth ? To this it must be said that there are strong indi-
cations that in many instances it is sufficient. The great comet
of this year, for example, had a nucleus the diameter of which
was estimated at about fifteen hundred miles ; and the character
of the light of this nucleus, as seen in the spectroscope, showed
it not to be gaseous, but to be composed of solid or liquid matter.
It is true that the nuclei of this and other similar comets may
not have been coherent — that is, they may have been composed
of particles separated by distances great compared with their
own size, like the flakes of snow in a storm ; so that their total
mass would be small compared with the space which they occu-
py. But there is no conclusive reason to believe this ; and if the
mass of these comets is as great as it would seem, it is evident
upon reflection, and from what has been said, that collision with
them would, under almost all conditions of impact, be dangerous.

THE END OF THE WORLD. [Jan.,

So it will be seen that we are by no means insured against
collisions which would be destructive simply from the conver-
sion of mechanical energy into heat. But that is not the only
source of danger in a meeting with, or even a near approach to,
one of these immense wandering bodies. For everything about
them indicates that they are in a state of great internal activity,
at least as they approach that region near the sun in which we
must, if at all, meet them. Forces and movements of unusual
violence are developed in them by the action of the great lumi-
nary, and it is reasonable to suppose that their production is ac-
companied by a considerable rise in temperature, as it is a gen-
eral rule that actual energy in any mass of matter tends to turn
itself partly into heat. Hence it would not seem to be necessary
that a comet should actually strike the earth in order to produce
a considerable thermal effect upon it ; a near approach of a large
one would appear to be likely to produce disastrous results.

And this might happen not only directly by the action of heat
radiating from the comet itself, but also from the action of the
mysterious forces at work in it disturbing the equilibrium of
those acting on our own planet, and thus causing the production
of heat here.

Another consideration also should be brought into our calcu-
lation. The interior parts of this globe are, at least to some ex-
tent, at a very high temperature. If not in a state of fusion
throughout, they evidently are so in parts, as is plain from the
melted matter ejected by volcanoes ; and that tremendous forces
are at work under our feet is equally clear from the earthquakes
which are so frequently felt in various places. It needs but a
slight disturbance (slight, that is, compared with the shock of a
full collision) to liberate these pent-up forces, and thus spread
ruin and devastation over the whole surface of the earth. It is
not known how the moon reached its present state of barrenness
and desolation ; but it is morally certain that the vast craters
which pit its entire face are those of extinct volcanoes, and it
seems at least possible that the eruptions of these, perhaps occur-
ring simultaneously, actually caused, as they no doubt might
have caused, the destruction of animal and vegetable life once
existing upon our satellite. If so, what has happened to the
moon may happen to the earth also in due time, and that even
without any very abnormal outside influence being brought to
bear upon it.

But let us now turn from the consideration of forces acting
within the earth, or from bodies casually approaching it, to that

1 882.] THE END OF THE WORLD. 497

of the immense influence exercised upon it by the great source
of energy in the planetary system — the sun. It may be said that
all the changes and movements occurring here, if we except the
tidal flow of the sea, are produced by the immense energy con-
tinually poured upon this globe from the central orb, so slight a
part in comparison have other sources of power to do with them.
Put out the sun, and the earth would soon die, not a violent
death, but one of inanition. This energy is sent to us regularly,
with but slight variations, and we live ; the operations, that is,
both of animate and inanimate nature go on in a normal way.
But let the solar energy sent to us be notably changed and
everything would be put out of order.

We do not say that the earth would be actually burnt up by
the direct increase of solar radiation. That result might indeed
be produced by the collision of the sun with a body approaching
its own dimensions ; and such a collision is at any time possible,
for it is pretty well ascertained by direct observation that the
sun is moving through space, and it is beyond doubt that it has a
relative motion with regard to the other stars. But it may be
said such an event could not occur for countless ages ; for there
is no star near enough to us. This, however, is not conclusive ;
for it is highly probable that there are burnt-out and invisible
suns in space, such as the companion of Procyon, noticeable by
its disturbance of the movements of that great star, but never
as yet seen by man. Such a dark and dead sun we may meet at
any time.

It is not a matter of actual observation that such collisions
of stars, possible as they evidently are, have ever in fact occur-
red. But it is a matter of observation that an enormous develop-
ment of light has suddenly occurred in various stars. Such phe-
nomena have been observed in past times, specially in the tempo-
rary stars which appeared in the times of Tycho and Kepler re-
spectively (the last of which Helmholtz ascribes to a collision) ;
and they are noticed, now that the heavens are watched more
carefully, with apparently increasing frequency. In the last fif-
teen years two such outbursts of light have occurred in the hea-
vens, in May, 1866, and November, 1876, respectively. The light
of the star in the first case was at least fifteen times what it had
been twenty-four hours previously ; in the other the increase was
probably quite as great. Now, whatever may be said to account
for the change in brilliancy of the class of stars which are known
as " variable " by ascribing their changes to the interposition of
other bodies, to their rotation combined with a variously lighted

VOL. xxxiv. — 32

498 THE END OF THE WORLD. [Jan.,

surface, etc., it is plain that in such cases as these there was a
real and sudden increase of light — and undoubtedly also of heat —
in them. Whether this increase was caused by collision with an-
other sun, or by passing into a dark, gaseous nebula at a high
temperature, as nebulas are believed to be, or in some other way,
is immaterial ; it has occurred, that is enough. And what has
happened — whatever it may be — to other suns may happen to
our own.

In the case, then, of the blazing up of our sun in this extra-
ordinary way from collision or from any other cause the earth
would no doubt be entirely destroyed, at least as far as life and
organism of any kind is concerned, by the increased radiant heat.
But we do not say, as has been before remarked, that the earth
would be actually burnt up in this way. For its devastation by
fire a smaller increase of energy or one of a different kind might
suffice. A considerable disturbance of its electrical equilibrium,
for instance, might bring about that result.

Disturbances of this kind by the sun's action are probably of
frequent, perhaps almost of continual, occurrence, though gene-
rally they are slight and hardly noticed. The aurora borealis or
australis, which appears to have a connection with increased solar
activity, is, however, an indication of them ; and sometimes they
force themselves still more strongly on our attention. Such was
specially the case on September i, 1859.

It so happened that on that day two astronomers who were
independently observing the sun's surface noticed a sudden burst
of light upon it of a splendor far exceeding its ordinary brilliancy.
The appearance was as if a mass from outside had fallen into the
sun, ploughing up its surface and exciting it to unusual intensity
of action. The effect of this solar excitement was immediately
felt on the earth. On that night, as many of our readers may
remember, a most magnificent aurora overspread the heavens
and was seen even in the tropics. It was a spectacle which those
who saw it will hardly forget. It is as fresh in the memory of
the writer as if it had occurred only yesterday. The whole sky
was of a crimson hue, and gave enough light to read print easily.
With it came great magnetic disturbances. In many places the
telegraph lines refused to work. The magnetic currents of the
earth themselves took charge of them, giving electric shocks in
some cases to the regular officials who ventured to interfere, and
producing heat enough in one case, at least, to set fire to the ap-
paratus.

The similar aurora which occurred four days before this had

1 882.] THE END OF THE WORLD. 499

probably a like cause. There appears to have been at this time,
as most likely at most times when auroras are frequent, a stream
of meteoric bodies of greater or less size pouring- into the sun.
Let a sufficient stream of such bodies continue the battery for a
few days ; let the excitement of the sun be not merely momen
tary but continuous for some time ; and it is quite possible that,
even if the increase of direct radiant heat from our luminary be
insufficient to devastate the surface of the earth, the same effect
may be produced indirectly by the additional upheaval of its
electrical energies.

It is the opinion of Prof. Proctor that the recent phenomena
of 1866 and 1876 above mentioned came from a rush of meteors
upon the stars which blazed up so suddenly, and it is evident, as
he says, that our sun, if it were excited as they were, would simply
by its increased heat destroy all living things on the earth ; and
there is reason to believe that not only would living things be de-
stroyed, but inanimate nature also would be reduced to chaos.

But have we any special reason to fear the attack of such a
meteoric stream upon the sun? To this it must be answered
that we have. And here is where what would otherwise be a
mere possibility rises into what may be called the region of pro-
bability.

It has lately been found that such meteoric streams travel in
the wake of at least some comets. The November showers of
meteors, which were to many appalling in 1833, and certainly
magnificent in 1866, 1867, and 1868, follow a small comet known
as Tempel's, first discovered in 1866. Those of August follow
the second comet of 1862. Now, let a large comet pass near or
fall into the sun, continuing its bombardment of it for some time
by its following train of meteors, and we have conditions which
justify grave apprehension of serious consequences to the earth
and the nearer members of the solar system generally.

Is there such a comet ? There have been several ; but it is
one specially which it would seem we have to fear. It is the
great comet which appeared in March, 1843, and which, according
to the general belief of astronomers, reappeared in February,
1880. At its last appearance it was not seen in these latitudes,
the part of the heavens in which it was being unfavorably situat-
ed for us. But its general characteristics, as well as the precise
resemblance of its orbit, which is quite well determined, to that
of the comet of 1843, justifies confidence in the identity of the
two. It is thought to have been seen a number of times before,
but this is not yet beyond dispute. The distance from the sun's

500 THE END OF THE WORLD. [Jan.,

surface at which this comet passes in its nearest approach is only
one-tenth of the sun's diameter ; and it is quite possible that at
some future return, as in 1917 or 1954, it may be thrown even
nearer, or actually upon, the sun itself. It is not at all certain
that such a diminution of its distance has not already occurred.

Of course we are not sure that this comet is followed by any
train of meteors ; but analogy leads us to suspect it, and comets
seem to have a tendency to break up into meteoric streams.
That of Biela, after separating first into two distinct comets and
appearing twice in this condition, was a few years later resolved
into a mere shower of meteors. But it is not absolutely necessary
that there should be any such train to a comet — let not the train
here spoken of be confounded with the tail, an entirely different
affair — in order for it to produce disastrous effects if falling into
the sun. Let its own mass be large enough, and of course the
consequences of the arrest of its movement in the photosphere
would be sufficiently serious.

We have now said enough, it would seem, to show that we
are not at all secured by the laws discovered by modern science
from danger ; on the contrary, it may be said that science has
shown us dangers which before we did not know to exist. Let it
not, however, be supposed that it is our object to show that
science is sufficient of itself to prove the destruction of the world
by fire. The mass of the comet of 1843-1880 may not be great
enough to do serious damage to us ; and it may never reach the
sun ; and no one may ever appear of an equally threatening char-
acter. And the chances of the other accidents of which we have
spoken are of course very small. Still, these chances exist ; and
even of themselves they would suffice to show that St. Peter's
prophecy, and the Christian faith corresponding with it, are very
far from being scientific absurdities, and that even those who
deny the existence of God, or his direct action in the universe,
can only say that we have no right to maintain as a certainty
what is only a possibility.

But we do not maintain it as a certainty on scientific grounds ;
what we have wished to show is that the revelation in which we
believe may not be a prophecy of an entirely supernatural event,
but rather a knowledge given to us beforehand of a result which
is to be produced by the forces now at work, and which is, there-
fore, in one sense a scientific one, though one which science itself
is at present, and probably always will be, unable to place beyond
doubt.

i882.] A CHRISTMAS CARD. 501

A CHRISTMAS CARD.

V. Ignem veni mittere in terram.
R. Et quid volo, nisi ut accendatur ?

A CHILDISH figure, all in white arrayed,

Stands waiting at closed gate— our hearts — to knock
Till every inmost fastening shall unlock —
God's Christmas gift within our hearts be laid :
A childish face, with innocent blue eyes

Wherein sad wonder mingleth with glad love
And that pure peace He bringeth from above —
Twin planets brightening darkest Christmas skies,
The yearning child-heart wondering love should wait
So long to win the opening of closed gate.

A little, childish mouth, lips red as love,
In the soft shadow of whose happy smile
Twin dimples play, glad loving to beguile
And weeping hearts to sunnier thoughts to move.
Soft, rippling waves of unbound yellow hair

Fringe with their gold the width of thoughtful brow-
Whose veins' blue shadows track a field of snow —
Mingling the gold with halo trembling there
That 'gainst the dark of earthly skies doth shine —
The Father's glory crowning Child Divine.

The gate-posts hang with icicles, half-barred

The gate where knocks the dimpled little hand.

We cannot see the unshod feet that stand
And prove how bitter are earth's ways, and hard.
Perched on his shoulders, nestling 'gainst his sleeve,

Red-breasted robin and brown sparrow sit,

Or in and out the iron portal flit,
As they would bid us dreams too earthly leave ;
While, folded close, he holds against his breast
The Dove of Peace that giveth all hearts rest.

5O2 A CHRISTMAS CARD. [Jan.,

Behind the brightness of the Child Divine
The sky is dark with depth of midnight blue,
Its azure darkness seen the branches through

That, leafless and snow-laden, intertwine

And hide the twinkling stars, save only one
That shineth bravely in a broader space,
Its rays spread softly in the sign of grace —

The blazon of the great King's holiest Son :

The hope fulfilled of proud Jerusalem

Blent with the promise of fair Bethlehem.

This in a circle edged with golden rim —

Oft-spoken token of eternity,

Symbol of that pure light, beyond death's sea,
No fading twilight ever maketh dim ;
True symbol of that never-ending love

That yet had no beginning, was God's thought

Before in fire the stony hills were wrought,
Or set the firmament the earth above.
Strong love the Christ-Child comes to-day to bring,
Heaven's joy of life, on earth, foreshadowing. .

This circle set in oblong, upright frame

Where, on a background of dull, cloudy gray —
The chilling shadow of unbroken day —

Burns the black-alder's winter-undimmed flame,

The scarlet berries nestling to the bough —
As love clings closest in the darkest skies —
Where yet, full-leaved, the summer greenness lies,

As if love wrought above the barren snow

A miracle of life so, well to prove

The more abiding miracle of love.

Glow the red berries as the light that came
And shined in the darkness, and none knew,
Save chanting angels and poor men a few,
When first on earth was lit the holy flame.
And fair white stars are shining through the gray
Of winter dawn — the brave arbutus bloom
That blossoms whitest in the deepest gloom —
Spring's trusting child, herald of fuller day,
Hearer of songs that winter's silence break
Ere field and wood to earth's wide chorus wake.

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS CARD. 503

Sweet-scented censer of devotion swung

In lonely woods as type of lands unknown

One day to seek the little, lowly throne
Chosen by God earth's lordlier gifts among,
Sweet type of Israel's Maid hiding fair face

In holy sanctuary till God's good will

Should cull a grander purpose to fulfil
And virgin chaste be mother made of grace :
Pure, snow-white blossom flushing into rose
As in its wider life it doth unclose.

Next, writ the legend of my Christmas thought
In curious text learned from an older age
When loving scribe wrote slowly-lettered page,

The glad evangel in strange pictures wrought.

So, handed down to us, from year to year,
From century to century, this tale
Of love divine in whose light burneth pale

All lesser flame our hearts can kindle here —

" To earth I come to light love's living fire ;

What will I but its flames to me aspire ? "

Then still, set 'mid the blossoms of the spring,
A winter landscape : wide, rejoicing skies,
Blue vault and fleecy clouds' soft harmonies,
Warm, sunlit boughs with purple shadowing,
Snow not too deep to let the withered grass
Rise golden -speared its azure shade to throw
Across the sparkling sunshine. Heaven so
And earth be glad as Christmas angels pass.
Last, life and love bound with broad band of gold-
Worthless all gift heart's love doth not enfold.

504 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, by Mary H. A. Allies..

PART II.— YOUTH STEALS ON.

CHAPTER IV.

A LA MARIE STUART.

THE latter end of summer was a gay time at Griinerode. Al-
though the baroness and Isidora enjoyed excellent health, or
perhaps from the very fact that they did, they spent six weeks
at Baden-Baden and six weeks at Trouville, and, after having
bored themselves in the most fashionable way for the space of
three months, they met Sylvia at Valentine's house and pro-
ceeded together to Griinerode, where a pleasant change had
taken place. The nearest neighbor, Count Weldensperg, a para-
lyzed old bachelor, had died, and his nephew, Countess Xaveria's
husband, had come in to the fine property. Countess Xaveria
had long and earnestly wished for this consummation. Her hus-
band, it is true, had extensive and valuable estates, but none of
them had the sort of commodious house which formed the ob-
ject of her desires, and she had never been able to induce her
husband to build, because Weldensperg, the object of his expec-
tations, united every advantage ; the house, grounds, park, and
neighborhood were all charming. Xaveria had been devoting
herself conscientiously all the spring and summer to settling
in at Weldensperg, and steadfastly resisted watering-places and
outings. She got through unconscionable sums of money, only
half- realizing what she" spent, and not being particularly anxious to
enlighten herself on the subject. When the bills came in she
looked to the figures at the bottom, and, thinking half a dozen
such sums might disturb her husband, she kept back two or three,
not to let them all fall upon him at once, and determined to pro-
duce them by degrees and at favorable moments. He was, for
instance, all smiles and good-humor after a pleasant day's hunt-
ing, or a race where one of his own horses had been the winner,
or a steeple-chase in which he himself had carried off the prize.
At these important hours of his- existence, especially after the

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 505

triumphant steeple-chase, his wife might present herself with a
portfolio full of unpaid bills, and he made no single observation.
Alas that such blissful moments were not frequent occurrences !
Xaveria was often obliged to wait for so long that she sometimes
forgot the very existence of the bills, or tore them up as old let-
ters for her waste-paper basket. Nevertheless, thanks to her ef-
forts and planning, Weldensperg was transformed into an ideal
country-house on a large scale, and it was her intention to enjoy
its good things till far on in the winter with the proper comple*
ment of from thirty to forty guests.

Both at Weldensperg and at Griinerode the house was on the
confines of the property, the high-road being the wall of separa-
tion between the two parks, so that, if desired, there was every
facility for fostering neighborly intercourse. And Grafin Xa-
veria did desire it. She thought of Baron Griinerode's first-rate
hounds and of his excellent dinners, and, wise woman of the
world that she was, she knew that sport and good cheer act like
magnets on the masculine portion of society, and that change of
scene is wont to freshen up and invigorate people who may be
staying in one's house.

The baroness had scarcely arrived at Griinerode before Xa-
veria had the pony saddled which she used for riding about the
park, and went over there unaccompanied, much to the astonish-
ment of the baroness, who was very nervous and hardly ventured
to walk in her park without a servant at her back.

" Here I am already, baroness, you see, to tell you how
pleased I am that you are come. I have been looking out for you
and your young people for some time. How are you? Didn't you
see a good deal of demi-monde at Baden-Baden ? It's better at
Trouville, isn't it ? Well, we'll have the very best society here
and enjoy ourselves tremendously. We'll have acting, dancing,
music, riding, hunting, and croquet. Croquet is the newest en-
tertainment, and it's delightful ! You'll learn it and see if I'm
not right. My brother is such a croquet-player that he has to
get leave of absence for country air here in order to play it." So
Countess Xaveria ran on. Sylvia and Isidora agreed with what
she said, whilst the baroness listened in bewilderment; for the en-
joyment proposed by the countess was laborious, and she cared
for those social pleasures only which were compatible with
peace and quiet — such, for instance, as doing the honors of a din-
ner or ball, or sitting in a box at the theatre, or leaving cards by
the dozen. This was her department, and in it she left nothing
undone. " O children ! what a horrible prospect," she sighed

$o6 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

when Xaveria had gone. " The countess means to set up a mad
chase after pleasure, and we are to be dragged into it."

" It will be lively and make the wearisome country life bear-
able," said Isidora.

" We will at least shorten the time as much as we can, Isi,"
said the baroness.

" No, mamma, we won't," exclaimed Isidora ; " one isn't dull
when there's so much going on."

" Don't you think my uncle will like it ?" asked Sylvia.

" Do you think so, love ? Well, that would make all the dif-
ference."

" And then Edgar and Harry are to be considered, poor
boys ! They must have two or three months' rest in the coun-
try."

" Yes, love, you are quite right. I am and shall always re-
main a victim to my husband and children. And now I will my-
self go and see that everything is right, so that they may find
their rooms as they like them to-morrow ; and after that, Sylvia, I
will dictate one or two letters."

The countess' projected campaign was fully carried out at
Weldensperg, and a close friendship sprang up between her and
Sylvia.

" Don't go and fancy that I am making up to Sylvia Neheim
on your account," she said to her brother, Lieutenant von Tief-
fenstein. " I am doing it on my own and on her account, as she
may become a leader of tone and fashion some day or other. She
has it in her, and that's what makes me take to her. She can
learn the best company manners of me."

" She is an enchanting creature," said the lieutenant.

" It's easy enough to see you think so, Wilderich. All the
same, what will her charms lead you to? To holy matrimony?
But she has nothing, and you have less than nothing, for you
have debts. So you can't think of it for a moment."

" But I am thinking of it, Xaveria."

" My dear Wilderich ! The farce une chaumicre et son cceur is
quite gone by nowadays, and can only be acted when social re-
quirements are less exacting, or in circumstances where there is
no need to take th&m into consideration, or by people who choose
not to attach any importance to them. Is this your case or
Sylvia's ? "

" It is my opinion that old Griinerode ought to do something
handsome to get a brilliant match for his niece. Marriages are
scarce nowadays."

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 507

" Particularly marriages which one may also call brilliant
matches," replied Xaveria, laughing ; " and as we are alone, I will
give you my mind on the subject. As far as you are concerned
personally, Sylvia Neheim has made a splendid conquest ; but
you are no brilliant match. If you were there would be nothing
against your marriage."

" Couldn't you try, Xaveria, to get the old fellow to make
her a good allowance, if he won't put down capital?"

" A good allowance is a vague term which varies according
to circumstances, Wilderich. Some people call a thousand
guilders a good income, and some think nothing of ten. I am
very much afraid this is how it will be with you and old Grii-
nerode."

" You crush all my hopes, and yet I can't give them quite up.
Sylvia and my happiness are one and the same thing. I felt it in
an indefinite kind of way at that ball at the Griinerodes', when
she looked to me like a forest nymph in her pale blue gown, and
the feeling grows upon me."

" I am sorry for Sylvia, as I fear — she shares your feelings."

" You fear it, Xaveria ! " he called out excitedly.

" Yes, Wilderich, I fear it, for a marriage between you is not
to be thought of ; yet you have paid her such very marked atten-
tions that she would be quite justified in expecting it. Now, if
you draw back she will be pained and wounded, and when she
is mentioned the world will say spitefully that Baron Tieffen-
stein jilted her. All that is extremely disagreeable for a girl,
and I could at least wish that she might get off without suf-
fering."

" If the matter did not concern Sylvia I should be offended
with you for your very small sisterly sympathy."

" You would be unjust, Wilderich. In an affair like this of
rours, where, for instance, the girl is perfectly in earnest, she de-
irves all the more sympathy."

1 But I am in earnest, too, and have got a heart, and am suffer-
ing from adverse circumstances."

" I dare say you are, Wilderich," interrupted Xaveria coldly,
" but that won't prevent you from breaking gently with Sylvia
and making a good match. The man who can console himself in
this way, my good brother, is not much to be pitied. Sometimes
I wonder whether I ought not to enlighten Sylvia out of friend-
ship."

" You would be wronging your brother," exclaimed Wilde-
rich with warmth. " You have no right to do it. Something

508 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. Uan-»

may happen to alter my position. Perhaps I shall take up diplo-
macy."

" Perhaps ; but even • then you would not be able to marry
Sylvia, and that is what I am talking about at this moment," said
Xaveria carelessly. " Supposing you had a rich uncle, a nabob,
who were to die and leave you all his property — this would be
the only way to attain your ends. But calm yourself. I am not
heroic enough to disturb our pleasant relations. Sylvia would
be sure to avoid us, and that would be very annoying. Her
very appearance apart from her talents creates a stir in society.
I cannot possibly let such a treasure go, which is a little selfish of
me, to be sure ; but selfishness is the order of the day in the world,
and, as I cannot make it better, I may as well be like my neigh-
bors."

True to these sentiments, Countess Xaveria continued to
treat Sylvia as her most intimate friend, so that it was only
natural for people to suppose that she was favorable to her
brother's suit and welcomed Sylvia as her future sister-in-law,
whereas in reality she was paying court to her drawing room's
ornament.

Sylvia drank in the attentions which all the world, and espe-
cially Baron Tieffenstein, paid to her. She had arrived at a full
consciousness of her beauty, her charms, and her gifts, and of the
power which they placed at her command. She did not wish
to misuse her power, but only to employ it in gaining happiness.
Like a powerful magnet it was to charm and attract sympathetic
elements out of the human crowd, to gain her the love of a heart.
Why should it not ? What point or end had her fair gifts, if not to
make her loved, and, being loved, to make her happy ? Formerly
the results of her pious bringing-up and her peaceful love for
Aurel had diverted her mind from her own gifts ; in those days
she had been wont to think rather of the virtues which she
lacked, and of her weakness. Or she looked at Aurel, whom she
had clothed in her secret heart with ideal qualities, and, whether
she considered him or herself, self-love took no hold of her. Now
it was different. Little by little the barriers which protected
her from the surging sea of worldliness had given way, and she
was exposed to its waves. At times she still had pious feelings,
and moments in which Catholic memories awoke ; but, banished
as it was from her life and her surroundings, religion could have
neither influence nor practical working upon that life.

No one was better pleased at Sylvia's success in society than
Baron Grunerode ; no one was less so than Isidora. ' He was a

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 509

great admirer of feminine beauty, and from the first moment
Sylvia had thereby captivated him. It flattered him that so
showy a flower had blossomed forth in his house, and that Sylvia
owed to him her education, and cultivated talents, and that finish
peculiar to luxury and elegance which is to feminine beauty in
society what the golden frame is to a fine picture. Admiration
at a picture hanging frameless to a cold chalk wall is apt to be
diverted by the miserable surrounding. But in an appropriate
gold frame, on a ground of crimson or green damask, every
stroke of the brush and all effects of light and shadow and color
blend harmoniously together.

"Sylvia! Sylph, you fairy! what are you about now?" ex-
claimed the baron one morning as she came into the small study
where he was reading the Incttpendance Beige and other papers
and periodicals of the same hue over a pile of costly cigars, whilst
the baroness, seated on a sofa near the fire, was engaged upon
some wool work which had been lying about for years.

" Do you like my Mary Stuart costume, dear uncle ? I am
so glad ! But I came to ask you, Aunt Teresa, if you .don't think
the lace collar is too stiff and the sleeves too bulging. Although
Xaveria has had our costumes done from prints sent to her from
town, it seems to me they ought to be made as dressy as possible.
" Quite right, little witch — as ' dressy as possible/ And what
are you after as Mary Stuart ? " said the baron, as the baroness
arranged the lace collar and sleeves.

" It is to be a surprise, dear uncle, but I will let you into the
secret," replied Sylvia. " We think tableaux vivants are very
tiresome and stupid things, for any one can put on a pretty cos-
tume and show herself in it. We are going to act some scenes,
and I am to be Mary Stuart talking with Mortimer after his re-
turn from Rome. Xaveria, as Princess Eboli, has a scene with
Don Carlos, and Countess Nerine, as Theckla, with Max Picco-
lomini. We are deep in tragedy, you see ; for comedy requires
real actresses to be anything, and of course we can't put our-
selves on a par with them."

" An exceedingly wise plan, Sylvia. You are three enchant-
resses, but I must say * feathers make birds.' When 1 compare the
Sylvia in black merino of four years ago to the Sylvia who stands
before me now in black velvet, they are two different beings."
" And which do you like best, dear uncle ? "
" How can you ask me? Why, Sylvia a la Marie Stuart."
" Oh ! I'm so glad," she exclaimed cheerfully, and left the
room with some good wrinkles from the baroness.

gio THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

After a little the baroness said to her husband : " Tieffen-
stein's marked attentions to Sylvia are really very awkward;
don't you think so ? "

" He is in love with her ; and who can wonder at him, my
dear ? Any man with two eyes in his head can't help being en-
chanted with her."

" I know, love. But I am thinking what provision is there for
Sylvia in case of her marriage? "

" Provision ? Nonsense ! We provide for her. Marriage ?
Let her marry when she's thirty-six. I have told you that al-
ready, and now I repeat it. I am not going to give her up."

11 1 fancy, love, that she would very much like to marry Tief-
fenstein."

" I dare say. He is a wonderfully handsome fellow, has the
reputation of having been very wild and of having sobered
down, and now he is madly in love with her. She would be as
insensible as a statue if she weren't affected by it."

" And what is to be done if she is affected by it? He can't
marry her, for there is no living on air and love."

" They will both find that out in time, my dear, and calm
down. So you calm yourself, and just listen to the progress of
\\\e parti pretre in Belgium. The very word parti pretre makes
my blood boil, for how can comfort, education, industry, and in-
telligence make progress if these unsavory leeches, not content
with themselves, have enough influence to secure a secular party
at their back?"

" Priests want to live as well as other people, love."

" A wholly unjustifiable claim in these enlightened days. The
spirit of the time is quite against their existence."

" But, love, you worship liberty. Why not let priests enjoy
theirs?"

" They are Rome's slaves. Their very existence is opposed
to liberty. If they weren't slaves they would gladly marry like
msn. They could still play their tricks at the altar, if the people
must have them. Wife and children need not interfere."

" I should like to know how Rome manages to force celibacy
on so many, many thousand priests," said the baroness musingly;
" our young people wouldn't submit to anything of the kind."

"Rome's atrocious and mysterious tyranny over minds will
alone explain it. Nobody knows what kind of means she uses,
but everybody is convinced that they must be diabolical, for hu-
man resources won't go so far."

As there was nobody in the room to suggest to the baron that

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRT 511*

perchance divine and supernatural resources might be at work,
and whereas the baroness was no lover of lengthy discussions,
deep silence began to reign, and the baron fed his anger and
thirst for vengeance on the invectives, lies, and calumnies with
which the press is so lavish where Catholic interests are con-
cerned.

CHAPTER V.

HOPES AT CROSS PURPOSES.

SYLVIA stood before the large glass in her room. She had
taken off her Mary Stuart costume and put on her riding-habit,
and was just tying on her bow as Isidora came in, also in her rid-
ing-habit, and said : " Aren't you ready yet ? It is wonderful
what trouble you take to make yourself look nice."

" Trouble wouldn't make me pretty — perhaps the contrary,"
said Sylvia, not hurrying herself.

" How can you fancy that this is the way to entrap a know-
ing man like Tieffenstein ? "

"What way? " asked Sylvia sharply, set off her guard by the
unexpected attack.

" Why, by such wretched means as dress, tableaux, or acting.
That's not the way to take any man, for he can get it all better
and more comfortably at the theatre."

" But it amuses us without thinking at all about enchanting
any one," replied Sylvia, who had regained her composure. " If
you would take part in it you would soon see what fun it is."

" It is much more fun to criticise than to be criticised," said
Isidora ; " and criticisms are never wanting — you may be sure of
that."

" I don't in the least doubt it," said Sylvia disdainfully.

" Yes, everything is criticised, let people make you all the
pretty speeches they like. For instance, they make their com-
ments upon Tieffenstein's acting Mortimer."

" I didn't ask him to do it."

" Oh ! no; of course it comes quite naturally, doesn't it? But
that's just the thing. Mortimer commits suicide out of love for
Mary Stuart. Don't flatter yourself that Tieffenstein's passion
for Sylvia Neheim is deep."

Sylvia's laugh was somewhat forced as she pulled her locks
into shape so as to put on her riding-hat, and said : " You are talk-
ing tragically or enigmatically."

" I am talking the truth. Tieffenstein adores you, as people

'512 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

say. But he worships riches more than you, and he will never
marry a girl without money."

Sylvia turned hastily from the looking-glass to Isidora, and
exclaimed angrily : " What right have you to judge him so
harshly ? "

" My observation is my right. It is my delight to watch dif-
ferent people in society. It keeps me cool and quiet. The
daughter of a rich father can't allow herself to be taken in, or
she may fall a prey to a hungry lieutenant, or a nobleman with
debts, or a money-seeking banker. I have not lived twenty years
without being able to distinguish between the three, simply be-
cause I watch people. That is why I am not married yet, for
I'm disgusted with that sort of thing."

" I pity you if these are the only sort of people you get hold
of," said Sylvia scornfully.

" You poor little goose ! " exclaimed Isidora, " don't you see
that Tieffenstein is one of these very people ? "

" I know neither how nor whom he will marry," exclaimed
Sylvia excitedly, " but one thing is certain : he won't condescend
to a mere money match."

" The Countess Weldensperg is at the door on horseback, and
the horses are waiting," said a servant.

The girls hurried down. Sylvia was depressed and con-
strained in spite of her calm words. A thousand malicious
thoughts were at work in Isidora's heart, though outwardly she
was cool and collected as usual, which possibly made her appear
reflective.

Wilderich von Tieffenstein was the first man who had ever
made an impression upon her, although he had shown her noth-
ing more than the ordinary politeness due to a daughter of the
house. To see Sylvia the object of his attentions was, therefore,
the more wounding to her ; but she concealed her feelings under
the mask of indifference towards the world in general, setting
herself to criticise society, as if she meant thus to show that some-
thing quite out of the way would be necessary to produce any
effect upon her. A peculiarity of this kind might have been at-
tractive if it had been inspired by that inward nobility of charac-
ter which has a high standard of excellence, or if it had been ac-
companied by physical beauty or charm of manner. But this was
not Isidora's case. Nature had been stingy with her. By Syl-
via's side she could not help being conscious of it, and, as she had
to bear the brunt of the contrast, Sylvia became an object of deep
resentment and secret envy. Nobody was better pleased at

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 513

Aurel's marriage than Isidora, and nobody was more prepared
to like Phoebe. It would have been intolerable to her to see
Sylvia in Phoebe's place as the wife of so rich and handsome a
man as Aurel was ; yet Aurel was only a brother. Was she now
to stand by and let Sylvia become Baroness Tieffenstein, and see
the cream of society open its arms to her because she had car-
ried off the man who had done nothing all his life but make con-
quests of others — the one man whom she, Isidora, liked ? It was
well known that the brilliant lieutenant was a spendthrift and not
inclined to learn better ways. A rich marriage, nay, a very rich
marriage, was therefore a rigorous necessity, and this excluded
Sylvia. Possibly he might not marry, but it was an unlikely
possibility. From year to year his pecuniary affairs grew worse
and worse, and this would, no doubt, make him inclined to get all
he could out of his marriage. Thus reasoned Isidora. She care-
fully avoided putting herself on a par with Sylvia, kept entirely
in the background, and always chose passive in preference to
active enjoyment, so that their rival claims -should not clash to-
gether. But for all that she never lost sight of Tieffenstein, and
after the conversation above recorded Sylvia began to notice it
with the greatest dismay. "Supposing Isidora loves him," sug-
gested her fluttering heart " But no ; she has a very poor opin-
ion of him, or perhaps she talks so out of spite because he doesn't
care for her. Heaven preserve me from Isidora as a rival ! "
The consciousness, however, that Tieffenstein loved her, not Isi-
dora, was stronger, on the whole, than her anxiety of mind, and
love's confidence made her look unhesitatingly for that favorable
turn in circumstances which would bring about the desires of
her heart.

Tieffenstein had told her, too, that he was thinking of entering
diplomacy, as offering a better position for the future than an
officer's wandering life. At the same time he had begged her to
keep it to herself, as it was only a scheme. Initiated as she thus
was into his plans, how could she doubt that she and they were
closely bound up together ? The illusion was excusable in Syl-
via, but not in Tieffenstein. Sometimes he tried to flatter him-
self that in the end he would be able to marry Sylvia, though if
he had only listened to the voice of conscience he would have
heard a distinct reproach on the score of his false and cruel be-
havior. He turned a deaf ear to it, alleging his passion as an
excuse, and his readiness to marry Sylvia there and then, should
he come into a property or win a good sum at a lottery. But
this was quite a chance, and when he considered the matter in

VOL. xxxiv. — 33

514 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

cold blood it was perfectly clear to him that his position as secre-
tary to an ambassador would not be a bit better than his lieu-
tenancy, as far as becoming a family man was concerned. But
why think of these things ? That which is disagreeable and pain-
ful is apt to make itself felt fast enough without so much reflec-
tion. In the meantime he would give himself up to the sweet de-
lights of daily intercourse with the charming, loved, and loving
Sylvia.

" Mortimer commits suicide for the sake of Mary Stuart, but
I hope, Sylvia, you don't think he means to die for Sylvia
Neheim ?" said the baron once.

" Dear uncle, I should hate such silly thoughts," exclaimed
she.

" This sort of exaggeration makes the men of our days only
suitable for women of doubtful reputation, so you are safe from
them, little fairy."

" There is a fearful degeneracy amongst men," remarked the
baroness.

" There is a certain laxity, no doubt," replied the baron ; "the
course of things and circumstances make it inevitable. A high
state of civilization is synonymous with sovereign money. Some
want to buy unlimited enjoyment with their money, and others
are ready to make themselves slaves to get it. So they meet
each other half way, and morality comes off sometimes with short
commons. Proper-minded women have to look after what still
remains. Mind, Isidora and Sylvia, you are to develop into the
most proper women, to become models, des dragons de vertu"

The baron laughed heartily, though whether it was about his
first-rate advice or the world's corruption did not transpire.
Isidora thought to herself : " How glad I am that I can com-
mand money ! I shall gain my point" ; and Sylvia said to herself :
" Oh ! what would I give to be rich. Then I should be happy
myself and I could make him happy." Neither paid any attention
to the baron's spasmodic exhortation to virtue. It is a tender
plant which grows apart from the crowd on a well-prepared soil
and under a watchful hand. Where was the soil and who was
the gardener ?

Three months went by in the country and brought no change
in Sylvia's intercourse with Tieffenstein. The winter and then
the carnival passed in the same way, and still there was neither
proposal nor engagement. But a bridegroom for Isidora appear-
ed in the person of a verv wealthy young Scotchman who was
spending the winter for his own amusement in the capital. It

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 515

was not easy to understand why it was she attracted him. Per
haps for the simple reason that she attracted nobody else, and
gave herself no trouble to make herself pleasant to him. He had
been anything but assiduous when suddenly he presented him-
self to the baron as an aspiring son-in-law. The baron was high-
ly gratihed, and did not for an instant doubt of Isidora's consent.
Words could not express his anger when she refused point-blank.
The baroness, too, was much perturbed. They both insisted
that Isidora should assign a reasonable cause to her negative.

" Well, then," she said with determination, " I love another
man, and if I don't marry him I'll marry nobody."

" And who may this other man be?" asked the baron angrily.

" Baron Tieffenstein."

" Stuff ! for he doesn't care for you ; and folly ! because he is a
poor beggar," exclaimed the baron, quite exasperated.

" What put such a thing into your head, child?" asked the
baroness, dazed. f

" I love him," replied Isidora coldly, " consequently I am not
going to marry any one else, and that's as certain as that I am
the daughter of my parents."

Highly irate, the baron walked to and fro, giving vent to bro-
ken sentences, such as " You have lost your senses. ... I should
like to have you locked up. . . . The baronet is a party whom
fifty girls would have liked to catch this winter. You didn't
even try, and you are the object of his choice."

"And I decline it," said Isidora, nothing daunted. "A girl
must have this much liberty. I don't mean to marry for conve-
nience, like Valentine. I mean to love the man I marry, and I
don't love the carroty Scotchman, for all his money, but Tieffen-
stein, be he poor or rich."

" But you must have seen, child, that it is Sylvia he likes," re-
marked the baroness.

"The whole town knows that he is paying her attentions,
mamma, but, as it has been going on for more than a year, it is
quite clear that he has no intention of marrying her. It's time
the silly business came to an end, and when it does — well, what's
the use of having a worldly-wise father and mother, if they can't
get their daughter the husband she would like? "

So exalted an interpretation of parental duty by no means dis-
turbed the baron, who replied :

" It would be easy enough, if the father and mother wished it
too ; but a son-in-law with more debts than he has hairs on his
head is not to my taste."

516 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

" And the baronet is not to mine," said Isidora ; and thereupon
she left the room with cool indifference.

" You must give the subject your thorough consideration,
love," said the baroness, with some constraint, to her irate hus-
band. " This awkward intercourse between Tieffenstein and
Sylvia must be brought to a stop. She will fret over it, but it
can't be helped. When Tieffenstein has once made up his mind
to break with her he will easily be brought to marry Isidora."

" Perhaps so, but / won't make up my mind to it," went on
the baron.

" That is just the point to be well considered, for of two evils
you must choose the least. Isi has set her cap at him."

" So has Sylvia. If one has to give him up why shouldn't
the other? "

" With this difference only : that Sylvia will keep her trouble
to herself ; whereas Isidora, poor child, not being so very good-
tempered, will get most fearfully bitter and torment our lives
out, and perhaps after a series of years we shall have to consent
to some foolish marriage or other just to prevent her from being
an old maid and becoming more unbearable. If for a few thou-
sand thalers you can escape having your poor daughter's cross
face always before you and hearing her sharp tongue — for Isi-
dora will not be sparing with that — you would do well to spend
them. She would be happily settled, and we should have only
dear Sylvia at home. We would treat her as our only daughter,
and comfort her about her little trouble, which we could never
do in the case of our stubborn Isidora."

" Perhaps you are right, Teresa," said the baron, somewhat
pacified ; " the prospect of having Isidora an old maid at home
is dreadful. But I am too vexed not to have the baronet for a
son-in-law. Daughters of rich fathers are the most wayward
people in the world."

" I am thinking of telling Countess Xaveria plainly about
Sylvia first, and then time will prove what is next to be done,"
said the baroness.

The baron quite agreed. Poor Sylvia's heart beat violently
when, on the same day, her aunt dictated a note, inviting Coun-
tess Xaveria to a confidential talk on a matter which nearly af-
fected them both.

The answer was not long on the road, and the next day
at ten o'clock Baroness Griinerode drove over to Countess
Weldensperg. The latter was perfectly aware of the sort of
disclosure she was going to hear, and the baroness had

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 517

scarcely mentioned Sylvia's name when she exclaimed with
animation : " Dear baroness, if you only knew how vexed I am
about my brother's senseless behavior! If he had only fol-
lowed my advice there would have been no need of this talk."

" Last autumn, countess, you seemed to favor his inclination,"
said the baroness coldly ; " otherwise, perhaps, things would
never have been carried so far."

" Really, I am so extremely fond of Sylvia that her society
is an intense pleasure to me. This is why I have made so
much of her — quite a selfish business," said Xaveria, laughing.

" Anyhow, it has come to this : that we think it would be for
the best if Baron Tieffenstein would leave town for a bit, and
afterwards he could marry Sylvia."

" He can only do that if Sylvia's uncle comes forward as
her father to provide for her."

" Couldn't you take up your brother's interests in a kind of
motherly way, countess?"

" Oh ! dear, no ; that is the business of fathers," exclaimed
Xaveria, laughing. " I couldn't think of suggesting such a thing
to my husband. He would point to our children."

" This is my husband's case."

" With this great difference: that two of his children are
already in brilliant positions, and that every day he is increas-
ing his fortune."

" We can't expect all our children to do so well as my son
and Valentine, and until my husband has provided for his three
younger children he can't do anything out of the way for his
niece."

Xaveria sighed and said : " You are right, baroness. It will
be best if my brother can get sent as attache to Constantinople
or Rio Janeiro, and that we should lose sight of him."

" Yes, it will be best for us all," exclaimed the baroness ex-
citedly.

" You mean to say best for Sylvia in particular?" asked Xa-
veria, surprised.

" Not only Sylvia — I will take you into my confidence, coun-
tess. I have another reason for being eager about your bro-
ther's departure, and I hope you will urge it all the more when
you know what it is. Remember, this is the strictest confidence.
My unfortunate Isidora has fallen in love with Baron Tieffen-
stein."

" Has she really ? Isidora ! Still waters run deep. This is
why she is so quiet and retiring. Hearts are wonderful things."

518 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

" Unfortunately ! " sighed the baroness. " So I have now got
to struggle with two love-sick maidens — a very painful task, and
I should be exceedingly grateful to you to lighten it for me."

Xaveria promised to do her part, not losing sight of her own
interests in the matter, and the baroness went home highly satis-
fied at the pleasant turn the business had taken. Her husband
looked pleased when she ca^me in. He had a letter in his hand,
and said :

" I was never so glad to hear of a death. Young Dambleton
is dead. The father writes that his wife is plunged in melan-
choly, and begs that Sylvia will go and spend some time with
her to try to cheer her up. I will take her myself, and see Aurel
on my way back through Paris."

" This is really a most fortunate disposition of Providence,"
said the baroness, delighted.

" Stuff, my dear ! Leave Providence alone. It is a combina-
tion of circumstances which happens to suit us — nothing more. I
am sure Dambleton doesn't think his son's death a * most fortu-
nate disposition of Providence.' '

" Well, that is true, love."

" Lose no time in having Sylvia sent for."

She came with her heart in her mouth. The baron immedi-
ately began.

" Cheer up, little fairy! You have long been wishing to go
and stay with Mrs. Dambleton in England. She has sent you a
most pressing invitation, and, as she has just lost her youngest
son, poor thing ! we will give in to her wishes and spare you for
a few months. As I have pressing business in Paris, I will put
you down first in London. Set to work with your goods and
traps, and be in readiness to start. I shall send a telegram say-
ing she may expect us in a few days. I want to be off."

Sylvia stood and listened, pale and motionless as a statue,
with eyes fixed on the ground. It seemed to her as if she were
by an open grave in which all her love, happiness, and hope were
coffined.

" Dead!" she ejaculated, not knowing what she said.

" Yes, dead. It is very sad for the poor mother," remarked
the baroness.

" And very flattering to you, little fairy, that she appeals to
you for consolation," added the baron impatiently. He was
much put out to read misery on Sylvia's face, not out of any
compassion for her, but only because he did not want any dis-
turbing element to come and ruffle his high good-humor. " So it

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 519

is quite settled. Go and have your handmaid up, and see about
your preparations at once."

Sylvia departed, feeling as if she must be wound up to go on
at all, so miserable and paralyzed did she seem to be. When she
got to her room she sank on a chair, leaned her head back on the
wall, and remained in this position. What were her uncle's
orders to her, what was Mrs. Dambleton, or England, or the
whole world, if they parted her from Tieffenstein ? For it was a
separation, a real farewell, and she was perfectly conscious of it.
Her aunt and Xaveria had talked over the possibility of her mar-
riage and decided against it, her uncle had refused to help her,
and Xaveria would not do anything for her brother, which both
might have done with very little trouble. She had neither rights
nor weapons, and nobody to look steadily after her interests ; so
the sword was broken over her future, and she was torn from
the man in whom she had placed all her hopes of happiness.

There was a knock at the door.

"Who is it? "she asked.

" C'est moi, mademoiselle," was the answer.

"Come in, Victoire. What is it?" said Sylvia, opening her
weary eyes.

" Your aunt has sent me to see about the packing."

" Oh ! very well, Victoire."

" Won't you give me some idea, miss, of what you would like
packed ? "

" Ask my aunt." .

Victoire said nothing, but opened a cupboard in the little re-
cess. Since Sylvia had been forbidden to go to Mass with her
all intercourse not immediately relating to Victoire's avocations
had stopped between them, and with Sylvia's increasing distaste
for religion grew her indifference towards Victoire. Indeed, she
was quite ready to laugh with the others over any trait of big-
otry laid to the charge of the " Parisian saint," as the baron call-
ed her.

" If you are going to stay some time in England, miss," began
Victoire after a while, " I shall very likely never see you again,
for as soon as the spring dresses are finished her ladyship is
parting with me and I am going back to Paris."

" To freedom ! I congratulate you," said Sylvia sorrowfully.

" Yes, to freedom, which I value doubly because it will enable
me to become an Ursuline."

" Are you mad, Victoire ? " exclaimed Sylvia, raising herself
quickly up. " Do you call that liberty ? "

520 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

" Yes, I do," answered Victoire calmly.

" But in a convent you are not your own mistress."

" That is often the greatest slavery, for we poor creatures are
so inclined to let our passions get the better of us. Certainly I
shall have to obey in the convent and let others lead me, but in
a direction which will make me lose sight of the world, whilst
now it is always before my eyes."

" I thought you were saving your money to be married. So
it is for the convent ? "

, " Yes. A convent isn't a hospital. A vocation must take us
there, not neediness."

" Well, then, go and be an Ursuline, and pray for me some-
times," said Sylvia ; and whilst Victoire did her business she
sank back again into her apathy, not taking home the maid's
pious observation. Suddenly she got up and went to her writ-
ing-desk, saying :

" I must write a few lines to Countess Weldensperg. Will
you please post the note yourself at once at the nearest post, so
that I may feel sure about it ? "

" With pleasure, miss," answered Victoire.

Sylvia wrote hurriedly : " Dearest Xaveria, I have heard to-
day that I am to be banished to England to-morrow, I don't
know either why or for how long. I entreat of you to come and
see me in my room either this evening or to-morrow morning,
that I may wish you good-by, and be comforted, and cry out my
troubles with you. I beg of you not to forsake me, and to come
as soon as possible to your poor SYLVIA."

Xaveria duly received the note, and immediately wrote her
answer as follows : " I should have gone to you before now, my
sweet Sylvia, if it weren't for a heavy cold which keeps me a
prisoner to my room. Don't distress yourself about the unex-
pected departure to England. It will do you good, and you will
enjoy it, and come back to us nicer and prettier than ever, of
which nobody will be better pleased than your faithful

" XAVERIA."

She sent a servant with this answer, so that Sylvia should not
be kept waiting. Sylvia skimmed it through with feverish
haste, squeezed it up in her hand, then, throwing it into the
fire, she said angrily: " She is not true to me. She is false. I am
sure that I am being sent away on purpose, and she is glad about
it. They are all against me, and I am only something to them
as long as I can do anything for them. Nobody cares for me —
not even he himself. Love is enduring and stronger than all

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 521

obstacles, but this is not his line at all. What selfish people there
are on earth ! "

The baroness had lost no time in letting- Xaveria know that
Sylvia was going for six months at least to Mrs. Dambleton, add-
ing that Baron Tieffenstein might now wait in peace and quiet
for a suitable diplomatic post, as many things might happen in
six months. The countess had taken the hint. The baroness
was determined to bring about Isidora's marriage to Tieffen-
stein. One at least of her children should marry for love, and
perhaps the marriage would turn out better than Valentine's and
more happily than Aurel's.

CHAPTER VI.

LI A INSTEAD OF RACHEL.

BARON TIEFFENSTEIN was beside himself when his sister told
him of Sylvia's departure and related part of her conversation
with Baroness Griinerode.

" Calm yourself ; it was bound to come to this," she said cold-
ly. " It is to be hoped that Sylvia will make a good match in
England."

" That's more than I can bear," he broke out. " I must go
after her."

" What right have you to go after her ?" asked Xaveria. " You
ire not engaged to her, and you don't wish to engage yourself,
[f you went after her you would be treating her badly, and so
far you have been merely heedless."

" Sylvia will be miserable with any other man."

" That's by no means certain, Wilderich. She is shrewd, and
msequently will know how to choose her husband ; and after all
it is not so easy to be unhappy. The first thing for you both to
lo is to part."

"You are joking, Xaveria," he exclaimed bitterly.

" By degrees you will see that you must have done with your
violent manias, which lead to nothing but to some wretched ca-
tastrophe or other ; that it isn't to be your lot to marry for love,
and that you must grow used to the notion of marrying for con-
venience. I don't ask you to come and ask me to-day or to-mor-
row whether I know of a nice little wife for you with her thou-
sands, but in two or three months' time we will think about it
again. Now, we shall soon be having the race season. See what
privileged people we are ! Formerly there was a water season

522 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

and the winter season, to be sure. But our unfortunate grand-
fathers and grandmothers never dreamed of races. Think how
many ways we have of killing our time ; so we ought to be able
to make light of a little bit of love-sickness, which, after all, is
pure fancy."

" You are lightness personified, Xaveria, and I really don't
know if I shall ever clamber up to you."

" I am not at all light, Wilderich. I love amusement, show-
ing off, society, and the world, and I do all 1 can to enjoy it
thoroughly ; but I am an exemplary wife and a most loving
mother, and there is scarcely anything which I deny my chil-
dren."

" The last point is the truest thing you have said to-day," said
Wilderich, laughing.

"And many other things will come true as well, O brother
mine ! " she added.

She cultivated Baroness Griinerode, having at once taken in
the fact that the baroness was particularly desirous of bring-
ing about Isidora's marriage to Tieffenstein, and concluding that
her brother would be allowed to make his own terms. As a
splendid position represented to her mind the height of happi-
ness, and as, in her way, she really cared for her brother, she
made the most strenuous efforts to procure it for him. She
avoided facing the Griinerode pedigree and the green and red
coat-of-arms which she had ridiculed three years before, or con-
soled herself by thinking, " That is Wilderich's business. These
are matter-of-fact days. Money is the great leveller." It did not
strike her that the times were matter-of-fact in virtue of popular
opinion, and that she and many others of her kind did their best
to strengthen that popular opinion. The reigning tendency of a
time does not drop like rain from the clouds, or blow like the
wind, nobody knows from what quarter. It is the result of an
inward tendency which determines the outward course of the
great majority. Time takes the coloring which man gives to it,
according as he aims at low or high marks. The more he tarries
in low-lying regions the more he is affected by the unwholesome
miasma peculiar to such parts, and which has so demoralizing an
influence upon character. He himself grows either weak or bru-
tal, if not both, as it often happens. Tieffenstein was on his way
to this consummation. He was not exactly a bad man. He
would as willingly have been good, if only goodness had come
easily to him. Unfortunately it was so very difficult. The
world, and especially the feminine world, had spoilt him early in

I882.J THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 523

the day. They had coaxed and petted all his morality out of
him. That very man whom society called " the knight," on ac-
count of his chivalrous bearing, was powerless against momen-
tary impressions which appeared to him in the light of wild pas-
sions, because he was weak and without firm principles. This
was the kind of fancy he had conceived for Sylvia. For the
space of a week he was quite beside himself, bemoaning the lot
which tore him from so pretty and elegant a treasure. Then he
comforted himself by the reflection that Sylvia was his last love,
and that henceforward he would harden himself to the charms
of women. Another wedk passed, and it occurred to him
that, as he was now insensible to love and its happiness, he must
begin to think of his future in sober earnestness and take his sis-
ter's advice. Not that he did it willingly ; but Xaveria was quite
right — the days of wild passions were for ever gone by, and, being
in the flower of his years, it behooved him to assert his place in
society and to keep it. A rich wife was the first thing necessary.
In short, Sylvia had been gone one month only, and Xaveria was
able to say to him :

" Wilderich, I know a little wife for you." , tu

He tried to stop her.

" She is mad about you, and suffered dreadfully about you and
Sylvia."

" She loves me without my knowing it ? " asked Wilderich
somewhat curiously.

" She was too proud not to hide her love away from sight as
long as she saw you day after day at Sylvia's feet."

" Who is she ? " he asked with interest.

" Isidora Griinerode."

" Never!" he exclaimed energetically — " never, never! Lla
instead of Rachel — surely you can't be for it."

" Isidora isn't pretty, but for all we know she may be very
nice when she chooses. She must have suffered so much!
Think what it must have been to care for you, and yet be oblig-
ed to see that you cared for the girl who always stood in her
way."

" Lia instead of Rachel — it is hard," said Wilderich sorrow-
fully.

" You must take the money into consideration, Wilderich, as
it is a question of a matter-of-fact marriage."

" Is her father inclined to put down a good sum with her ? "
he asked, still in a very melancholy tone.

" The mother is, and that with a determination I should never

524 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

have expected from her. If she and Isidora worry the father a
little, and you on your side make the most of your family and of
yourself, I believe you may win him over. I always tell the ba-
roness that you must have money, and a great deal too."

" You are something like a sister," he said with feeling.

" Strangely enough, or rather naturally enough, the baroness
has never made the slightest allusion to your caring for Isidora.
She leaves it quite out of the question, and seems to trust your
liking her to time."

Wilderich shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.

" And she may well do this," said Xaveria, laughing. " The
man who inspires a passion and remains indifferent has still to be
born."

" So you have pretty nearly settled matters with the baron-
ess, sister mine ? "

" As far as I could. Now you must come forward as suitor."

" In short, there is nothing for it but for me to submit to fate.
But it will be hard work on the very spot where I used to see
Sylvia."

" Yes, and I think it might be feasible for you and the Grii-
nerodes to go away somewhere, say to a Tyrolese valley,
where nobody knows you or anything about your passion for
Sylvia."

" That would indeed make it easier," exclaimed Wilderich, de-
lighted.

" Then you would come back engaged, and be married short-
ly afterwards. People don't trouble themselves about a fait ac-
compli"

" And what of Sylvia? "

" My dear Wilderich, be so good as to drop Sylvia. You
may be quite sure that all girls go through a little smarting of
this kind."

Sylvia had already been four weeks in Devonshire at Mrs.
Dambleton's beautiful country-place at the time of the conversa-
tion above related. Baron Griinerode had said to Mrs. Damble-
ton : " I am bringing you our pearl, by which you may guess
whether we sympathize with you in your sorrow. But you must
take great care of her, for the little fairy has danced and sung so
much that she is rathfcr unstrung. The soft Devonshire air, com-
bined with the sea and bathing in the height of the summer, will
set her up again."

Mrs. Dambleton was duly grateful, promised to look after
Sylvia as if she were a daughter, and the baron left for Paris.

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 525

Aurel and Phoebe received him very properly, so far as mere po-
liteness went. But the icy coldness which reigned between them
spread its atmosphere over everything which came in contact
with them. The baron was not slow to discover the biting frost ;
for, albeit he was not particularly given to warm feelings, he did
relish a certain amount of freedom in family life. He considered
that his wife and daughters were bound to be brisk and good-
tempered in his presence, and to make things pleasant for him,
who worked so hard for them. Now, anything but cheerfulness
and good temper, the spontaneous productions of a happy exist-
ence, reigned between Aurel and Phoebe. They gave the baron
most excellent dinners, drove him in a very elegant turnout in
the Bois de Boulogne, and went with him to the opera. The
baron could not refuse his admiration at their household arrange-
ments any more than he could fail to be pleased at the position
occupied in the higher financial world by the firm of Grandison
& Griinerode ; but, in spite of this and their outwardly brilliant
circumstances, he was not proof against a feeling of secret dis-
comfort. Phoebe looked so pale and ill, and her face bore wit-
ness so evident to nervous exhaustion, that the baron said to her
one day :

" If you were my wife, Phcebe, I would ride four hours a day
with you. Young women ruin their health by sitting still and
taking no exercise in the fresh air. There you loll on your
chaise-longues, or causeuses, or whatever you call the things in
your stuffy rooms pervaded with flowers and perfumes, and you
never walk except on a carpet three inches deep ; and, to make
matters better, you dance furiously for six weeks in the winter.
Of course your health must suffer. You used to ride ; why don't
you ride now in this lovely spring weather ? You would make
a capital horsewoman with your slender figure and your erect
carriage."

" My state of health is against it," she replied in her snubbing
way, and went out of the room.

" Her state of health ? " said the baron to Aurel. " Does that
mean — "

" Years ago, father, you spoke to me about the misery of rear-
ing children who were weak either in body or in mind. You
will approve, therefore, of my anxiety not to have them. Poor
Phcebe is in a deplorable state of health. She is a victim to epi-
lepsy, and I am a victim to my ignorance, or rather to my miser-
able weakness. Of course, I want to spare you the trial of epi-
leptic grandchildren, and I hope you will be duly grateful."

526 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Jan.,

Aurel's icy tone and his bitter words disturbed his father's
presence of mind. The baron paused before he said : " You
must not call nervous attacks by this dreadful word."

" But supposing doctors give them this name? "

" They are a parcel of humbugs, who call a thing by an ugly
name when they don't understand it, and talk grandly about its
being incurable when there are a hundred simple remedies which
might be used."

" I should be very grateful to you if you could procure me
any one of them, for I am very sorry for poor Phoebe. I pro-
posed to her that she should go back to her parents. As I can-
not love her, I would far rather she did not take up a wife's place
in my house."

" What ! would you break with Grandison? "

" Why shouldn't I ? I don't owe him the least consideration.
But Phoebe did not agree to my proposal, and, as she seems able
to put up with our way of getting on together, let her stay."

" Then there can't be much question of domestic comfort,"
muttered the baron.

" And you are the last person who ought to look for it, father,
for you knew all about Phoebe's malady."

" This is a lie ! "

" I say you did know it, for Mme. Daragon wrote and told
my mother about it ; and she surely did not keep it from you."

" Oh ! 1 saw Mme. Daragon's letter, to be sure ; but what man
in his senses dreams of swallowing hearsay ? "

" Very well, father, we had better say no more on the subject.
1 only thought I was bound to tell you what a miserable marriage
you have got me into, and also what small prospect of domestic
happiness I have before me. Now, I think, it is time to dress for
dinner."

Aurel went out of the drawing-room, and the baron mut-
tered impatiently to himself : " A nice piece of work ! What a
creature this Phoebe is not to have energy enough to get the
better of nervous attacks, at any rate before her husband, poor
wretch ! For the matter of that, my pretty Sylvia would have
been a different kind of a wife. But things are as they are.
and there is no altering them now. Besides, he will find some
fair comforter or other in Paris."

But for all that he was not quite comfortable at his son's
house, and two days after their conversation together he left
Paris. On his return home* he said to his wife : " As to homeli-
ness, my dear, give me Germairy and German housewives. For

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS LEGEND. 527

the rest, you may comfort yourself by thinking that Aurel and
Phoebe live together like the angels in heaven."

His Paris experience was, however, favorable to Isidora's
wishes. When the baroness told him the thing was becoming
serious he answered impatiently : " If she is simple enough to
fall in love with a man who only takes her for her money's
sake, let her marry him. We will see whether this marriage
turns out better than the two others."

" But, love," put in the baroness, " didn't you say Phoebe and
Aurel were as happy as the angels in heaven?"

" No, my dear, that is not what I said at all," he exclaimed ir-
ritably. " But never mind. Isidora shall be happy after her fash-
ion. I will be a wonderfully generous father, will pay debts and
make an allowance. At the same time I am pleased enough for
the plebeian, Isi Prost, to marry into one of our first families; for
as to Miss Isi's being a Griinerode, that is, of course, all gammon.
But the world swallows it down, because the world must always
be acting a farce in which it takes the part of audience and per-
former."

TO BE CONTINUED.

A CHRISTMAS LEGEND.

IT was the holy Christmas tide

In Ireland long ago ;
The hills and vales were covered o'er

With newly-fallen snow.
It was a Christmas in the days

Of misery and fear,
When it was death to say a Mass,

And danger Mass to hear. t

There stood a ruined abbey church,

All open to the sky :
Happy the brethren to whom God

Had giv'n the grace to die
And rest within their quiet graves

Before the day of woe
That saw their peaceful, holy home

A prey to cruel foe.

528 A CHRISTMAS LEGEND. [Jan.,

A peasant woman from her sleep

Arose that Christmas day,
And from her cottage window looked

Out on the twilight gray.
Forth from the ruined church there streamed

Across the spotless snow
A brilliant light, and white-robed forms

Were passing to and fro.

The holy music of the Church

Fell on her raptured ear ;
She roused her children and went forth

The holy Mass to hear.
They knelt within the ancient walls

Till Masses three were said,
But as they knelt and gazed in joy

The glorious vision fled.

No footprints save their own were seen

Upon the new-fall'n snow ;
They knew not whence the priest had come.

They never saw him go ;
And whether he were mortal man

They would not dare to say,
Or one come back from 'mong the dead

To keep that Christmas day.

1 882.] TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM. 529

TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM CON-
CERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE.

PART I.

VALUE OF THE TRADITION OF JERUSALEM— IMMEMORIAL SANCTITY OF ITS HOLY PLACES—
A CHIEF SITE OF PATRIARCHAL, JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, AND MOHAMMEDAN WORSHIP OF
THE ONE GOD— SPECIFICALLY OF SACRIFICE— EARLY EUCHARISTIC TRADITION — ST.
CYRIL THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS TO THE PRIMITIVE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF JERU-
SALEM— THE CREED OF THIS CHURCH — MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS FROM THE CATE-
CHETICAL LECTURES OF ST. CYRIL.

THE special value and importance of the testimony and tra-
dition of the apostolic Church of Jerusalem, in respect to all
Catholic dogmas, is clear at first sight. Christianity and the
church had their birth and the nurture of their infancy, the
apostolic mission had its point of departure, Catholicity its first
germinating principle and movement, within its bosom. The
very spot where David reigned and was buried was the site of
the first Christian church where his greater Son began his ever-
lasting kingdom. The place where the religion of Moses reached
its fulfilment and its extinction was the local position of its trans-
formation into the religion of Christ, when the Old Law was
abrogated and the New Law substituted. It was there that the
wild olive was grafted upon the old olive-tree, and the transition
took place by which the small society of the Christian Israel was
developed into the universal church of all nations. Plainly, the
surest way to determine the essence and properties, and even the
primary specific accidents, of this religion both old and new, at
once identical, in respect to its indestructible, persistent matter,
with the true, revealed religion created by God at the beginning ;
and also specifically different through its new form ; is to trace
its history up to its source and determine its original character
on the spot where it received its being.

This, which is verified in respect to all Catholic dogma and
discipline in general, is particularly applicable to the part which
relates to the Eucharistic Sacrament and Sacrifice, as will appear
in the course of the following argument. This application is our
principal intention at present, including in a secondary or inci-
dental way other topics related to the primary one, and bearing
in common with it toward the conclusion : that it is the Catholic

VOL. xxxiv. — 34

530 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Jan.,

as opposed to the Protestant type of religion ; the Catholic idea
of Christianity ; to which the testimony and tradition of Jerusa-
lem witness from the days of the apostles.

Let us begin by denning these opposite doctrines in respect
to the Holy Eucharist. The doctrine contrary to Catholic
dogma is, that the character and offices of priesthood under the
New Testament are strictly confined to the person of Jesus
Christ, who fulfilled the offices of his earthly priesthood com-
pletely in his last act as Redeemer, when he died upon the cross.
A sequel to this doctrine is the denial of his real bodily presence
on the earth since the day of the Ascension ; and another is the
denial of the existence of his visible, mystical body the church,
of sensible, efficacious instruments of grace in the sacraments, of
an external medium of his infallible teaching in the hierarchy ;
and the reduction of all his perpetual action in enlightening
and sanctifying believers to an immediate action by the Holy
Spirit on their individual souls, through the sole instrumentality
of their personal faith. There is, therefore, for them, no priest,
altar, sacrifice, or real sacrament. Public worship and religious
acts are merely expressions by word or sign of their thoughts
and sentiments ; church-organization is only an orderly way of
associating together for mutual improvement and other salutary
ends.

The Catholic dogma is concentrated in the real, bodily pre-
sence of Christ under the sacramental species of the Blessed Eu-
charist, effected by consecration of the bread and wine of the obla-
tion. The Lamb of God, by producing anew at each consecra-
tion his Body and Blood under sensible and destructible species,
by that act ipso facto represents his death on Mt. Calvary to the
Eternal Father, and offers himself again as a sacrifice of adora-
tion, thanksgiving, expiation of the remaining penalties of for-
given sin for the just on earth and in purgatory, and impetration
for all men, especially the faithful; consummating the Divine Act
by the communion of the priest which finishes the sacrifice, with
whom the faithful also communicate sacramentally at fitting-
times. The power to consecrate and offer this sacrifice, being
supernatural, can only be received through the ordination of men
divinely appointed to confer the priesthood from Jesus Christ
himself. Thus, there must be a hierarchy, the sacred character
of which consists in power over the real body of Christ, with
the annexed powers requisite for the due administration of the
other sacraments, and the fulfilment of the offices necessary for
the due order of his mystical body which lives through his di-

1 8 82.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 531

vine, incarnate life and in his Divine Spirit, whose grace is im-
parted through baptism and other mystical and efficacious signs.

All who hold this dogma and whose religion is constituted
upon it, though they may be affected by schism or heresy de-
priving them of Catholic integrity, are so far Catholic as to be
distinguished from pure Protestants. This is the specific differ-
ence and typical character of two opposite and irreconcilable
kinds of religion, each claiming to be the ancient, genuine form
of Christianity which it received from its Divine Founder.

In searching for the original and true type in Christ's institu-
tion of the Eucharistic Sacrament, it is reasonable to examine, at
the very spot where it was instituted, everything which went
before or came after the institution itself, which can throw light
on the object, the reasons, and the nature of a rite so simple and
yet so sublime and mystical, which is the central point of all
Christian worship and a sensible compendium of the whole faith.
In doing this we must be allowed to go back to the earliest his-
tory and traditional reminiscences of the site chosen by God as
the place of sacrifice, where the victims of the sacrificial rites of
the Old Law were to be offered, where his Son was to be immo-
lated, and where the sacrifice of the New Law, the Mincha, to be
offered up in every place from the rising to the setting sun, was
to be instituted and first offered by the great High-Priest and
King of the human race.

The mountain on which the Temple and city of Jerusalem
were located by David and Solomon appears in Judaic tradition
as a place specially sacred from the beginning of the world.
The Mohammedan legends and myths spring from an imme-
morial sentiment, prevailing among Arabians and Semitic tribes
generally, of the special sanctity of that place. It is the common
opinion of both Jews and Christians that this was the location of
the Salem where Melchisedech was king and priest, and the rab-
binical tradition designates the great stone under the Kubbet-es-
Sachra as the altar on which he offered his oblations of bread and
wine. On this stone the Mohammedans believe that God will
place his throne at the Last Judgment ; they also believe that
the mouth of hell is directly beneath it, and that the gate of
heaven is immediately above it, at a distance of only eighteen
miles. It is the common belief of Christians that Christ will de-
scend at his second coming upon the Mount of Olives. Thus all
Semitic tradition, particularly in the family of Abraham, connects
great events and scenes in the human drama, from its beginning
to its consummation, with Jerusalem. Other races drawn into

532 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Jan.,

the circle of Semitic religious ideas inherit this tradition. Jeru-
salem is a central point of interest and veneration for Christians,
Jews, and Mohammedans alike. It is for all a spot specially con-
secrated to the worship of the One True God. There was the
Temple of God built by Solomon, the Sanctuary of which proba-
bly rested on the rock above mentioned as its foundation. There
the Mohammedans placed their great mosque of Omar, second
only in sanctity to that of Mecca, and in some respects hav-
ing precedence even of that. There, during a short interval, the
cross shone resplendent above the Kubbet-es-Sachra, and during
a longer one Christianity reigned supreme on Sion and Calvary.
For Jews and Christians who adhere to the genuine, original
idea of Mosaic and apostolic worship, sacrifice is the great act of
the worship of the One True God, by which homage is paid to
his sovereign dominion over life and death. The sacrifice and
priesthood of Melchisedech are the original type both of the
Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices committed to its ministry,
and of the office and offering of Jesus Christ, the High-Priest of
the New Law. Melchisedech was king and priest of Jerusalem,
and, as such, blessed Abraham, offered sacrifice for him, and re-
ceived tithes from him. There was an ancient tradition that this
royal pontiff was the patriarch Shem. According to the short
chronology of the Hebrew Pentateuch, this patriarch lived until
after the birth of Jacob. But as the uncertainty of the early
chronology does not permit us to found any argument upon this
computation, we cannot with probability say more than this : that
Melchisedech may have inherited his royal and sacerdotal pre-
eminence among the Semitic tribes from their common ancestor.
St. Paul proves that the priesthood given to Aaron was inferior
to that of Melchisedech, because his ancestor received the bless-
ing of the latter and paid tithes to him. Jesus Christ, a son of
David and Judah, and not of Aaron and Levi, was constituted a
High-Priest after the order of Melchisedech, whose royalty on
Mt. Sion had been transferred to David. Jesus, the Son of
David, received both the kingdom and the priesthood, under a
New Law, of which the primitive royal priesthood of Melchise-
dech, King of Salem, whose name and title signify that divine
character which Jesus Christ possessed in his own person as the
birthright of the Son of God — viz., King of Righteousness and
King of Peace — was a type. Mt. Moriah was probably the scene
of the preparation which Abraham made to offer up Isaac — a
sacrifice which God did not permit to be accomplished, because
the victim was not sufficient. It was the site of the Temple

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 533

of legal, symbolic sacrifices, which were done away with as in-
sufficient arid merely typical when their time was fulfilled. Jesus
Christ, the true Priest and Victim, offered himself on Mt. Cal-
vary as the sacrifice of redemption, and upon Mt. Sion he insti-
tuted and began the perpetual, unbloody Sacrifice whose merit
and efftcaey are derived from the Sacrifice of Calvary, which it
represents before God and men, and whose fruits it gives into
the hands of men, to worship God by their oblation and to receive
as a heavenly nutrition. The chosen and most holy places of
Christian worship, therefore, were the Ccenaculinn of Mt. Sion,
Golgotha, and the Holy Sepulchre. The site of the ancient Tem-
ple was left in its desolation and ruin. It was the Moslem who
seized on it, and made it the seat of the mosque of the False
Prophet who pretended to supersede both Moses and Christ.
The Christian Temple of the Crusaders represented the triumph
of Christ over Mohammed. . If, as a consequence of the final tri-
umph of Christianity over Judaism and Mohammedanism, the
cross and altar of Christ take final possession of the Temple of
Solomon, that will be the most fitting place for the cathedral of
the patriarch of the new, Christian Jerusalem, as the successor
not merely of Juvenal and Mark, but of St. James, of Abraham,
of Melchisedech, and of Shem.

In the Church of Sion the Lord, on the night before his cruci-
fixion, celebrated the first Eucharistic Sacrifice. There the apos-
tles continued to offer the same Sacrifice, and from their rites and
observances, inaugurated in that holy place, all the liturgies of
the universal church derived their origin. The Eucharistic and
liturgical tradition must have remained pure and undiluted in
that venerable church of all the apostles and the original disci-
ples, which became, as a particular diocese, the church of St.
James and of the line of martyrs and confessors who succeed-
ed him, down to the Council of Nice and the time of St. Maca-
rius, St. Maximus, and St. Cyril. The doctrine and law of Je-
sus Christ, the principles and practices of his religion, deeply
stamped in by himself into the original society of his disciples,
were ineffaceable and unalterable. The faith, worship, order, and
practical system of religion which were undeniably existing there
in the fourth century, as proved by abundant testimonies, must
have been handed down from the apostles. Precise and definite
testimonies serially connected together from the apostolic age to
the epoch of Constantine are for the most part wanting, in the^
extant documents of the first three centuries, in respect to de-
tails of ecclesiastical rites and customs. We can infer, however,

534 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Jan.,

from the way in which churches were invariably constructed at
the earliest period of which we have information, that the first
church on Mt. Sion, the model of all, was similar in its arrange-
ments. The altar was, namely, the principal and most conspicu-
ous object, standing in a separated chancel, to which the rest of
the enclosure led up, the tribune for reading and preaching .be-
ing on one side and nearer the people. So also the promiscuous
crowd, and the catechumens, who were allowed to be present
during the first part of the divine service and the sermon, were
excluded from the most sacred part, the proper worship of the
faithful. Catechumens were prepared by a long and strict pro-
bation for initiation into a full knowledge of the Creed, the Sac-
raments, and the Holy Eucharist, which were all covered by a
veil of secrecy from the profane. The universal prevalence of
all these customs in the fourth and third centuries proves that
they had their origin in the apostolic tradition which went forth
from the Ccenaculum of Jerusalem. All these things prove that
the Holy Eucharist was a most sacred and solemn mystery,
its celebration the great act of Christian worship, Holy Com-
munion the term and consummation of the privileges of the
faithful as the children of God. All the liturgies, and the uni-
versal customs in respect to the vestments of the altar and its
ministers, the sacred vessels, and the whole order of worship and
administration of sacraments, must be traced to the same origin.
Silence respecting these things in early writers and canons of
councils is to be accounted for partly by the discipline of the
secret, partly by the absence of disagreement and controversy in
regard to these things, and partly from the absence of any par-
ticular reason or motive of mentioning matters of custom and
order which were known to all those who had access to the more
public or more private Christian assemblies.

There are, however, some few notices of early usage which
are interesting and important. We are told, for instance, that
St. James always wore a linen garment, which is most naturally
to be understood as the alb, the immemorial garment in almost
all countries of persons consecrated to the sacred ministry.
Polycrates, in his letter to Pope Victor, incidentally mentions the
petalon — i.e., plate or lamina — which St. John wore as a mark of his
sacerdotal dignity. This is supposed to have been a golden
coronet or fillet for the head, and seems to have been the first
form of the crown-shaped mitre worn by Greek bishops. It is
not likely that St. John would have used this ornament unless
the apostles had all done the same while he was with them at

1882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 535

Jerusalem. And St. Epiphanius says expressly that St. James
wore a similar petalon. At the beginning of the Eighth CEcume-
nical Council, held in the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople,
A.D. 869, Elias, the procurator of Theodosius, Patriarch of Jeru-
salem, presented a letter from him to St. Ignatius, excusing him-
self for not coming to the synod, on account of the tyranny of
the Saracen oppressors. He accredits Elias as his representa-
tive, and Thomas, Archbishop of Tyre, as the representative of
the vacant see of Antioch, to whom the Emir of Syria had
given permission to go to Constantinople under the pretext of
procuring the release of some Saracen prisoners. He begs Ig-
natius to intercede for their release, and adds that in the hope
of obtaining this favor he sends to him the tunic, humeral, mitre,
and stole of St. James the apostle.* Eusebius enlarges on the
munificence of Constantine and St. Helena in bestowing costly
stuffs and vessels on the churches of Jerusalem and other places.
These rich stuffs can have had no other use except to furnish
decorations for altars and vestments for the clergy. In one in-
stance we know for certain what these vestments were. St.
Cyril, viz., was accused by Acacius, Metropolitan of Caesarea, of
having sold some of these, and in particular one tunic of cloth of
gold given to the bishop to be worn in the administration of
baptism, which was afterwards purchased by an actor and ex-
hibited on the stage.

The scattered and scanty evidences which can be collected
from very ear.ly writers respecting the accessories of divine wor-
ship during the ante-Nicene age, all agree with the principal evi-
dence derived from the universal and traditional usage of the
fourth and later centuries. . These accessories of rite, ornament,
and ceremony find their reason and motive in the dogma of the
Real Presence, which they confirm and illustrate, with the
closely connected Catholic doctrines of the sacrifice, priesthood,
and efficacious sacraments of the New Law. The direct evi-
dence, both from Scripture and tradition, concerning these doc-
trines, is much more full and explicit than the indirect evidence
from the history of ceremonial rites and forms.

We have this traditional doctrine, as it was handed dowTn
from the apostles in the Church of Jerusalem, embodied in a very
full and systematic manner in the Catechetical Lectures of St.
Cyril. These Lectures are a series of instructions on the Creed
which Cyril delivered during Lent and Easter week, in the year
347 or near that time, to the class of preparation for Baptism,

* Hefele's Cone. Gesch. , vol. iii. p. 375.

536 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Jan.,

Confirmation, and First Communion, in the great basilica of Con-
stantine. He was then a priest, not much over thirty years of
age, having been ordained but two or three years before, under
Maximus, who appointed him to this responsible office of chief
catechist. The Lectures are written in a very eloquent style,
and their exposition of doctrine is admirably clear, enforced
and applied with impressive and fervent practical exhortations.
There are none of the writings of the ancient Fathers, among
those which have been translated into English, more interesting
and instructive for the Catholic laity, or for those who wish to
learn what primitive Christianity really was, than these Lec-
tures.

The Lenten Lectures, eighteen in number, were delivered in
the greater basilica ; those of Easter week, five in number, called
Mystagogical Lectures, were given after the candidates had re-
ceived the sacraments, in the chapel called the Anastasis, which
contained the Holy Sepulchre. What can be more admirable and
better fitted to awaken the most holy emotions than such a scene ?
An eloquent young saint, clad in his priestly garments, instruct-
ing a crowd of neophytes, descendants of Jewish and pagan an-
cestors, in presence of the bishop and the assembled clergy, on
the very spot where the Lord was crucified, where he was laid
in the tomb, and where his glorious resurrection took place !

The topics of the Lectures include an Introduction, the Dispo-
sitions for Baptism, Repentance, Faith, the Nature and Perfections
of God, the Trinity, the Person, Incarnation, Passion, Resurrec-
tion, Ascension, Second Coming, of Christ, the Holy Ghost, the
Catholic Church, Everlasting Life, the Three Sacraments of Bap-
tism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist.

Before proceeding to quote passages apposite to our purpose
from the Lectures, we will first give the Creed of the Church of
Jerusalem, as extracted from the body of St. Cyril's discourse in
its several members.*

" We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth, and of all things visible and invisible : And in One Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only-Begotten Son of God ; begotten of the Father Very God, before
all worlds ; by whom all things were made ; who came in the flesh, and was
made man of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost ; He was crucified and buried;
He rose a^ain the third day ; and ascended into heaven, and sat on the
right hand of the Father ; and He cometh in glory to judge the quick and

* The extracts are taken from the volume contained in the Oxford Library of the Fathers,
which is a translation by the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Church, with a preface by John
Henry Newman.

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 537

the dead ; whose kingdom shall have no end : And in one Holy Ghost, the
Comforter, who spake in the Prophets : and in one Baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins : and in one Holy Catholic Church : and in the
Resurrection of the dead : and in the Life everlasting."

We will now make a few miscellaneous extracts illustrating
local and historical circumstances which have been noticed in
our former articles on " Christian Jerusalem."

In the first place, there are several allusions to the holy places
and churches of Jerusalem :

" We know the Holy Ghost, who on the day of Pentecost descended on
the apostles in the form of fiery tongues, here, in Jerusalem, in the Upper
Church of the apostles (on Mt. Sion) ; and, in truth, it were most fitting
that as we discourse concerning Christ and Golgotha, upon this Golgotha,
so also we should speak concerning the Holy Ghost in the Upper Church "
(Cat. xvi. sect. 4).

"The holy wood of the cross is his witness, which is seen among us to
this day, and, by means of those who have in faith taken thereof, has from
this place now almost filled the whole world. The palm-tree in the valley
is his witness, which supplied branches to the children who then hailed
him. Gethsemani is his witness, which to our imagination almost shows
Judas still. Golgotha, this holy place which is raised above all others, is his
witness in the sight of all. The Holy Sepulchre is his witness, and the
stone which lies there to this day " (x. 19).

" There will cry out upon thee, (if thou deny Christ) this holy Gol-
gotha, rising on high, and showing itself to this day, and displaying even
yet how because of Christ the rocks were then riven " (xiii. 39).

"The soldiers then surrendered the truth for silver; but the kings of
this day have, in their piety, built this holy Church of the Resurrection of
God our Saviour, inlaid with silver and embossed with gold, in which we
are assembled ; and have embellished it with rarities of silver and gold and
precious stones " (xiv. 14).

The Lenten season with the festival of Easter at the end, as
the time of preparation for baptism, during which the Lectures
were delivered, is frequently mentioned :

" It remains, brethren beloved, to exhort you all, by the word of teach-
ing, to prepare your souls for the reception of the heavenly gifts. As re-
gards the holy and apostolic faith delivered to you to profess, we have
spoken as many Lectures as was possible in the past days of Lent. And
now the holy day of Easter is at hand, and your love in Christ is to be illu-
minated by the Laver of regeneration. Ye shall, therefore, again be taught
what is requisite, if God so will : with how great piety and order you must
enter in when summoned, for what purpose each of the holy mysteries of
baptism is performed, and with what reverence and order you must go
from baptism to the holy altar of God, and enjoy its spiritual and heaven-
ly mysteries.

538 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Jan.,

" And after the holy and salutary day of Easter, beginning from the
second day of the week, ye shall come all the days of the following week
after the assembly into the Holy Place of the Resurrection, and there ye
shall hear other Lectures, if God permit " (xviii. 32, 33).

The discipline of the secret is strictly enjoined on the neophytes
in the introductory Lecture :

" Now, when the catechising has taken place, should a catechumen ask
what the teachers have said, tell nothing to a stranger ; for we deliver to
thee a mystery, even the hope of the life to come ; keep the mystery for
Him who pays thee. Let no man say to thee, What harm if I also know it ?
So the sick ask for wine ; but if it be unseasonably given to them, it occa-
sions delirium, and two evils follow : the sick man dies, and the physician
gets an ill name. Thus is it with the catechumen also if he should hear
from the believer: the catechumen is made delirious; for, not understanding
what he has heard, he finds fault with it and scoffs at it, and the believer
bears the blame of a betrayer. But now thou art standing on the frontiers ;
see thou let out nothing ; not that the things spoken do not deserve telling,
but the ear that hears does not deserve receiving. Thou thyself wast once
a catechumen, and then I told thee not what was coming. When thou hast
by practice reached the height of what is taught thee, then wilt thou un-
derstand that the catechumens are unworthy to hear them."

At the end of the Introductory the following caution is
•given :

" To the Reader : These Catechetical Lectures thou mayest put into the
hands of candidates for baptism, and of baptized believers, but by no means
of catechumens, nor of any others who are not Christians ; as thou shalt
answer to the Lord. And if thou takest a copy of them, write this in the
beginning, as in the sight of the Lord,"

The episcopate of St. James, and the line of his successors, is
declared in the following passages :

" Then he was seen of James, his own brother, and first bishop of this
diocese."

"Then fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were appointed in succession from
among the Hebrews " (xiv. 21, 15).

The universality of episcopal regimen and the distinction of
orders in the hierarchy is set forth, and an interesting testimony
to the wide diffusion of Christianity at that time is found in the
course of his remarks on the diversity of the gifts and operations
of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Church:

" For consider, I pray, with thoughts illuminated by Him, how many
Christians there are of this diocese, and how many in the whole province
of Palestine, and carry forward thy mind from this province to the whole

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 539

Roman Empire ; and after this consider the whole world — races of Per-
sians, and nations of Indians, Goths and Sarmatians, Gauls and Spaniards,
Moors, Libyans, and Ethiopians, and the rest for whom we have no names ;
for of many of the nations not even the names have reached us. Consider,
I pray, of each nation, bishops, priests, deacons, solitaries, virgins, and
other laity ; and then behold the great Protector and Dispenser of their
gifts " (xvi. 22).

That the canon of Scripture was received through the aposto-
lical succession of bishops, and that their teaching authority is to
be obeyed, is taught in the following passage :

" Those (books of Scripture) study earnestly which we read confidently
even in church. Far wiser than thou, and more devout, were the apostles,
and the ancient bishops, the rulers of the church, who have handed down
these ; thou, therefore, who art a child of the church, trench not on their
sanctions " (iv. 35).

The following is St. Cyril's exposition of the article of the
Creed, " And in one Holy Catholic Church " :

" Now, then, let me finish what remains to be said in consequence of the
article, ' In one Holy Catholic Church/ on which, though one might say
many things, we will speak but briefly.

" Now, it is called Catholic because it is throughout the world, from one
end of the earth to the other ; and because it teaches universally and com-
pletely one and all the doctrines which ought to come to men's knowledge
concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly ; and be-
cause it subjugates in order to godliness every class of men, governors and
governed, learned and unlearned ; and because it universally treats and
heals every sort of sins which are committed by soul or body, and pos-
sesses in itself every form of virtue which is named, both in deeds and
words, and in every kind of spiritual gifts.

" And it is rightly named church, because it calls forth and assembles
together all men, according as the Lord says in Leviticus, And assemble
thou all the congregation to the doors of the tabernacle of witness. And it is
to be noted that the word assemble is used for the first time in the Scrip-
tures here at the time when the Lord puts Aaron into the high-priesthood.
And in Deuteronomy the Lord says to Moses, Assemble to me the people,
and I will make them hear my words, that they shall learn to fear me. And
he again mentions the name of the church when he says concerning the
Tables, And on tkem was written according to all the words which the Lord
spake with you in the mount of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly ;
as if he had said more plainly, in the day in which ye were called and gath-
ered together by God. And the Psalmist says, I will give thee thanks in the
great assembly ; I will praise thee among much people.

" Of old the Psalmist sung, Bless ye God in the church, even the Lord from
the fountain of Israel. But since the Jews, for their evil designs against
the Saviour, have been cast away from grace, the Saviour has built out of
the Gentiles a second holy church, the church of us Christians, concern-

540 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM. [Jan.,

ing which he said to Peter, And upon this rock I will build my church, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And David, prophesying of both,
said plainly of the first which was rejected, I have hated the church of the
evil-doers ; but of the second which is built up he says in the same Psalm,
Lord, I have loved the habitation of thine house ; and immediately after-
wards, In the churches will I bless the Lord. For now that the one church in
Judaea is cast off, the churches of Christ are increased throughout the
world ; and of them it is said, Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise
in the church of the saints. Agreeably to which the prophet also said to
the Jews, I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts ; and immediate-
ly afterwards, For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the
same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles. Concerning this Holy Ca-
tholic Church Paul writes to Timothy, That thou mayest know how thou
ought est to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living
God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

"But since the word church or assembly is applied to different things
(as also it is written of the multitude in the theatre of the Ephesians, And
when he had thus spoken he dismissed the assembly \ecclesian\, and since one
might properly and truly say that there is a church of the evil-doers, I mean
the meetings of the heretics, the Marcionists and Manichees, and the rest),
the faith has delivered to thee by way of security the article, ' And in one
Holy Catholic Church,' that thou mayest avoid their wretched meetings, and
ever abide with the Holy Church Catholic in which thou wast regenerated.
And if ever thou art sojourning in any city, inquire not simply where the
Lord's house is (for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call
their own dens houses of the Lord), nor merely where the church is, but
where is the Catholic church. For this is the peculiar name of this holy
body, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only-begotten Son of God (for it is written, As Christ also loved the
church and gave himself for it, and all the rest), and is a figure and copy of
Jerusalem above, which is free and the mother of us all ; which before was
barren, but now has many children. And while the kings of particular na-
tions have bounds set to their dominion, the Holy Church Catholic alone
extends h^j illimitable sovereignty over the whole world ; for God, as it is
written, hath made her border peace. But I should need many more hours
for my discourse, would I speak of all things which concern her " (xviii.
22-27).

TO BE CONTINUED

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76.' 541

A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76.

ONE evening in December, 1776, Washington was seated in a
log cabin near the Delaware River, striving by the aid of a blaz-
ing fire to drive away the gloom which oppressed him. But this
was not easy to do. Far more dismal than the wintry landscape
without was the state of the country at this time. The excite-
ment which had followed the battle of Bunker Hill and the
evacuation of Boston by the British had died away ; then had
come the American defeat on Long Island, the loss of the impor-
tant city of New York, the fall of Fort Washington and Fort Lee,
the retreat across the Jerseys, until finally the Continental army,
dispirited by reverses and indignant at its shameful treatment by
Congress, was murmuring and clamoring for food and clothing
and pay. Ay, many times this December day had Washington
heard the ominous words: "Give us our pay. Where is our
pay ? We will not fight without pay."

Can we wonder, then, that his heart was heavy and that he
scarcely lifted his eyes from the fire — not even when, by and by,
the jingling of many sleigh-bells was heard at the door ? But
when, in another moment, the door flew open and a figure ap-
peared all wrapped in fur, and white with snow like Santa Claus,
the great chief rose to his feet; for surely the wayfarer had
not paused at headquarters for nothing at this hour and in such
weather. Perchance he brought important news. " Why, Ro-
bert Morris ! " exclaimed Washington, grasping his friend's hand
the instant that he recognized him. " I am ever so pleased to see
you. But has anything happened ? What brings you hither?"

" I am come to provide a merry Christmas for your soldier-
boys," answered Morris, smiling and stamping the snow off his
top-boots. " Ha ! Then indeed must you have brought a
weighty load of presents," continued Washington ; " for we
number six thousand, you know." " True, a weighty load," said
Morris ; and as he spoke a couple of stalwart negroes entered
carrying bags, which they let drop with a thud upon the floor.

" Pray, what may that be ? " inquired the general, opening his
eyes ever so wide. " Silver and gold," replied Morris. " Oh !
then Congress has at last awakened to the needs of the troops,
and they are to get their just dues, poor fellows ! " said Washing-
ton. " Well, it is not Congress but myself who does this. Yet

542 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

I wish no praise for it," answered Morris, with a deprecating
wave of his hand — " no praise. I am rich, I am worth millions,
and every dollar I will give to my dear country." Here the talk
was interrupted by a young woman, a stranger, who peeped
somewhat boldly into the room. " May I enter?" she said. " It
is bitter cold outside, and I wish to speak with General Wash-
ington." "With me?" said Washington. " Well, come in, lass,
and warm yourself. Then let me hear what you have to say."
" I would rather wait, sir, a few minutes — until we are alone,"
said the girl, drawing near the fireplace, and at the same time
casting a searching glance on Morris. " Well, well, as you wish,"
continued the general, who presently whispered a word in his
friend's ear ; whereupon the latter ascended to an upper floor,
while his servants withdrew to find quarters elsewhere. " My
name is Sarah Pennington," began the girl as soon as they were
alone, " and I have come from the other side of the river to give
you information about the enemy."

" May you be any kin to Josiah Pennington, who keeps the
tavern called the Cobwebs on the outskirts of Trenton ? " in-
quired Washington. " He is my father," she replied ; then, with
a slight air of embarrassment, " So you know my father, sir?"
" I do. I know all about him, and regret to say that not a more
bitter Tory can be found than he is." At these words Sarah
blushed and said : " Then whatever news I may bring will not
be considered very trustworthy." Seeing that Washington
made no response, she presently added : " Well, whether you
believe me or not, my heart is with the cause of independence ;
and let me inform you, sir, that there are now in Trenton three
regiments of Hessian grenadiers and a battery of artillery — all
under the command of Colonel Rahl — and that to-morrow a
troop of British cavalry is expected. This is the news which I
bring you."

Scarcely had Sarah finished speaking when she gave a start
and clutched the edge of the mantelpiece as if for support, while
her cheeks grew deathly white.

She had been looking toward the west window, and had dis-
covered a face pressed against the glass, and, to her horror, it
was her father's face ! Without waiting now to explain the cause
of her sudden agitation, she hurriedly quitted the house.

This odd behavior rather confirmed Washington's suspicions.
Already within twenty-four hours two female spies had been
turned out of the camp. This one was doubtless sent by her
Tory parent on the same unpatriotic mission.

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 543

After thinking the matter over a moment he summoned Mor-
ris, with whom he briefly consulted, then wrote a few words on
a slip of paper, which he sent to the officer of the guard.

In a little while a lieutenant arrived, accompanied by a file of
soldiers, who immediately proceeded to remove the bags of coin
to an adjoining building for safe keeping.

The last bag had not more than crossed the threshold when
the report of a musket was heard, quickly followed by loud
shouting and then several other musket shots.

" It is well-nigh incredible," exclaimed Morris, who had made
haste to learn the cause of the disturbance, "ay, it is well-nigh
impossible to believe that all the money which I brought here has
been stolen — stolen from the soldiers who had it in charge, and
their officer is now lying in the snow badly wounded." " Impos-
sible ! It cannot be ! " said Washington. " No, no, it cannot be ! "

But what Morris reported was too true. And, moreover, all
the daring robbers save one, thanks to the wildness of the night
(it was snowing and blowing furiously), had gotten safely away
with their booty. But no one believed Sarah Pennington's
solemn protestations of innocence. She had been captured as
she was fleeing after the gang of scoundrels, and when she was
led into Washington's presence he threw on her a look of scorn-
ful reproach, then gave orders to have her placed in close con-
finement. " And be careful," he added, addressing the sergeant
of the guard — " be careful that she does not escape. What has
happened is disgraceful enough — disgraceful enough." " The
soldiers were doubtless raw recruits, and did not expect to be at-
tacked right here in the midst of their tents," observed Morris.

" No, no, it is most disgraceful," repeated Washington. " And
the officer must have been a — a —

" Must have been blinded by the snow and completely taken
by surprise," interrupted Morris.

" Well, hark ! The whole camp is aroused," exclaimed the
general. So saying, he donned a heavy military cloak, then sal-
lied forth to investigate the untoward affair more closely and to
learn if any more serious attack might be apprehended. But
everything soon quieted down, and in less than half an hour the
troops were all in their tents again.

" O Sarah -Pennington ! can this be you ? " exclaimed Dick
Hubbard, a tall, handsome corporal who had been specially de-
tailed to guard the fair prisoner. These words were spoken the
moment he entered a narrow, second-story chamber in the guard-
house where she was confined.

544 -A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

The girl did not answer immediately, but appeared quite as
much surprised as himself at this strange, unexpected meeting.
Then, while he was staring at her, she quietly observed : " You
remember me, then, Mr. Hubbard ? " " Remember you ? I do
indeed ! And we are good friends, I hope, are we not ? "

" I will not break my promise : we are good friends/' an-
swered Sarah with wonderful outward calmness, yet oh ! with
what an aching heart. Here let it be told that shortly before
the opening of the Revolution Sarah Pennington had left her
home on the Delaware and gone to visit her grandmother in
Lexington, Massachusetts, There she had met the son of a well-
to-do farmer, who had admired her, courted her, then after a
while given her up for another young woman who possessed
more beauty than she. But it was an old story, as old as the hills,
and the grandam had tried to console poor Sarah by saying :
" All men are alike, my darling — all men are alike. Don't cry
about it." Whereupon Sarah had drawn her apron across her
swollen, bloodshot eyes and made believe forget all about Dick
Hubbard, who a fortnight later became betrothed to Charity
Pine, of Concord, then departed to join the Continental army
which was assembling near Boston. Truly their meeting now
was strange and unexpected. " Well, if every soldier, if every
officer, if even Washington himself, were to swear that you had
taken part in the robbery I myself would swear that it was a lie —
a base lie," ejaculated the corporal in fervent accents and ven-
turing to take Sarah's hand. <f Oh ! do not weep, do not weep,"
he continued. " You are innocent ; no harm shall befall you."
But Sarah was not able to repress the tears which welled up
from her broken heart at the sight of him, and for several min-
utes she wept in silence, while his own eyes moistened as he
watched her.

" It might have been," she sighed — " it might have been."
And Hubbard believed that she was grieving because she had
been made prisoner. Foolish fellow ! But it was an old story —
as old as the hills. He was a man. Only a woman truly loves.

" You are right," Sarah murmured at length: " I am innocent.
I implored him not to do it. I — I did indeed."

" Implored whom? Tell me the name of the villain who led
the band of desperadoes, and to-morrow I vow to go myself and
plead your cause before the commander-in-chief," said Dick.
But Sarah shook her head ; she forbore to pronounce her fa-
ther's name. Rather would she suffer herself than have the deed
fastened upon her father. " Why will you not speak ? " pursued

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 545

Dick, now stealing both her hands. " And you are cold, dear
Sarah ; your hands are like ice." " This is a chilly prison," she
answered, shivering. " Well, here is my overcoat," said Dick,
who forthwith drew off his thick outer garment and placed it
around her.

" Thanks," said Sarah. " But what will you do yourself ? You
will freeze to-night."

" We are used to hardships — to scanty clothing, poor rations,
no pay," replied the corporal. " But yonder is a little firewood.
I will kindle a fire." Here Sarah's eyes fell to the floor, and dur-
ing a couple of minutes she appeared to be in deep meditation.
Suddenly looking up, " Mr. Hubbard," she said, "you would like
a merry Christmas, would you not ? " " Surely I would. But
what chance is there of my having one? " said Dick. " Well, let
me escape, let me go back to Trenton, and I promise to recover
every dollar of the stolen money, which was meant to pay the
soldiers with, and then every one in this army will have a merry
Christmas," replied Sarah.

These words caused Dick such a startle that at first he was
not able to answer. But when presently he perceived Sarah's
eyes stray toward the window, which looked out upon a deep
snowbank, "Dear Sarah," he said, "for my sake I beg, I im-
plore you not to make any rash attempt to escape. You know
that 1 must do my duty." As he spoke she buried her face in
her hands and heaved a sigh. " But have no fear," he continued
— f< have no fear. Although I am only an humble corporal, I pro-
mise early to-morrow morning to seek an interview with General
Washington, who will surely liberate you."

" Alas! you did not notice the scornful look which he gave me
when I was taken prisoner," returned Sarah, shaking her head.
" No, no. If he is a just man he ought to punish me ; the evi-
dence against me is too strong." Then, glancing toward the
door, " Hark ! " she added, " did you not hear a knock ? "

" Some of the inquisitive guards may be eavesdropping," an-
swered Dick, frowning and going to the door, which he opened.
Now was Sarah's opportunity. In another moment she had
reached the window, flung it wide open, and was in the act of
springing out when Dick seized his musket and levelled it at her.
But he could not find it in his heart to pull the trigger ; never-
theless, hoping to frighten her, he cried : " Stop ! stop ! or I'll
fire." But Sarah heeded not this terrible threat. Nay, it was
scarcely uttered when she was up to her waist in snow.

Dick now quickly retraced his steps to the door, gave a loud

VOL. xxxiv. — 35

546 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

call for assistance, then followed after the fugitive. But Sarah
was no ordinary girl, and before he could take the same leap
which she had taken her figure had disappeared in the blinding
snow-storm.

The old clock in the Cobwebs had struck midnight when
Josiah Pennington and his comrades got back from their expedi-
tion across the river. The tavern-keeper had left orders to have
a rousing fire kept up during his absence, and now the whole
party, being very cold and hungry, were glad to huddle about the
spacious hearthstone and to drink and make merry. Penning-
ton alone held aloof, with arms folded, and gazing vacantly at the
sparks flying upward into the sooty, cavernous chimney. .

" Well, Donner und Blitz ! Mr. Pennington, it was a saucy
thing what we did," spoke Major von Doodle, a pursy, apoplec-
tic-looking Hessian officer with a glass eye, and whose face was
disfigured by a couple of sabre-cuts. Then, addressing the seven
natives of Trenton whom he and the publican had led in this
daring raid, " And I guess," he added, " that the Continentals
won't despise you Tories so much after to-night."

"But my daughter! my daughter!" groaned the tavern-
keeper. " Oh ! 1 blush to think that we left her in the hands of
the enemy. Why, she is worth a thousand limes as much as
yon bags of coin." " What say you?" ejaculated the indignant
major, his red face waxing redder; " I tell you Miss Sarah is
worth all the gold in the wide world ; and I bet a whole year's
pay that she'll turn up safe and sound afore long. Why, the
Cobwebs couldn't get on without Miss Sarah."

" I wonder what business called her over to the rebel camp ? "
inquired one of the Tories.

" It is not your business to ask that question," growled Pen-
nington, laying his hand upon the heavy iron poker ; whereupon
the other did not repeat the query. ," She is a trump and above
all suspicion," put in Von Doodle.

" I guess the Cobwebs would lose half its charms for some- 1
body if the gal did not return," spoke another of the Tories, with
a grin and a wink.

" Well, yes ; that is true," acknowledged the major. "I do
love Sarah Pennington, even if I am a high-born noble with a
Von before my name. And I don't care if Lord Cornwallis finds
it out. I'll tell him to his face that I love her."

When the laughter which followed this frank declaration of
ieeling had subsided another armful of hickory was thrown upon

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 547

the fire, after which the bluff, jovial, gallant Von Doodle leaned
back in the roomy arm-chair, and, with his pipe still dangling from
his lips, was ere long in the land of dreams. And the one about
whom he dreamt was worthy indeed of the praise which he had
bestowed upon her. The inn would certainly not have pros-
pered as it did without Sarah. In Trenton towm she was by all
odds the most popular young woman, and it was she who had
given her father's hostelry its quaint name ; for albeit extremely
tidy in most things and fond of plying her broom wherever there
was dust and dirt, yet if in any nook or corner she discovered a
spider's nest, instead of sweeping it away she allowed the home-
loving, useful insect to live and prosper? until in the course of
time the large chamber where the guests assembled was thickly
lined with spiders' webs of various densities, which Sarah kept
neatly trimmed with her scissors.

As the major had prophesied, the missing one got home safe
and sound, thanks to the warm overcoat in which Corporal Hub-
bard had enveloped her, and to her strong arms, which, unaided,
had ferried her skiff across the icy Delaware.

It was just dawn when Sarah glided into the house by a side
entrance. But her father's vigilant ear had heard her footsteps,
and, hastening to meet her, Josiah Pennington embraced her
more cordially than he had done in several years. " My daugh-
ter," he said, "you can't imagine how anxious I have been
about you. I have called myself a coward a hundred times
over for having allowed you to be taken captive." " Well,
father dear," returned Sarah, as he helped her to draw off
the weighty, snow-bound coat, " I, too, am overjoyed to be
home once more. I escaped through my prison window, and,
thanks to the storm, they could not tell which direction I took."
Then, clasping his cheeks between both her palms, u And now,"
she added, " I \vish you to restore every dollar of the money
which you took from the American camp — every dollar." " Oh !
ask me anything but that, Sarah — anything but that," answered
the publican. " You know that there is a heavy mortgage on the
Cobwebs, which must shortly be paid off — it must. Moreover, to
supply the rebels with money is only to prolong this wicked
strife. No, no, don't ask me to give back the gold and silver
which I risked my life to obtain. It is all mine now, after pay-
ing the men who helped me get it and giving something to Von
Doodle. Then when our property is clear of encumbrance I
shall breathe freely once more and make you a handsome pre-
sent."

548 A CHRISTMAS TALE. OF '76. [Jan.,

" No, no, give back every dollar," pleaded Sarah. " If you
love me give it all back." " I have said my say," replied Pen-
nington gruffly, and knitting his brow. "Now, child, roil me
not ; keep me in good-humor, if you can. And let me observe
that but for the joy which I feel at your return I should at this
moment be in a towering passion." " Pray, why ? Do not the
bags contain as much loot as you expected ? " asked Sarah inno-
cently. " Confound you !" thundered the tavern-keeper. "What
induced you to visit the American camp all by yourself? What
secret business called you into the rebel Washington's presence
last evening ? " Sarah made no response. To have breathed a
single word in excuse would only have added fuel to her father's
rising temper ; and she knew too well how violent it was.

" Well, father, how is the sick girl ? " she inquired presently.
" Ha ! that's a good way to evade my question," said the other.
Then, after a jeering laugh, he added : " I don't know how she is ;
better go see for yourself." Sarah now withdrew to her room
for a brief space, after which she entered on tiptoe another apart-
ment adjoining her own. There, in an old-fashioned feather bed
draped with heavy red curtains, lay a young woman of about the
same age as herself, whose wan, hollow cheeks told that she had
suffered much ; nor had the fever yet abated. " You are always
beside me," murmured Charity Pine in a feeble voice, and ex-
tending her thin, parched hand toward Sarah. " And if I ever
get over my wearisome illness, after the good God, it will be you
whom I shall have to thank — you, my patient nurse."

" Well, I have not been with you a single moment since sun-
down ; therefore do not praise me," answered Sarah, clasping
her hand.

" Indeed ! Why, I fancied that I saw you very often peeping
at me through the curtains," pursued Charity. " Pray, where
have you been ?"

" To the camp of the patriots beyond the river."

" Really ? What a daring girl you are ! But what will your
father say ? Will he not eat you up if he finds it out? " " He
knows it already," said Sarah. " And verily it has been a night
of adventure for me."

" Indeed ! Well, tell me all about it. Do ! " said Charity.

" I fear that it might excite you over-much."

" No, no, it will not. I am anxious to learn as much as possi-
ble about our brave soldier-boys," continued the other. " For,
although I did not reveal it to you before, you must know that I
am betrothed to a young man named Richard Hubbard, from

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF 76. 549

Lexington, Massachusetts, and who shortly before the Bunker
Hill fight joined our army. Who knows ? — he may be in the
very camp which you have been visiting." " You his betrothed ! —
you, Charity Pine, of Concord ! " exclaimed Sarah inwardly, while
the color fled from her cheeks. Then aloud she said, after a
short, painful pause : " Well, yes, I met Mr. Hubbard a few
hours ago."

" Did you ? Oh ! tell me how he is. How is my beloved
Dick?" And as Charity spoke she pressed her hot lips to Sa-
rah's hand.

" He never looked better in his life," answered the latter.
" The Lord be thanked ! " ejaculated Charity. Here she breath-
ed a short but fervent prayer, after which she added : " So you
knew my Dick? You had met him before ? "

" Yes," answered Sarah in a low tone — too low for the other
to hear. " Oh ! how fortunate it was," pursued Charity — " how
fortunate it was, when I was in search of my lover to bring him
some Christmas gifts, that I fell ill under this hospitable roof in-
stead of under the roof of some cold-hearted being, who would
never have given me tidings of my Dick as you have done."
Then, jerking one of poor Sarah's fingers, she went on : " But tell
me, dear friend, what are you gazing at so intently ? Why do
you turn your face away ? "

" I am admiring the flag which I finished yesterday," re-
plied Sarah in broken accents, and still keeping her tearful eyes
fixed upon a beautiful star-spangled banner hanging overhead.
But it was impossible to suppress her grief; it presently escaped
in a loud sob, which caused Charity to twitch her sleeve and
say: " Pray, what is the matter? Has your father been scolding
you for making that banner or for visiting the patriot army ?"
" Alas ! how I wish that my dear mother were alive ; she might
bring me consolation," murmured Sarah.

" Ah ! you are thinking of your mother," said Charity.
" Well, she must indeed have been a rare woman to have been
your mother. But never mind. I hope ere long that you may
meet some worthy, patriotic youth, who will love you and give
you another home. Ay, I will henceforth Dray morning and even-
ing that you may become affianced to a brave, manly fellow like
my Dick."

" May the Almighty protect him ! " exclaimed Sarah inward-
ly. She trembled to think of what might happen to her some-
time lover, who would doubtless be severely punished for having
let her escape. " I must save him," she said to herself. " But

550 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

how — how ? " Then, while Charity kept watching her with
wondering, feverish eyes, Sarah all of a sudden rose to her feet,
and, clapping her hands, " Yes, yes," she cried, " that is what
I'll do ! Verily, it is an inspiration — an inspiration ! "

"My faithful friend," said Charity, in alarm, " do tell me
what ails you. Have your wits left you? What mean those
words ? "

" I was never saner in my life," replied Sarah, now smiling
through her tears. " But what I mean must remain a mystery,
for a brief space at least. Of one thing, however, be assured —
you will yet present to your betrothed the Christmas gifts which
you have brought for him all the way from distant Concord."
At these words a smile lit up Charity's haggard visage, while
Sarah, putting her finger to her lips, added : " Now let us be
quiet ; we have talked enough. Try to fall asleep ; I will come
back by and by."

But, as we may imagine, the fever had been increased, not les-
sened, by the above conversation, and now it was impossible for
Charity to close her eyes ; she turned restlessly from side to
side, muttering the name of her lover.

Sarah had scarcely left the room when she came face to face
with Major von Doodle, who vigorously grasped her wrists.
His glass eye was staring hard at her, while the other eye was
bursting out of its socket with delight. Ever since he had first
met Sarah, three weeks ago, he had felt a great admiration for
her. Hessian though he was, he could not help admiring her
pluck, her outspokenness in the cause of independence. Even
Sarah's harsh Tory father had not been able to bend her, to make
her say, " God save the king ! " Moreover, she was a tall, grace-
ful girl with a bold Roman nose — it may have been a trifle too
long — and with deep-set, mysterious gcay eyes which made her
admirer wonder what she was thinking of whenever he saw her
looking at him. But if Sarah was brave and able to ride and to
manage a boat, she was likewise good. Instead of gadding about
in quest of silly gossip, like other young w.omen, she faithfully at-
tended to her household duties, and in the evenings was fond of
reading the Bible and Pilgrims Progress. So that whatever the
major's lapses and failings — and he was by no means a saint — it
spoke well for his judgment and common sense that he was able
to appreciate Sarah Pennington's excellent qualities. " Your
eyes are red ; you have been crying," he said, after he had done
shaking her wrists. " Well, well, the old man is wroth at you
for doing what you did, and he has been scolding you. But, Don-

i882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 551

ner und Blitz! I'll take your part. Only, mind, don't pay any
more visits to the rebel camp."

" I will go there as often as duty to my country calls me," an-
swered Sarah. Then, dropping- her voice, " But I would never
cross the river to do what you and father did last evening. That
was shameful ! " " O Miss Sarah ! Miss Sarah ! " — here Von
Doodle fell on his knees. But Sarah would not wait to hear him
out ; she hurried to her own apartment to seek the rest which
she so much needed.

On the morrow, which was the third day before Christmas,
Sarah made as careful an inspection of the Hessian quarters in
Trenton as it was possible for a girl to make, and satisfied her-
self that, if the foreign mercenaries were better supplied with
rations and raiment than the Continentals, they were yet pretty
poor in pocket and were looking forward to anything but a mer-
ry Christmas. During her absence Von Doodle, who knew Sa-
rah's wreak point — and who has not a weak point ? — called on an
aid-de-camp of Cornwallis, a particular friend of his, and from
him procured a paper of choicest sugar-plums. These he offered
to her as soon as she got back ; and although Sarah hesitated a
moment, for he had already made her half a dozen presents, she
finally accepted them and at the same time thrust her little finger
through his button-hole and looked so archly at him that Von
Doodle was sorely tempted to ask her on the spot a certain very
momentous question. " I wish you to do something for me,"
began Sarah. " I will stand on my head, if it be your pleasure,"
returned the major, smiling and lifting himself on tiptoes — for
Sarah was a tall girl, while he was somewhat undersized. " Well,
I am anxious that your poor soldiers should enjoy themselves
on Christmas day," she continued. " But they have received no
pay in several months ; and no pay, no fun, you know."

"True! true!" safd the major, pressing in his false -eye,
which occasionally dropped out. " But they may have a glo-
rious holiday," went on Sarah, " if you will only distribute
among them the gold and silver which you helped to bring over
yesterday from the American camp. True, it does not belong to
me nor to you ; it is all booty stolen from the patriots. But, as
I am sure that my father will never consent to give it back, I pre-
fer to see it go toward making your own misguided men happy."

" What a kind, what a golden heart you have ! " exclaimed
the major, grinning. " Perhaps it is because you eat so many
sugar-plums that you are so sweet." " Do not joke," said Sarah.
" Tell me at once if you are willing to do as I request." " Oh 1

552 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

but, Miss Sarah, what will your father say? He will kill me,"
said Von Doodle. " I will brave his wrath," replied Sarah ; " no
harm shall come to you." " And you will be grateful to me if I
obey — very grateful?" said Von Doodle. "I shall owe you
more thanks than tongue can express," answered Sarah. " Then
it shall be done," said the major, coming down upon his heels
with such force that it disturbed the invalid in the chamber
near by.

As we may imagine, the tavern-keeper was beside himself
with rage when he discovered on the morrow morning that the
coin which he had so carefully hidden up the chimney had disap-
peared. Von Doodle he did not for a moment suspect of being
the thief; much less did he suspect his own daughter. But he
loaded his blunderbuss and swore that if he could find a certain
pedlar who had spent the night by the fireplace, making believe
sleep, that he would shoot him dead. And for several hours
Pennington roamed through the town in quest of him.

At last Christmas eve arrived. And Sarah, although she had
passed a sleepless night by the bedside of Charity Pine, looked
as fresh this morning as a rose in June. Indeed, her father
stopped his oaths when she appeared, and complimented her on
her brilliant color ; while the major drew her aside and whisper-
ed : " My sugar-plum, I have distributed every dollar according
to your wishes, and to-morrow will be the merriest Christmas
our soldiers have ever had."

This speech caused Sarah's heart to throb faster and the flush
on her cheek to deepen ; ay, her excitement was intense, for she
was about to do something which would pass into history.

During the greater part of this feverish day Sarah was busy
indoors, and never before had the old tavern looked so green and
Christmas-like. Branches of hemlock and cedar and strips of
wild ivy were festooned along the walls, while here and there
patches of cobwebs were allowed to peep through the cheery
vista of green. And in this festal work Sarah's one-eyed admirer
lent a willing hand.

But every half-hour she would pay a visit to her sick friend,
whose mind occasionally wandered, and then Charity fancied that
she beheld her dear Dick standing beside her. During one of
Sarah's frequent visits the other said in a low but earnest tone :
" O my faithful nurse ! if I were to die what would become of
Dick? Would he stay true to my memory ? Would he go alone
through life, loving me always ? " Then, falling back on the
pillow, she began to talk incoherently about her far-off home in

1 882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 553

Massachusetts, which she believed that she would never see
again. Sarah, bending over her, tried by soothing words to rouse
her from her despondency. But in vain. " No, no, I am going
to die," answered Charity. " And when I die what will become
of Dick ? Tell me what will become of Dick ? " Without mak-
ing any response Sarah fled out of the room.

"What troubles my sugar-plum? What agitates my admira-
ble Sarah?" exclaimed Major von Doodle, meeting her now, as
more than once before, with outstretched arms. But she did not
speak. She gazed on him in silence for more than a minute;
then, observing by the difference between his glass eye and the
other eye that he had been imbibing somewhat too freely,
" Major," she said, " I owe you many thanks for your kindness
to me and my father since you have made the Cobwebs your
headquarters. You are a good man, major; but if you would
only grant me one favor you would be ten times better." " Don-
ner und Blitz ! I'll jump over the moon, if it be your pleasure,"
said Von Doodle. " Do be serious," said Sarah, brushing away a
tear and trying hard not to smile, for he looked so comical. " As
serious as a judge," answered the major. " Well, you know,"
she went on, u that you have a weakness for Madeira and egg-
nog." " And who makes the best eggnog in the world, eh ? "
interrupted Von Doodle, grinning. Sarah gave him a gentle
stroke on his bushy whiskers, then continued : " Now, major,
drinking is bad for you : it hinders promotion ; therefore be a
man, a strong man, and firmly resolve from this time forth never
to drink another drop of eggnog or Madeira." The major re-
flected a couple of minutes before he answered ; then, with a truly
grave expression, " Alas ! " he said, " I fear that what you ask
of me I cannot grant. Our stay on earth is short — too short — and
I must make the most of this life, for I shall never pass this way
again." " You pain me," said Sarah, who, despite his faults, could
not help liking the major, he was so gallant. " Well, I am going
to make you a Christmas present that will make up for the pain
I am now giving you," said Von Doodle : " a very big Christ-
mas present — so big that you will not be able to hold it in both
hands."

Sarah, bright as she was, did not guess what he meant. Then,
as she turned and walked sadly, silently away, he chuckled and
murmured to himself : " Mrs. Sarah von Doodle — what a pretty
name it will be ! And how the fat, homely girls of Hesse-Darm-
stadt will envy my lithe and lovely American wife ! "

When evening came round, and when all the lamps had been

554 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

lit, Sarah glided out of the house unseen and carrying under her
arm a most precious heirloom. It was a family Bible which had
crossed the ocean in the Mayflower, and in the wide world there
was nothing that she treasured more. The river was exceedingly
difficult to cross, owing to the great quantity of ice, and, more-
over, it was dark and bitter cold. But the skiff was strong,
Sarah's heart undaunted, and in less than an hour she found her-
self once more in the presence of General Washington.

We need not say that the. latter was greatly surprised to see
her. As on the occasion of her first visit, several bags of coin
were lying on the floor ; for Robert Morris had wasted not a day
in replacing the treasure which had been lost, and the great
financier himself was again seated by the side cf Washington.

"No, no," spoke the general, after Sarah had whispered some-
thing in his ear. " My friend here may be trusted ; let Mr. Mor-
ris remain and hear what you have to communicate." But be-
fore she proceeded to unfold her plans she looked cautiously
around, as if she feared lest others might be listening, then went
on to speak in a very low voice. What Sarah said we may not
tell ; but her concluding words were these : " If, however, you
doubt my patriotism, if you still believe that I am a spy, then
here is an old Bible which belonged to my mother and to her
mother's mother ; I value it beyond language to express. Keep
it as a pledge of my sincerity."

" Nay, truth is stamped upon your countenance," answered
Washington, who had been eyeing her closely. " I did wrong
ever to suspect you. Retain this precious book, and a brief time
will show how far I am willing to carry out the important move
which you have suggested."

" Glory will come of it," said Sarah, her eyes flashing fire ;
" ay, glory, and perhaps independence." Then, her expression
suddenly changing, " But now, ere I depart," she added, " let me
inquire after the young soldier who was placed over me as jailer,
and from whom I so adroitly escaped. I have been most anxious
about him."

" He is in irons, and severe indeed would have been his pun-
ishment had you not come this evening and dispelled my
doubts," replied Washington. " But now I am convinced that
you are both true Americans, and I shall immediately give or-
ders for Corporal Hubbard's release."

" Well, this is Christmas time," said Sarah. " May I be so
bold, sir, as to ask of you a Christmas gift ? " " To be sure you
may," answered the general, not a little surprised, and thinking

i882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 555

what an odd girl she was. " Well, promote Corporal Hubbard;
let that be my Christmas gift."

" You seem to take a great interest in his welfare," pursued
Washington, smiling, while Sarah's eyes fell to the floor and the
vision of a thousand might-have-beens passed before her. " How-
ever, I forbear to ask any delicate questions. I know that your
friend is an intelligent non-commissioned officer, and when he is
promoted he will doubtless prove worthy of the interest which
you take in him." Sarah was now about to withdraw when the
general urged her to tarry a few minutes longer and drink a dish
of tea. "'Not one girl in ten thousand," he said, " has the -strength
and the pluck to do what you have done in midwinter and on
such a dark night. A dish of tea is little enough refreshment ere
you start homeward."

Sarah accepted the invitation, and had just finished drinking
the cheering beverage when the door opened, and who should
appear but Dick Hubbard!

The bright glow at once faded from her cheeks, and when
presently he advanced toward her with outstretched hand she
turned, whispered something to Washington, then hurriedly quit-
ted the house without even throwing him a glance.

The Cobwebs was a pretty old inn, and had been the scene of
many a revelry. But never since its foundation-stone was laid
had it known a holiday like the Christmas of 17/6. Major von
Doodle before the hour of noon was beside himself with hilarity ;
he sang, and tossed off bumper after bumper, and did his best
to coax Sarah into a corner where he might breathe in her ear
some burning words. But she always managed to elude him.
She was either with Charity Pine or else in the midst of a group
of merrymakers, so that he did not get a single favorable oppor-
tunity to offer himself in marriage; for his own noble, titled self
was the gigantic Christmas gift of which he had spoken to her
the day before. But Von Doodle threw his Dulcinea many a kiss
from a distance ; and once, when Sarah shook her head as he filled
his goblet with wine for the seventh time, he cried out : " My
sugar-plum! my sweetest sugar-plum! I must make the most of
this life, for I shall never pass this way again ! "

Nor did the din of the carousal disturb Charity, whose ill-
ness had suddenly taken a favorable turn, and she told Sarah
that she believed the Almighty -had listened to her prayers and
that she was going to live.

But not only in the Cobwebs were the Hessian soldiers hav-
ing a jovial feast-day. Thanks to the money which the major had

556 A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. [Jan.,

distributed among them, every place of public entertainment in
Trenton was thronged ; more than a thousand plum-puddings
were devoured, gallons of precious wine and eggnog were
drunk, and even Colonel Rahl, the Hessian commander, imbibed,
it is said, somewhat more than was good for him.

When night approached the fun, instead of coming to an end,
waxed faster and more furious, while louder howled the wind
outside and deeper fell the snow. Of the hundred pickets
whose duty it was, despite the tempest, to keep a bright lookout
for the enemy, there was not one who did not cast a wistful eye
toward the Cobwebs, whose windows were flaming in the fire-
light, and sigh to be there drinking " God save the king ! "

" What aileth you, Sarah ? " inquired Josiah Pennington to-
ward five o'clock the next morning — for the revel had been kept
up all night. "Your face looks burning red and you are trem-
bling. Has this long-protracted frolic thrown you into a fe-
ver?"

" O father ! I wish that Charity Pine could be moved some-
where else ; there is danger here for her as well as for you," re-
plied Sarah, with an air of alarm, and pressing her hand upon
her throbbing brow.

" Danger ! What mean you ? " said the publican. " Speak !
What mean your mysterious words ? " He had scarcely put the
question when the tavern-door flew open and a loud, startling
voice cried out : " To arms! To arms ! Washington is crossing
the Delaware ! "

" Donner und Blitz!" ejaculated the dumbfounded Major von
Doodle, letting his goblet fall and rubbing his eyes. " Donner und
Blitz !^ Donner und Blitz ! " But this was all he said ; at least
this was all that could be heard amid the uproar which followed
the unexpected call to arms. Presently a cannon boomed ; then
another and another. On came the Continentals in two divi-
sions, one led by General Sullivan, the other by General Greene.
Through the deep snow they tramped ; like a long line of ghosts
they seemed in the dim December twilight. What could the
unfortunate Hessian leader do ? Verily, it was a heartrending
surprise for this brave officer. Well, history relates that Colonel
Rahl did his utmost to rouse his men from the stupor into which
they had fallen after their Christmas carouse ; and with the words,
" All who are my grenadiers, forward ! " he sank to the ground
mortally wounded.

In the wild confusion which prevailed Von Doodle's false eye
dropped out and was lost in the snow. But, without halting to

i882.] A CHRISTMAS TALE OF '76. 557

look for it, he waved his sword and tottered in the direction of a
stone wall which stood about forty paces from the tavern, fall-
ing- thrice on the way and crying in husky accents : " Donner und
Blitz ! Where is my horse? Where is my horse? "

" 'Tis perhaps well, poor major, that you are not sober, or
you would go and get yourself killed," thought Sarah Penning-
ton, as she hastened after him, carrying his saddle on her shoul-
der, which presently she flung across the stone wall. Then, seiz-
ing her noble cavalier firmly by the arm, she assisted him to
mount.

Once in the saddle and holding in his left hand a star-span-
gled banner — which he could have sworn was the cross of St.
George — the doughty warrior dug his spurs deep into the jagged
stones and shouted and cried : " Donner und Blitz ! Charge !
Charge ! God save the king ! "

Many years after the battle of Trenton three persons were
seated beneath a broad-spreading elm on the banks of the Sus-
quehanna, talking about the memorable Christmas of 1776.
" That victory did more than anything else to rouse the people
from despondency," spoke Mrs. Hubbard. " But my precious
wife had a very narrow escape from death on that day," answer-
ed Farmer Hubbard, patting Charity's sunburnt hand.

" Dear Sarah Pennington ! " continued the latter. " Twill be
long ere this world sees her like again. How tenderly she fold-
ed me in a blanket, and, despite the ghastly wound from which
her life-blood was streaming, carried me out of the burning
building to a place of safety ! " " Sarah was indeed a heroine,"
said the farmer; "and but for her I should not have had you
with me now under this elm-tree."

" Well, the very last word she breathed was your name,"
pursued Mrs. Hubbard. " * Love Dick,' she murmured to me.
' Be faithful to him ever and ever. Dear Dick ! ' Then she bow-
ed her head on my breast and never spoke again." " Was it
ever known how she received her fatal wound?" inquired the
third person of the group — an old gentleman, in threadbare
clothes, who sat beside the farmer's wife. " It was said that her
own father struck her," answered Mrs. Hubbard. " And, horri-
ble though this be, it may be true ; for Josiah Pennington was
a bitter Tory, he had an ungovernable temper, and if — as was
said — he discovered that she had assisted Washington in that
great surprise of the enemy, then it is not impossible that he may
have wreaked vengeance even on his own daughter." " It is well

558 A TRUE MONK— THE VENERABLE BEDE. [Jan.,

that the Cobwebs was burnt, that not a stone was left upon a
stone, after witnessing such a deed," said the old gentleman, who
was no other than Robert Morris. Once ever so rich, he had
refused his country never a dollar in the darkest hour of her
struggle for independence. But now in his old age his immense
fortune was all gone, nobody in all the land was poorer than he,
and, after being incarcerated awhile in the debtors' prison, Rob-
ert Morris had come to pass a few days under Farmer Hubbard's
hospitable roof. But presently his careworn visage brightened
at the sight of two young men who came and laid their axes at
his feet, then asked him to tell them a story of the Revolution.
This request made his dim eyes kindle anew, and he went on to
relate a thrilling tale, in which he introduced Washington cross-
ing the Delaware in midwinter, routing the Hessians, and alarm-
ing Cornwallis ; and when he concluded, Charity's sons cried
out at one breath : " O mother ! mother ! how I wish that I had
lived in the days of '76."

A TRUE MONK— THE VENERABLE BEDE.

To the student of history there is always an unaccountable
and inexplicable fascination about those old English cathedrals
and monasteries whose defaced interiors stand as a protest
against the vandalism of the sixteenth century, and whose ivy-
grown exteriors show that grim Time has dealt more gently
with the works of man than has man himself. There is some-
thing mysterious about these grand old piles, and with them
in our minds there is always associated something of the mar-
vellous. Nor are we much astray in thus bringing together
the marvellous of imagination with the wonderful in build-
ing, for within these old ruins were centred at different epochs
all of England's greatest saints and scholars. If the very walls
speak to us now so plainly, and are even yet centres of interest
to scholars, how much louder must they have preached and how
much more interesting must they have been when re-echoing the
voices of the hundreds and thousands of beings who daily and
hourly chanted the praises of their Creator ! It is true the
pseudo-historians of the past century have sought to bring dis-
credit on the occupants of these venerable institutions by as-
sertions based on prejudice and hatred, and by accusations

1 832.] A TRUE MONK— THE VENERABLE BEDE. 559

which have not been able to stand the test of historic inves-
tigation ; but that day is past. The researches of learned and
trusty men have vindicated the character of the early monks
from the aspersions cast upon them, and have satisfactorily
proved to the intelligent world that the monks, instead of being
the lazy, dissipated persons so often represented in caricature,
were in reality the learned and scientific men of their time.
Their convents became storehouses for books, and their cowls a
protection for learning. Then, too, when a mighty intellect
arose, students flocked to him from all parts of the known world.
His words were listened to with respect and reverence, were
copied by loving scribes and sent to the various parts of the
continent. Yet full oft when the lecturer had. closed his instruc-
tion did he doff his doctor's cap and betake himself to the field,
where with the humblest he divided the task of the farm labors.
Such was the Venerable Bede, rivalling his brethren in humility,
and in the practice of monastic virtues those whom he ex-
celled in worldly knowledge and science.

" Born at the end of the Christian world," writes Montalembert, "and of
a race which half a century before his birth was still plunged in the dark-
ness of idolatry, this Anglo-Saxon at once reveals himself clothed in the
fulness of all enlightenment known to his time. He was for England what
Cassiodorus was for Italy and St. Isidore for Spain. But he had in addi-
tion an influence and echo beyond his own country which has been sur-
passed by none ; his influence on Christendom was as rapid as it was ex-
tensive, and his works, which soon found a place in all the monastic libra-
ries of the West, brought down his fame to the period of the Renaissance.
He wrote at his pleasure in prose or verse, in Anglo-Saxon, in Latin, and
in Greek. Astronomy, meteorology, physics, music, philosophy, geography,
and arithmetic, besides theology, became at times the subjects of his various
books, and thus he fairly won for himself the title given to him by Edmund
Burke of ' the father of English learning.' "

Bede was born in the year 673 near Wearmouth. At the age
of seven he was entrusted by his parents to the care of St. Bene-
dict Biscop, who at that time was founding his celebrated mon-
astery of Wearmouth. Never, perhaps, was name more appro-
priately conferred than was that of the child Bede. In Anglo-
Saxon it means " prayer," and was thoroughly indicative of the
spirit which guided its possessor. By St. Benedict, Bede was
sent to Yarrow with a score of others to found the afterward
celebrated monastery of that place, under the guidance of the
saintly Ceolfrid. Shortly after its establishment, however, an
epidemic broke out which carried off all the members of the
community save the aged superior and the youthful novice,

560 A TRUE MONK— THE VENERABLE BEDE. [Jan.,

Bede. With grieved hearts these clung closely to the rule of
their founder, and met each day to chant in unison the divine
office. Nor did they abandon their holy custom. For the an-
cient annals tell us that God, pleased with their fidelity to rule,
sent them other holy souls to replace the ones whom death had
snatched away. At the age of thirty he was ordained priest in
the monastic chapel at Yarrow by St. John of Beverly. His re-
maining years he passed amid his brethren in his favorite monas-
tery of Yarrow, never leaving it, save for the sake of obtaining
greater knowledge or doing greater good.

Of course it may be a matter of great surprise to the many
industrious members of Bible societies to learn that one of the
greatest labors of Bede was his anxious endeavor to combat the
ignorance and lukewarmness of the new Catholics of England by
making them capable of reading and understanding the Bible :

" To bring to the level of all capacities the most approved explanations
of obscure passages ; to seek out with scrupulous care the mystic sense
and spiritual use of biblical narratives ; to go deeply into and to simplify
that study of the sacred words which is so dear and so necessary to real
piety ; to draw from it the lessons, and especially the consolations, pointed
out by St. Paul— such was the task of Bede. He gave himself up to it with
a fervor which never relaxed ; with a perseverance which consumed his
nights and days; with touching and sincere modesty ; with delicate precau-
tion against the danger of being taken for a plagiarist (for he gave a
synopsis of all the Fathers in his explanations) ; with a courage sometimes
failing, yet ever springing up anew ; and, in short, with a solidity and assur-
ance of doctrine which have kept for him till the present time a place
among the best authorized interpreters of the Catholic faith."

One of his greatest works, which he in his humility styled a
pamphlet, was his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.
This it was which justly obtained for him the title of " Father
of English History" and the " founder of history in the middle
ages." His preface may well be contrasted with those of works
of greater pretensions of our own times. Moreover, we fear that
if the comparison were made it would not be in favor of the faith,
or piety, or honesty of mam' historians whose works are a thou-
sand times more known than are those of the Venerable Bede.
In his preface he says : " I entreat all those of our nation who
read this history, or hear it read, to recommend often to the
divine clemency the infirmities of my body and of my soul. Let
each man in his province, seeing the care which I have taken to
note down everything that is memorable or agreeable for the
inhabitants of each district, pay me back by praying for me."
When he sent the first copy of his history to the friend who had

1 882.] A TRUE MONK— THE VENERABLE BEDE. 561

first suggested the idea of it to him, he wrote : " Dear and good
father, beloved friend in Christ, remember, I beseech you, my
weakness — you and all the servants of Christ who live with you ;
remember to intercede for me with the merciful Judge, and make
all those who read my humble work do the same." In the pre-
paration of his history Bede was much assisted by the learning
and researches of the monk Albinus. Albinus furnished him
with memoranda of all that had happened in Kent and the
neighboring counties from the time of the missionaries under St.
Augustine. He even despatched a priest from London to Rome
to make researches among the archives of the Eternal City. All
the bishops of England and the abbots and monks of the princi-
pal monasteries busied themselves in collecting information and
data concerning the origin of their various establishments. The
history is written in a clear, simple style, with more regard for
truth than rhetoric. The greatest opponents of Catholic truth
have looked in vain through its pages for a single narrative
which they might condemn. How strangely different from the
style of Gibbon, Hume, Smollett, or Froude, who by beauty of
language and profusion of imagery seek to hide the truth or dis-
tort it !

Before his last illness Bede had completed forty-five volumes
upon various subjects. He gives the list of these works himself,
and then concludes with the following prayer : " O good Jesus !
who hast deigned to refresh my soul with the streams of know-
ledge, grant to me that I may one day ascend to thee, who art the
source of all wisdom, and remain for ever in thy divine presence."

Like all other great souls, Bede had his trials and difficulties.
In his treatise on chronology he had ridiculed the idea then pre-
vailing among the common people, and even asserted by some of
the learned, that the world was to last only six thousand years..
Again, he differed from other writers about the date of the birth,
of our Saviour. Popular opinion was excited against him be-
cause of these things, and by some he was even proclaimed a
heretic. To one of his gentle disposition, and to one so carefuL
in those troublous times to keep himself in perfect accord with
Roman doctrines and practices, this was a severe blow. He
grew pale, he says himself, with surprise and horror when he-
heard it. He became troubled and indignant. He wrote art
apologetic letter to one of his monastic friends, and charged him,
to read it to Wilfred, Bishop of York, who, it appears, had al-
lowed the calumny to be uttered at his table without rebuke..
The orthodoxy of his writings has since been suitably vindicated*

VOL. xxxiv. — 36

562 A TRUE MONK — THE VENERABLE BEDE. [Jan.,

by the church, which has inserted several of his homilies in the
divine office. One of his grandest letters, and one which can
with advantage be studied by rulers of the nineteenth century,
was written to Egbert, Bishop of York and brother of the king
of Northumbria. It teems with sound advice against both spirit-
ual and temporal abuses, gives many practical instructions for
the suitable guidance of the people, and shows how, by the pro-
per union of church and state, the happiness of nations may be
promoted. It was thus that his life was passed in advancing the
interests of his soul and instructing those under his charge.
But Bede grew old, and death claimed him for its victim. Yet
even in his last hours, as recorded by his faithful Cuthbert, has
he given the world an example of how the servant of Jesus Christ
can meet death without fear, with confidence. The history of
his last days forms in itself a most pleasing episode, and the
thanks of present ages are due to the saintly monk who so faith-
fully gave us the picture of the dying saint. I cannot do better
than repeat his words :

" Nearly a fortnight before Easter he was seized with an extreme weak-
ness in consequence of his difficulty of breathing, but without great pain.
He continued thus until Ascension, always joyous and happy, giving
thanks to God day and night, and even every hour of the night and day.
He gave us our lessons daily, and employed the rest of his time in chant-
ing psalms. . . . From the moment of awaking he resumed his prayers and
praises to God, with his arms in the form of a cross. O happy man ! He
sang sometimes texts from St. Paul and other Scriptures, sometimes lines
in our own language— for he was very able in English poetry. He also
sang anthems according to his liturgy and ours — among others the follow-
ing : ' O King of glory, who now hast mounted in triumph above the skies,
leave us not like orphans, but send us the Spirit of truth promised to our
fathers.' At the words like orphans he burst into tears. An hour after
he repeated the same anthem, and we mingled our tears with his. . . . Dur-
ing all these days, in addition to the lessons which he gave us and the
psalms which he sang with us, he undertook two pieces of work : a transla-
tion of the Gospel according to St. John into our English tongue, for the
use of the church of God, and some extracts from Isidore of Seville. ' For,'
said he, ' I would not have my children read lies, nor that after my death
they should give themselves up to fruitless work.'" As his sickness ad-
vanced " he continued to dictate in good spirits, and sometimes added, ' Make
haste to learn, for I know not how long I may remain with you, or if my
Creator may call me shortly.' On the eve of the feast of the Ascension, at
the first dawn of the morning, he desired that what had been commenced
should be quickly finished, and we worked till the hour of tierce. Then we
went to the procession with the relics of the saints, as the solemn occasion
required. But one of us remained by him and said to him: 'Beloved
father, there is still a chapter wanting ; would it fatigue you to speak any
more ? ' Bede answered : ' I am still able to speak. Take your pen, make

1 882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 563

it, and write rapidly.' The other obeyed. . . . Towards the evening the
disciple of whom I have already spoken said to him, ' Beloved master, there
remains only one verse which is not written.' ' Write it, then, quickly,' he
answered. The young man, having completed it, in a few minutes exclaim-
ed : ' Now it is finished.' ' You say truly it is finished,' said Bede. ' Take
my head in your arms (said the dying monk), and turn me, for I have great
consolation in turning towards the holy place where I have prayed so
much.' Lying in this position on the floor of his cell, he sang for the last
time ' Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,' and gave
up the spirit as he pronounced the last of these divine names."

The great saint, and great monk, and great historian was
dead, and who will deny that even in death he was grander than
the most renowned of worldly heroes or famous men ? He seem-
ed little in his own eyes, but God made him great, and has even
wrung the praise of Bede from the mouths of those who, as far
as his honor and glory are concerned, would much rather have
been silent.

THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES.

THE Celtic languages have probably been the most unfortu-
nate of all forms of speech within the ken of history, unless
we include some of the barbarous and extinct dialects of uncivi-
lized men. Every dialect of Celtic speech is either dying or
dead, with the single exception of the Welsh. . The decay of
Gaelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland has been so
rapid as to appear almost miraculous. Cornish has been dead
nearly a hundred years, and Breton is disappearing almost as
fast before the Latinized tongue of Gaul, just as Gaelic is dis-
appearing before the Anglo-Saxon of Great Britain. Though
Welsh may be said to be holding its ground so far, there are
nevertheless signs that it, too, is a doomed language, unless un-
foreseen political and social changes of the most extraordinary
nature take place among the English-speaking peoples of the Bri-
tish Isles. Why the Welsh should have been able to preserve
their language so far, with only an imaginary line between them
and England, and why the Irish should not have succeeded in
withstanding the encroachments of Saxon speech, with thirty
leagues of a stormy sea between them and their successful foes, is
a puzzle connected with the Celtic languages which the writer
confesses himself unable fully to explain.

Whatever cause or causes led to the decay of Gaelic in Ire-

564 THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. [Jan.,

land, there can be no doubt whatever as to the startling rapidity
with which it has disappeared from almost the entire island. At
the beginning of the present century Gaelic was spoken in every
county in Ireland ; it was, in fact, the speech of the people through-
out, and it held its own within the strongholds of Protestantism
even. In the year 1800 there were only two cities in Ireland
where a knowledge of the Irish language was not an absolute
necessity in a business point of view ; these were Dublin and Bel-
fast. In every other large town in the kingdom the retail trader
was obliged to speak Gaelic, because by far the larger part of his
customers could speak nothing else. The unpublished letters of
two of the greatest Celtic scholars of the century, John O'Dono-
van and Eugene O'Curry, contain many remarkable facts about
the extraordinary rapidity with which Gaelic has disappeared as
a spoken language in most parts of Ireland. These two gentle-
men were employed on Griffith's Survey of Ireland, and some
thirty or forty volumes of their unpublished letters are to be seen
in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. One of Mr. O'Curry's
letters contains a remarkable reference to the use of the Gaelic
language in the immediate vicinity of Dublin at a recent date.
He relates that in the year 1837 he found in Glenasmole, within
five miles of Dublin, a family of elderly people who spoke Gaelic
fluently. He asked if they had acquired the language from their
parents, and they answered that they had, and that when they
were young .Gaelic was the language of the locality, and that
English was never heard but from natives of Dublin or from
Dublin carmen. Mr. O'Curry adds that the two persons who gave
him the information were not more than fifty-five years old ; so
that " when they were young " could not have been much earlier
than the year 1800, and the Gaelic language was at that time
spoken almost within earshot of Dublin Castle. The old language
may be said to be dead at present in the province of Leinster ; it
lingers amongst the old people in the extreme south of the coun-
ty of Kilkenny, and in the northeast corner of the county of
Louth and the northern part of Meath ; but it has disappeared
from every other part of the province. For many years previ-
ous to the famine of 1847 the Shannon formed the boundary line
between English and Gaelic ; but the English language is no
longer bounded by the Shannon, and has pushed back Gaelic
into the western parts of Mayo and Galway, almost the only
places in the province of Connaught where Gaelic is now the
current speech of the peasantry. In Munster Gaelic has almost
entirely disappeared from the counties of Limerick and Tippe-

i882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 565

rary, and is only partially spoken in the other four counties of
that province. In Ulster it is spoken in the counties of Donegal,
Monaghan, and Cavan, and is confined to a very limited area in
the two latter. The total number of persons speaking Gaelic in
Ireland is about three-quarters of a million.

The disappearance of Gaelic has been almost as rapid and as
extraordinary in Scotland as in Ireland ; we say Scotland, for it
is an erroneous idea to suppose that Gaelic was not the current
language of all Scotland at one time. It may be difficult to prove
the exact date at which Gaelic ceased to be the current speech
of the Scottish Lowlands, but that it once was such there can be
no reasonable doubt. To this day the nomenclature of the Low-
lands is very nearly as Celtic as that of the Highlands ; in fact, it
is only in the counties of Haddington, Peebles, Berwick, and Sel-
kirk that Saxon nomenclature is more general than Celtic, and
the probabilities are that the preponderance of Saxon names of
places in the extreme southeast of Scotland dates from the Nor-
man Conquest only, when the marriage of a Saxon princess with
the Scottish king introduced the Saxon language beyond the Bor-
der.

Like the Shannon in Ireland, the Grampians in Scotland for
many generations formed the boundary line between Gaelic and
English ; but English passed the barrier of the Grampians long
ago, and is rapidly pushing back Gaelic into the mountain fastness-
es of western Argyle, Inverness, and Ross-shire. In fact, there are
very few districts even in the northern and western Highlands, ex-
cept the Hebrides, where Gaelic is the current speech of the peas-
antry at present. By the last census (1880) the Gaelic-speaking
population of Scotland is put down at nearly four hundred thou-
sand ; but that includes all those who are even partially acquainted
with the language, and it is estimated that the number of those
who speak Gaelic exclusively is not more than one hundred thou-
sand.

The principality of Wales, however, makes a much better
figure than either Ireland or Scotland in the matter of national
language. The perseverance and wholeheartedness with which
the Welsh have stuck to their language is beyond all praise, and
affords one of the most curious and interesting linguistic specta-
cles of modern times. No one who has not travelled in Wales
can be fully aware of the strong hold which the national lan-
guage has on the people. Separated from England by no geo-
graphical barrier, brought into daily intercourse with people who
speak English and nothing else, with hardly any political or re-

566 THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. [Jan.,

ligious differences between them and the English, the Welsh so
far do no.t seem to have yielded one inch in the matter of lan-
guage since the days of Owen Glendower. Except in two or
three of the extreme eastern counties of the principality, Welsh
is at least as much the language of the people as English is the
language of New York. Not only is Welsh the language which
one hears in Wales ; it is also the language one sees, for fully three-
fourths of all the newspapers and periodicals published in that
country are in Welsh, and there is hardly a bookstore in Wales
where the number of English books for sale is not more than
quadrupled by those in the national language. A large propor-
tion of the popular English books have been translated into
Welsh, including the works of Dickens and those of most of the
well-known English writers on theology and popular science.

If the Welsh were a radically different race from the Irish and
the Scotch we could easily understand why they have stuck to
their language with such devotion, and why the Gaels of Ireland
and Scotland have been in such hot haste to get rid of theirs ; but
if philological researches have ever proved anything they have
proved that Welsh and Gaelic have had the same origin. It is
true that at present the difference between Welsh and Gaelic is
very great — so great as to preclude the possibility of Gaels and
Welshmen understanding one another through the medium of
their respective languages ; but most of the differences between
Gaelic and Welsh are apparent rather than real. The Welsh
have long ago reduced their language to a phonetic system of
spelling, and have invented, not an alphabet — for they use the
Roman letters — but certain combinations of consonants and vowels
which amount very nearly to the same thing as the invention of
an entirely new alphabet. This makes the appearance of Welsh
and Gaelic as different as possible, and has certainly helped to
widen whatever slight original divergence might have existed be-
tween them. O'Donovan says in his Gaelic grammar that, judg-
ing from the slight difference which exists between Irish and
Scotch Gaelic, and taking into consideration the length of time
that has elapsed since the Gaelic literature of Scotland began to
show sectional and national differences from that of what might
be termed the mother-country, the separation of Welsh from
Gaelic cannot have taken place much before the second or third
century.

The great distinguishing feature of all Celtic languages,
and the one probably to which they owe the greater part of
their misfortunes, is the change of the initial consonant in certain
grammatical positions. This peculiarity, while giving wonder-

i882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 567

ful richness of sound to the languages and eminently adapting
them for poetry, is nevertheless such a tax on the memory and
throws such difficulties in the way of the learner that it is hardly
to be wondered at that men very soon became weary of trying
to master such linguistic difficulties and adopted the more sim-
ple speech of their conquerors. Celtic grammar is certainly very
difficult, and the majority of mankind will in most cases learn a
simple language like English in preference to difficult ones like
Gaelic and Welsh, no matter how poetic, expressive, or beautiful
they may be. There can hardly be a doubt that Latin would have
survived the fall of the political power of Rome, and would have
been adopted by the barbarians as their current speech, had it
not been of such a complex and difficult grammatical structure.
Rude and ignorant men could hardly be expected to remember
the numerous inflections of Latin. That the difficulty of acquiring
Latin, especially by the uneducated barbarians who overwhelmed
the Roman Empire, was one cause of its decadence as a spoken
language there can hardly be a doubt ; for the fact of all the lan-
guages that were formed from Latin being so much more simple
in their construction than Latin proves that the majority of man-
kind prefer a simple to a complex form of speech. One of the
principal difficulties of Latin was its noun-inflections ; and it is a
very curious fact that almost all the languages that have been
formed from it are wholly without inflections of nouns. No noun
changes its termination to express case in French, Spanish, or
Portuguese, and it looks as if the natives of France, Spain, and
Portugal had simultaneously come to the determination to do
away for ever with that particular difficulty which had given
them so much trouble in the language of their conquerors.

The student of Celtic has not only a system of case-endings
as complex as those of the Latin to contend against, but he has
the still more "difficult task of learning the rules which govern
the system that changes the initial consonants of nouns, adjec-
tives, verbs, and pronouns. These rules are certainly most in-
teresting and philosophic, and are of great importance to the
philologist, but few, we fear, will be found to possess patience
and perseverance enough to master them. The changes made by
aspiration and eclipsis in the initials of words and by inflection
in the terminations are together often so great as to render the
word thus varied scarcely recognizable except to an expert in
the language. One unacquainted with the language could
scarcely believe that bhean, mhnaoi, and mnaoi were simply inflec-
tions of bean, a woman, or that buin, mbuin, and bhuin were inflec-
tions of bo, a cow. Here we have not only change of the initial

568 THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. [Jan.,

letters, caused by eclipsis and aspiration ; we have also a change
in the terminations to denote case. All nouns in Gaelic are not
so irregular as the two given, which may be said to be hetero-
clites ; but the change that is made in even the most regularly
declined nouns by eclipses, aspiration, and termination is gene-
rally very great, and more than enough to deter any but the most
hard- working and persevering student. Gaelic verbs do not offer
nearly so great difficulties to the student as do nouns ; the verbs
would be very simple, were it not for the fact that they have all a
double form of conjugation — one with the pronoun, called the
analytic; the other with the pronoun embodied in the termination,
called the synthetic. The most difficult and curious part of the
synthetic form is that the terminations expressing the persons
change with every mood and tense. A few examples will illus-
trate this : as, ceilim, I conceal ; cheileas, I concealed ; ceilfead, I
will conceal ; cheilfinn, I would conceal. Here we have the pro-
noun /embodied in four terminations which are entirely dissimi-
lar.* The analytic form of conjugating ceil, conceal, is much the
simpler — as, ceil me, I conceal ; cheil me, I concealed ; ceilfidh me, I
will conceal ; cheilfeadh me, I would conceal. This double form
of conjugation gives great richness and ductility to the language,
but it must be confessed that the student finds the mastery of it
no easy matter.

There can hardly be a doubt but that the difficulty of acquir-
ing the Celtic languages has been one cause of their misfortune
and decay ; and this is further proved by the fact that the simplest
of them — the Welsh — has by far the most vitality in it, and, judg-
ing from present appearances, seems destined to flourish when the
Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland shall have passed away. It must,
however, be admitted that the most complex form of speech will
flourish when sustained by political power, and that the easiest
and simplest will languish and die under political oppression ;
but, everything else being equal, it will be found that simplicity
of construction is almost a fundamental necessity for the perpe-
tuation of a language.

The amount of untranslated matter in the Gaelic branch of
the Celtic is much greater than is generally supposed, and it
cannot be doubted that the literary activity of the Irish was very
great in the middle ages. Whatever doubts may exist as to the
quality of ancient Irish literature, there can be none as to its
quantity. There are nearly a thousand volumes of untranslated
Gaelic manuscripts in the library of the Royal Irish Academy

* This is not a mere omission of the pronoun, as in Latin ; we cannot say ceiliin me or
, for the pronouns are included in the terminations of the verbs.

1 882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 569

in Dublin ; these are mostly compositions of comparatively mo-
dern times, and few of them are older than the fifteenth century.
There are, however, an immense number of untranslated Gaelic
manuscripts in the libraries of Great Britain and the Continent
of a much more ancient date. Mr. O'Curry's admirable work,
Manuscript Materials of Irish History, gives an exhaustive account
of the very large quantity of ancient Gaelic writings yet in exist-
ence ; but if the national language of Ireland and Scotland had no
monuments but what are contained in the " Six Great Books " —
known as the Book of the Dun Cow, the Speckled Book, the Book
of Leinster, the Book of Lccan, the Book of Ballymote, and the Book
of Fermoy — it would be entitled to hold an important position
amongst the languages of mediaeval Europe. It is a strange fact
that not one-tenth of the above-named books is yet translated,
and there seems very little prospect that any one now living will
see them rendered into English. The difficulties of translating
them are very great, owing partly to the antiquity of the lan-
guage in which they are written. But the principal difficulty
which they present is in the system of contractions practised by
those who composed or transcribed them. Contractions are
more or less common in all ancient writings, but those used by
the ancient Irish scribes were so numerous, so frequent, and so
arbitrary as to present sometimes almost insuperable difficulties
to the modern scholar. So difficult, in fact, was the work of
translating the Brehon Laws that three only out of the thirteen
volumes in existence have been rendered into English, and there
seems no prospect that the British government will undertake
the arduous and expensive task of completing what was begun.
Even supposing that their translation was desired by the public, it
Seems doubtful if there are any Gaelic scholars now living who
would be equal to the task. Since the deaths of O'Donovan and
O'Curry there has not been much done in the way of translating
ancient Gaelic writings, and none of the living Gaelic scholars
possesses sufficient knowledge of the subject to accomplish the
work thoroughly. It is apparently likely that if the old Gaelic
writings are translated at all the work will be performed by
German scholars. There are more good Gaelic scholars to be
found at present in Germany than in Ireland — men whose perfect
training in the modern school of philology gives them an ad-
vantage over any Irish or Scotch scholars.

If the Celtic languages have been in a moribund and neglect-
ed condition almost up to the present, there cannot be a doubt
that they have recently attracted a great deal of notice from the
scholars of many countries, but more especially from those of Ger-

5/0 THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. [Jan.,

many. The impetus given to the study of ancient Gaelic had
its origin in Ireland, and was mainly owing to the translations
made by O'Donovan. lie was about the first explorer in the
mine of Gaelic literature, and his translations excited a great
deal of surprise and interest amongst the learned of Europe.
Very little was known about Celtic literature fifty years ago ;
the manuscripts in which it existed were either uncollected or
known only to a few ; hardly any knew much about the grammar
of the language ; those who spoke it could very rarely write it;
the horrible penal laws of the last century tended to kill it as a
spoken language, and made the study of it, either by priest or
layman, almost an impossibility. While the penal laws were en-
acted solely against Catholics and the Catholic religion, they
failed to detach the Irish from their faith, but they nearly killed
the Irish language. Priests could not be educated in Ireland,
and consequently were obliged to go to the Continent to study.
A large majority, in fact, of the Irish priesthood of a hundred
years ago had not only been educated on the Continent, but had
passed most of their lives there. Such men could hardly be ex-
pected either to be fluent Gaelic speakers or fair Gaelic scholars;
they very naturally preferred to preach in English instead of in
Gaelic .; and we have here one of the chief causes of the decay
of Gaelic in Ireland, for the language heard most frequently from
the altar will ever be the one to which the Irish Catholic will
give the most attention.

Nothing can show more clearly the state of Celtic literature
in the British Isles in the last century than the fact of certain
men in Scotland having invented a dialect of Gaelic, and the fraud
not having been discovered until quite recently. About the time
that MacPherson published his so-called poems of Ossian the
Irish Bible, which had been in use in all the Gaelic-speaking
parts of Scotland for nearly a century, made its appearance in
what might almost be called a brand-new language, which neither
Irish nor Highlanders could fully understand. The change was
said to have been made in order to conform as much as possible to
the pronunciation of the Scottish Gaels, without entirely destroy-
ing the grammatical fabric of the language ; but the real motive
was the fear of Jacobitism. If the Irish and Highlanders of the
period were to a great extent different in creed they were abso-
lutely one in politics, and both wished ardently for the restora-
tion of the Stuart dynasty. The strong bond of a common
language and literature, and a very nearly common history, had
existed between them for more than a thousand years, and there
can hardly be a doubt but that the distortion of the Gaelic Ian-

i882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 571

guage in the Bible, and the distortion of Gaelic history in Os-
sian, were done for one purpose, and that was to break down the
political friendship that had so long existed between the Celts
of Scotland and Ireland. There exist many proofs of this.
Amongst the most potent is that of all Gaelic books printed in
Scotland up to the middle of the last century having been, with-
out a known exception, printed in exactly the same dialect as that
used in Irish books. There is a book of hymns in the Royal
Irish Academy in Dublin, issued by the Presbyterian Synod of
Argyle, and published in 1738 by James Duncan, of Glasgow,
the language of which is exactly the same as Irish Gaelic.

The distortions of the language of modern Scotch Gaelic
books are not followed by the Gaelic-speaking inhabitants of the
Highlands even at. present, most of whom speak the same lan-
guage in use wherever Gaelic is spoken in Ireland. The unedu-
cated peasants of Lewis in Scotland and of Donegal in Ireland
can converse together in Gaelic without any difficulty, but none
of them could fully understand the language of the present
Scotch Gaelic Bible. It will, of course, be readily seen that such
a change of language as was suddenly made by the Scotch would
• not have been attempted with any form of speech familiar to
scholars, and could not have remained so long undiscovered but
for the general ignorance of Gaelic amongst the cultured classes
of Ireland and Scotland.

In spite of the past misfortunes and of the difficulties we have
mentioned of the principal, and certainly the oldest, form of Celtic
speech — the Gaelic of Scotland and Ireland — it seems not impro-
bable that brighter days are in store for it. About six years ago a
movement for its preservation took place almost simultaneously
in Ireland and Scotland, and it cannot be denied that since then
more has been done for its revival and culture than had ever
before been done since English became the language of general
use in the British Isles. Whether the movement will ultimately
be successful remains to be seen ; but it is certain that, in Ireland
at least, a large number of energetic and disinterested men have
become full of the idea that the resuscitation of Gaelic is possible,
and that at no distant period a large part of the general litera-
ture of the country will be printed in that language. They have
succeeded in placing it on the same footing as Latin, French,
and other branches of learning in the national schools ; so that
any teacher capable of teaching it will be paid for his trouble,
and any pupil wishing to learn it can be instructed in it, provid-
ed that teachers can be found in the locality. The Gaelic lan-
guage has also been put on the programme of the " Intermediate

572 THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. > [Jan.,

Education Act " lately passed by the British Parliament. Pur-
suant to this act, persons under a certain age may study either in
a school or in their own homes any of the branches named in
the act, and can at stated times demand an examination in it ;
they receive diplomas when they make a good examination, and
the number of those who are studying Gaelic under this act is
increasing very rapidly in Ireland. It was fully expected by
those who are interested in the preservation and cultivation of
Gaelic that a weekly journal wholly in that language would ere
now have been established in Dublin ; but the political agitation
of the last few years, and the excitement about the land ques-
tion, caused the postponement of the scheme. It will not, how-
ever, be delayed very much longer, and in the course of a year
or two it is more than probable that the journal in question will
make its appearance. The establishment of a weekly journal en-
tirely in Gaelic will mark a new epoch in the language, as such a
thing has never yet been attempted ; and it certainly ought to
meet with hearty support even from those who are neither Irish
nor Celtic by birth or blood, for it would make many thousands
of the Irish race who are at present wholly indifferent to literary
matters take an interest, perhaps for the first time in their lives^
in the cultivation and preservation of their shamefully neglected
national language.

A scheme is also on foot to assimilate the spelling of Scotch
and Irish Gaelic — in fact, to make them one language again. The
idea originated with the Irish, and some interesting correspon-
dence on the subject was recently published in the Highlander,
a weekly journal printed in Inverness, Scotland. So far the
Scotch do not seem to favor the idea ; but if those who are agitat-
ing about the preservation of Gaelic, whether they are Irish or
Highlanders, are really earnest in their desires, the matter is of
the first importance. If books printed in Ireland could be as
easily read in Inverness as in Gal way, and vice versa, the lan-
guage would in all probability be once more the medium of com-
munication between men of learning and culture. All that can
be said in a utilitarian point of view in favor -of resuscitating
Gaelic is that it would tend to educate large numbers of Irish
and of Highlanders who have heretofore paid hardly any atten-
tion to literature. If the Irish had a flourishing literature in
their national language it is fair to presume that a stimulus would
be given to education amongst them greater than could be given
by perhaps any other means whatever. Besides, the knowledge
of two languages must tend to widen a man's intelligence ; for it
would hardly be possible to banish the English language from

i882.] THE DECAY OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGES. 573

Ireland now, however much some of the extreme national party
there might desire to do so. Bi-lingual nations are generally
more intelligent and progressive than those speaking only one
language. We have notable examples of this in Belgium and
Switzerland, where seventy-five per cent, of the inhabitants
speak two languages. There are probably no two other coun-
tries in Europe where illiteracy is less common and where there
is more general intelligence to be found amongst the masses.

The absence of any general desire, except what has been re-
cently manifested, on the part of the Celtic race of Ireland and
Scotland to preserve or cultivate their national language has
hardly an example in the history of Europe. If Gaelic were a
language without a literature, or if it were merely an outgrowth
of mediaeval barbarism like the Romance or the patois of Southern
France, contempt for it on the part of those amongst whom it
originated could be easily understood ; but Gaelic is a speech of
great antiquity, and was a cultivated language long before any
of the modern languages of Europe was formed. Its literature
is larger and more ancient than that of any European nations, ex-
cept Greece and Italy ; scholars of many countries are studying
it, and a knowledge of it has become almost a necessity to the
modern philologist. Yet the people amongst whom it originated
have totally neglected it. Oddly enough, too, some of the very
lowest and most ignorant among them think a knowledge of it a
disgrace, and will often deny that they can speak it, when even the
very language in which the denial is uttered proves that Eng-
lish is a foreign tongue to them and that Gaelic was the first they
ever spoke. But the paradox does not end even here ; for while the
principal branch of the Gaelic race — the Irish — have gone to more
trouble to neglect their national language and to learn English
than to achieve almost any national object they have ever under-
taken, they are nearly as bitter opponents of English rule to-day
as they were when Gaelic was the language of their entire na-
tion. It seems, however, as if the present generation of Irish and
Scottish Celts have become fully convinced of the necessity of
preserving their national language, and it is to be hoped they
will succeed. Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh, has already col-
lected twelve thousand pounds to establish a Gaelic chair in that
city, and by his writings and speeches has thoroughly aroused
the Gaels of Scotland to the necessity of preserving their na-
tional speech ; and It remains to be seen if the twenty millions of
the Gaelic race that are scattered almost from one end of the
earth to the other will have perseverance and patriotism enough
to accomplish the work they have undertaken.

574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ST. MARY MAGDALEN. By the Rev. Pere H. D. Lacordaire, of the Order of
St. Dominic, and member of the French Academy. Translated by E. A.
Hazeland. London : Burns & Gates. 1881. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co.)

To all acquainted with Father Lacordaire's writings, either in English
or in French, the publication of this little volume will be good news. The
beauty and sublimity of Lacordaire's writings, and the strictly logical and
critical spirit pervading them all, clearly entitle him to a place amongst
the greatest lights of the centurjr. That is the opinion of many thoughtful
and profound Christian scholars.

The occasion of his writing the Life of the Magdalen is worthy of remark.
He was about to restore the ancient church and monastery of St. Max-
imin, in the south of France, in order to establish there the principal
house of studies of the French Dominicans. The head of St. Mary Magda-
len, then at St. Baume, belonged to the church of St. Maximin. It was
translated to the latter church, with the most enthusiastic devotion and
magnificent ceremonial, on the occasion of Father Lacordaire's taking pos-
session. St. Mary Magdalen and St. Cecilia are known by the Dominicans
as special patronesses — one representing the spirit of penance, and the
other the fine arts. Lacordaire's Life of St. Mary Magdalen was pub-
lished in February, 1860, and made a great sensation. He had been known
as a great orator and writer ; in this he was famous ; but his work on St.
Mary Magdalen showed him to the world in a new light. It proved beyond
question his wonderful spirit of piety and his deep asceticism, which had
been scarcely recognized outside of the circle of his intimate friends.
There is no doubt that this beautiful life in English will be read by many
religious people and will give much edification.

SANCTUARY BOY'S ILLUSTRATED MANUAL. Embracing the ceremonies of
the inferior ministers at Low Mass, at High Mass, Solemn High Mass,
Vespers, Benediction, and Absolution for the Dead. By the Rev. James
A. McCallan, S.S. Published with the approval of the Most Rev. Arch-
bishop of Baltimore. Baltimore : J. Murphy & Co. 1881.

The altar-boy's ceremonial ! Truly a new book, in which everything
is treated solely with a view to the altar-boy. The author, a ceremonia-
rius of many years' experience, has enriched his work, which contains gen-
eral rules as well as the distinct description of the particular ceremonies,
with useful details and practical cautions. In order to secure success in
the following of the most approved authorities, and accuracy in the descrip-
tion of the various actions, the author has submitted his manuscripts to
several rubrical censors. The language is simple, and all words which sur-
pass the understanding of the average boy are scrupulously avoided. The
matter is further elucidated by numerous engravings exhibiting the rela-
tive positions of the ministers after important movements.

Not only will this work interest the clergy, as it must, by lightening
the burden of their many and varied labors, but also it will stimulate
those of a class of the laity rapidly increasing in this country, who devote
much time and attention to the right understanding of the liturgy of the

1 882.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 575

church. By the aid of this'manual an intelligent young man will be able
to charge himself with the instruction of tht altar-boys in his parish church,
and bring the ceremonies to greater perfection than the labors of the rec-
tor would allow him to do.

THE HISTORY OF THE PRIMITIVE YANKEES ; or, The Pilgrim Fathers in

England and Holland. By William Macon Coleman. Washington,

D. C. : Columbia Publishing Co. 1881.

The intention of this pamphlet is to show that the Mayflower " Pilgrims,"
instead of being Puritans, were the members of a small sect of Anabaptist
origin, commonly known after their founder as Brownists ; that when
forced to leave England for Holland, previous to their coming to our
shores, they were notorious for their communistic and other mischievous
doctrines — the real name of their sect was " The Family of Love " — and that,
in fact, they left 'their country for their country's good. A curious point,
by the way, which the author brings out is that the Pilgrims, while in Hol-
land, had set on foot a plan of settlement in New Amsterdam, but that the
managers of our old Knickerbocker colony, fearful from past experience of
the cantankerous disposition of the Brownists, bribed the captain of the
Mayflower to land the wanderers further to the north.

But the author's manifest anti-New-England animus weakens the force
of his argument on some points, and occasionally gives rise to the suspi-
cion that his prejudice colors his statements. He declares it his object to
prove the absurdity of the claim set up for the Mayflower Pilgrims of
being a godly, orderly, liberty-loving people to whom the United States are
indebted for ideas of religion, education, and free government. To those
familiar with New England written history only, Mr. Coleman's facts,
backed up by a plentiful citation of authorities, will be startling. Not a
few of his authorities are contemporary English Puritan writers who may
be supposed to have been well acquainted with the Brownists, their doings,
and their purposes.

Even, however, if Mr. Coleman satisfactorily makes out his case his
application of the term primitive Yankees to the Pilgrims might unjustly
identify these with the colonies of Puritan and other Protestants who came
to our country later, and who, whatever may be thought of their religious
principles, were apparently an earnest, God-fearing people in their own
way.

THE CRIMINAL HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. A series of open let-
ters to the Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Prime Minister of England. By Pat-
rick Ford. New York : Irish World Office. 1881.

A well-arranged summary of the infamies of British rule and British
policy wherever in any part of the world that rule or that policy has gain-
ed a foothold. It is an awful catalogue of relentless cruelty, base treach-
ery, and smooth-faced hypocrisy for one small nation like England! An
extract or two may perhaps be suggestive of thought : " Before the so-
called Reformation there were some four hundred thousand owners of the
soil in England ; to-day, although the population has quintupled, there are
but thirty thousand." But then it was in the days before those pleasant
Reformers, Henry VIII. and Cranmer, that England was known as " merrie "
— precious little merriment is there now among the great body of the peo-

576 NEW PUBLICATIONS. w [Jan., 1882.

pie of England ! Mr. Gladstone, it is generally known, is the son of a
Liverpool merchant, but the following from one of these letters will indi-
cate perhaps a reason for the " Liberal " minister's ardent opposition to
the cause of the Union during our civil war : " How few are aware that you
are the son of a slave-merchant ? How few know that the large fortune
which you have inherited was coined, every penny of it, out of the blood
and tears of those outraged Africans ? "

This pamphlet is an exceedingly bitter invective, but it is nowise ex-
aggerated. Whoever could think without bitterness of the dreadful ca-
reer of English policy in Ireland, of the government of India during the
last hundred years, or of the wicked Opium War against China, would be
either more or less than a man.

THE PRACTICE OF INTERIOR RECOLLECTION WITH GOD, DRAWN FROM THE
PSALMS OF DAVID. By Father Paul Segneri, SJ. Dublin : M. H. Gill
& Son. 1881.

Nothing fosters the interior spirit of prayer so much as fervent aspira-
tions clothed in the language of Holy Scripture, and no part of Scripture
is so rich in such material as the Psalms. This little book contains the
verses used by the saintly Father Segneri himself, and will be the means, if
rightly used, of producing similar effects in others.

HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE; or, Practical Lessons in Home Life. By the author
of Golden Sands. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1881.

A handy little book of household hints and household wisdom for young
housewives and those who intend to become housewives. There are no
time-worn platitudes, but a great deal of very useful information such as an
accomplished Catholic Frenchwoman might be expected to possess as to all
that concerns home and its surroundings.

THE BLOODY CHASM. A Novel. By J. W. De Forest. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. 1881.

A clever story of love and politics. The hero is a Bostonian who, being
a veteran soldier, retains no rancor against the late enemy, while the
heroine is a high-spirited South Carolina girl who, having lost all her family
in the war, is determined not to tolerate a " Yankee." Nevertheless, the only
admirable, really worthy character in the story is that of a young Catholic
girl who is jilted by the Bostonian, but bears herself like a Christian and
an honest woman, although the author, following the absurd English fashion
that has come upon us of late years, speaks of her as of " plebeian " origin.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1881.
THE LIFE OF THE ANGELIC DOCTOR, ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, of the Order of Friars Preachers.

By a Father of the same Order. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1881.
HIGHER THAN THE CHURCH. An Art Legend of Ancient Times. By Wilhelmine von Hillern.

From the German by Mary J. Safford. New York: William S. Gottsberger. 1881.
THE LIFE OF THE REV. MARY JOHN BAPTIST MUARD% founder of the Missionary Priests of the

Convent of St. Edward. By the Rt. Rev. Dom Isidore Robot, O.S.B. New York: Fr.

Pustet & Co. 1881.
CAMPAIGNS OF THE CIVIL WAR.— III. THE PENINSULA. McClellan's Campaign of 1862. By

Alexander S. Webb, LL.D., President of the College of the City of New York, Assistant

Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, General Commanding Second Division,

Second Corps, etc. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIV. FEBRUARY, 1882. No. 203.

THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE.

THERE has just now been published by Appleton & Co. an
abridged English translation of Professor Morselli's work on the
frequency of suicide. It is a carefully-prepared work, based, as
the author tells us, on the analysis of facts which lead him to his
synthetical conclusions. There is a great array of statistics which
he acknowledges are not altogether what he could desire — not al-
ways corresponding in date and period. Still, it is a very valuable
collection, and, though it may be said statistics mislead, we think
in this case they cannot mislead substantially, and we can there-
fore trust the learned professor in his presentation of them and
in many of his deductions ; others we can learn from the facts
ourselves.

The first conclusion at which he arrives, as others have done
before him, and which he proves by his tables, is that from the
beginning of the present century there has been a steady increase
in suicide. This is a fact ; and he shows that the latest statistics
tell of the highest increase.

What is the meaning of this frightful and most abnormal
development of human society ? Can anything be imagined
more out of keeping with all the theories of progress, enlight-
enment, and culture ? We thought we were, in this nineteenth
century, in the most prosperous and happy period of the exist-
ence of our race since man first appeared upon this planet t
And yet here are men putting a stop to all progress, enlighten-

578 THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. [Feb.,

ment, and culture by taking a plunge in the dark — in fact, put-
ting an end to their existence. If this is not a comment on our
civilization it is hard to say what is. There is something wrong
somewhere. What is it ?

It cannot be the ignorance and the barbarity of the people.
The professor shows this with his eloquent tables and his strict
logical deductions. Page 132 he tells us that, of the four na-
tions he mentions, " Prussia stands first both as to education and
suicides ; France comes next, second in both sociological charac-
teristics ; lastly, Italy and Hungary." Turn to the ethnological
map of Europe, and you find that the Russian dominions, ex-
cept the portions near the Baltic and St. Petersburg, are re-
markably free from suicides. The Russians of all this vast
region are certainly far behind in culture ; the cultured portion
near the Baltic give proof of their progress by increased fre-
quency of suicide.

It cannot be claimed that climatic influences have very
much to do with this increase, because the climate of Europe
has not changed from what it was in the early part of the cen-
tury. Moreover, the advance in mechanical means of protec-
tion against the depressing influence of climate enables people
to bear up against it better than they used to.

There is no use seeking for any other than a moral cause for
the increase of suicide.

Undoubtedly the wild speculation and greed for wealth which
characterize this period play a very important part in this phe-
nomenon. Many minds are unsettled, and not a few suicides
result from insanity. We remember having heard a physician
speak of a case of attempted suicide to which he was called.
The sufferer had been intemperate, and his mind gave way. It
was during a fit of insanity that he cut his throat. The care of
the physician brought him safely out of his perilous state, and he
gave an account of how he happened to resort to so desperate an
attempt. He said that he was laboring under an hallucination.
He found himself continually annoyed by a little black imp, who
sat on his shoulder, and when driven off one shoulder went to
the other, always caressing him and saying strange words. One
day he went to shave, and the imp was there as usual. He con-
tinued his troublesome caresses, and, when the man took the razor
in <his hand, kept saying : " Cut, it will do you good ; cut, -it
will do you good." Urged on by this fatal influence, he drew
the razor across his throat. It can hardly be doubted but that
this 'is a (air explanation of not a few suicides. But it does not

1 882.] THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. 579

meet the majority of cases, especially where fixed, steady pur-
pose has been shown, as in the case of remarkable suicides of the
past and present well known to all.

The real cause of this increase in the frequency of suicide is
to be found either in the state of society brought about by the
rejection of revealed religion, or else in the adoption of that form
of revealed religion which, by upsetting the order that the Foun-
der of Christianity, who made human nature, had 'established in
accordance to its wants, rejected authoritative teaching and sub-
stituted for such authority the use of private judgment. The
strain upon the human mind in striving to grasp and understand
what cannot be grasped or understood by a finite mind has often
ended in disaster and self-destruction. Hopeless in their effort,
always striving after the certainty of truth, and never being able
to attain it, men look on death as a relief, as what will solve the
problem that puzzles them — long for it and seek it. The author
says, somewhat naively, the mystic and metaphysical character
of Protestantism has much to do with the preponderance of sui-
cide among those who profess it.

Before we call the professor to our aid in this solution of the
question we shall state that he is an enthusiastic admirer of Dar-
win, Tyndall, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, This fact
will give value to his conclusions and assertions, should they
favor the view given above. We wish, too, to enter a protest
against what he calls the law of increase in frequency of suicide.
That there has been this proportionate yearly increase in many
cases is a fact ; but not a universal fact, as he himself admits in
the case of Norway and of England. There is therefore no law,
properly so called. This graded increase is to be sought rather
in the hurtful influences of irreligion and modern social theories,
which year by year are more widely spread with the facilities
men have in publishing and in circulating their ideas everywhere.
Such facilities have been going on, increasing too, undoubtedly,
in a well-defined proportion. There is here merely the relation
of cause and effect ; and man remains a free, responsible agent,
who is to give an account of his act in taking his own life. Let
us now direct our attention to the tables and maps found in the
work before us.

Table xvi., p. 122, gives us the influence of religion on the
tendency to suicide. Although in this table the data refer to
different periods as regards the different countries, they belong
to the same period with respect to the same country, and they
justify the author in saying that he has been able to ascertain

580 THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. [Feb.,

the frequency of suicide among individuals of different religions
in the countries he puts in this list.

In Table No. xvi. we have the following proportional rate
of suicide among Catholics and Protestants, per million of each
religion :

Catholics Protestants
per million, per million.

In Bavaria (1866-67) 56.7 152.7

In Upper Bavaria (1851-52, 56-57) 56 237

In Lower Bavaria ( 1 85 1-52, 56-57) 28 148

In Prussia (1869-72) 69 187

In Austria (1852-4, 58-9) 51.3 79.5

In Bohemia (1858-59) 69 132

In Upper Austria ... 41 68

In Lower Austria 105 247

In Galicia 45 16

In Bukovina 80

Military frontiers 28 25

These extracts will suffice for our purpose ; the general ave-
rage of excess of suicides among Protestants in this table is three
or two to one among Catholics. In studying the table it would
seem to result that where Catholics largely preponderate their in-
fluence over their non-Catholic neighbor is beneficial in reduc-
ing the number of suicides — as, for example, in Austria and in
Bohemia ; while in Bavaria, where Catholics are only about .71
per cent., their influence being comparatively weaker, the pro-
portion of suicides is nearly three Protestants to one Catholic.
The learned professor, who is willing to concede everything he
can to the positivists of his day, is too honest not to see some-
thing very significant in these figures. Page 125 he writes:
" The very high average of suicides among Protestants is another
fact too general to escape being ascribed to the influence of reli-
gion." He goes on to give further explanation which has un-
doubtedly foundation in fact ; the most salient feature of this ex-
planation is that the neglect of religious ideas which naturally
would have an influence to check suicide comes from the little
hold any ideas have on the mind of men, except such as are di-
rected to material improvement and the gratification of ambition.
Naturally when a reverse comes there is no religious foundation
to fall back on. It is a pity that the professor does not see that
the very philosophical principles which directly tend to breed
and foster such a state of things are not, as he says, " harmless
to strong minds." It is these strong minds that will develop and
reduce to practice these theories with increased evil- to them-
selves and to their fellow-men.

i882.] THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. 581

We may be pardoned for not looking on as quite fair the
remark he makes on p. 126 regarding the relative frequency of
suicide among Catholics and Protestants. He says : " Where the
tendency of suicide is great among Protestants it will be found
to be also high among Catholics, as may be observed in the sta-
tistics already quoted of Baden, Wurtemberg, Franconia, Galicia,
Bavaria, etc." Why he brings in Bavaria here, with the table
before us, we are at a loss to see. In Upper Bavaria the propor-
tion of suicides of Protestants to suicides of Catholics is about 4
to i ; in Lower Bavaria, 5 to i ; in Bavaria in 1857-66, 2% to i ;
in Bavaria in 1866-67, nearly 3 to i. The other countries he
cites above do not compare in all respects to those we have
given in the table above. The Catholics in Baden are 65 per cent,
of the population ; in Wurtemberg a little over 30 per cent. ; in
Lower Franconia, where the Catholic population is 8o}4 per cent.,
the suicides are, among Catholics i, among Protestants over 3 ;
in Central Franconia, where the Catholics are 21^ per cent, of the
population, suicides among Catholics are i to 2^ among Protes-
tants ; in Upper Franconia, percentage of Catholics 42.4, the sui-
cides are i to a little less than 2 among Protestants ; in Galicia,
percentage of Catholics 44.7, suicides among Catholics 3^ to i
among Protestants ; in Bukovina the proportion is against Catho-
lics, as also in the military frontiers. These latter regions — Ga-
licia, Bukovina, and the military frontiers — are guarded frontiers.
It would be interesting to know how many among these suicides
were soldiers, their followers or attendants, and how many of
such cases were Catholics from other parts of the empire. The
author says, p. 259, that suicides in the Austrian army are very
numerous. However, these three mentioned provinces are an
exception to the general rule which results from the examination
of the statistics : that where Catholics are the more numerous they
not only are far below Protestants in the proportion of suicides ; they
exert also a healthy influence on Protestants in restraining them from
committing suicide, while where Protestants predominate they exert a
hurtful influence on Catholics which leads to more frequent suicide.

Leaving the statistics, we take up the map, colored and lined
in proportion to frequency of suicide. What countries are freest
from suicide ? Looking over the map, we find in this category
Spain, Ireland, Rumania — the population of which last is largely
of the Greek and Catholic churches — and Italy. Next comes
Russia, the religion of which is the so-called orthodox Greek, with
the priesthood and sacraments of the Catholic Church ; also Scot-
land and Wales. England, according to Professor Morselli, has

582 THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. [Feb.,

remained for a considerable time stationary in regard to suicide,
coming third in the scale. The lowest place is held by Lower
Austria, Saxony, Saxe-Meiningen, and the Isle of France. With
regard to Lower Austria it must be remarked that suicides both
of Catholics and non-Catholics are summed up together in this
latter conclusion, and the total is three hundred and fifty-two
per million, plfts a doubtful number of Jewish cases. The He
de France has within it the enormous and heterogeneous popula-
tion of Paris, with its host of men without religion and a good
number of non-Catholics professing belief in Christ.

A second map which merits close attention is that of Italy,
the study of which will repay us ; for it is wonderfully instruc-
tive. The revolution has been at work there for over thirty
years. What is the state of the peninsula regarding suicide?

The professor's map gives us the relative proportions of the
different provinces. The smallest number of suicides is found in
the old kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Next comes the Roman
district, with several portions of the kingdom of Italy. Next to
the very lowest place comes Milan, the " moral capital" of new
Italy. The lowest place on the scale is occupied by the districts
of Bologna, Modena, Mantua, and Forli ! To any one who knows
Italy these facts are very, eloquent. The Italian revolution has
had Bologna in its coils for over twenty years. That university
which did so much for Catholicity and civilization has been a tho-
rough means of perversion of youth from obedience to the Cath-
olic Church, and its baneful influence has almost made Bologna a
byword in Italy. Milan is not much better ; it is a commercial
city and at the head of modern material progress, and its influ-
ence, in an anti-papal sense, has been so great as to merit in
Italy the appellation we have given above. In Rome and its
district we have no means, as far as we see, in the professor's
book of contrasting the Rome of the king with the Rome of the
pope. Suffice it to say that to hear of a suicide during our resi-
dence there under Pius IX. 's rule was the rarest of things ; to
hear of suicide after Rome fell into the hands of the Piedmontese
and became overrun with people from the north of Italy, and
from every part of it in fact, was a frequent occurrence. In the
old Neapolitan kingdom, which has always retained a very cor-
dial dislike of the northern Italians and a great attachment to
its clergy and Catholic customs, so as even to defy in Naples
the efforts of the Piedmontese iconoclasts — to its credit be it said
—there is less suicide than in any other part of Italy. And of this
section of the peninsula the freest from this moral blot is the

1 832.] THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. 583

Terra di Lavoro. Here certainly is everything that could keep
men from making away with themselves. Not' only does reli-
gion flourish there, but the soil is rich and the people industri-
ous. Coming from the sterile Campagna of Rome, one seems
to enter into the garden spot of Italy. We remember well, one
September morning, passing through the heart of this province
in the train for Naples. Having left on our right the picturesque
abbe}' of Monte Casino on its rocky height, the home of St. Bene-
dict and the storehouse of knowledge and the nursery of art in
the middle ages, which has not lost its reputation in this our day,
we were rapidly carried southward. We soon found ourselves
in the midst of the vine-clad hills, on which stood forests of elm-
trees, the vines clinging to them and hanging in graceful curves
from one tree to the next, realizing the idea that so pleased the
Mantuan Bard — the vine wedded to the elm. Suddenly we
came upon a group of young men and women clad in the pictur-
esque attire of the people ; they stood with their heads turned to
us and fixed as in a tableau. A young man was on a short lad-
der placed against an elm, holding on to the round with one
hand, while with the other he was in the act of gathering grapes
from a richly clustered festoon. On the ground below stood a
young girl, her apron spread to catch the fruit as it fell. Two
other young women were in the act of placing the grapes in a
pannier ; while a youth stood by the faithful little animal which
was to bear the burden — a demure little donkey that took his
part in the group, not marring it by any movement, as the train
swept by. The beauty of the scenery, the bright and happy
faces of the young people, the nature of their work, the grace of
their pose, and the picturesque beauty of their garb, altogether
made such a scene as an artist would fain paint. Surely this
land has every physical characteristic to bring about a contented
spirit and exorcise the demon of suicide. When to this we add
the influence of religion, to which the people are strongly at-
tached from the conviction of their bright intellects and by the
love of their warm hearts, one can readily understand why, of
all Italy, it should be perhaps the privileged spot where men
think least of insulting their Creator by usurping his right of life
and of death.

It is not, however, on the physical or psychological conditions
of a country that the frequency or rarity of suicide depends.
Trouble comes everywhere ; Care enthrones herself in the palace
and in the hovel, on the smiling prairie and on the rocky moun-
tain side. There is needed something else. That something is

584 THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE. [Feb.,

not the development in man of " the power of well-ordered sen-
timents and ideas by which to reach a certain aim in life — in short,
to give force and energy to the moral character " by the means
Professor Morselli recommends. It is not this. The real means
is religion so cherished as to become the life of the people. Do
you want a proof? Look at Ireland, a Catholic people by excel-
lence. Here is a people ground down by centuries of religious
persecution ; their priesthood proscribed ; their worship forbid-
den ; the education of their children unlawful ; their families re-
duced to poverty, to live on the wild products of nature, the
roots of the forest and the weeds of the sea ; even those who
could raise themselves a little above the lot of the rest allowed
to till the land at a rack-rent which tardy justice is only now re-
ducing one-half. So wretchedly has the economical condition of
this people been administered that Ireland has become almost
the classical land of poverty and famine. Was there ever a state
of things more likely to foster a tendency to suicide ? Where
was the aim in life for this people, debarred from every position
of political preferment, of social standing, or of acquired wealth ?
There was no aim in life for them ; but there was an aim beyond
this life, and that aim was God ! To God and to his religion
they clung ; and in the day of dark despondency the eye of faith,
piercing the darkness, saw beyond the light eternal of the house
of their Father. This kept them up ; this formed their character ;
this gave them an aim in the life to come and in that of the pre-
sent ; this made this gifted people an example to the world of
sound morality and of sterling love of virtue. Their history has
demonstrated to the world what it is sustains man in trial and
forms the character of man ; it has shown that the preventive of
self-destruction is not to be found in the schemes of the rational-
istic professor, but in the supernatural power of the religion of
Christ, the Redeemer of the world.

i882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. t 585

JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

[NOTE.— One of the noble traits in the lives of classic heroes was the enduring reverence in
which they held the preceptors of their youth — their mental parents. Ancient history has given
us interesting records of the recollective veneration for those directors of the youthful mind who
instilled ideas of virtue, honor, and desire for renown. But the only instance of ingratitude in
the far past of a pupil to his preceptor — that of Nero to the good and wise Seneca — remained
unimitated for fifteen centuries, until Henry VIII. more than rivalled the Roman tyrant in the
pagan barbarism of his conduct towards a saintly Christian prelate, the preceptor of his youth.
Nero permitted his victim to die by the easiest of deaths. In the following pages it will be seen
how far the destroyer of Rome and persecutor of the Christians was exceeded in the brutality
of the sentence passed upon 'the venerable tutor of that monarch to whose prodigality, licentious-
ness, avarice, and injustice is mainly due the initiative of the change of faith called the English
Reformation, consolidated, from selfish and political motives, by his daughter Elizabeth.]

JOHN FISHER was born in the reign of Henry VI., in the
town of Beverly, where his family had been located for centu-
ries. Young Fisher studied in Cambridge under Father Melton,
a learned and pious divine. In 1491 he was ordained priest, "at
which period " (says Bayley) " the almond-tree began to bud. All
the arts and sciences were but his tools ; but this his occupation."
In Cambridge his learning, humility, and piety won for him the
esteem and love of " fellows, masters, and students ; and there
he remained until the university's highest honors were conferred,
or rather imposed, upon him." The "good Margaret, Countess
of Richmond," aided by the solicitations of her son (Henry VII.),
induced Father Fisher to become her confessor and almoner.
In this office Father Fisher gained the deserved respect of the
good and benevolent countess and the royal family, who
were " for years governed by his wisdom and discretion." He
constantly recommended to his wealthy penitent the practice of
charity in some amiable form — such as the relief of persons of
education who met with trials in the social ways of life ; to suc-
cor orphans, especially females; to redeem captives; to pro-
mote the marriage of poor and virtuous maidens, giving to each
of them a small dowry ; to induce men to marry those whom
they had dishonored ; to repair bridges, that the poorer people
might go to market; to look after the widow and her orphans;
to reconcile village quarrels ; to induce husbands and wives to
love one another and set a good example to their children.*

* Phillips to Collet, On the Good Works of Maister Fisher; Henry Deane, Archbishop of
Canterbury, on the Goodly Life of Dr. Fisher. At the period of his fall the reader can perceive

586 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

These were the maxims which Fisher inculcated upon his royal
penitent — injunctions which her grandson obeyed in the hopeful
morning of his life.

Cambridge in those days was in obscurity when compared
to Oxford. The rise and progress of Cambridge are, perhaps, to
be attributed, in part at least, to the presence of Erasmus and the
munificence of his patron, Dr. Fisher. Dean Hook writes in
fervent terms of the learning and the virtues which characterized
the Bishop of Rochester. I cannot omit the following passage :

" To Dr. Fisher's transcendent virtues and noble qualities justice,
through the party spirit of Puritanism, has nevar been done. Fisher ap-
pointed Erasmus to the chair of the Margaret professor; and' so great was
his zeal in the cultivation of Greek literature that in his old age he desired
to place himself under Erasmus as a student of that language. With the
generous assistance of the king's grandmother he did- more than any man
in England to promote the cause of learning ; and so wise and judicious
were his measures that students in both the great universities are at the
present hour receiving food and raiment from funds which his royal mis-
tress placed at his disposal. Such was the man whom Puritans generally
loved to defame, because he would not fall down with the costly sacrifice of
an upright conscience before King Henry."*

In 1504 Dr. Fisher was appointed to the see of Rochester by
Henry VII. , which appointment was confirmed by Pope Julius
II. He was at that time in his forty -fifth year. A contemporary
has remarked that " few priests or bishops ever went so much
among the people, or preached so many sermons to them, as good
Maister Fisher." The cause of his promotion, it was alleged,
arose from the interest he possessed at court ; but this allegation
was contradicted by the king, who declared that the " pure devo-
tion, perfect sanctity, and great learning which he had observed
in the man was the cause which had induced him to recommend
the name of Maister Fisher to the pope."f The numerous friends
of the new prelate had much difficulty in inducing him to accept
the mitre ; but when consecrated he brought all the energy of
his vigorous mind and honest heart to promote the interests of
religion. "The humblest and frailest had access to him, receiv-
ing relief, words of comfort and hope." Nearly two hundred

that Wolsey adopted many of the plans suggested by Fisher to his royal penitent, for the
" reconciliation of village quarrels and rural disputes," which places Wolsey's memory in an
amiable light. If the cardinal had had no connection with the " ship of the state," he would
have proved an excellent priest and- a wise mariner for " Peter's Ship."

* Dean Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. vi. p. 429.

f The king's letter (in Latin) to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Farland declares that
King Henry could not write a letter in Latin, and that it was composed by his Italian Latin sec-
retary. Very likely, but of little importance to posterity.

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 587

persons were fed daily at his expense ; and the men of learning
and science from foreign lands received a hospitable reception at
his palace. The cause of his want of appreciation amongst un-
gracious Puritans may be found in the fact that when Luther's
writings were imported into England he denounced them in
" vigorous language, and stood forth boldly for the maintenance
of the olden creed in all its integrity," which won for him the
secret hatred of worldly ecclesiastics and evil laity, of whom
there were many in those days ; but neither the efforts of the
venal laity nor the subservient spiritual Convocation could influ-
ence his opinion as to what he styled the " coming storm." A
later synod having been convoked to " take into consideration
certain church reforms," Dr. Fisher addressed the Cardinal of
York and the assembled prelates in these words :

" May it not seem displeasing to your eminence, and the rest of these
grave and reverend fathers of the church, that I speak a few words which
I hope may not be out of season. I had thought that when so many learn-
ed men, as substitutes for the clergy, had been drawn into this body, that
some good matters should have been propounded for the benefit and good
of the church, that the scandals that lie so heavy upon her men, and the
disease which takes such hold on these advantages, might have been hereby
at once removed and also remedied. Who hath made any the least propo-
sition against the ambition of those men whose pride is so offensive, while
their profession is humility ? or against the incontinency of such as have
vowed chastity ? How are the goods of the church wasted — the lands, the
tithes, and other oblations of the devout ancestors of the people wasted in
superfluous riotous expenses! How can we expect our flocks to fly the
pomps and vanities of this wicked world when we that are bishops set our
minds on nothing more than that which we forbid? If we should teach
according to our duty, how absurdly would our doctrines sound in the ears
of those who should hear us! And if we teach one thing and do another,
who believeth our report, which would seem to them no otherwise than
as if we should throw down with one hand what we build with the other?
We preach humility, sobriety, contempt of the world ; and the people per-
ceive in the same men that preach this doctrine pride and haughtiness of
mind, excess in apparel, and a resignation of ourselves to all worldly pomps
and vanities. And what is this otherwise than to set the people in a stand,
whether they shall follow the sight o^their own eyes or the belief of what
they hear ? Excuse me, reverend fathers, seeing herein I blame no man
more than I do myself; for sundry times, when I have settled myself to the
care of my flock, to visit my diocese, to govern my church, to answer the
enemies of Christ, suddenly there hath come a message to me from the
Court that I must attend such a triumph or receive such an ambassador.
What have we to do with princes' courts ? If we are in love with majesty,
is there one of greater excellence than Him whom we serve ? If we are
in lovewit'h stately buildings, are their roofs higher than our cathedrals?
If with apparel, is there a greater ornament than that of the priesthood ?

588 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF, ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

Or is there better company than a communion with the saints? Truly,
most reverend fathers, what this vanity in temporal things may work in
you I know not ; but sure I am that in myself I find it to be a great im-
pediment to devotion ; wherefore I think it necessary that we, who are the
heads, should begin to give example to the inferior clergy as to those par-
ticulars whereby we may all be the better conformable to the image of God
in this trade of life which we now lead neither can there be likelihood
of perpetuity or safety to the clergy as we remain at present." *

Dr. Fisher concluded by giving a solemn warning as to the as-
sumption of "spiritual headship" by the king.

" Beware," said he, "that you leap not out of Peter's Ship to be drowned
in the waves of all heresies, sects, schisms, and divisions. 'Take heed to
yourselves, and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you
bishops to rule the church of God,' was not said to kings, but to bishops.
We cannot grant this unto the king without renouncing our unity with the
see of Rome. In doing this we should forsake the first four General Coun-
cils. We should thereby renounce all canonical and ecclesiastical laws of
the church of Christ. We renounce thereby the unity of the Christian
world. The first General Council acknowledged the authority of Sylvester,
Bishop of Rome, by sending their decrees to be ratified by him. The Coun-
cil of Constantinople did acknowledge Pope Damasus to be their chief by
admitting him to give sentence against the heretics Macedonius and Sa-
bellius. The Council of Ephesus admitted Pope Celestine to be their chief
judge by admitting his condemnation on the heretic Nestorius. The Coun-
cil of Chalcedon admitted Pope Leo to be their chief head ; and all General
Councils of the world admitted the Pope of Rome to be the supreme head
of the church. And now, fathers, shall we acknowledge another head? or
one head to be in England and another in Rome? By this argument He-
rod must have been the head of the church of the Jews ; Nero must have
been the head of the church of Christ. The king's highness is not sus-
ceptible of this donation. Ozias, for meddling with the priest's office, was
thrust out of the Temple and smitten with leprosy. King David, when
bringing home the ark of God, did he so much as touch the ark or execute
the least priestly function ? All good Christian emperors have ever refused
ecclesiastical authority. At the first General Council of Nice certain bills
were previously brought unto Constanstine to be confirmed by his author-
ity ; but he ordered them to be burnt, saying : ' God hath ordained you
priests, and given you power to judge over us.' Valentine, the good empe-
ror, was required by the bishops to be present with them to reform the here-
sy of the Arians. He answered : ' As I am one of the lay people, it is not
lawful for me to define such controversies, but let the priests, to whom God
hath given charge thereof, assemble when they will in due order.' Theo-
dosius, writing to the Council of Ephesus, saith ' it is not lawful for him
that is not of the holy order of bishops to intermeddle with ecclesiastical ,-
matters.' And now, venerable fathers, shall we cause our king to be head
of the church, when all good kings have abhorred the very last thought
thereof, and so many wicked kings have been plagued for so doing? Truly,

*Bayley's Life of Fisher (black letter).

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 589

my lords, I think they are his best friends who dissuade him from it ; and
he would be the worst enemy to himself if he should obtain it. Lastly,
if this thing be, farewell to all unity of Christendom. For, as that holy and
blessed martyr, St. Cyprian, saith, all unity depends upon that Holy See as
upon the authority of St. Peter's successors ; for, saith the same holy fa-
ther, all heresies, sects, and schisms have no other rise but this, that men
will not be obedient to the chief bishop. And now for us to shake off our
communion with that church, either we must grant the Church of Rome to
be the church of God or else a malignant church. If you answer she is of
God, and a church where Christ is truly taught and his sacraments rightly
administered, how can we forsake, how can we fly from such a church ?
Certainly we ought to be with, and not to separate ourselves from, such a
one. If we answer that the church of Rome is not of God, but a malignant
church, then it will follow that we, the inhabitants of this land, have not
as yet received the true faith of Christ, seeing that we have not received
any other gospel, any other doctrine, any other sacraments than what we
have received from her, as most evidently appears by all the ecclesiastical
histories. Wherefore, if she be a malignant church, we have been deceived
all this while. And if to renounce the common father of Christendom and
all the General Councils be to forsake the unity of the Christian world, then
the granting of the supremacy of the church unto the king is a renouncing
of this unity, a tearing of the seamless coat of Christ in sunder, a dividing
of the mystical body of Christ, his spouse, limb from limb, and, tail to tail,
like Samson's foxes, to set the field of Christ's holy church all on fire.
And this it is which we are about. Wherefore let it be said unto you in
time, and not too late, Look you to that."

Bayley says of this synod : " After Dr. Fisher uttered these
and many other such words to this effect, with such gravity as
well became him, they all seemed to be astonished, by their si-
lence ; and the lord-cardinal's state did not seem to become him."

The address to the synod was evidently levelled at the Car-
dinal of York and one or two wealthy bishops who were profuse
in their style of living. " Rich priests or rich bishops I look
upon as bad men. As the shepherds of Jesus Christ theyrcan-
not indulge themselves in slothful ease, living on many dainty
dishes and drinking exciting wines, whilst the sheep and poor
little lambs are wandering about cold and hungry. The shep-
herd must be stirring with the lark, watching and seeking out
the stray sheep, and bringing them back to the one true fold
again. A priest must submit to every privation and hardship ;
he must have no family cares ; he must use all his judgment and
temper to bring back the fallen ; he must execute this holy office
by gentle remonstrance, by never-ceasing prayer to the Lord
Jesus and the High Court of heaven, and by good example,
which has at all times had a powerful effect on sinners."

Such were the words of Bishop Fisher to the Dean of Roches-

590 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

ter a few months before he was committed to the Tower. A
man of these views could not have been 'very acceptable to the
men who favored and compassed the " new learning" or were
careless in the practice of the Catholic creed.

In Dean Collet's sermon before the Convocation of the Pro-
vince of Canterbury, preached by the special desire of Arch-
bishop Warham, there is a powerful appeal -made to the prelates
and clergy to become " less worldly in their occupations, to preach
sermons, to distribute alms, to give good example to the peo-
ple, and to study no other calling but the salvation of souls." *
Some Catholics have denounced Collet as a " heretic," and Angli-
can writers assert that he was "a hidden Protestant." He was
neither, but rather an austere man, who wished to see church-
men living according to the discipline of primitive Christianity.
This was not altogether possible ; still, some approach might have
been made to primitive practices, ordaining no man who was
not possessed of " a calling for the sacred office," or, in the words
of Bishop Fisher, who was not " well tested and purged of
worldly motives, by refraining from secular occupations and the
amusements of the laity." Collet was, therefore, in no favor
with the seculars, or with those bishops or abbots who were seek-
ing at court advantages for themselves or their families. Collet
" called out in Convocation and in synod for a more strict disci-
pline of the clergy," for " constant preaching, for visiting and
instructing the poor and reclaiming sinners." He had a high
opinion of the Carthusian fathers. He never dissented from any
Catholic doctrine, but the reformation at which he aimed was
that of " morals and discipline."

Ambrose Asham (a Franciscan) represents Collet " as a vain,
proud, restless man, .who thought himself the most unblemished
shepherd."

One of the arguments advanced for the Protestantism of Col-
let is that he " did not make a popish will, having left no moneys
for Masses for his soul's health, which shows that he did not be-
lieve in Purgatory." All his sermons proved the contrary ; and
the fact of his frequent visits to the Carthusians confirms his
thorough Catholicity.

In 1529 the statutes for regulating the clergy met with vigor-
ous opposition from a few of the peers. Fisher spoke in indignant
terms of the irreligion and dishonesty of the Commons. On the
measure for " breaking off spiritual intercourse with Rome "

* A very correct English translation of this discourse appears in Knight's Life of Collet, pp.
181-191.

1 882.] Jo PIN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 591

Bishop Fisher, in a speech of great power and vigor, denounced
the proposition. " Is his holy mother," he said, " the church, about
to be brought like a bondsrnaid into thraldom ? Want of faith is
the true cause of the misfortunes impending over the state." *
The Duke of Norfolk replied in a speech wherein he used some
harsh language towards the aged prelate. The peer told the
bishop that the greatest clerks were not always the wisest men ;
to which Fisher replied that he " did not remember any fools in
his time that had proved great clerks." The Commons, at the in-
stigation of their Speaker, Audley, expressed great indignation at
the bishop's observations, and sent a deputation, headed by Aud-
ley himself, to the king to complain of " how grievously they felt
themselves injured by being charged with lack of faith, as if they
had been infidels or heretics." The deputation were conve-
niently carrying out the king's policy : his highness gave them
a flattering reception, blandly sympathized with their " Avounded
feelings," and sent for Dr. Fisher to rebuke him for his " bad dis-
course." The venerable bishop appeared before the king with
undaunted mien, but loyal and respectful bearing. He said
" that, having a seat and a voice in Parliament, he spoke his mind
freely in defence of the church which he saw daily injured and
oppressed by the lordly and territorial classes, whose office it
was not to judge of her manners, much less to reform them." f
The king seemed astonished at this bold reply ; but, knowing the
high integrity of his ancient preceptor, he perhaps secretly admit-
ted his judicious views of church government. He dismissed the
bishop with these words: "My good lord of Rochester, use
more conciliatory language in. future. Harsh words never mend
a quarrel." \

Reginald Pole, who was personally acquainted with Dr. Fisher,
describes his virtues in glowing terms. In Pro Ecclesiastics Uni-
tatis Defensione he says, as to his highness the king, " that if an
ambassador had to be sent from earth to heaven there could not
among all the bishops and clergy be found so fit a man as John
Fisher ; for what other man have you at present, nor for many
years past, who can be compared with him in sanctity, in learn-
ing, in zeal and careful diligence in the office and various duties
of a bishop ? Above all other nations we may justly rejoice in
having such a man ; and if all the parts of Christendom were
searched there could not be found one man that in all things did
accomplish the parts and the degrees of a bishop equal to John

* Bayley's Life of Dr. Fisher. ... t"lbid.

t Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII.

592 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

Fisher." Sir Thomas More also bears testimony to Fisher's dis-
interested zeal in the cause which he sustained with his words
and example.

Dr. Fisher preached a series of sermons against Luther,
one of them at St. Paul's Cross, which was attended " by Car-
dinal Wolsey, ten bishops and five hundred ecclesiastics, and an
immense concourse of people." He also delivered public lec-
tures on the same subject at Westminster Abbey and in many of
the metropolitan churches. He was most energetic in his oppo-
sition to the men of the " new learning," but that opposition
was confined to moral means alone : he himself never perse-
cuted nor recommended others to do so; yet he has been stigma-
tized as the " bloudie bishop." His opposition to the divorce of
Katharine of Arragon evoked the enmity of the king and of Dr.
Cranmer. Before the new form of oath was tendered to him as
a spiritual peer Cranmer and the king were aware that he would
not accept it. The honor and integrity of the man were not
doubted by any of his enemies ; and the king himself declared
to Maister Rich that he " looked upon John Fisher as the most
able man in his kingdom ; that his conscientious character and
general honesty could not be doubted ; that he esteemed and
loved him all his life, and would raise him to the highest position
in his councils, if he only agreed to take the oath of Supremacy."*
Papal and anti-papal notables were sent to remonstrate with him
on his " obstinate perseverance against the command of the
king." Audley, Crumwell, Suffolk, and Cranmer argued the
question with him on several occasions ; and then came Gardyner,
Tunstal, and Bonner, impressing " loyalty and menacing the
terrors of the law." To all Fisher was alike indifferent, declar-
ing that he could not take the oath proposed without a violation
of a higher and more sacred obligation to his Eternal Creator.
Dr. Fisher in Convocation denounced the seizure of the smaller
monasteries, and in an expressive allegory indicated the motives
and predicted the result. He told the bishops and abbots that
if they gave permission to the crown to destroy the smaller monas-
teries it might possibly lead to the destruction of the larger ones.
" An axe," he remarked, " which wanted a handle came upon a
certain time into the wood, making his moan to the great trees
that he wanted a handle to work withal, and for that cause he
was constrained to sit idle ; therefore he made his request to
them that they would be pleased to grant him one of their small
saplings within the wood to make him a handle. But now, be-

* State Papers.

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 593

coming a complete axe, he so fell to work within the same wood
that, in process of time, there were neither great nor small trees
to be found in the place where the wood lately stood. Now, my
lords, if you grant the king these smaller monasteries you do
but make him a handle whereby, at his own pleasure, he may cut
down all the cedars within your Lebanon." * The agents of the
king in Convocation denounced Fisher's allegory as " seditious
and presumptuous language." But it proved true.

The advice of Crumwell and Cranmer was now acted upon,
and the king, laying aside all hesitation, confirmed his dire career
of blood and despotism by summoning before the council his
aged preceptor. Before leaving Rochester the bishop bade fare-
well to his palace, his servants and retainers, and set out for
London, accompanied by a vast crowd of people. One of his
quaint biographers describes the scene : " Passing through the
city of Rochester, there were a multitude of people gathered
together, both citizens, countrymen, and women too, and many
scores of children, to whom the goodly bishop gave his blessing,
riding by them all the while bareheaded ; and the people were all
crying and sobbing, for they knew that he would never return
to them amore ; and others in the crowd cursed those that were
persecuting their good old bishop, who was so long amongst
them like a father. And as the people thronged round he had a
good word for every man, woman, and child, and would have
them to pray for his enemies. Then, raising his voice very loud,
he said warning words to them, to stand by the old religion of
England ; and the people all held up their hands, and the women
and young maidens were sore afflicted at the sight, and prayed
God to send him back safe ; but, alas ! he never came that road
again. And in this way and manner the holy bishop did ride on
his horse, and reached London City about the night of the same
day." .

Upon the bishop's arrival at Lambeth Palace he went through
a series of captious examinations before Archbishop Cranmer,
Sir Thomas Audley, and Crumwell ; but he could not be pre-
vailed upon to accept the new oath of Supremacy. After each
discussion he received so many days u for further consideration."
But all proved in vain, and he was ultimately committed to the
Tower upon Tuesday, the 2oth of April, 1533. When Fisher was
committed to the Tower Lord CrumweH's agents visited his
palace at Rochester, where the usual scene of confiscation and
plunder took place. A monk named Jacob Lee, who professed

* Bay ley's Life of BisJwp Fisher •, p. 108.
VOL. XXXIV. — 38

594 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

the Reformation principles, was one of the parties who took an
inventory of the bishop's property, and called the attention of
the inquisitors to a strong iron box which had been concealed in
an apartment for many years, and was supposed to contain some
golden treasures. Lee, on breaking open the box, exclaimed :
" Gold, gold for the Roman Antichrist ! Down with the pope ! "
The box contained a hair shirt and two whips which were used
by Fisher at certain times in " punishing his own body." Crum-
well expressed regret that the box had been opened. The gold
cup presented to the bishop by Henry's own mother, as well as
the memorials of Henry's grandmother, the good Countess of Rich-
mond, were confiscated. Bishop Fisher's benevolent and inte-
resting will was subsequently cancelled by the king, upon which
Bayley observes : " He that made void so many men's wills had
his own made void in every particular." When confined in the
Tower the king again commanded Gardyner, Tunstal, and Bon-
ner to remonstrate with Fisher on the imprudence of his con-
duct in questioning the royal supremacy. Bonner told him that
it looked like treason ; and Gardyner said that pious men
" should be obedient to the powers that be." Tunstal, taking
him by the hand, said : " Beloved brother, do not be obstinate ; try
and please the king, if you can do so without violating your con-
science. The king regards you much, and we all love you." His
reply was : " My very good friends, and some of you my old ac-
quaintances, I know you wish me no hurt or harm, but a great
deal of good ; and I do believe that upon the terms you speak of
I might have the king's favor as much as ever. Wherefore, if
you can answer me one question, I will perform all your desires."
"What's that, my lord ?" said several prelates. "It is this:
* What will it gam a man to win the whole world and to lose his own
soul ? ' ' Gardyner and Bonner became silent ; indeed, it would
not have been prudent for them to express any opinion in the
presence of the king's spies. And again Dr. Fisher said :

" My lords, it does not grieve me so much to be urged so sorely in a
business of this kind as it doth wound me grievously that I should be
urged by you, whom it concerns as much as me. Alas ! I do but defend
your cause, whilst you are pleading against yourselves. It would indeed
better become us all to stick together in repelling the violence and injus-
tice which are daily put upon our holy Mother, the Catholic Church, where
we have all in common, than to be divided amongst ourselves to help on
the mischief. But I see judgment is begun at the house of God ; and I see
no hope, if we fall, that the rest will stand. You see we are besieged on
every side, and the fort is betrayed by those who should defend it ; and
since we have made no better resistance, we are not the men that shall see

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 595

an end of these calamities. Wherefore, I pray you, my lords, leave me and
my cause to the Almighty God, in whom alone there is comfort which no
man can deprive me of. You have often told me of the king's heavy dis-
pleasure against me ; I therefore pray you to remember me to his highness,
and tell him that I had rather exercise the duty that I owe unto him by
praying for him than in pleasing him in the way and manner you ask me
to do."*

Thomas Crumwell, imitating the example of Maister Rich,
visited Fisher in the Tower, in order to discover his opinions on
the Supremacy and other questions. The bishop was courteous
but unbending at the interview, and Crumwell would have him
to believe that he and Cranmer held him in high esteem. After
" much preliminary discourse Crumwell came to the matter of
fatal importance to Fisher." " My lord of Rochester," said he,
" what would you say if the pope should send you a cardinal's
hat ? Would you accept of it ? " Bishop Fisher replied : " Good
Maister Crumwell, 1 know myself to be so far unworthy of any
such dignity that I think not of it. But if any such thing should
happen, assure yourself that I should turn that favor to the best
advantage that I could in assisting the Holy Catholic Church of
Christ, and in that respect I would receive it upon my knees."
Crumwell reported this conversation to the king in whatever
form suited his policy or his malice. Henry became indignant
on hearing of Fisher's reply to his minister. " Yea," said he, " is
the old man yet so lusty ? Well, let the pope send him a hat
when he will ; Mother of God ! he shall wear it on his shoulders,
then, for I will leave him never a head to set it on." f

Upon Dr. Fisher's arrest his private property was seized, as
had been his public, and his very clothing taken from him. With-
out " any consideration for his extreme age, he was allowed no-
thing but rags, which scarcely sufficed to cover his body." \

Many of the evil actions perpetrated against Dr. Fisher whilst
in the Tower have been attributed to Crumwell or Audley ; no one
imagined that the king was the author of the falsehoods intended
to induce his acquiescence. It is now important to know that
King Henry himself specially instructed Lord Crumwell to send
word to Dr. Fisher that " his friend, Sir Thomas More, had just
agreed to take the oath of Supremacy and was about to be re-
leased from the Tower." This falsehood was suggested by Henry
to induce the bishop to abandon his principles ; but John Fisher

was not the man to be moved by such reports. He was grieved

* Bayley's Life of Fisher. \ Ibid,

t Fisher's Letters ; Fuller's Church History, book v. p. 203.

596 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

at tWe statement, and expressed himself surprised to learn that
Sir Thomas More proved to be so weak-minded, and thought he
would act otherwise. "Perhaps," said Dr. Fisher, " my poor
friend was induced to give way through his natural tenderness
for his numerous family, who are now starving. But there is no
such excuse for me ; no, none whatever. I am a minister of the
Gospel, and am particularly bound to give good example and
to stand by * Peter's Ship ' to the death — let death come in what
form it may." * When Henry heard of the failure of his false
devices he muttered curses and spoke of the headsman.

After one year's imprisonment in the Tower Dr. Fisher was
placed on his trial (June 17, 1534) before Sir Thomas Audley and
the High Commissioners in the Court of King's Bench. Lord
Crumwell and the Duke of Suffolk were among the commission-
ers. Fisher, who was attired in a black gown, was brought up
in the custody of the lieutenant of the Tower. He was scarcely
able to stand at the bar from infirmity, old age, and hard treat-
ment in prison.

The charge preferred against him was that he had " treacher-
ously attempted to deprive the king's highness of his title by ma-
liciously speaking the following words : ' The king, our sovereign
lord, is not supreme head on earth of the Church of England.' '
The only witness for the crown was Maister Rich, the solicitor-
general, who, as the reader is aware, visited the bishop in the
Tower, in a " friendly manner," to " mend the quarrel between the
king and him." Rich turned a confidential communication into
evidence, and appeared as a witness for the crown. In the his-
tory of judicial proceedings there is perhaps nothing recorded to
equal Rich's conduct on this occasion. Dr. Fisher stood alone,
without counsel or friend, against the crown lawyers, judges,
and commissioners. He spoke of the manner in which the evi-
dence against him was elicited :

" Maister Rich, I cannot but marvel to hear you come and bear witness
against me of those words. This man, my lords, came to me from the
king, as he said, on a secret message, with commendations from his grace,
declaring what good opinion his highness the king had of me, and how
sorry he was of my trouble, and many more words not now fit to be recit-
ed, as I was not only ashamed to hear them, but also knew right well that
I could in no way deserve them. At last he broke to me the matter of the
king's Supremacy, telling me that his highness, for better satisfaction of his
own conscience, had sent him unto me in this secret manner, to know my
full opinion in the matter, for the great affection he had Always for me

* State Papers ; Sir Richard Rich to Sir Thomas Audley.

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 597

tore than any other man. When I had heard this message I put him in
lind of the new Act of Parliament, which, standing in force as it does,
light thereby endanger me very much in case I should utter anything
jainst its provisions. To that he (Rich) made answer, 'that the king
willed him to assure me, upon his honor, and on the word of a king too,
that whatever I should say unto him by this his secret messenger I should
abide no peril for it, although my words were ever so directly against the
statute, seeing it was only a declaration of my mind secretly as to his own
person ! And the same messenger (Rich) gave me his solemn promise
that he never would mention my words to any living soul, save the king's
highness himself. Therefore, my lords, seeing it pleased the king's high-
ness to send to me thus secretly to know my poor advice and opinion,
which I most gladly was, and ever will be, ready to offer to him when so
commanded, methinks it very hard to allow the same as sufficient testi-
mony against me to prove me guilty of high treason." *

Dr. Fisher's speech was received with demonstrations of ap-
plause. Almost every one present — save the judicial lictors — felt
horrified at the conduct of Rich, who rose to reply undismayed or
in any way abashed. He said that the prisoner had fairly stated
what occurred between them. He excused his conduct by affirm-
ing in a solemn manner that* he " said or did nothing more than
what the king commanded him to do." And then, as counsel as
well as witness for the crown, he argued that, assuming the
statement to be correct, it was no discharge in law against his
highness the king for a direct violation of the statute. Sir
Thomas Audley and the other judges were of opinion that this
message or promise from the king neither did nor could by rigor
of law discharge the prisoner from the crime ; but in so declar-
ing his mind and conscience against the Supremacy — yea, though
it were at the king's own request or command — he committed
treason by the statute, and nothing could save him from death
but the king's merciful pardon.

Dr. Fisher then contended that as the statute only made it
treason " maliciously " to deny the king's Supremacy, he could
not be guilty by merely expressing an opinion to the king him-
self, and that, too, by his highness' own order.

Audley replied, in a triumphant tone, that " malice did not
mean spite or ill-will in the vulgar sense, but was an inference of
law ; for if a man speak against the king's Supremacy by any
'manner of means, that speaking is to be .understood and taken
in law as malice."

* Burnet asserts, in variance with recorded facts, that "no Catholic was ever punished for
merely denying the royal Supremacy in official examinations." But the communication between
Bishop Fisher and Maister Rich was quite " private." Mr. Froude considers his oracle " mista-
ken in this matter."

598 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Feb.,

Bishop Fisher raised another important question — namely,
that in high-treason accusations the law required two witnesses ;
whilst the crown produced only one in his case, and that one
under the most discreditable circumstances that ever dishonored
a court of justice.* This puzzling point was quickly overruled
by Audley, who replied that as this was a case in which the king's
highness was personally concerned, the law requiring two wit-
nesses did not, in his opinion, apply ! He then addressed the jury
for the crown in a speech which has been described as a " literal
perversion of law, equity, and truth/' His manner was gross,
insolent, and overbearing.

After a brief time of seeming deliberation the jury returned
a verdict of guilt, to which the bishop replied : " I thank you
heartily, Maister jurymen, for your verdict ; and may the Al-
mighty God forgive you and those at whose bidding you have
outraged truth and justice ! "

Sir Thomas Audley, assuming a solemn appearance, said :

"John Fisher, you shall be led to the place from whence you came, and
from thence again shall be drawn through the city to the place of execution
at Tyburn, where your body shall be hanged by the neck ; half alive you shall
be cut down and thrown to the ground, your bowels to be taken out of your body
before you, being still alive, your head to be smitten off, and your body to be di-
vided into foiir quarters, and afterwards your head and quarters to be set up
wheresoever the king shall appoint. And God have mercy upon your soul ! "t

A scene of confusion followed which had scarcely a prece-
dent in the records of what was termed the Justice Hall. The
bar were astounded at the demeanor of Sir Thomas Audley. A
lawyer who was present, in writing to Carlo Logario, says:
" His countenance more fittingly represented the finisher of the
law than the mild and merciful expounder of it."

When order was somewhat restored the venerable prelate
addressed the commissioners, protesting against the injustice of
the proceedings against him, and concluded in these words :

" My lords, I am here condemned before you of high treason for denial
of the king's supremacy over the church of God ; but by what order of
justice I leave to God, who is the searcher both of the king's conscience
and of yours. Nevertheless, I have been found guilty (as it is termed), and
must be contented with all that God shall send, to whose will I wholly
refer and submit mjrself. And now I tell you more plainly my mind con-
cerning this matter of the king's Supremacy. I think, indeed, and I have

*Mr. Froude coolly says : "The king's counsel might have produced other witnesses had
they cared to do so." Of course they could ; there was any amount of testimony then available,
either from fear or avarice.

t Bayley's Life of Bishop Fisher, p. 198 ; State Trials of Henry's reign.

1 88 2.] THE DISCOVERY OF THE EAST COAST. 599

always thought, and do now lastly affirm, that his highness the king
cannot justly claim any such supremacy over the church of God as he now
taketh upon him. Neither hath it ever been or heard of any temporal
prince before his day aspiring to that dignity. Wherefore, if the king will
now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange and extraordinary
case, no doubt but he shall deeply incur the grievous displeasure of the
Almighty God, to the great damage of his own soul and of many others,
and to the utter ruin of this realm committed to his charge. Whereof will
ensue some sharp punishment at the hand of God. I pray God his high-
ness may remember himself in time and hearken to good counsel, for the
preservation of himself and his kingdom, and the peace of all Christen-
dom." *

Amidst a great parade of halberd-men, executioners, and jail
attendants in their various liveries the condemned prelate was
reconducted to the Tower. The lamentations of the populace,
especially the crowds who came from Rochester, much affected
him. At the Tower gate he thanked the officials for their at-
tendance. " I thank you," he said, " for the labor and pains you
have taken with me this day ; I am not able to give you any re-
compense, for all has been taken from me and I am as poor as
Lazarus. Therefore I pray you to accept of the only thing I can
give you, my thanks and good wishes."

THE DISCOVERY OF THE EAST COAST OF THE
UNITED STATES.

JOHN VERRAZANO and the French mariners who accompanied
him in his voyage of discovery to the New World were the
first to plant the standard of France upon American soil. The
Normans and Bretons, it is true, had discovered the coasts of
the country now known as the Maritime Provinces of the Do-
minion of Canada, and had established fishing and trading sta-
tions in those lands, as early as the year 1504, if indeed not pre-
vious to the discoveries of Columbus, Cabot, and Cortereal, as
has been maintained by judicious writers ; f and the Baron de
Lery had attempted to plant a French colony on Sable Island in
1518. But it was not until the year 1524 that an accredited repre-
sentative of the French race took formal possession of a portion
of the present United States4 The territory thus taken extended

* State Trials of Henry's reign ; Thorndale's Memorials.

t Laverdiere's Histoire-du Canada, p. 2 ; Bell's Garneau's History of Canada, vol. i. p. 46.
Compare with Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 171, notes.

\ The history of Verrazano's voyage has been handed down to us in a Letter, or report,

6oo THE DISCOVERY OF THE EAST COAST [Feb.,

from the vicinity of the Savannah River, in the State of Geor-
gia, to and including the State of Maine, and was named New
France.

Although the discovery of a new world by Columbus had
produced a tremendous impression throughout Europe, the
French kings were slow in becoming interested in America.
Charles VIII. and Louis XII. were too much engrossed with
their schemes for the absorption of the northwestern provinces
of France, and with their marriages and wars of succession, to
give a thought to making discoveries and founding colonies be-
yond the Atlantic. The kings of France at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, unlike the monarchs of Spain, Portugal, and
England, possessed but little power, their authority being fully
recognized in the interior only of France. Brittany was then an
independent hereditary dukedom, and so remained until the year
1532, when it was united to the French crown, its traditional
liberties of former times having been previously stifled. Francis
I., however, in the eighth year of his reign, although then en-
gaged in a colossal war against the Emperor Charles V. — a war in
which the political destiny of all Europe was involved — being
informed of the discoveries made by the navigators of the west
coast of France, and stimulated by the successes of the Spaniards,*
organized an expedition for the particular purpose of exploring
the Atlantic coast of the new-found world. He desired to take

written by Verrazano to King Francis I., dated Dieppe, Normandy, July 8, 1524, and first pub-
lished in the Italian language in Ramusio's Navigatione et Viaggi, etc., Venice, 1556. The first
English translation appeared in Hakluyt's Divers Voyages, etc., London, 1582. A manuscript
copy of the Letter, evidently contemporary with the Ramusio version, but differing from it in
some unimportant particulars, is in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence, and the text of this
document, together with a translation, is published in the Collections of the New York Historical
Society, second series, vol. i., New York, 1841. The original Letter, which was written in
French, is not extant ; and the first known account of the voyage, in the French language, ap-
pears in Belleforest's Histoire Universelle, 1570.

In 1864 Mr. Buckingham Smith, in a paper read before the New York Historical Society and
entitled An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Documents concerning a Discovery in North America,
questioned the authenticity of both the Ramusio and Magliabecchian versions of Verrazano's
Letter, and attempted to disprove the voyage altogether. Mr. J. C. Brevoort, ten years later
(1874), in a volume entitled Verrazano the Navigator, defended the voyage and presented new
matter to support it. This brought out a volume, adverse to the voyage, from Mr. Henry C.
Murphy, entitled The Voyage of Verrazano, 1875. Next appeared a pamphlet by the Rev. B. F.
De Costa entitled Verrazano : a Motion for a Stay of Judgment, 1876.

Following up the interesting subject, Mr. De Costa examined into the whole controversy,
and in a series of scholarly articles, which were published in the Magazine of American History,
triumphantly dispelled all doubts on the authenticity of the documents and refuted all arguments
advanced to disprove them and the voyage. The principal witnesses relied upon by the learned
polemic in his defence of the French discovery are, i. The Verrazano Letter ; 2. The Carli Let-
ter ; 3. The Map of Jerome Verrazano ; 4. The Discourse of a great French sea-captain ; 5. The
Ulpius Globe.

* Memoir of M. de Calliere to M. Seignelay, in Docs. Col. Hist. N. Y., ix. 266.

1 882.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 601

his share of the heritage left by Noe to his descendants, remark-
ing jocularly that the kings of Spain and Portugal were mea-
suring their lots a little too wide.*

Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian navigator then in the
king's service, was placed in command of the expedition. The
fleet, consisting of four ships, left France, probably from the port
of Dieppe, in the autumn of 1523 ; but having encountered vio-
lent winds it returned in distress to a port in Brittany, with only
two of the ships. After making the necessary repairs the ships
again set out, and, after cruising for some time along the Spanish
coast, Verrazano on the i/th of January, being then near the
island of Madeira, with a single ship named the Dauphin, directed
his course over a hitherto untravelled route to the New World.
His equipage consisted of fifty men, arms and other warlike mu-
nition and naval stores, articles for barter, and provisions suffi-
cient for eight months. After a long voyage, during which a
violent hurricane was encountered, Verrazano, on March 7, 1524,
" discouered a new land neuer before seene of any man either
ancient or moderne." f

Verrazano describes his landfall as being in 34° north latitude,
or in the southern portion of what is now North Carolina, south of
Cape Fear River, upon which the city of Wilmington is situated.
Fires were seen on the land, from which it was concluded that it
was inhabited, and a safe landing-place was sought to enable the
explorers to examine into the nature of the country. The coast
stretched to the south, and Verrazano followed it for a distance
of fifty leagues, with the evident intention of connecting his dis-
coveries with those of the Spaniards in Florida. Failing to find
a harbor in which to lie securely, he changed his course to the
northward, and, still unsuccessful in his search for a convenient
harbor, he approached the land and went ashore in a small boat.
The Indians, who had collected in considerable numbers at the
seaside, fled ; but the French, by various friendly signs, induced
them to return. Verrazano, in his relation of this scene, con-
tinues : " They showed the greatest delight on beholding us,
wondering 'at our dress, countenances, and complexion. They
then showed us by signs where we could more conveniently se-
cure our boat, and offered us of their provisions." \

* Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada, i. 13.

t " Scoprimo vna terra nuoua non piu da gli antichi, ne da modern! vista " (Ramusio, ed.
1565, iii. 420).

% The Voyage of John de Verazzano, etc., translated from the original Italian by Joseph G.
Cogswell, in Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc., second series, vol. i. p. 42.

602 THE DISCOVERY OF THE EAST COAST [Feb.r

This scene evidently took place in what is now the State of
South Carolina, probably in the vicinity of Cape Romain. In ac-
cordance with the custom of the times and the spirit of the occa-
sion it is most probable that the country was here consecrated to
the Christian religion, and that the sacrifice of the Mass was cele-
brated by a chaplain of the expedition ; * that possession was
taken of the territory in the name of the French king, attended
by the ceremony of planting a cross, erecting the arms of France,
shouting three times, " Vive le Roy ! '* and recording the minutes
of the proceedings, whilst the country seen and to be visited was
by acclamation given the name of NEW FRANCE.f

After visiting an Indian tribe located at no great distance
from the one in whose midst he had landed, Verrazano set sail,,

* I am not aware that any writer has heretofore referred to the fact that chaplains accom-
panied Verrazano's voyage of discovery, and that divine services were held in the present United
States, north of Florida, as early as the year 1524. The fact might, without direct evidence, be
asserted, since it was the invariable custom in Catholic times to place all enterprises of moment
under the patronage of religion, and since it appears from the history of all the early Spanish, Eng-
lish, Portuguese, and French voyages of which detailed accounts have been preserved that chaplains
accompanied such voyages ; but the Verrazano Letter testifies to the fact when it says that divine
service — and by divine service the most solemn act of Christian worship, namely, the Sacrifice of
the Mass, is meant in the terminology of the times — was held in the presence of the Indians. The
following are Verrazano's words — he is speaking of the religion of the aborigines:

" Stimia mo che non habbino fede alcuna & che viuino in propria liberta, & che tutto dalla
ignorantia proceda, perche sono moto facili ad essere persuasi, & tutto quello che vedeuano sare
a noi Christiani circa il culto diuino faceuano ancora essi con quel stimolo & feruore che noi fa-
ceuamo" (Ramusio, ed. 1565, vol. iii. 422).

"We suppose that they haue no religion at all, and that they liue at their owne libertie.
And that all this proceedeth of ignorance, for that they are very easie to be perswaded : and all
that they see vs Christians doe in our diuine seruice, they did the same with the like imitation
as they saw vs to doe it " (Hakluyt, ed. 1600, vol. iii. p. 364).

t Such was the formula of taking possession of new countries by the French. That the name
of New France was given to the countiy discovered by Verrazano appears from the map of Je-
rome Verrazano, the brother of John the navigator, made in the year 1529, and preserved in the
JRorghian Museum of the Propaganda at Rome. A reduced copy of this historical treasure has
been published by Mr. De Costa in connection with his admirable articles in the Magazine of
American History. It is based on John Verrazano's voyage, and supplies many details not con-
tained in the Letter. The inscription, " Verrazana sive Gallia nova qiiale discropo 5 annifa
Giovanni di Verrazano fiorentino Per ordine et comandaia del Chrystianissimo Re de Prancia"
proves that the name " New France " had been given to the country. Then along the Atlantic
coast are three flags, the southernmost flag being represented in the vicinity of Cape Romain,
South Carolina, the northernmost one in the vicinity of the northern portion of Maine, and the
intermediate one probably near Narragansett Bay. "We know that these flags," says Mr. De
Costa, "were intended to indicate the claims of Francis I., because upon the original map they
are blue, which about that period was made the color of France in opposition to the white flag of
England." They undoubtedly served another purpose — to indicate the points where the cere-
mony of taking possession of the country had been performed. The French colors are succeed-
ed by Breton flags, one on each side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

It has always been held in Canada that Verrazano gave the east coast of the United States
the name of New France. ' ' lean Verazan courut toute la contr^e depuis la Floride iusques au
Cap Breton, et en prit possession au nom de Francois I., son maistre. le croy que c'a este ce lean
Verazan qui a este le parain de ceste denomination de nouvelle France " (Biard, Relations des
Jesuites, Can. Ed., 1611, p. 2).

1 882.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 603

continuing to coast along the shore, which he describes with
great fidelity to nature. Names were given to the capes, bays,
and rivers discovered. The name of Dieppe was given to a
locality in the extreme south, evidently to the harbor of Savan-
nah, Georgia ; Saint Ann to the Virginia side of Chesapeake Bay ;
The Annunciation, probably because it was discovered on that
feast, to Eastern Maryland ; Saint Germain, after the residence of
Francis L, to the land at the mouth of the Hudson River, or New
York Bay ; Louise, after the Princess Louise of Savoy, the king's
mother, to Block Island,* off the coast of Rhode Island ; and
Saint Louis to an important river in Maine, probably the Saco
or the Penobscot. Among the principal places of landing were
the harbors of New York and Newport.

Entering the mouth of the Hudson River in a small boat, the
explorers found its banks well peopled, the inhabitants not differ-
ing much from those seen at the previous landing-places. Mul-
titudes of curious aborigines appeared from all sides to view the
strangers, whom they received with evident delight and with
loud shouts of admiration. Violent contrary winds arising, they
were obliged to return to their ship without fully exploring the
country. The next course was along Long Island Sound to Nar-
ragansett Bay, which, it appears, was named the Gulf of Refuge.
A fortnight was spent here, probably on the site of the present
city of Newport, from which parties often penetrated five or six
leagues into the interior to examine the country. The Indians
received the strangers with courteous consideration. They imi-
tated the French modes of salutation, tasted their food, and other-
wise exhibited a friendly disposition.

" Of those things which we gave them," says Verrazano, " they prized
most highly the bells, azure crystals, and other toys to hang in their ears
and about their necks ; they do not value or care to have silk or gold stuffs
or other kinds of cloth, nor implements of steel or iron. When we showed
them our arms they expressed no admiration, and only asked how they
were made ; the same was the case with the looking-glasses, which they re-
turned to us, smiling, as soon as they had looked at them." t

It is quite probable that the ceremony of taking possession of
the country was repeated at this point.

Having supplied his ship with all necessaries, Verrazano, on
the 5th of May, took his departure and continued his voyage,

* Kohl, History of the Discovery of the State of Maine ', says that the name Louise was given
to Martha's Vineyard.

t The Voyage of John de Verazzano, etc., in Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc., p. 47.

604 THE DISCOVERY OF THE EAST COAST. [Feb.,

keeping so close to the coast as never to lose it from sight ; the
nature of the country was the same as before, except that the
mountains were a little higher. The shore stretched to the east,
and fifty leagues beyond more to the north. The Indians here
were no longer friendly, and all courteous advances on the part
of the French were disregarded by the rude and suspicious na-
tives. If the strangers wished at any time to traffic with them
they came to the sea-shore and stood upon the rocks, from which
they lowered down by a cord to the boats beneath whatever they
had to barter ; they took nothing but knives, fish-hooks, and arti-
cles of sharpened steel. Evidently this was not their first deal-
ing with the whites ! When in the vicinity of Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, the French forced a landing, and twenty-five resolute
men penetrated two or three leagues into the interior. On re-
turning to their boats they were assaulted with a shower of ar-
rows, after which the Indians raised most horrible cries and fled
into the forest. Having coasted the shores of Maine, and con-
nected his explorations with those of the Bretons, Normans, and
Basques in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, Verrazano pre-
pared- to return to France, whither he arrived in the early part
; after an absence of about eight months.*

as the east coast of the United States, from Georgia
to Maine, discovered and explored by the French in the first
quarter of the sixteenth century. Attempts at colonization were
subsequently made by France at the two extremities of her new
possessions — in South Carolina before the first English colonists
crossed the Atlantic, and in Maine before Popham's colony and
the Pilgrims saw New England ; and during the long century
and a half during which France and England contested for domi-
nation in the New World the French never ceased to asseverate
their right to the heritage bequeathed to them by Verrazano and
the intrepid mariners who accompanied him on his memorable
voyage of discovery. Nor would they acknowledge the claims
of England to priority of discovery, the Cabots, they asserted,
having nowhere landed on continent or island. f

* " In July Verrazzani was once more in France. His own narrative of the voyage is the
earliest original account now extant of the coast of the United States. He advanced the know-
ledge of the country, and he gave to France some claim to an extensive territory on the pretext
of discovery" (Bancroft, History of the United States, ed. 1857, *• *?)•

Mr. Bancroft, in the Centennial (1876) edition of his great work, omits all mention of Verra-
zano's voyage, thereby, indirectly at least, expressing his adherence to the views of the polemists
adverse to its authenticity. It should be stated, in justice to the author of the History of the
United States, that Mr. De Costa's triumphant vindication of Verrazano had not appeared at
the date of the issuing of the Centennial edition of his works.

t Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, i. 3 ; and Shea's Charlevoix's History of New

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 605

When Verrazano reached Dieppe, with enthusiastic projects
of colonization to submit to the approval of his royal master, he
found France in a desperate situation. The personal bravery of
Francis I., the gallantry of Bonnivet, the valor of Laval-Mont-
morency, " the first baron of Christendom," and the sacrifice of
the life of the chivalric Bayard, " the knight without fear and
without reproach," had proved unavailing to save the French
arms from disastrous defeat at the hands of the Imperialist forces
under the valiant Colonna and the traitor Constable of Bourbon.
Disaster followed disaster until all was lost save honor. In the
general gloom that overshadowed France upon the capture of
the king at the battle of Pavia, not only the projects of coloniza-
tion failed to receive attention, but even the importance of Ver-
razano's successful voyage remained unappreciated. But, though
humbled, France was to rise again, and, though abandoned, her
projects for the founding of a New France were to be revived.
Had it been otherwise some of the grandest pages of American
history would not have been written. t r

AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND.

HALF-WAY between Paris and Lyons you come to an upland
region more or less wooded, about sixty miles in extent, with
hills that rise wave beyond wave till they finally assume the dig-
nity of mountains called the Montagnes Noires, which are divided
by deep glens and beautiful valleys kept fresh by streams that
come pouring down to feed the tributaries to the Seine and the
Loire. The freshness and varied character of the landscape is
delightful, especially to one coming up from the bleached, arid
plains of Provence. On one side it looks severe and melancholy
with its dense woods and dark, solitary ravines bordered by tall
granite cliffs ; and on the other graceful and attractive, with un-
dulating hills whose wooded slopes embosom fair islets of green
pasture-land where graze flocks of white sheep and herds of
cattle with beautiful horns. Now you come upon a deep gorge
through which dashes an impetuous torrent between high rocks

France, i. 105. It is now pretty well settled that Sebastian Cabot landed on "continent or
island " in 1498, but that he landed south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is evidently not pro-
bable.

606 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

blackened by time and rent by storms into fantastic shapes ; and
again upon fresh, sunny meadows and cultivated fields, with
bird-haunted copses in every direction. Here you are surprised
to see a hamlet suspended, as it were, on the side of a mountain ;
and there a group of cabins half hidden in the depths of a se-
cluded valley. The mountains are not like the lofty, precipitous
peaks of the Alps, however, but for the most part Have gentle
declivities clothed with rich forests or covered with harvests, but
more or less bristling with sharp gray cliffs. Here grow the
oak, the beech, and the witch-elm, the birch, the aspen, and the
alder, from which vast quantities of charcoal are made, and fire-
wood cut to be floated down the rivers to Paris. The pastures
are odorous with the wild thyme and the camomile, and brilliant in
their season with the purple digitalis, the blue veronica, and the
yellow flowers of the gorse ; and in the meadows grow profusely
the gentian and lily of the valley. An immense number of rills,
noisy and impetuous, foam down the mountain-sides in all direc-
tions, or have their source at the base, flowing over clear, sandy
beds, and uniting in the valleys to form streams that abound in
fish, especially the trout. The fields are divided by hedge-rows,
and the roads through them look like narrow ribbons bordered
with the hawthorn and the brier, or fringed with the pendulous
branches of trees. Every now and then they are crossed by a
fierce little torrent, or go wandering off into forests once sacred
to the Druids. In the middle ages this country was covered with
towers, and castles, and manor-houses, some fine specimens of
which still remain, like Chastellux and La Roche-en-Breny. And
there are the ruins of many more to be seen on the mountain
cliffs, in sheltered valleys, and in the- heart of the gloomy forests,
which serve to give a romantic aspect to the country in keeping
with its general character.

This diversified region has been known from time immemo-
rial as Morvan, or Mbrvand. St. Amatre, Bishop of Auxerre,
speaks of traversing it in the year 417. Venantius Fortunatus, in
the sixth century, calls it a region of bears. The monk Heric, in
the ninth century, describes it as a mountainous country covered
with forests. At one extremity is Vezelay, where St. Bernard
preached the Second Crusade ; and at the other is Autun, the old
druidical city, the ancient capital of the Celtic ^Eduans. The
elevation of the country is so general that the winters are cold,
and snow abounds on the mountains even when the valleys are
warm. This leads to hail-storms often injurious to the crops, and
thunder-showers are frequent and violent. The common people,

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 607

who generally date from some great calamity, still talk of 1788,
the annce du grand verglas, when the prolonged snows and severe
frosts ruined the crops and killed many of the trees.

The forests, which supply the capital with so much fuel,
everywhere reveal traces of the Druids. There are dolmens,
menhirs, cromlechs, and peulvans. The pierres branlantes, or
rocking-stones, are called roches des fe'es by the peasantry, who
attribute everything beyond the power of the ordinary man to
some supernatural agency, especially to* fairies. Fairies built the
great towers perched on the high cliffs. They set up the great
druidical altars and monuments, as at Dun-les- Places, known as
the Pierre des Fe'es, the Chateau des Fees, etc. They wrought in a
single night the old Roman roads — the chemins ferrtfs, as the
people call them. There are seven of these roads diverging from
Autun across the country, become for the most part impassable
from want of care. The Romans made an alliance with the
JEduans at an early period, and their domination lasted four hun-
dred years. They made Autun a centre and established military
posts throughout the country around, where towns and villages
now stand to perpetuate their memory, and where statuettes,
medals, and cinerary urns are still found from time to time.
They built numerous temples, and tried to uproot the religion of
the Druids by destroying their schools and slaying the priests,
but never wholly succeeded, so dear was it to the people. It
took refuge in the depths of the mysterious forests, and was still
the dominant religion when Christianity penetrated the country.
St. Germain of Paris, when he traversed his native mountains of
Morvand (fifth century), seemed to hear legions of Druids crying
from the woods and deep valleys : " Leave to the miserable the
solitude of the forests and the peace of the wilderness." But the
Christian religion finally prevailed, and the deep hold it took
in these mountains, chiefly through the instrumentality of the
monks who redeemed the wild lands and civilized the people,
is shown by the remains of numberless abbeys and priories,
rural chapels and oratories. The druidical serpent, however,
still figures on the arms of Autun together with the unclean
beast, immense numbers of which in the middle ages fed on the
acorns in the forests, as they do to this day, but to less extent,
owing to the diminution of glandiferous trees. The old monas-
teries, in particular, had herds of swine. The barons of Lormes
allowed the monks of Regny to feed one hundred in their forests.
The sires of Chastellux gave them a still more extended liberty.
The abbey of Morimond had more than twenty herds scattered

6o8 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

throughout the forests of Bassigny, each one with two or three
hundred swine. Many places in Morvand derive their names
from these old swine-pastures, such as Villapourgon, at the head
of a beautiful valley of that name watered by two small streams,
and Preporche (Pratum Porcorum), on the slope of a hill where
still grow numerous chestnut-trees.

St. Andoche and his faithful deacon, St. Thyrse, both disci-
ples of St. Polycarp, were the first apostles of Morvand. At
Autun they were welcomed by Faustus, a Roman senator, al-
ready a Christian, and baptized his son Symphorian, who, at the
age of twelve, was gloriously martyred for refusing to join in a
procession of Cybele. Thence they came to Saulieu by one of
the finest Roman roads in Gaul, built by Agrippa thirty-seven
years before Christ. Saulieu then belonged to Faustus, who .
doubtless wished to propagate the Christian religion in his do-
mains. Here they were received into the house of Felix, a mer-
chant from the East, and with him underwent a cruel martyrdom,
sentenced, some say, by Marcus Aurelius on his way through
Saulieu from Sens.

Saulieu stands on a plateau looking off at the east over a fer-
tile, undulating region, but at the north and west the view is
bounded by the hills. The origin of the town is lost in the ob-
scurity of past ages. Some say its name is derived from solis
locus, because it was once consecrated to the worship of the sun.
When excavations were made in 1750 half a mile south of the
old road of Agrippa, the remains of an ancient temple were found,
with a bronze statue of Apollo, and in 1600 a stone was dis-
covered on which were graven the twelve signs of the zodiac.
After the place became Christianized the possession of the bodies
of the three early martyrs gave it celebrity and contributed to
its prosperity. They had been carefully buried by their follow-
ers, and the church of St. Andoche was built over their tomb,
to which a monastery was in time added. A chapel was also
built in honor of St. Felix in a faubourg that took his name.
Many illustrious persons came to pray at the martyrs' tomb,
among others St. Clotilde, the first Christian queen of France ;
St. Columban, abbot of Auxeuil ; and good King Gontran, whom
the clergy and people went out to meet with the joyful cry of
Noel ! Noel ! St. Germain of Auxerre also came to Saulieu on
his way to Ravenna, and preached to the people and prayed at
the tomb of the three saints. St. Germain has always been
greatly honored in this region. The monk Heric relates that
in his time there was a church of that saint's name every few

1 8 82.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 609

leagues, and such was the devotion of the people that they kept
lamps burning in them night and day at his altar.

The abbey of St. Andoche was built by the offerings of the
people, and endowed by the Blessed Vare, son of Corbon, a
wealthy lord of Corbigny, with lands, money, books, and vest-
ments, in return for which the grateful monks bestowed on him
the title of founder as well as abbot. When Saulieu was pillaged
and burnt by the Saracens it would probably have never risen
from its ashes had not the tomb of its three martyrs escaped,
which led to the rebuilding of the monastery. Charlemagne be-
came the benefactof of the house, ordered the restoration of its
domains, and gave it a vineyard near Beaune, since known as the
Clos Charlemagne. He also rebuilt the church, which proudly
assumed the name of the Eglise Royale. The abbey regarded
him as its second founder, and took for its arms his famous
sword, the victorious Joyeuse, which was placed saltier-wise
with the abbot's crosier. And on the shrine of the three saints
was depicted the mighty emperor upholding the church, with the
inscription : " How Charlemagne, King of France and Emperor
of Rome, founded and rebuilt the church of St. Andoche." This
church stands in the centre of the town, completely overlooking
it. It was consecrated on St. Thomas' day, 1 1 19, by Pope Ca-
lixtus II. on his way through Morvand from the Council of
Rheims, attended by a great retinue of bishops and lords. He
was a native of Burgundy,* and gave all possible brilliancy to
the ceremony in order to show his veneration for the apostles of
his country. He went down into the crotine, as the crypt was
called, where for more than nine hundred years had reposed the
bodies of St. Andoche, St. Thyrse, and St. Felix, and solemnly
brought them forth and enshrined them in the upper church.
The head of St. Andoche was placed in a magnificent bust of."
silver, with a mitre on its head adorned with precious stones..
This stood, supported by eight silver angels, on a pedestal of fine-
brass, in which were inserted twenty-two silver plaques with the-
history of the three martyrs depicted thereon. The entire re-
liquary was four feet high. It was kept in a niche at one end of
the choir, which was opened on great solemnities to satisfy the
devotion of the people, who came here in throngs. The bodies
of the three martyrs were deposited in an oaken chest, which
was placed in a shrine behind the high altar, resting on pillars of

* Pope Calixtus II., son of William the Great, surnamed Tete-Hardie, Count of .Bmgundy, ,
was born at Quingey.

VOL. xxxiv. — 39

6io AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

fine brass. Solemn oaths and covenants used to be made at this
sacred shrine.

Pope Calixtus, desirous that the memory of the day should
be perpetuated, accorded a jubilee or pardon to all who should
visit the church on the anniversary, which usually brought a
great concourse here. Such was the sanctity of the church that
it was esteemed a privilege to be buried within its walls, and
many foundations for the dead were made at its altars. Among
others, an old lord of St. Leger de Fourches * founded a daily
Mass at the altar of St. Maurice, to be said in a loud voice, the
priest attended by six acolytes, after which he was to say the De
Profundis and sprinkle the old lord's tomb with holy water. At
the Revolution this venerable church was profaned and its portal
inscribed : Temple dc la Raison. The sacred vases and reliqua-
ries, including the bust of St. Andoche, were saved thanks to the
civil authorities, but the coffer containing the holy bodies of
the martyrs was thrown out into the street and burned, to-
gether with the bull of Pope Calixtus II. attesting the consecra-
tion of the church. The ancient sarcophagus in which the three
saints were first deposited was sold to a marble-worker at Dijon,
but was afterwards redeemed by the parish-priest and placed in
the choir. It is rounded at both ends, and on it are carved
vines, festoons, birds, and other emblems, both Christian and
pagan, leading to the supposition that it was originally the
tomb of some old Roman.

When St. Andoche was secularized in the twelfth century,
Saulieu, which had been a dependency of the abbey, became a fief
of the bishop of Autun, who built a stronghold on the east side.
The town at that time was surrounded with a wall flanked with
sixteen towers and a moat with drawbridges. One of the gates,
called Porte Notre Dame, had over it statues of Our Lady and
St. Andoche. The town was besieged by the English in 1359,
and after three days taken by assault. The fortifications were
destroyed, the churches devastated, and the bells melted down.
The people, too, lost everything. The king came to the assist-
ance of the chapter of St. Andoche, and one pope after another
granted indulgences to all who would aid in restoring the
church.

When Francis I. came to Saulieu the people, though im-
poverished, presented him with a silver basin adorned with a
salamander and the royal arms. And when he was taken pris-

*St. Leger de Fourches was a castellated tower a few miles southwest of Saulieu, on the
^borders of the pond of Champeau, the waters of which fed the moat that surrounded it.

1 382.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 611

oner the canons of St. Andoche sold lands and vineyards, melted
down their chalices, and pawned their reliquaries to help pay his
ransom.

There was a Maison Dieu, or hospital, at Saulieu as far back
as the eleventh century, as appears from a document of 1098 in
which the chapter of St. Andoche agrees to pay it annually fihy-
tvto boisseaux of wheat. In 1298 Eudes de Roussillon bequeathed
a sum for the maintenance of a lamp before the Blessed Sacra-
ment at the Hotel Dieu and at St. Andoche.

Nine miles north of Saulieu is La Roche-en-Breny, specially
interesting as the place where M. de Montalembert resided the
last part of his life. The prsenomen is derived from the granite
ridge on which the town is built, and the surname from the old
forest of Breny, a portion of which is still to be seen towards
Saulieu. The parish church, mentioned as far back as the ninth
century, is dedicated to St. Alban, the proto -martyr of England,
devotion to whom was introduced into this country by St.
Germain of Auxerre, who, when he visited the tomb of St. Alban
at Verulam, took up a handful of the earth, still red with the
martyr's blood, and brought it to Auxerre, where he built a
church in honor of St. Alban that was held in the greatest vene-
ration. That at La Roche-en-Breny is a Gothic church with
stained windows. The choir is very ancient, but the nave was
rebuilt about thirty years ago, chiefly through the generosity of
M. de Montalembert, in the style, however, of the thirteenth cen-
tury. The seigneurial chapel is on the north side, with vaults
beneath for burial.

A long avenue of fine lindens leads to the castle, which stands
in a valley east of the town. It has a genuine feudal aspect, with
donjon, moat, and drawbridge. In former times this was the
seat of a barony belonging to the duchy of Burgundy, and its
lords administered justice haute, moyenne, et basse within its own
domains. They were a chivalric race and figured in all the an-
cient wars. William I., who married Damette de Chastellux,
took the cross at V6zelay with his father-in-law, Artaud I. of
Chastellux, in 1 146, and went to the rescue of the Holy Sepul-
chre. The people of Morvand, in general, were so enthusiastic
as to the Crusades that not only did all the great lords enlist, but
many towns and villages were nearly depopulated, and the clergy
and laymen who could not take part in them paid a tenth of
their revenues toward their support, called the dime Saladine.

The park of La Roche-en-Breny is very picturesque, varied
as it is with meadows, woods, and cliffs, and terminating with

612 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

the pond of Villerin. On one hill, planted with evergreens, is
a monumental cross blessed by Mgr. Dupanloup.

M. de Montalembert bought this ancient seat in 1841. He
belonged to a distinguished family originally from Poitou, where
it can be traced back at least to the year 1050. It distinguished
itself not only in the Crusades, but in the wars with England
and Italy. Geoffroy de Montalembert, a knight of the thirteenth
century, gave lands to the Templars, and two of his sons, John
and William, accompanied St. Louis to the East. The old
manor-house of the family was near Civray, on the confines of
Poitou and Angoumois, but its domains included several other
seigneuries, to which an ancient chronicle in rhyme refers :

"La maison de Montalembert,
D'Esse, de Vaux, de Cers,
Mi-partie Angomoisine,
Mi-partie Poitevine,
Vaillamment a combattu
Es champs de gloire et vertu."

One of the most noted of its members was Andre de Montalem-
bert, better known as Brave d'Esse from his seat of that name.
He was brought up with Francis L, and took part in all the
great events of his time, among other things victoriously de-
fending Landrecies against Charles V., who besieged it three
months with fifty thousand men. He used to say he only feared
he should die in his bed, and he rose from it when ill to go to
the defence of Therouanne. In taking leave of King Henry II.
on this occasion he said : " Sire, when you hear Therouanne is
taken you may safely say D'Esse is cured of his malady and is
dead." He died, as he wished, in arms, June 20, 1553, at the age
of seventy.

A few miles east of La Roche-en-Breny, on the borders of
Morvand, is the hamlet of St. Segraux, so named from a holy
maiden of the middle ages who consecrated herself to the ser-
vice of lepers in a maladrerie founded here by the neighboring
lords of Thil. South of the hamlet is a spring known as the
Fontaine de Sainte Segrette. At the north rises the mountain of
Thil crowned by the ruins of an ancient chateau, beside which
are the remains of a collegiate church founded in 1340 by the
lord of the manor.

Near St. S6graux is the village of La Mothe-Ternant on a
low hill, at the foot of which flows the Villargois. From the top
you look off over a pleasant valley bounded by a forest in the

i882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 613

depths of which are the ruins of the priory of Val Croissant, with
a stream crossing the ancient court overshadowed by lofty ash-
trees. At the south stands the old Gothic church, now used as a
barn, its rose-windows still preserved, but its arches fallen in.
The chapter-house, which had a pillar in the centre spreading
out at the top like a palm-tree to support the vault, is now gone,
but you see the tomb of William, sire of La Mothe-Ternant, who
founded this priory in 1216 in honor of Our Lady. On it he is
represented as a crusader " sheathed in his iron panoply," with a
greyhound at his feet. The ancient lords of this manor mani-
fested great faith in the suffrages of the church, which it does
one good to read of. One knight of the house, Hugues de La
Mothe-Ternant, in 1413 founded at Val Croissant, with the con-
sent of his wife, three Masses a week in perpetuity : the first on
Monday in honor of the Holy Ghost ; the second on Wednesday
for the dead ; and the third on Saturday in honor of Our Lady.
The latter might be said at the castle, where breakfast would be
provided for the celebrant. And Hugues' widow, Jeanne de
Norry, out of the love and devotion she had from all time to God
her Creator and the glorious Virgin Mary, founded two weekly
Masses at Val Croissant, one to be said at the grand altar before
the hour of prime, marked by twelve strokes of the bell at cer-
tain intervals, after which one of the monks, in his alb, attended
by his brethren, was to sprinkle her tomb at the gospel side of
the altar with holy water, and say for her repose the Salve Re-
gina, the De Profundis, and the prayers Infinna, Qucesumus, and
Fidelium. The other Mass, that of the dead, was to be said
on Monday. And at Michaelmas the prior with two of the
monks was to go to the castle and say the office of nine lessons
in the chapel. Remains of this old castle are still to be seen with
vaulted subterranean rooms hewn out of the rock, above which
once stood a formidable tower.

A little southwest of La Roche-en-Breny is the village of St.
Agnan at the entrance of a wild gorge overhung by a forest out
of which flows the Trinclin. The chateau overlooks a broad
meadow belonging to the grange of St. Agnan, given in the
twelfth century to the abbey of Fontenay, near Montbard, found-
ed by Rainard, uncle of St. Bernard. Here the monks sent herds
of cattle and swine to pasture at a place still called Porcherie.
The lay brothers, sent as herdsmen, built a chapel here in honor
of St. Agnan, which became a place of pilgrimage and the nucleus
of a village. St. Hubert, too, became popular here, as all
through the sylvan region of Morvand.

614 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

A few miles at the northwest is Quarre-les-Tombes, so called
from the huge stone tombs formerly heaped up in great numbers
in the centre of the town, which acquired much celebrity in the
middle ages on account of the traditions connected therewith.
In them, it is believed, were buried the Christians who fell in a
terrible battle that once took place with the Saracens, some say
on the outskirts of the town, in which fell six thousand combat-
ants. The people, who are lovers of the marvellous, tell many
legends concerning this battle, and how Renaud, prince of the
Ardennes, one of the Four Sons of Aymon, took part in it. This
hero is said to have gone into the neighboring forest, and, fasten-
ing his steed to the trunk of a venerable oak, sat down under a
tree where a nightingale was singing, and while listening to its
song fell asleep. Meanwhile the battle began furiously, and the
cries of the men and the clang of arms at last awoke the knight.
Ashamed at being thus overcome, Renaud sprang on his horse,
flinging a malediction at the bird which had lulled him to sleep,
and, seizing a chevron, rushed into battle. The Christians were
beginning to yield when he appeared on the scene. He began to
lay about him unsparingly with his strange weapon, and had
cleared a broad space around him when a voice cried : " Use it
like a scythe, Renaud, and instead of hundreds you will cut down
thousands." He obeyed, and the infidel fell like grain before the
reaper. The ground was soon strewn with the dead, and, if we
may believe an old poem of the thirteenth century dedicated to
Jane of Burgundy, wife of Philippe le Long, blood was shed in
such abundance as to swell the neighboring stream (doubtless the
Tanquoin) and cause it to overflow its' banks. Tombs from hea-
ven were sent to receive the bodies of the Christians, but the
Saracens were cast into trenches whence nothing sprang but
thorn-bushes and pernicious briers. The nightingale, gentil
oiseau, whose melody had hitherto given such a charm to the
Bois du Roi, was never heard to sing there again after the curse
of Renaud.

The old poem referred to above says this battle took place at
Pierre Perthuis, now a poor dilapidated village on a granite
ridge at the west, just beyond the forest of Morvand, so called
from the pierced rock or cliff which opens to allow the passage
of the river Cure. Here you see the remnant of an old fortress
of the ninth century, once a formidable hold with massive don-
jon, walls of great thickness, and a double moat, which belonged
to Gerard de Roussillon, who, with his father Drohon and seven
kings of Spain, gave battle near by to the forces of Charles the

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 615

Bald, who was aided by three Saracen kings and three admi-
rals. Gerard was left master of the field, but great numbers fell
on both sides, who were transported in carts and chariots to
Quarre for burial. Gerard and his wife, Dame Berthe, spent
two days and two nights in praying for the souls of the Chris-
tians slain. They vowed, moreover, to eat nothing but barley
bread till they all had suitable burial ; and lo ! one morning, by
some mysterious agency, they found them all buried in large
stone coffins heaped one above another. A great number of
stone sarcophagi, in fact, have been found beneath the soil at
Quarre, with rounded covers, and tapering towards the foot,
some with crosses carved on them, others swords, and containing
bones, fragments of weapons, spurs, pieces of money, etc. So
many were dug up in the course of last century that they were
used in repairing the walls of the church, and the edifice is actu-
ally paved with them.

Three miles from Quarre-les-Tombes is the village of St.
Leger de Fourcheret, where in a little thatched cabin of two
rooms, poorly lighted, Marshal Vauban was born. It is now
used as a barn. His father was a great cultivator of fruit-trees,
and to him are due the fine varieties now to be found in the com-
mune, in many of whose orchards may be seen inscribed on old
trees : " It was Vauban who planted me." The parish church, in
which the son was baptized May 15, 1633, is of great antiquity.
In the tenth century this church, with the neighboring lands, was
given by the bishop of Autun to Eldrade, abbot of Vezelay, who
founded a priory here. There is a field near by still called the
champ du prieur^ and at the south is the Bois Sainte Marie, where
the parish priest till a late day had the right of obtaining fuel.

Four miles north of Quarre is the little village of St. Bran-
cher, a corruption of St. Pancrace, to whom the church is dedi-
cated— an old building of the eleventh century, at least the nave,
which is low and sombre, with bays at the sides pierced with
loopholes. Near by is the fountain of St. Eutrope, efficacious in
fevers. The great number of ancient remains found in the vicin-
ity show that a Roman villa once stood here.

South of St. Brancher is St. Aubin, so called from an old
orator}'-, now in ruins, dedicated to that bishop, whose festival
used to be celebrated March i by a great concourse. At one
end of the church is a sacred spring of repute, and near by is a
tomb called by the people le tombeau de St. Aubin. A little to the
west is Vaupitre (Vallis Petrosa), where pilgrimages are made in
honor of St. Dietrine, whose body is popularly believed to be en-

616 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

I
closed in a great rock which, at her prayer, opened to receive

her when pursued by her enemies. The peasants say nine Paters
and nine Aves at this tomb, from which, they declare, sometimes
issue great drops of sweat. They drink devoutly from a hollow
in the rock, and, when it is dry, fill it with water from a neighbor-
ing spring.

South of Vaupitre is Ruissottes on a little stream of the same
name, near which are the ruined castles of Chagnis and Chagnats,
two of whose ancient lords, according to a popular legend, alter-
natively visit each other every night between eleven and twelve.
The villagers pretend to have frequently met them in their
chariots on their nocturnal round of courtesy.

Eight miles east of Quarr6 is the village of St. Magnance, on
the road from Paris to Lyons — so called from a holy maiden of
that name from Civita Vecchia, who came hither in the train that
followed the body of St. Germain of Auxerre when brought back
from Ravenna, where he died July 31, 448. His body was borne
on men's shoulders surrounded by an immense multitude singing
psalms of triumph, and bearing so many torches that the very
light of the sun was eclipsed. When it passed through Morvand,
as everywhere else, the people went out to meet it, some bearing
offerings, others repairing the bridges or levelling the roads, and
all testifying their veneration. In the train were five ladies of
noble birth, three of whom died one after another on the way.
One of them, named St. Magnentia, fell ill in passing through
Morvand, and died November 26, 448, near the place where the
village of her name now stands. She was buried in a field be-
side the old road of Agrippa, and a chapel was afterwards built
over her grave, some vestiges of which are still to be seen, and
the neighboring parishes used to come here on her festival, even
after the removal of her body to the village church. St. Pallaye,
or Palladia, also seems to have died in Morvand. Only two of
these ladies reached Auxerre. One of them, named Maxima, was
buried near the tomb of St. Germain with the inscription :
" Here lies the body of the Lady St. Maxima, Virgin, who ac-
companied the body of St. Germain from Ravenna to this mon-
astery, together with St. Palladia, St. Magnentia, St. Camilla, and
St. Porcaria." The other, St. Porcaria, was buried in a neigh-
boring town, and became famous for the miracles at her tomb.
On the ancient sarcophagus in which St. Magnance was buried,
still to be seen in the porch of her church, is sculptured in relief
the procession following St. Germain's body to Auxerre — in it
the five pious virgins. In the ninth century a priory was built

1 8 82.] • AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 617

here. It was at that time her body was removed hither for se-
curity, and placed behind the high altar in a niche grated like an
ossuary. Not far from the village once stood a hermitage with
a chapel to St. Pancrace. And at the northeast is still the an-
cient chapel of St. Gregory with a fountain celebrated against
diseases of cattle. Here, on the titular festival, used to assemble,
and perhaps do still, a great number of peasants, and thousands
came hither when there was any epidemic in their herds. They
drove their cattle to the fountain of St. Gregory, or carried some
of the water home for their benefit.

West of St. Magnance is Cussy, a small but very ancient vil-
lage on the Cousin. An oratory stood here as far back as 706,
said to have been built by the Blessed Var6, of whose do-
mains Cussy formed a part. In the middle ages the lord of
Cussy had a large oak chair of antique shape on the gospel side
of the altar, and on festivals .the cure used to approach him to
present the holy water and incense. On the festival of St.
Hilaire a candle was lighted in the church, and the bell rung at
full peal to summon the people to pay their tribute of two deniers
to their seigneur. Those who did not arrive before the candle
went out were subject to a fine.

At the very northern extremity of Morvand is Avallon, not
in a vale, like its Cornish namesake where lay King Arthur
" watched by weeping queens," but perched on the top of a rocky
height that is surrounded on three sides by a deep ravine where
flows the Cousin, a branch of the Seine. From the south it pre-
sents the imposing, picturesque aspect of a feudal town with
moat, high walls, and crenellated towers. It can only be reached
on this side by following a winding path along the side of the
cliff. This leads to an esplanade at the top shaded by trees that
grow out of the crevices of the rock. Here you look directly
down into the deep ravine out of which you have just ascended,
and on every side have a striking view over hill and dale, with
villages half hidden in the valleys, out of which rise granite cliffs
once sanctified by hermits, and mountains gloomy with um-
brageous forests. On the north side the town is easily ap-
proached by a table-land bordered by graceful, vine-covered hills
that yield wine of such excellent quality that Wolfgang the
Cruel, the Huguenot leader, when he ravaged this district in
1569, carried off two hundred bottles of it, which tempted him to
such excess as to cause his death shortly after at Escarts.

Avallon is very ancient. It was a place of military impor-
tance under the Gauls, and the Druids had a college here. The

618 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Feb.,

I
Romans and dukes of Burgundy also regarded it as a post well

situated for defence. Many of the charters of the ancient dukes
are dated apud castrum nostrum Avalonem. Their castle stood on
the southern edge of the town, crowned with battlements and
defended by massive walls, and in times of danger was well gar-
risoned. The town was early Christianized, and the lingering
remains of paganism were rooted out by St. Martin. When he
came here in 376 he overthrew the altar of Apollo at the peril of
his life, and converted the temple into a chapel, to which a priory
was afterwards added. In the fifth century the sciences were
taught here with success. St. Germain of Paris studied here un-
der the direction of his relative Scopillon, who was a priest.
On account of the antiquity of its church Avallon became one of
the four archdiaconates of the see of Autun. The house of the
archdeacon, opposite the church of St. Lazare, was exempted
from all taxes by the dukes of Burgundy and the kings of France.
St. Lazare, the principal church, was founded in the ninth cen-
tury by Gerard de Roussillon in gratitude for his victory over
Charles the Bald and his allies. The portal is curious with its
twisted columns and twelve signs of the zodiac. You descend
by twelve steps into the interior. After crossing a section of the
nave you descend two steps ; at the second section four steps ;
then two — forming a regular descent towards the sanctuary, where
the altar stands at the lowest point of all. The north side of the
church is shorter than the south, so that the axis has the inclina-
tion so significant of the Divine Sufferer on the Cross. Beneath
the sanctuary is an ancient martyrium, where the relics of the
saints used to be kept. The most noted of these relics is the so-
called head of St. Lazare, which is merely a portion of his skull,*
given to the church by Hugues the Great, Duke of Burgundy,
and kept in a silver bust presented by Blanche of Brittany, Coun-
tess of Artois, in 1322, after she was cured of the leprosy. It was
this princess that composed the naive canticle that became popu-
lar here, the first lines of which so truly express the general feel-
ing of the inhabitants :

" Sire Saint Ladre d'Avallon
Bailie meix indulgence et remichon."

* The custom of speaking of a portion of a saint's skull as " the head," of a single bone of
the arm as " the arm," or any notable part of a saint's remains enclosed in a simulacrum as if
the whole body, etc., has led to much confusion in the minds of superficial travellers, who seem
to find the same relic in many different places, not being aware of this practice, and that there
are many saints of the same name. The church has never in any age been so lacking in saints
that it need impose spurious relics on the public.

1 8 82.] TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM. 619

TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM CON-
CERN1NG SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE.

PART II.

ST. CYRIL'S TEACHING CONCERNING BAPTISM — CONFIRMATION — THE HOLY EUCHARIST — EX-
POSITION OF THE LITURGY — THE LITURGY OF ST. JAMES — EXTRACTS FROM THE SAME —
TRADITION OF JERUSALEM A TESTIMONY TO APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE.

WE come now to St. Cyril's specific teaching concerning the
Holy Eucharist as a Sacrament and a Sacrifice, and concerning
the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, which are closely
connected with it. We will take up Baptism first, then Confirma-
tion, and lastly the Holy Eucharist, this being their proper order.

He gives no complete and minute description of the ceremo-
nies prescribed by the ritual and liturgy, since this was not
necessary for the instruction of those who witnessed and took
part in them ; but only a mention of or allusion to certain parts
which were to be explained to the neophytes, that they might
understand their significance. This is quite enough, however,
to give a general idea of the ceremonial usage of that time in the
Church of Jerusalem, and to show its substantial conformity to
the ritual which, with accidental variations in different places
and times, has been always and everywhere the same in the
Catholic Church.

St. Cyril first explains the principal ceremonies preceding
baptism :

" First, ye entered into the outer hall of the Baptistery, and there, facing
towards the west, ye heard the command to stretch forth your hand, and
as in the presence of Satan ye renounced him."

The significance of this act is explained quite at length, and
in particular that they faced the west as being symbolically the
region of the powers of darkness. Three distinct renunciations
are mentioned, besides the general renunciation of Satan — viz.,
"of his works," "of his pomp," and "of his service," which are
explained. Then comes the recitation of the Creed, facing the
east:

" When, therefore, thou renouncest Satan, utterly breaking all cove-
nant with him, that ancient league with hell, there is opened to thee the
paradise of God, which he planted towards the east, whence for his trans-
gression our first father was exiled ; and symbolical of this was thy turning

62O TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Feb.,

from the west to the east, the place of light. Then thou wert told to say,
I believe, etc."

St. Cyril then describes the entrance into the Baptistery, the
putting off of garments, the anointing with exorcised oil, the
second profession of faith, and the baptism by trine immersion in
the font.

Of the nature and 'effects of baptism he speaks copiously in
the Lectures which preceded and those which followed the ad-
ministration and reception of the sacrament :

1. Necessity of baptism. " Unless a man receive baptism, he hath not
salvation ; except martyrs alone, who even without the water receive the
kingdom " (iii. 10).

2. Conveys remission of sins. " Great indeed is the baptism which is of-
fered you. It is a ransom to captives ; the remission of offences ; the death
of sin; the regeneration of the soul; the garment of light; the holy seal
indissoluble ; the chariot to heaven ; the luxury of paradise ; a procuring
of the kingdom; the gift of adoption" (Introd. 16). "Thou descendedst
into the water bearing sins, but the invocation of grace, having sealed thy
soul, allows not that thou shouldest henceforth be swallowed up by the
fearful dragon. Dead in sins thou wentest down, quickened in righteous-
ness thou earnest up.

" What is greater than crucifying Christ ? Yet even of this is baptism
a purification " (iii. 12, 15).

3. Regeneration. " After these things ye were led to the holy pool of
divine baptism. . . . And at the self-same moment ye died and were born ;
and that water of salvation was at once your grave and your mother" (xx.
4). " Especially abhor all the assemblies of the wicked heretics ; and in
every way make thine own soul safe, by fastings, by prayers, by alms, by
reading of the divine oracles ; that, living in soberness and godly doctrine
for the rest of thy time in the flesh, thou mayest enjoy the one salvation of
the Laver of Regeneration, and, having been thus listed in the heavenly
hosts by God and the Father, thou mayest also be counted worthy of the
heavenly crown in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and
ever. Amen " (iv. 37).

4. Illumination. " For since in the Gospel the power of salutary bap-
tism is twofold — that, namely, bestowed by means of water on the illuminat-
ed, and that to holy martyrs in persecution through their own blood — there
came out of that salutary side blood and water, to ratify the gift to confes-
sion made for Christ, whether in illumination or on occasions of martyr-
dom " (xiii. 21).

The Third Lecture on the Mysteries treats of the Holy
Chrism, or Sacrament of Confirmation.

"And as Christ was in truth crucified, and buried, and raised, and you
in likeness are in baptism accounted worthy of being crucified, buried, and
raised together with him, so is it with the unction also. As he was anoint-
ed with the spiritual oil of gladness, the Holy Ghost, who is so called be-

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 621

cause he is the author of spiritual gladness, so ye were anointed with oint-
ment, having been made partakers and fellows of Christ. But beware of
supposing this to be plain ointment. For . . . this holy ointment is no
more simple ointment, nor (so to say) common, after the invocation, but
the gift of Christ ; and, by the presence of his Godhead, it causes in us the
Holy Ghost. . . . Keep this unspotted ; for it shall teach you all things if
it abides in you, as you have just heard declared by the blessed John [ Ye
have an unction from the Holy One, etc. — I John ii. 20-28, which verses were
the text of this sermon], who discourses much concerning this chrism. For
this holy thing is a spiritual preservative of the body, and safeguard of the
soul. Having been anointed, therefore, with this holy ointment, keep it
unspotted and unblemished in you, pressing forward by good works, and
becoming well-pleasing to the captain of your salvation, Christ Jesus, to
whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

The Fourth Lecture on the Mysteries treats of the Holy Eu-
charist :

" i Cor. xi. 23 : I have received of the Lord, etc. This teaching of the
Blessed Paul is alone sufficient to give you a full assurance concerning
those Divine Mysteries, which when ye are vouchsafed, ye are of the same
body (Eph. iii. 6) and blood with Christ. For he has just distinctly said,
That our Lord Jesus Christ, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread,
and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, Take, eat, this is my
Body ; and having taken the cup and given thanks, he said, Take, drink, this is
my Blood. Since, then, he himself has declared and said of the Bread, This
is my Body, who shall dare to doubt any longer ? And since he has affirm-
ed and said, This is my Blood, who shall ever hesitate, saying that it is not
his blood?

" He once turned water into wine, in Cana of Galilee, at his own will
[which is akin to blood, Ed. Ben.}, and is it incredible that he should have
turned wine into blood ? That wonderful work he miraculously wrought
when called to an earthly marriage ; and shall he not much rather be
acknowledged to have bestowed the fruition of his Body and Blood on the
children of the bride-chamber? Therefore with fullest assurance let us
partake as of the Body and Blood of Christ : for in the figure of Bread is
given to thee his Body, and in the figure of Wine his Blood ; that thou,
by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mightest be made of the
same body and blood with him. For thus we come to bear Christ in us,
because his Body and Blood are diffused through our members ; thus it
is that, according to the Blessed Peter, we become partakers of the divine
nature.

" Contemplate, therefore, the Bread and Wine not as bare elements, for
they are, according to the Lord's declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ ;
for though sense suggests this to thee, let faith stablish thee. Judge not
the matter from taste, but from faith be fully assured, without misgiving,
that thou hast been vouchsafed the Body and Blood of Christ.

"These things having learnt, and being fully persuaded that what seems
bread is not bread, though bread by taste, but the Body of Christ ; and that
what seems wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the

622 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Feb.,

Blood of Christ; . . . mayest thou behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord,
and proceed from glory to glory, in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The Fifth Lecture on the Mysteries, which is the twenty-
third and last of the course, is on the Liturgy. Its text is taken
from i St. Peter ii. I, etc. : Wherefore, etc., be you also as living
stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

The selection of the text of itself shows that the Holy Eu-
charist was believed to be the Sacrifice of the New Law, and
that the sacerdotal character and function of the Catholic
Church, in which all the faithful partake, the church possesses
and exercises in the persons of those who, by their priestly ordi-
nation, are empowered to consecrate and offer this sacrifice.

The exposition of the lecture is brief and not minute, being
confined to some of the more important parts of the liturgy
which the neophytes had only witnessed after their baptism.
In order to understand it fully, and to bring out more clearly the
traditional doctrine and usage of the Church of Jerusalem, it is
necessary to supplement the comments of St. Cyril from the text
itself of the Liturgy of St. James.

Mr. Neale has edited this with several other primitive litur-
gies in their Greek text, in a small volume, and in another sepa-
rate volume has furnished English translations, with learned an-
notations. The quotations which follow are from this edition.

The Liturgy of St. James is composed of two principal parts,
the Pro-Anaphoral portion, corresponding to the Ordinary of
the Mass in the Latin Rite, and the Anaphoral portion, corre-
sponding to the Canon of the Mass.

The Pro-Anaphoral part is subdivided into the Mass of the
Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful. The Mass of the
Catechumens is begun with an Introductory Prayer accompanied
by the blessing of incense. Next comes the Tntroit, or Antiphon
of the Little Entrance, a procession in which the Gospel is car-
ried, and which finishes by the clergy taking their proper sta-
tions within the sanctuary and around the altar. Next to this is
the singing of the Trisagion, which is the anthem sung in the
Latin office of Good Friday : Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy
and Immortal, have mercy on us. Then were read the Lessons
from Holy Scripture, ending with the Gospel, which was read
with special solemnity and marks of honor. The Sermon came
after the Scripture Lessons, whenever there was a sermon
preached to the miscellaneous audience who were permitted to be

1 832.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 623

present during the first part of the Liturgy. After the Gospel
follow prayers in the form of a litany, at the end of which all
persons except the faithful were excluded from the church and
the doors guarded.

The Pro-Anaphoral part of the Mass of the Faithful now be-
gins, embracing all that is said and done until the Sursum Corda,
which is the commencement of the Preface. First comes a se-
cond Prayer of Incense and the incensing of the altar, the cor-
poral having first been unfolded. Then follows the Cherubic
Hymn : Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and sing the
thrice-holy hymn to the quickening Trinity, lay by at this time all
ivorldly cares, that we may receive the King of Glory, invisibly at-
tended by the angelic orders. Alleluia. After this the Great En-
trance is made — namely, the carrying of the oblations in proces-
sion from the credence table, in a side chapel, to the altar. The
Offertory comes next, then the Creed, the kiss of peace, a general
litany, and the Prayer of the Veil, when the gifts are uncovered,
which concludes this portion of the Liturgy.

St. Cyril passes over the whole of this portion of the Liturgy
without commenting on any part of it, except two ceremonies —
viz., the washing of the hands and the kiss of peace, which he
seems to single out from all the others as standing in particular
need of explanation :

" Ye saw then the deacon give to the priest water to wash, and to the
presbyters who stood round God's altar. He gave it, not at all because of
bodily defilement ; no, for we did not set out for the church with defiled
bodies. But this washing of hands is a symbol that ye ought to be pure
from all sinful and unlawful deeds ; for since the hands are a symbol of
action, by washing them we represent the purity and blamelessness of our
conduct. Hast thou not heard the blessed David opening this mystery,
and saying, / will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass thine
altar, O Lord? The washing, therefore, of hands is a symbol of immunity
from sin.

" Then the deacon cries aloud, ' Receive ye one another ; and let us
kiss one another.' Think not that this kiss ranks with those given in
public by common friends. It is not such : this kiss blends souls one with
another, and solicits for them entire forgiveness. Therefore this kiss is
the sign that our souls are mingled together, and have banished all re-
membrance of wrongs. For this cause Christ said, If thou bring thy gift to
the altar, and then rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave
there thy gift upon the altar, and go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift."

The second part of the Liturgy of St. James, the Anaphora
or Canon, commences with the Preface. All who have paid at-

624 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Feb.,

tentibn to the ceremonies of High Mass in a Catholic Church
know that shortly after the wine and water have been put into
the chalice and the offertory has been made, the priest concludes
a short prayer which he has said, in a low voice, by singing aloud
the conclusion,/^ omnia sczcula sceculorum. Then he sings, Do-
minus Vobiscum. Choir: Et cum spiritu tuo. P. Sursum corda.
C. Habemus ad Dominum. P. Gratias agaimis Domino, Deo nostro.
C. Dignum et justum est. P. Vere dignum et justum est, cequum et
salutare, and so on to the end of the common or proper preface,
concluding with the Sanctits, which is also sung by the choir.

In the Liturgy of St. James, after the last prayer of the Pro-
Anaphora, the Anaphora begins by the priest saying :

"The love of the Lord and Father, the grace of the Lord and Son, the
communion and gift of the Holy Ghost be with us all. People. And with
thy spirit. Pr. Lift we up our mind and our hearts. P. It is meet and
right. Pr. It is verily meet and right, fitting and due, etc. Choir. Holy,
Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth, etc."

After the Sanctiis, called the Triumphal Hymn, follows the
Prayer of the Triumphal Hymn, the Commemoration of the
life of our Lord and of the institution of the Holy Eucharist,
the Consecration, the Oblation, the Invocation of the Holy
Ghost, the Prayer for the living and the dead, the Prayer before
the Lord's Prayer, the Lord's Prayer, and the Prayer against
temptations, the Prayer of Intense Adoration, the Elevation, the
Kyrie Eleison, the Communion, the last Incensing, the Prayer of
the Dismissal, and the Recession into the Sacristy. The Lecture
of St. Cyril consists chiefly of an exposition of this portion of the
Liturgy, a considerable part of which we will proceed to quote :

"After this the priest cries aloud, ' Lift up your hearts.' . . . Then ye
answer, ' We lift them up unto the Lord.' . . . Then the priest says, ' Let
us give thanks to the Lord.' . . . Then ye say, ' It is meet and right.' . . .
After this we make mention of heaven, and earth, and sea ; of the sun and
moon ; of the stars and all the creation, rational and irrational, visible and
invisible ; of Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Dominions, Principalities, Powers,
Thrones ; of the Cherubim with many faces ; in effect repeating that call of
David's, Magnify the Lord with me. We make mention also of the Sera-
phim, whom Esaias by the Holy Ghost beheld encircling the throne of
God, and with two of their wings veiling their countenances, and with two
their feet, and with two flying, who cried, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of
Sabaoth. For this cause rehearse we this confession of God delivered down
to us from the Seraphim, that we may join in hymns with the hosts of the
world above.

" Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we call
upon the merciful God to send forth his Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 62$

before him ; that he may make the Bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine
the Blood of Christ ; for whatsoever the Holy Ghost has touched is sancti-
fied and changed.

"Then, after the spiritual sacrifice is perfected, the Bloodless Service
upon that Sacrifice of Propitiation, we entreat God for the common peace
of the church, for the tranquillity of the world ; for kings, for soldiers and
allies ; for the sick ; for the afflicted ; and, in a word, for all who stand in
need of succor we all supplicate and offer this Sacrifice.

"Then we commemorate also those who have fallen asleep before us —
first, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, that at their prayers and in-
tervention God would receive our petition. Afterwards also on behalf of
the holy Fathers and Bishops who have fallen asleep before us, and, in a
word, of all who in past years have fallen asleep among us, believing that it
will be a very great advantage to the souls for whom the supplication is
put up while that Holy and most Awful Sacrifice is presented.

" And I wish to persuade you by an illustration. For I know that
many say, What is a soul profited which departs from this world either
with sins or without sins, if it be commemorated in the prayer ? Now surely"
if, when a king had banished certain who had given him offence, their con-
nections would weave a crown and offer it to him on behalf of those under
his vengeance, would he not grant a respite to their punishments ? In the
same way we, when we offer to him our supplications for those who have
fallen asleep, though they be sinners, weave no crown, but offer up Christ,
sacrificed for our sins, propitiating our merciful God both for them and for
ourselves. '

"Then, after these things, we say that prayer which the Saviour deliv-
ered to his own disciples. [Here follows a long exposition of the Lord's
Prayer.]

"After this the priest says, 'Holy things to holy men.' Holy are the
gifts presented, since they have been visited by the Holy Ghost ; holy are
you also, having been vouchsafed the Holy Ghost ; the holy things, there-
fore, correspond to the holy persons. Then ye say, ' One is Holy, one is the
Lord, Jesus Christ'.' . . .

"After this ye hear the chanter with a sacred melody inviting you to
the communion of the Holy Mysteries, and saying, Oh ! taste and see that the
Lord is good. Trust not the decision to thy bodily palate ; no, but to faith
unfaltering ; for when we taste we are bidden to taste, not bread and wine,
but the sign of the Body and Blood of Christ."

This last expression means that the sacramental species sig-
nify to the senses the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of
Christ.

St. Cyril then instructs the neophytes how to approach and
receive communion, directs them to wait for the completion of
the prayers and to make a thanksgiving-, closing with a short ex-
hortation to perseverance in a holy life and the frequentation of
the sacrament.

The Real Presence and the true Sacrifice of the Body and
Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Mysteries are clearly

VOL. xxxiv. — 40

626 TRADITION OF THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM [Feb.,

and sufficiently expressed in the quotations already given. We
will add, however, a few more from the text of the Liturgy :

" For the proposed, precious, heavenly, ineffable, spotless, glorious, fear-
ful, terrible, divine gifts, and the salvation of the priest that stands by and
offers them, let us supplicate the Lord our God. Send down the same most
Holy Ghost, Lord, upon us, and upon these holy and proposed gifts, that,
coming upon them with his holy and good and glorious presence, he may
hallow and make this bread the holy Body of thy Christ, and this cup
the precious Blood of thy Christ.

" Oh ! taste and see that the Lord is good : he that is broken and not
divided, distributed to the faithful and not consumed.

"Lord our God, the Heavenly Bread, the Life of the world, I have
sinned against heaven and before thee, and am «not worthy to partake thy
spotless mysteries ; but do thou, who art a compassionate God, make me
worthy by thy grace to communicate without condemnation in thy holy
Body and precious Blood, for the remission of sins and eternal life.

" Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and stand with fear and trembling,
and ponder nothing earthly in itself ; for the King of Kings and Lord of
Lords, Christ our God, cometh forward to be sacrificed and to be given for
food to the faithful.

" Lord and Master, thou who dost visit us with mercies and loving-
kindnesses, and who hast freely given boldness to us thy humble and sin-
ful and unworthy servants to stand before thy holy altar, and to offer to
thee the fearful and unbloody sacrifice for our sins and for the ignorance of
the people, look upon me, etc.

"According to the multitude of thy mercy receive us who approach to
thy holy altar, that we may be worthy to offer to thee gifts and sacrifices
for our own ignorances and for those of the people ; and grant us, O Lord,
with all fear and with a good conscience to set before thee this spiritual and
unbloody sacrifice, which receiving into thy holy and super-celestial and
rational altar, for a savor of spiritual sweetness, send down to us in its
stead the grace of thine all-holy Spirit. Yea, O God, look upon us, and
have regard to this our reasonable sacrifice, and receive, as thou didst receive
the gifts of Abel, the sacrifices of Noe, the priestly offerings of Moses and
Aaron, the peace-offerings of Samuel, the repentance of David, the incense
of Zacharias ; as thou didst receive from the hand of thine Apostle this
true worship, thus receive also from the hands of us sinners, in thy good-
ness, these gifts that are laid before thee. And grant that our oblations may
be well pleasing to thee and hallowed by the Holy Ghost, for a propitiation
of our transgressions, and of the ignorances of the people, and for the re-
pose of the souls that have fallen asleep.

" Master, have mercy upon us ; since we are full of fear and dread, when
about to stand before thy holy altar and to offer this fearful and unbloody
sacrifice. . . . And do thou, uncovering the veils of enigmas which mysti-
cally surround this holy rite, make them gloriously manifest to us, etc.

"We, therefore, also sinners, . . . offer to thee, O Lord, this tremen-
dous and unbloody sacrifice . . . for thy holy places, . . . especially for
the holy Sion, the mother of all churches ; and for thy holy Catholic
Apostolic Church throughout the world ; . . . and for the peace and sta-

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 627

bility of the whole world, and of the holy churches of God, and for that
for which each has brought his offering, or hath in his mind ; and for the
people that stand around, and for all both men and women."

Eusebius, in his account of the dedication of Constantine's
basilica, which has been quoted already in the article on " Chris-
tian Jerusalem " (Part v., November, 1881), says that the " priests
of God " — i.e., the bishops — " by UNBLOODY SACRIFICES AND MYS-
TICAL IMMOLATIONS sought to propitiate God." These bishops
were, as he informs us, from Macedonia, Pannonia, Mysia, Per-
sia, Bithynia, Thrace, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Syria, Mesopotamia,
Phoenicia, Arabia, and Egypt. The patriarchates of Antioch
and Alexandria, the exarchate of Pontus, and other outlying
provinces were represented in this assembly. Arians were mixed
up with Catholics. Yet there was no difficulty in all either cele-
brating or taking part in the celebration of the liturgy in the
churches of Jerusalem. In fact, there were only four liturgies
in use at this time in the East : those of St. James, St. John, St.
Mark, and St. Thaddseus. The Liturgy of St. James was used'
throughout the patriarchate of Antioch and the exarchate of
Pontus, that of St. John in the exarchate of Ephesus, that of St.
Thaddseus in the remoter East, and that of St. Mark in the pa-
triarchate of Alexandria. They are all so much alike that a bi-
shop using any one of them would have no difficulty in celebrat-
ing, with the assistance of some of his own clergy, anywhere ;
and the people could assist at Mass celebrated according to any
rite, without perplexity or confusion. The Liturgy of St. James,
therefore, as we have it now, and as it was used in the Church
of Jerusalem and commented on by St. Cyril in the fourth cen-
tury, represents the doctrine and usage of the universal church
of that period, and consequently of the apostolic beginning of the
universal church in Jerusalem, the original source of this com-
mon belief and practice.

In its present form, with the exception of a few minor additions
of a later date, it is, in the opinion of learned writers on liturgy,
the most ancient of the extant primitive liturgies mentioned
above, and also prior to the Latin Liturgy of St.* Peter, which
was probably derived and modified from the original Greek Lit-
urgy of the Roman Church, which, it seems reasonable to sup-
pose, was yery similar to that of Antioch and Jerusalem. The
Caesarean Liturgy of St. Basil, derived from the Liturgy of St.
James, and still in use on certain days throughout the four East-
ern patriarchates and in Russia, dates from the latter part of the

628 TRADITION OF THE CHURCPI OF JERUSALEM [Feb.,

fourth century ; the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the one now
in general use in both Catholic and schismatical churches of the
Greek rite, which is a modified form of the Basilian, dates from
the fifth century. The Roman Canon of the Mass received its
last finishing touch from St. Gregory the Great at the begin-
ning of the seventh. The Liturgy of St. Mark, says Mr. Neale,
" with the exception of certain manifestly interpolated ^passages,
had probably assumed its present appearance by the end of the
second century." The Liturgy of St. James, confessedly the
most ancient of all, must have been brought to perfection at a
still earlier period — one early enough to account for its accept-
ance by the Church of Antioch and its very wide prevalence be-
yond as well as within the limits of that patriarchate. It does
not seem probable that during the third, or even the latter half
of the second, century, when ^Elia Capitolina had sunk into the
position of a small and miserable town, and Cassarea was the
civil and ecclesiastical metropolis of Palestine, even Ccesarea
would have received a new liturgy from the Church of Jerusa-
lem, much less the great Church of Antioch, that of Csesarea in
Cappadocia, and the other great churches where the Liturgy of
St. James was in use at the epoch of the Nicene Council. It
seems far more probable that it was brought into its ultimate
form during the episcopate of St. James, while Jerusalem re-
mained a great centre of influence, and was thus the original and
primitive liturgical model imitated by apostles and early succes-
sors of apostles in framing and completing the other great litur-
gies of Alexandria, Ephesus, and Rome.

The question concerning the time when the Anaphora, or
Canon, was reduced to writing, and copies permitted to be taken
by bishops and priests, is quite distinct from that of its first fixed
and settled formation. We do not suppose that in the earliest
age a Missal was used at the altar, but rather that the officiating
clergy learned and knew by heart everything which they recited
or chanted — something which cannot seem at all incredible to
those who know the habits of Orientals.

Neither do we depend on the probable evidence for any par-
ticular time 'and manner of liturgical growth and development
for the value of the testimony which the existing liturgies of the
third and fourth centuries furnish to apostolic doctrine and prac-
tice. The witness of the Church of Jerusalem, expressed in its
liturgy and in the words of Eusebius and St. Cyril, is irrefraga-
ble, as even the soundest Protestant scholarship and criticism
attest abundantly. No reasonable evidence or argument has

1 882.] CONCERNING SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE. 629

even been adduced or can be found to show that St. Proclus,
the successor of St. John Chrysostom, was not literally accurate
in the statement which sums up the belief of all Catholic antiquity
in the following words :

" Our Saviour having been assumed into heaven, the apostles, before
they were dispersed through the world, coming together with agreeing
minds, gave themselves up to prayer during an entire day, and since they
had found that much consolation was contained in that mystical sacrifice
of the Lord's Body, with great diffuseness and a long circuit of words they
chanted Mass ; for that, equally with the ordinance of teaching, they
thought ought to be preferred to all other things, as the more excellent.
Therefore, with the greatest alacrity and with much joy occupying their
time, they applied themselves diligently to this divine sacrifice, continually
mindful of these words of our Lord, saying, This is my Body ; and Whosoever
eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood remaineth in me and I in him.
Wherefore, also, with a contrite spirit, they chanted many prayers, fervently
imploring the divine favor " (De Div. Lit.)

This passage may serve as a comment on the inspired text of
St. Luke, who describes what was done in the Church of Antioch,
in imitation of the Church of Jerusalem : " Ministering to the
Lord and fasting " (Acts xiii. i, 2). The Greek word is Xeirovp-
yovvTcav, which never had and cannot have any meaning in
connection with Christian practices besides that which Erasmus
and the " Orthodox Confession " of the Greeks give it: "sacri-
ficantes Domino," " sacrum officium celebrantibus — i.e., hostiam
incruentam Deo offerentibus." When, therefore, St. Paul, writ-
ing to the Hebrew Christians of Jerusalem, Palestine, and other
places, of Melchisedech, of Christ, of the blessings of the New
Covenant which had superseded the Old, says, " We have an al-
tar" he means the altar of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. When he
exhorts, " Let us offer the Sacrifice of Praise to God continually,"
he means the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The true sense and meaning
of the New Testament is made known with certainty by the pure
and clear tradition preserved in Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ
sealed this testament with his own blood. DE SlON EXIBIT LEX,
ET VERBUM DOMINI DE JERUSALEM.

CONCLUDED.

630 AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [Feb.,

AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.

ON the shore of the Lake of the Two Mountains, overshadow-
ed by the everlasting hills, stands the Indian village of Oka, its
small brown houses sharply denned against a high, semicircular
ridge of golden-yellow sand. This ridge, which rises from the
bank of the Ottawa River and slopes gradually upward to the
foot of the mountain, is called Calvary. The record of Oka has
furnished a dark page of Canadian history. The strange story of
the Oka Indians' fantastic claim to the estates of the Seminary
of St. Sulpice are well known to many English-speaking Catho-
lics ; still, as recent events have awakened a fresh interest in the
subject, it may not be out of place to give some account of these
matters.

Every student of Canadian history will remember that in 1663
the Compagnie de Montr6al gave the Island of Montreal to the
Seminary of St. Sulpice by deed of donation —

" In consideration of the great blessings it has pleased God to shower
upon the said Island of Montreal, for the conversion of the Indians, the in-
struction and edification of the French inhabitants thereof through the
ministry of the late Messrs. Olier, de la Marguerie, de Vanty, and other as-
sociates, laboring for the past twenty years," and " because the gentlemen
of the Seminary of St. Sulpice have labored by their zeal to maintain this
good work, and have exposed their persons and made heavy contributions
for the good of the colony."

The members of the Compagnie de Montr6al made gift to the
said gentlemen of the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Paris of

" All their rights of property which they have and may have in the
said Island of Montreal, to enjoy and dispose of the same as incommu-
table proprietors, according to their good will and pleasure." It is further
added: "The domain and proprietorship of the said island shall be insepa-
rably united to the said seminary, and shall not be separated therefrom un-
der any circumstances whatever."

By letters-patent, March, 1677, Louis, King of France and Na-
varre, granted the establishment of a community of Sulpicians in
Montreal, " there to labor for the conversion and instruction of
our subjects," and also approved the donation of the gth of
March, 1663, declaring " to be held in bond and mortmain for
ever the said land and seigniory of Montreal, as dedicated and
consecrated to God," and that it be " for ever part and parcel
of their society."

1 882.] AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 631

In those days the Island of Montreal was not, even in their
conception of the term, a home for the Indians, who in the spring
and fall would come in swarms from their distant hunting,
grounds to buy and sell at the trading-post of Ville Marie.
Fleets of canoes then covered the St. Lawrence, painted warriors
stalked in all directions, wigwams sprang up under the shelter-
ing walls from which floated the standard of France, and the
work of civilization went on apace. It was in view of these half-
yearly migrations that the sons of the saintly Olier opened their
first mission on the spot where now stands the Grand Seminary
and Montreal College. Two small white towers, venerable with
age and holy memories, are still guarding the gateway of the
seminary garden, precious among the few remaining landmarks
of the old regime in Canada. In these towers the venerable
foundress of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, and
those brave women who shared her labors, toiled at the instruc-
tion, spiritual and temporal, of the Indian maidens, and lent their
valuable assistance to the pious work of their benefactors, the
gentlemen of the seminary, in this their mission of Our Lady of
the Snows. Some of the more intelligent and more faithful of
their neophytes gave up their nomadic life and attached them-
selves to the mission, so that in time quite a little village grew
up around the religious houses.

But, alas ! even to this garden came the serpent. The rule of
life at the mission was very different from that governing the
trading-station, where savage ignorance was taken advantage of
and savage love of drink cultivated. The Indians, who had been
docile, became demoralized, a prey to drunkenness, and in a spirit
of charity the community in 1696 removed their mission to Sault-
au-Recollet, on the Riviere des Prairies, about six miles from the
city, where it continued to exist under the title of Our Lady of
Lorette. It was, however, too near the venders of firewater, and
in 1716 the seminary requested the king to change the mission.
This change was resolved upon, and MM. de Vaudreuil and
Begon, the governor and the intendant, were commanded

"To grant to the seminary three square leagues of land adjoining the
lands granted to M. Duguy and ascending along the Lake of the Two
Mountains, to be given on condition that they do build the church and a
fort according to the plans which would be furnished to them by MM.
de Vaudreuil and Begon, and that such buildings be completed within two
years."

On the 26th of September, 1733, a new grant of land adjoining the
above mentioned was made to the seminary by the king : " To

632 AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [Feb.,

have and to hold, the said ecclesiastics, their successors and as-
signs for ever, as a fief and seigniory, with the right of superior,
mean, and inferior jurisdiction'"; and as there was no longer any
necessity for the fort above mentioned, the king exempted them
from building it. To the Lake of the Two Mountains, then, in
1721 came the priests of St. Sulpice and the Sisters of the Con-
gregation, and established a mission under the title of the An-
nunciation of the Blessed Virgin, around which grew up in time
the village of Oka. In summer and winter, seed-time and har-
vest, these workers in the vineyard of the Lord toiled on, studying
the languages, catechising, preaching, baptizing, clothing, feed-
ing, caring for poor Indians, whom they accepted as a charge
from Him whose servants they were.

Then came the conquest by England. Under the capitulation
signed by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor-General of Canada,
representing the King of France, and by General Amherst on
behalf of the King of England, French subjects were allowed to
retain possession of their lands or to sell them and return to
France, carrying with them the proceeds of the sale. The article
of the capitulation relating to the estates of the priests of the
Seminary of St. Sulpice was granted by General Amherst as fol-
lows :

" They shall be masters to dispose of their estates and to send the pro-
duce thereof, as well as their persons and all that belongs to them, to
France." To this his British Majesty conceded, " provided the priests of
the Seminary of Montreal do continue to enjoy their estates, but without
any dependency from the seminary at Paris."

In conformity with this intimation of the wishes of the King of
England a deed of donation was effected, and the Seminary of
Montreal became absolutely independent of that of Paris. In
the royal instructions to Governor Guy Carleton it is set forth

" That the societies of the Romish (sic) priests called seminaries, in Quebec
and Montreal, should continue to possess and occupy their houses of resi-
dence and all other lands and houses to which they were lawfully entitled
on the 1 3th September, 1759." *

The title of ordinances granted them is worded as follows : " To confirm
their title to the fief and seigniory of the Island of Montreal, the fief and seign-
iory of the Lake of the TIVO Mountains, the fief and seigniory of St. Sulpice,
in this province"

The gentlemen of the seminary were in all things benefactors
to the Indians. They allowed them to cultivate their lands for
their own benefit, gave them seed and pecuniary assistance in

* Mirror of Parliament ', vol. xxi. p. 545.

i882.] AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 633

many ways, permitted them to take firewood for their own use,
but prohibited them from selling it or performing other acts of
proprietorship, considering themselves proprietors. In all cases
of dispute the claims of the Indians to any rights in the seign-
iory were rejected by the authorities, their only claim being
distinctly set forth in these words of the ordinance : " Mission of
the Lake of the Two Mountains for the instruction and spiritual
care of the Algonquin and Iroquois Indians." All who have seen
anything of the Indian character know that the Indians hate
work. This fact being well known, certain Orangemen and
other evil-disposed persons of Montreal and its vicinity, aided
and encouraged by Charles Chinquy, the disgraced cure of Lon-
gueil, set to work to utilize it. These men introduced a Pro-
testant pervert as missionary into Oka. " See," said they to
the Indians, " this land is yours ; the seminary holds it in trust
for you, and gives you in return religious instruction. Once
you become Protestants the occupation of the priests will be
gone, and with it their excuse to remain in Oka and lord it over
you, who have a better right than they."

Among the Iroquois was the son of an old chief, one Jose
Onaskenrat, who from his earliest years had given promise of
more depth of character and firmness of purpose than usually
fall to men of his race. The Sulpicians, discovering his talent,
had given him at their own expense an education at the Montreal
College. We shall see how he repaid them.

On the 3 ist of July, 1868, the Algonquins of the Lake of the
Two Mountains memorialized the government, claiming the
rights their forefathers held, and asking " that the domain be un-
der their own control, instead of the priests controlling them."
On the 8th of August of the same year the Iroquois sent a similar
petition to Lord Monck, and among the prominent signatures
was the name of Jose Onaskenrat. This latter petition charged
the seminary :

" ist, With having refused to make concessions to the Indians ; 2d, with
having refused them wood for their own use and consumption (whilst they
actually sold large quantities of it under pretence of opening a road) ; 3d,
with having refused them wood for lumber, whilst they are selling it them-
selves ; 4th, with having revendicated a canoe made by an Indian and sold by
him ; 5th, with having exacted tithes from the Indians ; 6th, with having
prevented the location of the property of a poor Indian widow, so as to get
possession of it, and with having paid her one-half of the value of the
rent."

The Secretary of State wrote to the superior of the seminary,
who forwarded explanations as follows :

634 AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [Feb.,

" We leave to the Indians the enjoyment of our lands for their require-
ments ; we allow them to take lumber and firewood for their own use ; the
only indemnity that we exact from them is the twenty-seventh part of
their grain produce, which is the amount levied from the Canadians and
other cessionaries under the appellation of dime. We give them in alms,
in seed, etc., more than we receive from them. In a word, we act toward
them in the spirit of charity that we feel bound to show them. We cannot
allow encroachment on our property. We strictly prohibit the sale of
wood by the Indians ; for that reason we revendicated a canoe sold by one
of them. We have a very limited number of pine-trees for making canoes.
Indians can obtain permission to make canoes for their own use. We for-
bid them to sell them. As regards the rental of the widow's land, the Cana-
dian who had rented it could not come to live among the Indians without our
permission. He offered no guarantee. We used our discretion, and, after
having caused an evaluation of the land to be made by a farmer, we paid
the amount of the award, and in so doing we acted in accordance with the
oft-repeated desire of the widow."

This refutation was of course accepted.

In 1868 Jose Ononksothoso, an Iroquois chief, accompanied
by some of his braves, marched to the domain of the gentlemen
of the seminary. T he chief had stakes driven in different places,
and then solemnly awarded to each Indian present the piece of
land which he would in future have a right to occupy ; further,
in his capacity of chief, authorizing them to take immediate pos-
session, and telling them that their lands, as well as the domain,
did not belong to the priests but to the Indians, and that the
chiefs had been authorized to put them in possession of property
of which they had been too long deprived.

From the government came repeated communications to the
Indians, advising them to respect the rights of the seminary.
At length the government gave them the option of removing to
another locality where land would be granted to them, and ar-
rangements might be made with the seminary to allow them an
indemnity for such improvements and erections as they had
effected in Oka. This, though considered more favorably by the
Algonquins, was declined by the Iroquois, who continued to
send petition after petition to Ottawa. To these protestations
Mr. (now Sir) Hector Langevin returned answer, reiterating
the statement that the land was given to the seminary by the
King of France, and recognized as theirs by act of Parliament,
consequently the Indians have no right of property thereon ; and
reminding them that, by order of council, lands were set apart for
the Iroquois of the Lake of Two Mountains and of Caughnawaga,
situated in the township of Wexford, where, provided they be-

1 882.] AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 635

came actual settlers, each family might be located on a farm-
lot of sufficient extent, and that for the Algonquins there were
reserves on the river Desert and the Gatineau. The malcon-
tents, however, declined to compromise, and the ringleaders
started for Ottawa, which visit they supplemented by a peti-
tion more senseless even than its predecessors. Sir John Young,
however, paid no attention to what he called " the frivolity of
their chimerical claims."

Years wore on. Ministry after ministry rose and waned.
From high authorities came one report after another, always
deciding in favor of the seminary. The firebrands who incited
the Indians to rebel kept up the cry of partiality. The report of
the Minister of Justice was declared valueless because he was a
Catholic, and, as such, a " slave to the priests."

An eminent Protestant judge of Montreal was then asked to
decide the question, and, after going through a long and thor-
ough investigation of the whole matter, closes his report with the
following paragraph :

" Under these circumstances it seems undeniable that as professing
Protestants the Oka Indians, though residents of the mission, have no right
"whatever to claim fro?n the seminary the only charge appointed by the con-
firmatory statute — namely, the instruction and spiritual charge of the Roman
Catholic mission — and that any such allotments which the Indians may oc-
cupy for residence or cultivation in or near the mission are not missionary
rights, but seigniorial and proprietary, and subject to be governed by the
terms of the location, permission being granted to them by the owners of
the property occupied by the Indian tenants."

The Protestant missionaries held their ground in Oka ; they
even helped themselves to wood from the forest of the Sulpicians,
and began to build a conventicle, which was quietly pulled down
by the owners of the land and of the stolen timber. A large
proportion of the Indians became Protestants. They met sol-
emnly in a house of the village, then rose and walked out, there-
by signifying that they had left the Catholic Church. They
made themselves a belt to symbolize their ownership of the land,
and worked a dog on either end to guard it ; and then buried the
belt, though, as the head of a department in Ottawa said, " they
might continue to make belts without much coming of it." The
gentlemen of the seminary continued to befriend them, and start-
ed a work-room in which Indian girls were taught to make rugs,
knit, sew, etc. Some of their work took prizes at the Dominion
Exhibition. Besides the work-room the school of the Congrega-
tion Nuns afforded them a free education. The Christian Bro-

636 AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [Feb.,

thers taught the young boys of the mission, and the parochial
work went on as usual.

On the I4th of June, 1879, at about half-past three o'clock in the
morning, the dwellers in Oka were awakened by the sound of a
cannon, and, rising, saw in the courtyard of the seminary a never-
to-be-forgotten spectacle. From the stable, from the roof of the
seminary, from the massive and time-honored church leaped
tongues of flame that ran along the buildings, hissing and crack-
ling as they devoured all obstacles in their path. Through the
air flew a living ball of fire that, lodging in the hay-loft, lit up the
prospect with a lurid glare, and showed the incendiaries as they
moved about intent on their fiendish work. From the shadows
silent figures came creeping to their deed of destruction, casting
here and there brands of ruthless fire. The priest, that kindly
man, who had lived among them and been so good, so self-deny-
ing, so just, and yet so merciful to them, was aroused, and, com-
ing upon the scene, was seized by one of these Indians, who
struck at him, and, were it not for the timely arrival of a house-
servant, wrould have cleft open his skull with an axe. The In-
dians then- cut the rubber hose with their axes, laying about
right and left in their work of destruction, and dancing with
cries of joy as the belfry of the old church fell. From the
window of a not very distant cottage might be seen the pale
face of the Methodist minister, as, surrounded by his family,
he surveyed the scene. Out upon the shining river floated in
the distance a small canoe, bearing away to the village of Hud-
son Chief Joseph Onaskenrat, the instigator of this worthy
scheme. And so the night wore on, and the morning sun rose
upon a smoking heap of ruins where there had stood a noble
church, and a house the lawful property of loyal subjects of the
English sovereign.

At Oka now there is no evidence of that wicked deed of ar-
son. Along the water's edge runs a broad wall of embankment ;
a few yards beyond it rises a massive church of gray and red stone,
of elegant design, tastefully frescoed in subdued tints harmoniz-
ing with the shades of the exterior. It is not yet completed, and
the little sacristy does week-day duty for a chapel ; on Sunday
Mass is sung in the old school-house. Near the church stands
the seminary, a very spacious gray stone building, having in its
rear the old courtyard where the late Rev. Mr. Lacan was so
nearly murdered. In front of the seminary, between it and the
water's edge, is a magnificent avenue of elms, ending in a sum-
mer-house built on a point running out into the lake — the point
on which King Louis wanted his fort built in days of old.

i882.] AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 637

On this point for many years stood an ancient cannon ; there
had been two supplied to the seminary, and the Indians had sto-
len one some time before the fire. In an account of the fire a
well-known ultra-Protestant paper of Montreal strove to palliate
the conduct of the Indians, and cited as an item in their favor
.that the Sulpicians used firearms, giving as evidence the cannon,
always ready, standing on the terrace in front of their house.
Some benevolent beings started for Oka, ablaze with righteous
indignation. They determined to investigate this affair. They
sailed over the silvery waters of the lake. There, truly, was the
cannon pointed at them. But Britons of the Exeter Hall type
are not easily daunted. They would face the cannon ; they
would land at the risk of being blown to pieces. They landed.
All being quiet, and no blackrobe in sight, they cautiously crept
up to the dreaded implement of warfare. One more venturesome
than the rest approached its mouth and looked in. He found —
what? A ball? A shell? A cartridge? No — a swallows nest,
with four young swallows angrily chirping at the intrusion! That
man was restored in safety to the bosom of his family. The can-
non is no longer there, but the celebrated canoe is on the shore —
a relic of old times at Oka.

The Congregation convent is a small, old-fashioned house,
quaint in its style and breathing of the past. One seems to feel
in it the presence of those holy women, the pioneers of this use-
ful sisterhood, and the gentle face of the Venerable Sister Bour-
geoys looks down from walls that might have sheltered her im-
mediate successors ; for this house was the school of the nuns so
early as 1721. Opposite, and on the river-bank, is the convent of
the Little Sisters of St. Joseph, a community devoted to useful
and charitable works, and who here dispense the alms of the gen-
tlemen of the seminary and visit the poor of the place. West
of this is the village of the " Suisses." There are still about
seventy families of Protestant Indians under the direction of a
French-Canadian Methodist minister.

Dissension, unfortunately, tore asunder the camp of this
person in the shape of the Baptist doctrine. Chief Louis Sana-
thion became a Baptist minister and drew to his creed about
thirty-five families. They were much better behaved and more
amenable to reason than their Wesleyan Methodist brethren, and
last October listened to the offer made them by government, and
left Oka to settle in Muskoka. It is probable that during the
coming summer 'the Methodist's flock will see matters in the
same light and remove themselves from the estates, on which they

638 AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [Feb.,

have not a shadow of right to remain. There are about thirty
families who remain constant to the faith ; some among them
have the appearance of being exceedingly respectable people.
The village has now many pretty houses, and the sound of the
hammer and chisel is constantly heard in its streets. The land
in the vicinity is good, and the inducements offered to farmers
are strong. The place bids fair to grow rapidly in size and
prosperity.

About three miles from Oka is the monastery of the Trap-
pists, to whom the seminary has granted a thousand acres of
land. Their monastery stands on the mountain-side, overlooking
one of the grandest landscapes of this eastern Canada. On the
slope in front of the monastery the monks go on with their
ceaseless toil, their white cassocks gleaming among the trees as
they follow the plough over the new land. Here and there is
the brown robe of a lay brother bending his shaven crown over
the earth in the monotonous employment of picking up stones.
Not far off a picturesque mill stands in a little ravine, and at the
gurgling waters of the mill-stream a herd of cattle are drinking,
driven by a good brother in brown, with his cassock pinned up
above his knees.

The special feature of Oka, however, is its Calvary. On the
high mountain which shelters the village to the north a Sulpi-
cian priest, M. Picquet, some hundred and ten or twenty years
ago erected the stations of the Passion. At the foot of the moun-
tain, where a shining rivulet flows over the yellow sand-hill, is
planted a lofty but plain cross. Further on, going through a
shady forest-path, you come to a small white chapel, where in bas-
relief is depicted the scene of our Lord's agony in Gethseraani.
At regular intervals along the ascent are four of these chapels
containing pictures of our Lord's Passion. The path becomes
steeper and more rugged, the forest more dark and drear, until
on the very summit of the mountain you emerge to find yourself
on a small plain in front of three white chapels wherein are
vividly portrayed the scenes which accomplished the purchase
of man's redemption. To this place come many pilgrims. The
I4th of September of each year sees the advent of thousands.
On that day the river is black with boats and canoes, the village
is crammed to its full extent. People bivouac on the hillsides
and by the water's edge. Over six thousand of the faithful from
the neighboring districts meet at Oka on that day and ^go in pro-
cession to adore the God of Calvary.

High Mass in the school-house, gravely called by the people

i882.] AT OKA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 639

" The Cathedral," is, if once attended, never to be forgotten. You
enter a low doorway, and bless yourself with holy water from a
stoup made of porcupine-quills and birch-bark. You kneel be-
side an old squaw whose head, in obedience to the apostolic in-
junction, is covered with an ample shawl, her withered neck
clasped by a chain of glittering beads, and her brown hands
swiftly telling her crimson rosary. As Mass proceeds the
strange, wild wail of Indian music rises through the church, now
sinking in the deep voices of the men, now rising in the shrill
treble of the women. As you bend your head at the sound of
" Saiatatokenti, Saiatatokenti, Saiatatokenti, niio Sesennio Sa-
baoth " — " Sanctus, Sanctus," etc. — you feel with the Psalmist,
" How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts."

More impressive still is the Mass at daybreak in the little
sacristy, where white man and red kneel together and receive
their one Lord, coming to them in the mystery of the Eucharist
to fill the humble chapel with his glorious presence. The faint
streaks of early dawn stealing in at the eastern window reveal
the bowed head of the priest wrapped in earnest thanksgiving
and in prayer for those entrusted to his guidance. From outside
comes the plashing sound of the waves against the shore. Over
Calvary the day is breaking in streaks of golden light; opposite,
on the Vaudreuil side, the green hills are covered by a light veil
of silvery mist rising from the water. Dew is dropping from the
giant branches of the old elms. Here and there a canoe shoots
over the trembling surface of the lake. Nature is bestirring her-
self, and whispering to man, " Let everything that hath breath
praise the Lord."

At nine o'clock the pier is all astir. All the idlers of the vil-
lage and some of the workers turn out to see the boat off. The
Methodist minister is there; his latest convert is there in brown
gloves. Here a knot of squaws discuss the cheapest market in
which to buy beads ; there some Indian boys playfully punch each
other's ribs at an imminent risk of tumbling over the wharf. A
goodly sprinkling of French-Canadians are interspersed among
the Indians. And now there is a shout. The boat moves off,
past the golden sand-hills, past the church, past Mount Calvary
with its dazzling white chapels and its symbols of the Crucifixion.
On past the monastery with its workers, away into the bend of
the river, away from Oka with its sad past and hopeful present,
we float on the waters of the St. Lawrence and dream of the
early days of Ville Marie.

640 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, by Mary H. A. Allies.

PART II.— YOUTH STEALS ON.

CHAPTER VII.

BOUND TO ITALY.

IT was a lovely August morning. The sun's rays played on
the sea's blue waves, and its golden beams seemed now to sink
into the restless waters, now to rise to their surface. The fresh
sea air blew an invigorating breeze on the coast, and gently
swayed the orange, myrtle, and pomegranate trees which, with
their masses of flower and blossom, gave the long terrace quite
a southern appearance. This terrace was situated about a hun-
dred feet above the sea's level, on a crumbling rock of that parti-
cular red sandstone which, combined with a very green vegeta-
tion, gives its character to the coast of Devonshire in the neigh-
borhood of Torquay. Dambleton Lodge, itself a mixture of cas-
tle and cottage, in no particular style of architecture, looked
pleasant enough opening out on to the terrace. It required no
great effort of imagination to picture a castle as having kept
watch over the rock and the surrounding cottages in olden
times. Sylvia was walking up and down the smooth lawn
which extended all along the top of the terrace. The morning
dew was no longer lying like pearly drops on this natural car-
pet. The sun stood high in the heavens, and a large straw hat
sheltered Sylvia's eyes from its rays. It was difficult to tell
whether her altered expression was due to its shade or to some
inward cause. Her beauty, indeed, had not suffered. The deli-
cately carved features, the pretty color, the shining eyes and
rich, fair hair were still the same, but a certain winning expres-
sion which had been her great charm formerly had vanished
and given way to a look of proud reserve. She had resigned
herself to the loss of Wilderich, though when she heard that he
was engaged to Isidora, and shortly afterwards that their mar-
i 'age had taken place, his fickleness and superficiality struck her
as fast anything she could have imagined. A fortnight previous-
ly Isidora had briefly written the news to her. When Sylvia

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 641

had read the letter she passed it on to Mrs. Darableton, saying
in a tone of deep scorn : " Only fancy, Charlotte, my having lov-
ed such a man ! "

Mrs. Dambleton looked at her with the greatest surprise, for
Sylvia had never said a syllable about any love affair.

" And, worse than this, Charlotte, I was under the delusion
that he loved me."

" My poor, dear Sylvia!" said Mrs. Dambleton tenderly, run-
ning her eyes over the note.

" Don't pity me, and never let us allude to it again," said
Sylvia abruptly. " It is a bitter dose, but it shall put an end to
my caring for people ; and this will be something. Of course I
cannot accept Isidora's invitation to the wedding. You will let
me stay with you till the autumn, won't you, and then —

" Well, and then?" exclaimed Mrs. Dambleton anxiously, ob-
serving Sylvia's hesitation. " Of course you will stay with me.
I won't let you go away at all."

" But you must," exclaimed Sylvia. " I hope to find a place
as governess or companion here in England. What is the use of
my talents, if they can't help me to be independent? "

Mrs. Dambleton gazed at this elegant and spoilt creature, who
fancied that she could so easily rest contented in a subordinate
position, and answered quietly : " Later on you may think about
it. For the present we will remain together."

Sylvia got up, kissed her kind friend, and betook herself to
her room.

So it was really true that for the second time in her life her
cup of happiness was dashed from her lips, yet her feelings were
very different to what they had been on that previous occasion.
She had given Aurel her heart's first freshness, whereas much
vanity, self-seeking, and worldliness mingled with her love for
Wilderich. " Aurel loves me " had been a thought which stirred
up the depths of her soul with gladness, and she had not troubled
herself about what the world would say. The thought, " Wil-
derich loves me," made her exult as though with the conscious-
ness of a great triumph, and she revelled in the feeling that she
had captivated him and inspired him with a great passion, that
the world would envy her, and that through him and with him
she was to shine in society. On the previous occasion she had
been disturbed out of a sweet dream by stern reality, and now
she seemed to awake from a state of mental inebriation to a sense
of her nakedness and humiliation. Aurel had wounded her heart :
Wilderich wounded her self-love. That very day, perhaps

VOL. XXXIV. — 41

642 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

•
at that very hour, Wilderich was to become Isidora's husband.

How could people be so heartless ? Could either of them look
for happiness ? What a pitch worldliness and selfishness must
have reached in both of them ! Like the Roman augurs with
their false predictions, would they not secretly laugh to scorn the
mere notion of sympathy or love? Sylvia walked uneasily up
and down the terrace as she asked herself these questions. From
time to time she leaned upon the railing and looked down into the
deep blue sea, which, in its expansive restlessness, is so true an
image of the human heart. Man also craves unceasingly for
something that is boundless. But Sylvia did not lift up her
eyes from sea to heaven ; her heart did not seek out God above
and beyond the wayward and changing circumstances of life.
She had not, indeed, lost her faith, but she had become lukewarm
and indifferent, and this is a step on the road to infidelity. The
resolution to serve God in real earnest had always been in her
mind in connection with marrying Aurel. But it had never even
occurred to her with regard to Wilderich, not only because they
differed in religion, but because any advantages he possessed
were of an entirely worldly character and did not suggest the
thought of higher things. She had, it is true, purposed setting
the world an example of virtuous matrimony, but she had lost
her tender, childlike confidence in God, and what she called a
proper feeling of self-respect — though in reality it was rather
wounded pride — did not predispose her now to turn to God. On
the contrary, it strengthened her in her coldness. And as, lean-
ing on the parapet, she allowed her eye to wander over the end-
less expanse of waters, a sense of bitter desolation fell upon her.
"As far as my eye can see above me," she sighed, " and as far as
wave upon wave rolls away to unknown shores, there is no one
to love." She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

One of the sons of the house had approached her unheard, as
the velvety lawn deadened the sound of footsteps. When he
saw that she was crying he stopped still and gave a somewhat
forced cough, so as to allow her time to wipe her eyes hastily be-
fore she turned round.

" My mother would like to see you ; she has had letters from
Germany. But perhaps you don't feel quite inclined — " said John
courteously.

" In my position one must be always ready to appear when
one is called," she said in a tone which betrayed a slight irrita-
tion.

" You shouldn't either say or think such a thing in our house,"

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 643

said John Dambleton. " You know that you are a favorite with
us all, Sylvia."

" Really, am I ? " she asked incredulously. " But tell me where
your mother is."

" In the library."

She nodded assent and went towards the house. He looked
after her. He had meant what he said. As she walked slowly
away he gazed at her tall, graceful figure, her long white dress
trailing on the soft turf, and he compared her in his mind to a
beautiful, stately white peacock or to the queen of the fairies.
John Dambleton was nineteen years of age.

Mrs. Dambleton looked up at Sylvia with tears in her eyes.
"Dear Sylvia," she said, " the German letters contain no good
news. My poor brother's domestic affairs are more miserable
than ever. Valentine doesn't deserve his kindness or consid-
erateness."

" What has happened ? " exclaimed Sylvia, frightened.

" I can't go into details, but it is, alas ! only too true that
ninety-nine husbands out of a hundred in his place would require
a separation. But George is so kind — he makes allowances for
her youth and trusts to time. He wants her to go away for a
time, to try what a change of atmosphere and surroundings will
do for her, and asks me to decide upon an expedition to Italy,
which I have had vaguely in my mind for some time, and to take
her. It is very considerate of him, but I don't feel drawn to it.
Valentine is one of those odd people who take fancies into their
head. There isn't much to be done with her. What do you
think ? "

"I think you ought to consent to your brother's kind plan,
Charlotte. Perhaps she may still be saved."

" I would only consent on condition that you went with me,
Sylvia."

" Really ! Oh ! that would be too delightful," exclaimed Syl-
via in high delight ; " only you mustn't ask me my advice, be-
cause I am far too interested a party."

The prospect of seeing Italy seemed to her like a mental
course of waters, and she entirely forgot all about the gover-
ness' place.

Mrs. Dambleton discussed the plan with her husband, and
proposed to him either to leave his business in his eldest son's
hands or to let Vivian go with her. He decided upon the latter
course, only he did not relish the notion of their having Valen-
tine'. Before they had made up their minds another letter came

644 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

from Germany. It was penned by Baroness Griinerode herself,
and contained lamentations about her single-handedness at home.
She ended by saying : " As Isidora has gone with her husband
to Biarritz, and I have lost my incomparable Victoire, Sylvia's
return is absolutely necessary."

Mrs. Dambleton answered most politely, although she was se-
cretly disgusted : " I am very sorry that you are so lonely, and am
going to propose the best plan I can to remedy it. You know
that George and Valentine are going to separate for a time. Send
for your daughter. Her mother sets her such an excellent ex-
ample of domesticity that it must do her good to be with you.
As to Sylvia, she has had so very quiet and dull a summer that I
have determined to give both her and myself a treat, and mean to
take her to Italy. It was George's wish that Valentine should ac-
company me, but I think her staying with you is much more to
the point than my sending Sylvia back to you and travelling
alone with Valentine ; I cannot, indeed, consent to the latter plan
under any consideration. A temporary parting with his wife is,
unfortunately, the only resource open to my brother to bring her
to her senses. What mother would not lend her daughter a help-
ing hand under these circumstances ? "

The baroness was dismayed at this proposal. To her mind
things would have been so comfortably arranged by letting Val-
entine go to Italy with Mrs. Dambleton and having Sylvia back.
And now it was to be just the contrary. Valentine added con-
siderably to her cares, and she was sighing for rest.

" Life is becoming too much for me, love," she said to her by
no means delighted lord and master. " It isn't every woman who
can direct so large a household as ours and discharge all her
social duties as well. Yet I do it. But when it comes to seeing
after a hundred small things — answering letters, writing notes,
adding up accounts, and examining cases of distress — I own it
is too much for me. Sylvia thoroughly understands all these
things, whilst Valentine lies on the sofa, full of fancies, and does
not stir her little finger to be of use to me. I won't have her
come," she added, nearly crying.

" And I am sure / won't," exclaimed the baron furiously.
" Does one marry one's daughter with great toil and labor for
her to fall back upon her parents, because, forsooth, her hus-
band can't bring her to listen to duty and reason ? She is a Gold-
isch now, and she ought to keep to the Goldisches. It is really
very odd that Mrs. Dambleton doesn't see it — won't see it, ra-
ther."

1 882.] . THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 645

" But what shall I say to her, love? O dear! that makes an-
other letter for me to write."

" Don't blubber ; I will write it," said the baron harshly. He
suited his actions to his words and wrote a short letter to Mrs.
Dambleton, saying he was much too kind a father to deprive
Valentine and Sylvia of the pleasure of seeing Italy in society
so agreeable, and that his wife perfectly agreed with him.

" What have you said, love? " asked the baroness as he sealed
the letter.

" What should I say, if not to advise her to go to the land of
pepper and lemons with Valentine and Sylvia?"

" With Sylvia ? " exclaimed the baroness, in a fright again.

" Well, of course, my dear. Don't make me hot over it. You
can see by Mrs. Dambleton's letter that she has not the smallest
desire of undertaking Valentine, and will only do it for her bro-
ther's sake. So far so good, you say. If she eats her bit of sour
apple, so must you, and you must give up Sylvia for the winter
for your daughter's sake. Besides, you are justly punished for
bringing up Valentine in such a way that she can't agree with
her husband."

" How unjust you are, love ! I didn't bring her up so at all.
She got so of herself."

" That's just what I say, my dear. Running to waste is
caused by want of discipline. Goldisch is good and sensible
enough. If his wife can't get on with him either her head or
her heart is to blame, and, supposing it were to come to the
worst — a separation — I should take my son-in-law's part."

" God preserve us from that ! But you surely couldn't leave
your daughter in the lurch. You see what a sacrifice I am mak-
ing for her in letting Sylvia stay where she is. But whilst you
are on the subject of discipline, love, make Edgar mind his ways
a little. We have had five tutors in three years, and the fifth
told me yesterday we had better look out for the sixth, as he
means to go, for Edgar is determined to learn nothing."

" In that case it seems to me we needn't look out. What a
boy that Edgar is ! "

" He wants to be a lieutenant."

" That's what every nincompoop wants to be in our warlike
days. I detest the military."

" He doesn't want to be a soldier, but a lieutenant."

" My dear, either you or Edgar are ironical if you fancy a
lieutenant is not a soldier. It is not worth our while paying any
attention to a simple fellow's wish for an idle life."

646 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

" I think so, too, love. Only make it quite clear to him."
" Nonsense ! Why should I waste my time and spoil my tem-
per on him ? You know my way, my dear. Until my daughters
come out and my sons are ready for business I am not wont to
trouble myself much about their doings or misdoings. That is
the mother's privilege, and I leave it entirely to you."

At the end of September Mrs. Dambleton went up the Rhine
with Sylvia and her eldest son, Vivian. They met Valentine at
Mainz and went on together to the south.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMONGST OLD FRIENDS.

" SHE is coming, mother ! Sylvia is really coming to Mech-
tild's wedding — that will be in a few days now. She writes from
Venice," said Clarissa von Lehrbach, joyfully handing her mo-
ther a letter in which Sylvia said she was "going to be allowed
to pay her old friends a visit, and that she was very happy about
it. " So you see, dear mother, that Sylvia has not altered from
what she was. Oh ! how pleased I am that she is coming."

"You dear child!" said Frau von Lehrbach tenderly. Cla-
rissa was her eldest daughter, a very pretty girl, full of love and
devotedness., who united great clearness of mind and strength of
purpose to her deep tenderness. The second daughter, Martha,
had gone at seventeen to be a Franciscan nun. Mechtilda, the
youngest, was now going to marry a young man who held a sub-
ordinate place in the business in which her father was Rath. The
two sons had likewise come home for this family event, the
youngest from Lyons, where he had just begun his studies, and
the eldest, Clarissa's twin brother, from the Gerichtshof, where he
was working up for his examinations. One and all, they had a
lively recollection of Sylvia, who had lived amongst them up till
her father's death, and they were looking forward to her visit
with great delight.

A few days later a carriage stopped at the door of the house
whose first story was occupied by the Lehrbachs. «

" Is that Sylvia, Theobald ? " asked Clarissa, without looking
up from her work ; for, as usual, many things appertaining to
Mechtild's trousseau had to be finished in the last few days.

" No, it is a young, long-legged fellow in a chocolate-colored
suit. Now he is helping two ladies down. He is making the

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 647

driver and another man carry two boxes, two bandboxes, and
two travelling-bags^ He is shaking one lady's hand, and now he
has got into the carriage and is driving off." This gentleman was
Vivian Dambleton, who had escorted Sylvia to her friends' house.

Then there was a ring at the door. Clarissa sprang up and
called out : " But it must be Sylvia."

" Sylvia with a shadow ? " asked Theobald, puzzled.

The friends hugged each other, and Frau von Lehrbach had a
loving greeting for Sylvia. Theobald went to see if the box had
been brought up-stairs. He soon came back bewildered, and said
to Sylvia : " The lady who came with you is sitting in the ante-
room and crying."

" Oh ! that's my silly maid," exclaimed Sylvia, laughing, and
she went with Clarissa into the ante-room.

" O miss! what is to become of me and the boxes?" asked
Bertha in a grumbling tone.

The Lehrbachs' quarters were not the least in keeping with a
lady's maid of Bertha's pretensions, and the attic which she
shared with the boxes was far from being either to her taste or
in accordance with her habits. When she was alone there she
sobbed violently for a few minutes, then she went to the boxes
and began to unpack. The operation dried her tears.

" You know this room of old, Sylvia. You and I are going
to share the same just as we used to do," said Clarissa.

" How nice ! " exclaimed Sylvia. " What delightful talks we
shall be able to have!"

Clarissa was delighted with her friend, and when, after taking
off her1 travelling costume and dressing for dinner, Sylvia ap-
peared in the large room where they were all sitting together,
she looked to them like a little queen. Herr and Frau von Lehr-
bach alone made no comment, and addressed Sylvia, according to
their wont, with " du," called her " dear child," and seemed not
to notice what a fine young lady she had become.

" You come from Rome," said Frau von Lehrbach at dinner
to Sylvia. " Tell us something about the Holy Father ; that is
always the pleasantest topic of conversation."

" I believe he is quite well," replied Sylvia. " We were only
in Rome for about three weeks, and one is quite overpowered
with all the sights there are to be seen."

" Is there anything in Rome better worth seeing than the
Holy "Father?" asked the eldest son, Vincent von Lehrbach.

" You must not forget that I was with Anglicans, who detest
papistry."

648 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

" Anglicans have certainly put together a thing which they
call papistry and would like to pass off for the church, but Ca-
tholics can't accept it," replied Vincent gravely.

" Is your cousin Valentine an Anglican, then?" asked Clarissa
anxiously, fearing that Vincent might have vexed Sylvia.

"No, she is a Catholic," replied Sylvia, laughing. " Vivian
Dambleton is the only real Anglican of the party. His mother
was originally a Lutheran or a Calvinist, I'm not sure which. It
is so difficult to distinguish between so many religions ! But
Mrs. Dambleton thought it better to be what her husband was,
so they all belong to the Established Church."

" Who founded the * Established Church ' ? " asked Mechtilda
innocently.

" The English Parliament, backed by the penal and bloody
laws of Henry VIII. and of his like-minded daughter, Elizabeth,"
rejoined Vincent.

" English people take a different view of the subject," said
Sylvia, somewhat shortly.

" Even English Catholics ? " he asked.

" I have hardly come in contact with any," she replied with a
touch of impatience.

There was a little pause, for the topic which of all others
most went home to their hearts produced no echo in Sylvia.
Her insensibility on this score had not been anticipated, and it
was necessary to find some other subject. This is always diffi-
cult and painful, as betraying a secret want of sympathy. Sylvia
seemed to heed it the least. She began to talk about Italy, and
on this neuter ground the conversation once more flowed free-
ly and easily. They had to content themselves with common-
places. Religion, with its thousand interests springing from the
ever-flowering tree of faith, is the strongest bond of hearts. It
generates understanding and sympathy between souls, and that
unity of feeling which, in spite of the greatest variety of opinions
and views, rests upon supernatural grounds mutually accepted.
A great friendship without this centre of attraction is not con-
ceivable. Conversation is restricted to outward things and mere-
ly superficial topics,

Clarissa felt it far more than Sylvia, for Clarissa was the most
thoughtful of the two, and she fully realized what it was that
Sylvia had not got ; whereas Sylvia fancied the slight constraint
was due to their respective circumstances, which made their
views of life necessarily different. She was secretly astonished
to find how much puzzled she was to know what to talk about

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 649

with Clarissa as soon as she had exhausted the topics of Martha's
vocation, Mechtilda's wedding, Vincent's profession, and Theo-
bald's studies, and asked a few questions about old acquaintances.
Sylvia had very little to say about herself. She would not for
all the world have told Clarissa about her two youthful dreams
of love and happiness, and the painful and humiliating awaken-
ing she had had. She feared a gentle reproof, and it was this
which had prevented her from telling Clarissa of her hopes and
their disappointment. She had consequently written as seldom
as possible, and now she found they had nothing in common to
talk about. For all that the. simple and cheery family life spoke
powerfully to Sylvia's heart. It was a most striking contrast to
all that she had experienced during the last six years.

Her uncle demanded her services as an entertaining machine ;
her aunt as companion, secretary, and something of everything ;
Valentine as confidante, Countess Xaveria as her drawing-room's
ornament, Mrs. Dambleton as ah angel of consolation. People
were fond of her inasmuch as she fulfilled these various obliga-
tions. But now she experienced for the first time what it was to
be liked for her own sake. She was treated as a child of the
house — as a somewhat spoilt child, indeed, but it was just that
which soothed her.

"I have quite got out of the habit of getting up early,"
Sylvia said on the first morning, as she came down to breakfast
after the whole family had already been to Mass.

" That is easy to understand," said Frau von Lehrbach kindly ;
" the world turns the night into day, so of course part of the day
must be turned into night."

" Is there a great deal of pleasure in large balls and parties ? "
asked Mechtilda.

" Sometimes," answered Sylvia — " that is, when one meets
pleasant people or there are good dancers and nice music. A
pretty dress is also part of the business, and — a good temper no
less. It is pleasant under these circumstances. But very often
it is exceedingly tiresome and one goes through it like a ma-
chine."

" What a waste of time and what a useless expenditure of
strength ! " said Herr von Lehrbach.

" I believe that I shall be heartily tired of society in a few
years' time," said Sylvia.

" That is very questionable, dear child," answered Frau von
Lehrbach. " When ten or twelve years of youth have been
spent in this way, society sometimes becomes a necessity, some-

650 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

times a habit which the force of circumstances alone can over-
throw."

"Growing old with these tastes must be dreadful," exclaimed
Clarissa. " Just fancy going about from party to party, wearied
out in body and mind ! It would be something like purgatory, I
should think. Give me our comfortable room and the dear
round table covered with books and work."

She was right. One felt so at home in the large room full of
daylight, too simple and domestic though it was to be called a
drawing-room. The mother and daughters sat round the table,
always at work upon something useful or ornamental, and one of
those present would read aloud. Vincent or Theobald generally
undertook the reading, or Sylvia, who liked it better than working.
Sometimes household occupations interrupted the book, or they
put it down to discuss it, or laid it by as Sylvia and the young
men seemed more inclined to use their tongues. In the evening
they walked out and had music ; Clarissa played the piano very
well, and Mechtilda's intended had a good tenor voice, besides
which there was Sylvia with her great talent. The days slip-
ped away, full of that quiet and easy enjoyment which requires
no effort. Sylvia said one day : " What a difference ! Life is so
pleasant here that you don't remark it, you only feel it ; whereas
in society you must wear yourself out to be able to say, * That
was a pleasant time.' ' And she described the social goings-on
in town, at Griinerode and Weldensperg, in England and Na-
ples.

u A cheer for family life ! " said Vincent, and they all ap-
plauded.

The wedding-day came. On the eve Mechtilda said affec-
tionately to Sylvia : " To-morrow I want you to be as if you were
my sister, and to go with us ail to Communion in the early
morning. You will, won't you ? "

" I ?" replied Sylvia, greatly startled.

"And why riot? " asked Mechtilda, still more astonished.

" Why, because — because it isn't my habit."

" Even supposing you do not follow my mother's and Mech-
tilda's good rule of going to Communion every Sunday, and only
go several times a year, still I think you might make an excep-
tion to-morrow. We should all be so happy about it. Mightn't
you, Sylvia? "

" I am not prepared, dear Mechtilda."

" But we are going to prepare all together this evening, Syl-
via, and you will hardly want more time than I ; for I am going-

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 651

to make a general confession of my whole life, so that I may en-
ter my new state with a clean conscience."

" That is very good of you," said Sylvia, looking with some
emotion into Mechtilda's innocent and beaming eyes ; " but as for
me, I cannot make up my mind without thinking about it."

She went back over the last three years — for she had broken
the church's commandment about the Easter Communion three
times. "But how could I help it?" she asked herself. " I was
travelling with Valentine the first time, and the next year I went
to England with my uncle, and now this time I was in Rome. So
I have always been away from home. It is impossible always to
go to a strange priest, so there is every excuse for me. For the
matter of that, I have done nothing wrong. I have been wronged ;
but as I may not accuse others, I really don't see why I should
say me a culpa"

Naturally enough this kind of examination of conscience did
not help her on much, and, in short, she did not comply with
Mechtilda's desire. She did not go to the sacraments. Nobody
made any remark about it, but they were all grieved, for they
drew a painful conclusion from it as to the state of Sylvia's spirit-
ual life.

" What will the world end by making of her ? " said Clarissa
in a dispirited way to Vincent. He was her twin brother, and
she was accustomed to speak out her mind to him.

" When people with these wonderful charms and selfish
natural disposition once let go the anchor of faith a shipwreck
is inevitable," he said.

" O Vincent ! we must try to keep her from that. How glad
I am that you have got your examinations to pass in the capital,
and that you will go there next winter ! She will at least have
somebody near her to take a spiritual interest in her."

" Do you fancy she will like it, Clari ? " asked Vincent, laugh-
ing. " When people don't want to think about it themselves they
are not often grateful to others for suggesting it."

" Whether she likes it or not, it consoles me to think you will
be near her ; for these Griinerodes strike me as something heath-
enish with their relish for the world and the dead level of a life
of boundless luxury, and of boundlessly-loved luxury too."

" And how character loses in an atmosphere so constituted,
especially a woman's character! " exclaimed Vincent.

" And a man's, too ! He gets sleepy or commonplace," said
Clarissa.

' Yes, but not in the same way as a woman does. A man has

652 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

the resource of outward activity and pressing business against
indolence and sleepiness. Even if his activity has no very lofty
aim, and is not the fruit of a high purpose, he still lives in a cer-
tain atmosphere of work and practical activity, which, to be sure,
constitute his life. But it is another thing, Clari, for a woman
with her delicate feelings. It will be her ruination to be decked
out in laces, and jewels, and fashionable dresses, and set in a
drawing-room to be bewildered by its homage and indoctrinated
in its tone, and to be driven by her wealth to make society her
chief occupation because the care of her children and household
are taken off her hands. She must come to grief, because her
need for domestic avocations is not met. She starves upon riches.
Everybody knows and sympathizes with the numberless women
whose souls and bodies fall a victim to want and poverty, but
hardly any one thinks of those not less numerous to whom riches
are fatal. Poor women are obliged to toil unceasingly for their
crust of bread, and they sink under their heavy burdens. Ne-
cessary work is what the rich ones want, and in its absence they
lose their physical powers."

"What a sad picture," sighed Clarissa, " especially when I
think of Sylvia in connection with it ! "

" And it is not in the slightest degree exaggerated," replied
Vincent. " It must strike any one who thinks at all about the
state of society. Never before were such extremes of wealth and
poverty, except in the last days of pagan Rome. Extremes are
always dangerous, because it is only a very small minority who
are proof against them. Faith alone gives us strength to resist
them ; and do you think that faith is very lively in those particu-
lar circles in which Sylvia moves ? "

" It is just the contrary conviction which makes me so glad
that you are going to be near her, Vincent."

" I haven't the smallest desire to mix myself up with these
'Griinerodes, Clari. I am not in the least suited to them. You
know how crippled my means are, and with small means it is
difficult to live in society. This would be quite enough in itself
to keep me away from them ; but, besides this, our way of looking
at things and at life is radically different."

" This may be all true, Vincent ; but still with your earnest-
ness, which is free from melancholy, and with your firmness,
which is gentle, you may gain a good influence with Sylvia, for
she still responds when her feelings are appealed to. So you
really must make a point of visiting the Griinerodes."

In the meantime Sylvia received a truly doleful letter from

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 653

her aunt, who entreated her not to delay her departure. She —
her aunt — found- her duties too heavy, and thought that young-
shoulders should bear the yoke ; in short, Sylvia was sadly want-
ed at home. The baroness did not trust the post with this letter,
but sent it by one, of her servants, who had orders to bring Syl-
via back. Bertha was nearly beside herself with delight when
Charles suddenly made his appearance in her attic. " You have
come to fetch us, Charles, haven't you ? Well, that is a good job,"
she exclaimed with fervor. " We have been travelling for one
year, six months, and two days, and no place is worth home. I
like our park at Griinerode better than England, Italy, and the
Tyrol put together. But it is dreadful here, Charles. Just look
at this garret. All Miss Mechtilda's trousseau has been made at
home, and when anything more than an ordinary pudding is
wanted Miss Clarissa does the sweet things herself. There is no
such thing in the whole town as a lady's maid of my importance.
I am the only one of my kind. Isn't it too strange ? And what
a quiet wedding Miss Mechtilda's was ! There was no talk of a
honeymoon. They stayed at home just like common people.
Really, Charles, it is a dreadful place, and I can't understand
what Miss Sylvia sees in it to call so delightful."

Sylvia did think it delightful, because, as Clarissa expressed it,
it appealed to her feelings. She had been so wounded under her
course of riches and grandeur that she was quite satiated with
them for the time, and prepared to find a family life such as the
Lehrbachs' quite an ideal picture. Mrs. Dambleton was exceed-
ingly kind, but she had not Frau von Lehrbach's motherly way ;
and Vivian, Edward, and John Dambleton, together with their
father, did not inspire her either with the same confidence as
Herr von Lehrbach or with the friendliness which she' felt to-
wards his children. She no longer had any sympathy with Va-
lentine, who was buried in a mountain of selfishness and neglect-
ed all her duties to pursue a phantom which her sickly imagina-
tion conjured up. Sylvia grew more disposed to grumble at the
selfishness of others in proportion as she became more and more
wrapped up in herself.

" The pleasant days at Aranjuez have come to an end," said
Sylvia, as she appeared in the large family sitting-room with her
aunt's letter.

" If only your majesty could leave us in a more cheerful frame
of mind," said Theobald, following her train of thought.

" It's all very well for you to joke. You are going to stay,"
she said.

654, THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

" But you will come back again," exclaimed Clarissa.

" I am sure I hope that you will — not in six years' time, but
next spring," said Frau von Lehrbach. "This is your native
place, where your father and mother lived, and died, and are
buried. You were born here, and all your youthful associations
and youthful friends are here. Such a place is by no means to
be neglected."

" Oh ! if I were only more independent how gladly I would
promise to come here every year to refresh myself with my dear
home," exclaimed Sylvia ; " but I am bound head and foot, and it
requires something out of the way for me to be able to leave my
aunt, who seems not to be able to do without me."

" That is a very happy thing for you," said Clarissa.

" Indeed it isn't," exclaimed Sylvia bitterly ; " it makes me
into a slave, and doesn't fill my heart."

"It is always a consolation to do one's duty," said Frau von
Lehrbach peacefully, " and your being so much sought after
proves that you have done it."

" If only happiness and duty were compatible ! " sighed Sylvia.

" Duty is nevertheless the only way to true happiness," said
Frau von Lehrbach, laughing.

" I can't at all imagine any other kind of happiness," added
Clarissa.

" That depends upon the kind of duties one has," replied Syl-
via in a tone of determination. "If mine. are opposed to my
wishes and to my nature they make me unhappy."

" In that case they are sent to you as a cross, and grace helps
you to carry it," said Frau von Lehrbach gently.

"That's how it ought to be," exclaimed Sylvia sorrowfully.
"But oh! the atmosphere which I breathe when I am with my
aunt is fatal to the doctrines of Christianity."

" You should make a point of altering this, Sylvia," said Frau
von Lehrbach in the same gentle tone. " You should find out a
way of practising your religion unmolested for the very reason
that you are so necessary to them."

" But it is almost impossible with people who understand
spiritual needs as little as the antipodes. They have become
so dead to these things that they don't the least know what
one is talking about or catch one's drift. This makes me
silent."

" Perhaps it would be a good opportunity now to claim a cer-
tain independence, for you certainly must have had it at Mrs.
Dambleton's," said Frau von Lehrbach. " With a little know-

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 655

ingness and firmness a year's absence may be made to work
many changes."

Sylvia let the conversation drop, as she was obliged to own to
herself that she had shown nothing but the greatest indifference
for religion during her stay with Mrs. Dambleton. If she had
somewhat shaken off her lethargy at the Lehrbachs' it was rather
that their warm faith and loving hearts awoke a certain feeling
of comfort in her than that she meant to return to the practice
of her religion. It was a sort of higher pleasure which she wel-
comed. She liked the flowers, but she had no mind to culti-
vate the soil from which they sprang. She worshipped an idol
which was dearer to her than anything on earth, and which grew
more to her in proportion as she let the world come between her
poor bruised heart and God. This idol was called Sylvia.

PART III.— THE FALL OF THE BLOSSOMS.
CHAPTER I.

A WARNING VOICE.

A YOUNG lady in a most elegant morning-dress was sitting in
a pretty boudoir. She was absorbed in a book. There was a
knock at the door, and upon her somewhat impatiently uttered
"'Come in" there followed a servant, who handed a note from
Countess Weldensperg, and added that a messenger was waiting
for an answer.

" Let him wait," was the short reply, and, casting her eyes
over the note, she took up her book again.

There was another knock, and the housekeeper appeared with
a thick quarto book and said : " Her ladyship begs that you
will look carefully through the accounts. I don't think there is
any mistake, but — "

" Very well. Put the book on my writing-table."

Another knock. A servant came in to say that young Baron
Harry would be very glad to see some one, as he was ill in bed
and very weary. Before he had gone the lady's maid brought a
message to the effect that her ladyship begged Miss Sylvia to
come, as three notes were waiting to be written.

" All right; I am coming," was the answer with which both
man and maid servant had to be satisfied. The young lady did

656 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

not even contemplate rousing herself from her arm-chair and put-
ting down her fascinating book. Half an hour later the lady's
maid returned with a pressing message from the baroness, and
she added that there was a fourth note to be written.

" And my own into the bargain, which makes five," exclaimed
Sylvia, springing up impatiently. " Dear me! I'm sure I can say
with the Barbiere di Sevilla, ' Figaro here, there, and everywhere.'
What a life it is ! What a slavery ! Not a minute to myself! I
must be ready for every one, like a maid-servant, and what have
I to show for it ? A prison with gilt bars and bolts ! "

She went to her aunt.

" Where have you been hiding yourself, love ? " exclaimed the
latter in a grumbling tone. " The ante-room is full of servants
waiting for answers."

" Let them wait, dear aunt ; that's what they were meant
for," said Sylvia indifferently.

" I have no objection, love, but you know that your uncle
doesn't like to wait luncheon, so we must make haste to be ready
at half-past eleven."

Sylvia sat down at her aunt's writing-table, ran her eyes
hastily over the numerous notes which were there awaiting her,
and wrote the answers at her aunt's suggestions. It was scarcely
half-past eleven when she had finished.

" What would you do without me, Aunt Teresa?" she asked
playfully.

" God only knows ! I am sure I don't," said the baroness.
" But I have got you, you see."

" Xaveria has asked me to ride with her, but I am not going,
because Herr von Lehrbach has time to pay me a visit to-day,
and I prefer my nice talk with him to Xaveria's stupid chatter."

" You must do as you like, love."

" I am very grateful to you, dear aunt, for letting me have
Herr von Lehrbach in the little drawing-room, for he is so over-
powered with work that he can scarcely ever get an hour to him-
self."

" What is there against it, love ? You are six-and-twenty and
you have experience and tact, so that I could not treat you like a
small person of eighteen. When one has lived a quarter of a
century one expects a little liberty. And then Herr von Lehr-
bach is an exceedingly steady young man, and he is younger than
you."

" No, lie isn't, Aunt Teresa. He, his twin sister, and I were
all born on the same day, May i, 1840."

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 657

" This is how it is, love : a man of twenty-six looks younger
than a girl of twenty-six. He has hardly reached his full de-
velopment, whereas she has seen her best years of youth."

This was just what Sylvia bemoaned in secret : the best years
of her youth were past and gone. Society had known her for
the last eight years, and no longer found her the bewitching Syl-
via of early days. She had lost the charm of novelty, which
conduces so much to drawing-room triumphs and not unfre-
quently calls them forth. She was still remarkably pretty, but
people were so accustomed to her good looks that they ceased
to think them anything out of the way. Younger girls who were
not at all pretty, but who were in the first freshness of youth,
outshone her, made more sensation, and married ; whilst, on the
other hand, Xaveria still retained her place as the acknowledged
queen of elegance, although she was on the verge of her thirtieth
year. But Xaveria was also rich Countess Weldensperg, who
was at the head of a brilliant establishment and gave the best
entertainments and dinners. These solid advantages secured her
reign in society until her dotage. Sylvia saw how it was very
well, and took it in by degrees ; she could not command any of
these things. Jealousy, discontent, contempt of others, an over-
weening opinion of herself, bitterness, and pride stirred up that
poor heart of hers, which had experienced nothing but deception
after deception. Her unhappiness weighed Jier down, yet she
saw no way out of it. She had long ago given up the scheme
of trying to find a place as governess or teacher of music in
England which she had mentioned to Mrs. Dambleton. It had
been due to a passing feeling of wounded pride and indignation
at Tieffenstein's conduct. At the time she had fancied that she
would never be able to meet him again or treat him as a relation ;,
but she had cooled down under the influence of the Italian expe-
dition, with its constant change of scenes and impressions, and::
when on her return she saw him and his wife she took it very
calmly, for she was already avenged. Wilderich and Isidora ledi
a most wretched life between them. He had sold himself to a*
wife he did not love, and Isidora, who had acted a farce about
her passion for him, had literally fallen a victim to it, and now
suffered terribly at his indifference. Isidora's propensity to be
saving was as well known to the baron as Wilderich's taste for
spending. As the charge of their household devolved chiefly on
him, this is what he did : he paid Wilderich's debts and made
Isidora treasurer, committing to her care, and not to Wilderich's*
the allowance to which he had pledged himself. The baron

VOL. xxxiv. — 42

658 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

viewed this arrangement as a check upon his son-in-law, and Isi-
dora as a means of tying her husband to her apron-string ; but
Wilderich considered it an insult on the part of his father-in-law
and a very low proceeding on that of his wife. He despised
her and she worshipped him — that is, she worshipped his inte-
resting looks and bearing, and his way of talking. Wilderich
would not have minded Isidora's adoration, if she had only been
something a little. out of the common. But as this was far from
being the case, and as she had neither physical nor mental ad-
vantages of any kind, he felt in a very humbled and dissatisfied
frame of mind, and required perpetual remonstrances from his
sister to keep him up to ordinary civility towards his wife.

" I can't bear it any longer. I must either go away or send a
bullet through my head," he said one clay, coming into Xaveria's
boudoir and throwing himself into an arm-chair.

" Nonsense, Wilderich ! " she answered calmly.

" Oh ! of course such things as petty jealousy, complaints,
and upbraidings are nonsense in the eyes of sensible married peo-
ple. But it is torture and by no means nonsense to bear with
them. I am the most miserable man on the face of the earth, and
it is your fault."

" Good gracious, Wilderich ! don't talk wildly. Before you
married Isidora you were in an impossible position, and how
could you expect tc^meet with parents — that is, rich parents — who
would give you their daughter, pay your debts, and keep you
and yours? I knew no such people, neither did you. Then a
happy chance inspired Tsidora with a passion for you."

" Oh ! do be quiet. Isidora's passion has been my greatest hu-
miliation."

"But it is a fact, and that pleasant footing in society which
spendthrifts are sure to lose in time is due to it."

" The Griinerodes were too delighted to thrust their unlova-
ble daughter into our society."

" Yes, they were, and it was part of your good fortune."

" My good fortune which makes me weary of life! Oh! the
thought of spending the rest of my days with that woman. And
I am just thirty-four."

" Did you fancy, then, that you would have no trials as a mar-
ried man ?"

" It's amusing to hear you talking about trials."

" You are very unfair. It is very hard to live under a per-
petual yoke, and this is what a wife has to do, to all appearances
at least, even if she wishes to make her will felt in reality. A

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 659

husband is always inclined to lord it over her, and to make short
work of anything that does not suit his convenience. It is a
wholesojne lesson for you to see that you can't do this and to
make the best of your lot."

" It's easy work for one of your dispassionate nature. But 1
have a warm heart."

"I know that well enough, Wilderich. But now do leave
your feelings alone. Be your heart what it may, it is a disturbing
element in life, whereas practical common sense is the very re-
verse. My scheming and your consent to it put you where you
are. Now be so good as to remain there contentedly. Have
you made any plan for the summer yet ? "

" Yes. I am thinking of going to hunt lions in Africa and to
catch whales at the North Pole," burst out Wilderich, and there-
upon he left Xaveria.

She let him go and said quietly to herself : " He will grow
accustomed to it, as I have had to do. But people must still
their cravings after love by plunging feverishly into the world's
enjoyments, without, of course, going too far."

This was the fair Countess Xaveria's way of looking at life.

She and Sylvia were still friends, but their former intimacy
had ceased. Xaveria found that Sylvia was no longer her draw-
ing-room's most attractive ornament, and Sylvia was convinced
that Xaveria had plotted against her marrying Tieffenstein. It
wounded her and set her against Xaveria. Her friends had been

as false to her as her lovers. No one, indeed, had ever really cared
about her, and it had been her portion to be speedily forgotten.
Others had deceived her, or she had deceived herself. Was
there, then, no such thing as true and lasting feelings? Was a
state of successive deceptions the only thing to be looked for on
earth? When she was by herself she had moments of utter mis-
ery which supernatural strength alone could have helped her to
bear ; but she had it not. In default of it she strove, like Xaveria,
to divert her mind by all manner of pleasure, without, however,
losing the consciousness of her misery.

It was a great comfort to Sylvia to have Vincent von Lehr-
bach in town. He was. an example to her of a young man who
was entirely thrown on his own resources to get on. He had
neither fortune nor interest to help him on the up-hill road of
government service. His father, who had no means besides his
salary, and who had Theobald's university expenses to meet,
could do nothing for his eldest son beyond making him a very
scanty allowance, so that Vincent was restricted to the necessa-

660 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

ries of life, and had no superfluity for those amusements and re-
laxations which young people naturally like. He never went to
evening- parties or to theatres, for they involved too much ex-
"pense for his slender purse. It was against his will, and only be-
cause his family pressed him so much, that he had visited at the
Grunerodes' ; they hoped he would thus be able to see something
of Sylvia.

" I like your friend very much, little fairy," the baron said to
her ; " he is a hard-working young fellow and lays no claim to
enjoy life.. Edgar, who at twenty is giving himself fine airs,
might take an example by him."

" I like him, too," said the baroness, " for speaking so tenderly
of his mother. It is a pity he is obliged to work so dreadfully
hard."

" Not at all ; it's very wholesome," said her husband. " The
hardest work makes the best men."

" When there is some good end beyond the mere gain," re-
marked Sylvia ; " otherwise every man who broke stones .on the
road, and every day-laborer and factory-worker, would be a
worthy man."

" The low herd is far enough from being that," answered the
baron, half disdainfully, half angrily. " But, for the matter of
that, of course I am alluding only to gentlemen when I speak of
honest men."

Sylvia had not followed Frau von Lehrbach's advice of profit-
ing by her usefulness to obtain liberty ; that is, she had not fol-
lowed it according to the spirit. The atmosphere of gentle piety
which had stirred up her heart within her at the Lehrbachs' had
left no impression on her. She was miserable, indeed, but instead
of seeking comfort in a region higher than the earth she clung
more steadily to the world, and, upbraiding in her mind this per-
son or those circumstances with her unhappiness, she sought out
other people and other circumstances on the chance of their sat-
isfying her. In the different circumstances of her life she had
ceased to take into consideration the will of God on the one
hand, and her own weaknesses and shortcomings on the other.
She had given up this view of things with the practice of her
religion. She was out of harmony with herself, like a beautiful
marble statue which, exposed to the action of time and the fury
of the elements, retains only the noble cast of features to denote
that it was once a work of art. And because Sylvia was con-
scious of this want of harmony in herself — for she had by no
means reached the stage when such a consciousness becomes a

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 66 1

matter of indifference — she turned her mind away from it, and
shut her eyes more and more resolutely to everything which re-
lated to the spiritual life. For all that she was fond of Vincent
von Lehrbach, though he possessed no one of those things which
she and the world prized. He was not rich, or fashionable, or
handsome, or at home in aristocratic drawing-rooms, or a mem-
ber of the club, or distinguished for sporting or turf propen-
sities. She could not account for her liking. Perhaps it was
due to the force of an old friendship which dated back to her
happy childhood, or to the fact that, inferior though he might
be, he was utterly unlike the ordinary type of man with whom she
came in contact.

"How are you? You have not been here for a long time,"
said Sylvia heartily, as she entered the morning-room, where
Vincent was waiting for her.

"I am very well," he replied, "but my time is all portioned
out. I am likely, it seems, to be always reminded that it is ex-
tremely precious and exceedingly short."

" Do you like the work which takes up so much of your
time ? "

" It belongs to my profession. A man must do what he can
to qualify himself, and it can't be done without some struggling
against one's inclination — that is, without some trouble and vexa-
tion of spirit. The great questions of the day interest me far
more than a quarrelsome suit over three acres of land. But I
have to read through my suit's documents when I would much
rather go into the questions of the day. But what does it mat-
ter ? Each one to his task ; that is what we are in the world
to do."

" Of course. Still, we are also in the world to be happy," ex-
claimed Sylvia.

" What do you understand by happiness ? "

" The fulfilment of our noblest desires," she replied quickly.

" This is a happiness we can secure for ourselves, as we can
desire nothing better than to bring ourselves into harmony with
our lot in life ; but I should rather doubt this being our predomi-
nating propensity."

" Is it yours? " asked Sylvia, laughing.

" I don't pretend to belong to the exceptions. But if I can
only just trace the wish in a remote corner of my mind, still it is
there and it makes itself felt. It won't let me alone, and up-
braids me when I follow the allurements of other inclinations. It
seems to tell me that I am on the wrong road, that the fulfilment

662 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

•

of my duty and my conformity with the will of God will be my
truest happiness. And that is what I try to aim at."

" It is a very sober happiness," said Sylvia.

" Yes ; but then life is a serious thing."

" You are making me more melancholy than I already am,"
she replied somewhat impatiently.

" I can't help it, for I didn't make life what it is. It is short,
uncertain, full of dangers, a path leading in two totally opposite
directions, and it is left to our free choice to take the right or
the wrong one. Isn't this serious work? "

" Dreadfully serious ! " exclaimed Sylvia.

" Would you prefer a sort of happy Arcadia kind of life ? "

" Oh ! no, the proverbial good spirits of Arcadia are weari-
some. But there ought to be some mezzo t ermine"

" There is ; only, like everything else on earth, it is subject
to change. There are happy hours, peaceful days, deep and
elevating joys which give man the necessary courage, strength,
and hope to pursue his onward way. In his childhood. he has
got his father's house and family life. Later on there is youth,
that wonderful gift of God, which fires him with activity and
endurance for undertaking and carrying out things which he
himself looks upon as impossible after the lapse of forty years.
As a man he has his calling, with its self-chosen round of duties
which he endeavors to fulfil as well as he can ; and in his old age
he has a good conscience, and a young family round him to take
example by him. The whole presents a mixture of cares and
pleasure, sorrow and joy, work and repose, labor and refresh-
ment, which go to make up the tissue of human life with its in-
dividual variations of sunshine and cloud."

Sylvia had listened attentively, and her face became sadder as
he went on. Tears glistened on her cheeks as she answered in
a trembling tone : " I could envy you your clear views of life. I
can't look at it in this calm way. I began it with so many de-
ceptive hopes ! My firmament was full of golden clouds, which I
took for sun and stars ; but they melted away into a gray fog be-
fore my eyes, and its cold damp goes through me."

" Such times do indeed come upon us all, but they do not
last," said Vincent consolingly.

" Do you speak from experience ? That would comfort
me."

" I have not had your kind of deception, but others closely
affecting myself, and consequently of the most bitter kind. I
fancied I was a giant who was going to take heaven by storm ;

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 663

and I found out that I was an ordinary mortal, who would have
to toil and sweat under the dust of life at the ordinary pace of
other people. It was a humiliation which would have discour-
aged me, unless I had determined to look upon and treat myself
as a very commonplace mortal, from whom God required nothing
but the accomplishment of his duty as an honest man and the
salvation of his soul. The resolution brought me peace, and
peace gives strength."

" You talk as if ' saving one's soul ' were a small thing ; but
perhaps it is a very big one," said Sylvia. " Amongst all the
'people with whom I live, whether relations or friends, I don't
believe there is one who thinks about saving his soul."

" And what of yourself ? "

" Sometimes I doubt whether I have a soul," she said, trying
to turn it into a joke, to avoid going into the matter. Then she
rose and said sadly : " Take compassion on me and come back
soon. Everything about me is so splendid, and outwardly I am
so well off, that nobody dreams of my real mind. People under-
stand material want and are sorry for it, and they are overcome
when they hear of those poor creatures in London who die of
hunger. But who understands or pities the unfortunate indivi-
duals who, in the midst of luxury, hunger after something bet-
ter? No one. They are so well off they can have any plea-
sure they desire ; why are they not satisfied ? They give way to
whims or nervous excitement. These are the kind of pleasant
things people say of them, and this is why they keep their feel-
ings to themselves and try to put up with their weariness. But
believe me, there are times when I envy the beggar-women in
the street, because physical hunger seems to me easier to bear
than the inward craving for sympathy and happiness ; for you
may say what you like, happiness does exist, and it is possible to
find sympathy of feelings and thoughts, views and aims. The
person who has to bemoan its absence knows this better than
any one else. You think differently to what I do in many
things, and perhaps you are right, for you are better than I ; but
this doesn't disturb me. On the contrary, I want to be able to
look up to some one with a certain respect ; it gives me strength
and courage. So pray be compassionate and come to see me
very often. Perhaps you may succeed in awakening me to my
religious duties."

" Only God and his grace can do that," replied Vincent.

" Call it what you like," she entreated, lifting up her hands.
" If one man is able to help another on in the world, and his do-

664 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Feb.,

ing so is called charity, why should not the same thing be done
in the spiritual world ? "

" It can," replied Vincent ; " but to get to that people must be
on a very different footing to what you and I are. A man who
tries to lead another onwards ought himself to be very holy, and
the one who is led ought to have an intense wish to become holy
— a firm and powerful desire which is capable of making great
sacrifices for an unseen end. I don't need to tell you that I am
anything but holy ; and as for you, Sylvia, you are thinking much
more of your earthly happiness than of your immortal soul. Can
you deny it ? "

" No ; I cannot tell a lie," she sighed.

" So I am unable to help you. But take the simplest means
in your power. Go to a good priest and use the means of grace
which the church offers her children."

" If you are going to talk in this way I shall say no more,"
interrupted Sylvia, drying her tears. " What does a priest know
about the heart? "

" As you have evidently never opened yours to a priest, you
have no right to talk in this way," said Vincent, laughing ; " and,
for the matter of that, I was not thinking about this sort of com-
munication, but — to use plain words — about an examination of
conscience."

" I am no criminal," she said in a vexed tone.

"Will you understand now that I am unable to help you to
spiritual progress?" he said with gentle earnestness. "As soon
as 1 give you practical advice you draw back or are hurt. You
ask my view on this or that point, and if it agrees with your
own, well and good. It is your own judgment that you like in
my words. This will lead to nothing but intellectual fireworks,
as it must stop short of any appeal to you which would imply a
sacrifice. Do you seriously think you will thus get light and
strength ? "

S}< Ivia wept bitterly and did not reply ; for never had any
one, much less a young man, spoken to her with so much earnest-
ness, kindness, and seriousness, and, alas ! with so much truth.

" Forgive me ; I did not wish to grieve you," Vincent said
after a pause.

" 1 know you didn't," answered Sylvia, striving to calm her-
self ; " but you see what a miserable plight I am in. The truth
overpowers me ; I can't bear it."

" Don't say that. It overpowers your human feelings, and
that is a good sign," he said kindly.

1 882.] HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS IN ENGLAND. 665

" Have you really any hope left for me?"

" 'Dum spiro, spero ! ' As long as I live I have hope, for you,
for myself, for all men."

" * Bum spiro, spero,' " repeated Sylvia more cheerily ; " that
shall be my watchword, too. And now I hope I shall soon see
you again."

They shook hands heartily, and Vincent found another leis-
ure hour for Sylvia sooner than he had anticipated or she had
ventured to hope.

TO BE CONTINUED.

HOLY BAYS ANB HOLIBAYS IN ENGLANB.

" How do these people observe their holidays? " is a question
which every traveller proposes when he visits a country for the
first time. If he has leisure he answers the question for himself,
and draws his own private conclusions. Thus, any one who has
lived a year in Rome, in Madrid, in Lisbon, in Vienna, has philo-
sophically thought out the objects and the characteristics of the
holidays of each of those capitals. Where most travellers are
puzzled is in the accurate discrimination of the ecclesiastical and
the civil days of rest. In Protestant England the outward sem-
blance of the one is much the same as the outward semblance of
the other. If we seek for the distinction between, say, Good
Friday and a Bank holiday, or between Easter Sunday and Box-
ing Bay, we shall scarcely find it in outward public recognition —
in the way, that is, of national demonstration. Excepting only a
different class of entertainments, there are really no external dif-
ferentise in the observance of Good Friday and Boxing Bay. We
speak, of course, solely of the public recognition ; not in any way
of the private observance. The churches may be opened on
Good Friday, but the masses keep holiday, not holy day. " Our
season begins on Good Friday," remarked the proprietor of a
Richmond hotel to the present writer ; and almost every pro-
prietor of every hotel just outside London, as well as of every
hotel at popular resorts, would be willing to give the same testi-
mony. Christmas Bay, on the contrary, is a home-holiday ; pure-
ly domestic, though festive in character ; but'ho more particularly
" religious " than is Guy Fawkes' Bay — that is, in its national
demonstration. That many persons observe Christmas Bay re-

666 HOL Y DA YS AND HOLIDA YS IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

ligiously (by going to their parish church in the morning) is as
certain as that " the nation " does not. Christmas Day is a din-
ner-day. " We dine together once a year." Even the good peo-^
pie who remember on Christmas morning that it is the Advent
suffer from a weakness of the memory before nightfall.

As to Sunday, if we are to trust to the officially authorized
statistics, about one grown-up person in every fifty, in the large
towns, attends some kind of church or of chapel. England is a
free country ; and that freedom is largely used in abstaining from
places of worship on a Sunday. The country people, on the
contrary, attend places of worship — a distinction which needs no
explanation. But in the towns the outward observance of the
Sunday is much the same as the outward observance of a bank
holiday, minus noisy pleasures, public sports, and plus a certain
dryness of demeanor.

We may say, then, that the odd thing about the holy days
of England is their undemonstrative, almost negative character.
That the English are not a demonstrative people is no solution
at all of the enigma. The English are a demonstrative people
whensoever it pleases them to be so. They can make as much
noise, call as many public meetings, walk in as many long pro-
cessions, shout, cheer, bless, or swear, as much as any other peo-
ple in the world. Even about religion the}^ can be d roily demon-
strative when their prejudice or their passion is tickled. To
" protest " is with the Englishman a supreme source of enjoy-
ment ; and he can make as much fuss about it as though
fuss were a lofty virtue, or as though martyrdom consisted in
howling down. There is only one point about which he is not
demonstrative, and that is the national Credo. The explanation
is not difficult to mid. The Credo, for the most part, is Protesto ;
and where it is not Protesto it is Dubito. The religious senti-
ment may be admirable in the extreme, but the belief is of the
opinionative kind. And hence it comes to pass that the English-
man is not demonstrative so far as his own creed is concerned ;
he is only demonstrative against the creed of other persons, or
against what he assumes to be their creed. Perhaps this is about
the best of the solutions which we can offer for " no national
demonstration." And as the subject is not without its deep in-
terests, we will linger for a few moments upon it.

That Catholic nations are demonstrative, but that Protestant
nations are not — in the sense of national, religious recognition —
will be conceded by every one who has travelled. And the ex-
planation is easy to be given. Wherever positive faith seems to

1 882.] HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS IN ENGLAND. 667

be strong, religion is more or less demonstrative ; but wherever
positive faith has died out, or has sunk down into rivalries of
thought — which is the case in all Protestant countries — the out-
ward, national recognition is either shy and apologetic, or else it
is contemptuously cold. There will be in every Protestant coun-
try the performance of " divine service," the more or less fre-
quentation of " public worship," but there will be the absence of
out-of-door ceremony, of national proclamation of faith. Thus,
in England, we might walk from Dover to London, from New-
castle to Brighton or Portsmouth, without ever — not even one
day in the whole year — seeing a token or suggestion of creed.
And this is true of all Protestant countries. It is scarcely true of
any country which is not Protestant. And the reason is that,
Protestant faith not being " positive," it cannot call for any na-
tional demonstration.

Yet the question remains : Why, in non-Christian countries,
should there be national demonstration of creed ? And the an-
swer we would suggest is, that in almost every religion save the
Protestant there are three publicly recognized characteristics :
sacrifice, fasting, intensity. Of intensity we will say a word
presently. Of sacrifice and fasting it suffices to observe that
their obligation entails demonstration. Sacrifice (everywhere)
involves ceremony, and ceremony everywhere is demonstrative ;
while as to fasting, where the duty is national, the observance
must be socially recognized. Not to fast, where fasting days are
commanded, is to make demonstration of not fasting. So that
sacrifice and fast days (and we may also add feast days, for
feast days are the counterpart of fast days) necessitate some
kind of demonstration, some kind of outward national recogni-
tion.

In regard to "intensity," which we call a third characteristic,
we tread upon very delicate ground.- Intensity may coexist
with the most abominable errors, and with the utter absence of
any " positive " faith. Can we say of the hundred and fifty mil-
lions of Hindus, of the hundred and forty millions of Moham-
medans, who have no living divine authority to appeal to, that
they are the possessors of a positive faith ? No ; positive faith
is a belief in divine dogmas, taught by a (living) divine authority,
as distinct from a pious belief in God, whether grounded on
revelation or tradition. But though Catholics are the only
people in the world who can be said, properly, to have " posi-
tive " faith, there are many false religions which teach that sac-
rifice and fasting, with corresponding joyous sacrifice and festi-

668 HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

val, are both of personal and of national obligation. Protestant-
ism, almost alone, has lost sight of fast and festival, of sacrifice
penitential and joyous. So that what we have called " inten-
sity," whether of faith or of public worship, can have no place in
the religion of Protestants. It may have place in almost every
other kind of religion. It has place in the schismatical Eastern
churches, as well as in many non-Christian religions. And the
argument, though negative, is of importance. While Catholics
are " intense," in their positive faith and true worship ; and while
millions of non-Christians are also intense, because they believe
in fasting and sacrifice ; Protestants are not intense — they do not
care to make demonstrations — because their creed consists main-
ly of pious sentiments.

We have said that mere intensity is no ,proof of a sound con-
viction, though the absence of it is proof of a weak one. But
since we are coupling " demonstration/' in the national sense,
with the existence of some kind of intensity, we should like to
show that the English make no national demonstration, because
they misdirect their intensity. When we come to speak of Eng-
lish " holidays," as distinct from English " holy days," we shall
see how this consideration works all round. We fully admit, as
we have stated, that we tread on delicate ground when we dis-
cuss the religious value of intensity. But almost every grand
truth has its mocking ape of falsehood, which seeks to cast ridi-
cule upon it. The philosopher will not be deceived by the ape.
The truth is not affected by its burlesque. False holy days,
false holidays, cast no sort of doubting shadow on the beauty of
the intensity of the true. Let us name a few false kinds of in-
tensity. We must ridicule the " intensity " of the worshippers
of Juggernath; "at whose orgies," as Dr. Duff tells us, "licen-
tiousness and blood are the main abhorrent features and crimes."
We must shudder at the* intensity of the human offerings of the
Polynesians, and of the excesses of some of the hill tribes of
Hindustan. We must mock the childish intensity of the jug-
gleries and the impositions of many of the Persian sect of Mos-
lems— the rotatory movements of the priest-worshippers, and the
epileptic excitement of the lay-worshippers ; just as we must
laugh at the intensity of some of the rites of the Hindu fakirs ;
or be appalled by the intensity of the Canesa fanatics, who think
infanticide " religious national demonstration." All this is not
intensity ; it is superstition. Nor is it easy always to distin-
guish between the two. Thus, the elaboration of the ceremonial
of the Brahmans, the false exquisiteness of their preparation for

1 882.] HOL Y DA YS AND H OLID A YS' IN ENGLAND. 669

public worship, must be regarded as very questionable intensity.
So that we yield at once that mere intensity of itself is no proof
of any sort of true piety ; and that national demonstration very
commonly coexists with the utmost rottenness of national belief.
There have been false priests of Baal who "cut themselves with
knives " ; there have been fire-worshippers, demon-worshippers
(and even worse people), all intense and demonstrative in their
way. So that we must look for the solution of undemonstrative
Protestantism in some other groove than its falsity ; and we must
still show that though intensity proves nothing, the absence of
intensity proves much.

Let us turn to English holidays, as distinct from English holy
days, and see if they will throw light upon the matter. Our first
point is the sympathy between the two. Just as in Spain or in
Italy (that is, in happier times) there was a marked likeness of the
holiday to the holy day — the one indeed being generally of the
same spirit with the other, or tempered by the remembrance of
that spirit — so in Protestant England the neglect of the holy
days seems to have vulgarized the observance of the holidays.
It would be unreal to affirm that, in the most Catholic countries,
there is not a vast amount of worldliness ; it would be absurd to
impute personal earnestness, personal refinement, to the majority
of even decorously behaved Catholics ; but thus much will be
admitted, that the pervading tone of Catholic holy days, as well
as the pervading tone of Catholic holidays, is innocent, well-disci-
plined, yet joyous. Indeed, we make this distinction — quite fear-
less of being refuted — :that in all countries where Catholic holy
days are well observed the people are joyous in their holidays ;
and not only joyous, but intelligent in their pleasures, well-man-
nered, refined, and sympathetic ; whereas there is no " day "
known in the world so utterly heavy, so utterly dull, as the Eng-
lish public holiday, or holy day. The streets seem to groan with
their own melancholy. The shop-shutters look profoundly in
mourning. The wayfarers seem to be keeping penal holidayi
The public parks look more dismal than is their wont, from a
certain effort of the loungers to look at ease. Nobody seems
happy, but everybody tries to seem so, and the failure is as trans-
parent as conspicuous. The people look condemned to suffer
idleness. There is no touch of spontaneity in the atmosphere.
If we visit the public gardens there is a grief-laden sensation,
with strange noises to compensate for the woe. The proper
sources of enjoyment seem as absent from the public holiday as is
the high-toned, brilliant gayety of southern Europe.

670 HOL Y DA YS AND H OLID A YS IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

One-sided as is this picture (for there are thousands of the
British public who are the equals, in every sense, of the Catholic
southerner), it yet gives the impression, often expressed by the
foreigner, of what is called in England public holiday. And now
we return to our question of intensity : Does intensity exist, and
of what sort? Let us admit that there are many intense people.
But of what kinds of intensity are they types ? Let us take two
or three specimens of " the intense." And, first, there is the class
who are exceptionally noisy, and who speak with a Yahoo-sort of
accent. They do not precisely speak, but they hiss, yelp, or
growl, as a substitute for the soft cadences of the human voice.
Now, of this class it must be conceded that they are amazingly in-
tense, but in the direction of the absence of what is pleasing.
Their manners, like their voices, are repugnant. Their conver-
sation consists mainly of chaff, varied only by ribaldry or oaths.
Half-a-dozen such persons, in any place of recreation, are enough
to make a holiday intolerable. As a policeman said but lately,
to the present writer : " Drink, sir, is the father of English ruf-
fianism. It not only creates all that is bad, but it takes away
all that is good." Bad whiskey, bad brand}^, bad beer are the
responsible progenitors of intensity ? Yet, in addition to this
cause, there is the absence of that refining instinct which comes
only from Catholic apprehension. Who that has lived in Spain
or in Portugal, in southern Italy, southern France, or (parts of)
Belgium, has failed to be struck by a certain dignity of individ-
uality in the humblest peasant, artisan, or poor shop-worker?
There is no ruffian class in such countries. Nor is there any ut-
terly poor class. When a " common " man is tipsy — which is a
sight not often seen — he is exhilarant, perhaps noisy — seldom ani-
mal. He is almost always more " larky " than he is grovelling.
Without pushing such comparisons too far, may we not hazard
that the inheritance of Catholic sentiment is visible in the style of
Catholic peoples ; and that the want of that inheritance is as con-
spicuously visible in the " intensity " of the English class re-
ferred to ? In other words, the true, Catholic intensity equally
elevates both the Christian and the man ; whereas the intensity of
non-Catholics, in the lower strata of the profanum vulgus, lacks the
charm of intelligence and delicacy. To quote our friend the po-
liceman once more (who had been twenty-five years in the force):
" You see, sir, there is something wanting in the English masses,
and I cannot make out what it is." What is it that is wanting?
Shall we go too far if we suggest that the almost paganizing of
holy clays is necessarily the almost ruffianizing of holidays?

1 882.] HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS JN ENGLAND. 671

Now, take another accident of intensity, a little funny yet
not without meaning. There is a large class of English people —
specially met with in holiday time — who treat the letter h as
their bitterest enemy. They leave it out where it has just claim
to be pronounced, and drag it in where it has no wish to be
heard. They leave it out savagely and they drag it in savagely,
as though some bitter ancestral feud had left to them the entail-
ment of always insulting this most delicate sound. The trifle in it-
self may seem but light, yet it implies something more than mere
commonness. Travellers who are familiar with the languages
of the Continent assure us that the commonest people speak
well, and that there is no class in other countries which corre-
sponds, in talking badly, to the //-less but demonstrative 'oliday
'Arry. The humblest persons in Catholic countries speak with
creditable propriety, as well as with a certain melody of pronun-
ciation ; just as they are usually polite, and even courteous, in
their style during any casual greeting of daily life. But it is
characteristic of an English class that they talk English execra-
bly ; that they give their /is the dead cut, abhor music in their
cadences, and treat their grammar with contempt or with malig-
nity ; just as in their manners they regard courtesy and refine-
ment as indications of weakness or cowardice. It is true that
this particular class has become thinned in the last twenty years ;
that there is much less of bad speaking than there used to be ;
that all classes are improving in the outward seeming of good-
breeding, and that the intercourse between classes is more court-
ly. Still, even now, on a public holiday, the unpleasant class we
have mentioned fills the air with grating sounds, grating words.
It is their mode of getting rid of their intensity ! Even the rabid
treatment of the poor unfortunate letter h is an intensity, a de-
monstrativeness, of vulgarity. The truth is that intensity is a
natural superlative of the human mind, and must be demonstrat-
ed in some way, at some times. It may take the form of \that is
intelligent and aspiring,' or it may take the form of what is im-
becile and low. It must take either a good or a bad form, for
the simple reason that it must necessarily exist. It must ex-
ist in all classes and in all minds. The noisy and illiterate classes
we have referred to show intensity in their repugnance to
refinement. The higher classes have a thousand outlets for in-
tensity which are necessarily almost unknown to the lower
classes. Good-breeding suppresses public demonstration, in the
purely natural and private caprices of the gentleman. Yet the
intensity exists inwardly, and is only not shown in religion for

672 HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

the reasons we have enlarged upon above. Time was when the
gentlemen of England, like the gentlemen of Spain or of France,
thought themselves honored in being permitted to bend the
knee, in the public streets, at the approach of the Holy Viati-
cum. Time was when, as simple Froissart tells us, and as Mon-
strelet and other chroniclers make evident, that an English gen-
tleman should be not demonstrative in the profession of his faith
was regarded as the " bad manners of the soul." If the reverse
is the case now, it is because, as we have said, there is no
" reason of being" for demonstrativeness when " positive " faith
(along with sacrifice and penance) has gone clean out of the
apprehension of the nation. Just as, at one time, half the streets
of old London were named after saints or after dogmas ; all the
churches having the same kind of dedication ; most of the col-
leges of the universities being " christened " to some devotion,
to some doctrine, to some practice of faith ; so the public holi-
days, both provincial and parochial, were associated with the
religious idea. We do not for a moment mean to say that such
idea was all-pervading ; that it really impressed the religious
character on the holiday ; to affirm this would be simply ridicu-
lous); but, like the roadside image or rude cross, like the holy,
picture that was placed over the cottage door, it demonstrated
the traditional sentiment of the faith, and that sentiment refined
all intensity. Both holy days and holidays in England — if we
may trust to the chroniclers and to the Day Books — were in the
middle ages more joyous than they are now ; though not only
not dissociated from religion, but impressed by at least its senti-
ment or idea. And it is because there is no such impression in
these days, that intensity has become commonplace emotion.
The public holiday, being never a holy day, cannot have any re-
fining impression. Sir John Lubbock in his institution of Bank
holidays (which he proposed to make the substitute for the old
Calendar days) totally ignored the stern fact that a holiday
without an idea is a holiday only fit for jolly school-boys. Men
and women want idea, want association. " The ringing island,"
as England used to be called, has become an island without idea,
without association. At least, this is the case with the masses.
And it is most painfully " demonstrated " in their holidays. We
have ventured to plead — for it is a truth worth debating — that the
utter vulgarizing of what used to be called holy days is the cause
of the utter vulgarizing of holidays. The secularizing of the one
is the brutalizing of the other. If you maintain that a nation
should show no national faith — should not demonstrate that faith

i882.] THE BRAVE LALLY. . 673

on high days — what can you say, when its mere holidays recur, if
those holidays are both vulgar and unjoyous ? Take the example
of modern France, which has tabooed religious festivals — so far as
its present government can taboo them. In the exact proportion
of the dishonoring of religion have the \French lost their culture
and gaiety. There is nothing like the charm of French manner,
French suavity, French power of making others feel happy, in
these days of free-thought worship or babbling, as there was in
the good traditioned old days. You cannot weaken the appre-
hension of what is enduring without weakening the apprehension
of what is passing ; nor can you kill the refining instincts of Ca-
tholicism without lowering all classes in natural grace. Leave
piety out of the question — we are not speaking of piety — and
consider the whole subject intellectually. Consider it, that is, as
it bears on the mental tone, and therefore on the happy sentiment,
of a nation. To recur to the case of France, as proving the truth
before our eyes, the proclamation of irreligion has been the pro-
clamation of vulgarity, and equally the proclamation of dulness.
England has made no (recent) proclamation ; she has simply sub-
sided into a negative. But France, in proclaiming holy days to
be superstitious, has proclaimed the natural holiday to be ani-
mal. In England it is not animal, it is pointless ; it is stupid,
unworthy of a great people. Will it ever become worthy of
them again ?

THE BRAVE LALLY.

IT is doubtful if history contains an example of a man at once
more brave, chivalrous, and unfortunate than Thomas Arthur,
Baron de Tollendal, Comte de Lally. Of a fiery and impetuous
nature, surpassing ambition, incessant activity, and admirable
loyalty to the country of his ancestry as well as that of his birth,
and with the courage to execute the great projects which his
mind conceived, his very virtues contributed to the misfor-
tunes which, after a brilliant career, finally caused his ruin — a
ruin as complete as his enemies, who to the last thirsted for his
blood, could desire.

Lally was descended from one of the most ancient of the
noble families of Ireland. The Lallys, or O'Mullallys, were chiefs
of ancient Galway (Hy Many), and were a branch of the- cele-
brated Clan Colla, through which they traced their descent from

VOL. xxxiv. — 43

674 ' THE BRAVE LALLY. [Feb.,

•one of the ancient kings. When dispossessed of their territories
they settled at their castle of Tullindally (Tulloch-na-Dala), near
Tuam, whence Count Lally derived one of his titles. The family
espoused the cause of the Stuarts, and when James II. abdicated
its head emigrated with him to France. Lally's father, Sir Ger-
ald Lally, who commanded the Irish regiment in the French ser-
vice of which his uncle, General Dillon, was proprietor, gave the
youth a military education and caused him to spend his vacations
with the regiment. At eight years of age, in the year 1710,
Lally " assisted," according to a history of those times, at the
siege of Giron (probably in the light infantry), and at the age of
twelve he mounted his first guard in the trenches before Barce-
lona. The death, in 1723, of the Duke of Orleans, who was re-
gent of France and his patron, delayed the promotion of Lally,
so that in 1732 he was only aide-major; but his brilliant con-
duct at the siege of Kehl, in 1733, during the war for the suc-
cession to the throne of Poland, and at Philipsburg, where he
saved the life of his father, gained him the grade of major.

The war being ended Lally, impatient of idleness, formed the
project of placing the son of James II. on the throne of England,
by means of an alliance between France and Russia. Provided
with a mission to the empress by Cardinal Fleury, the French
minister of foreign affairs, he travelled to Russia under pretext of
seeking service in the army, in which his uncle, General de Lacy,
then held a command. The sentiment of the Russian court was
opposed to the plan, and the doubtful nature of his credentials
placed Lally in a false position. His proud spirit could not
brook this, and, hastily quitting Russia, he returned to openly
reproach Fleury for his compromising silence. " I expected to
enter Russia as a lion," exclaimed he, " but, thanks to you, I es-
teem myself fortunate in being able to escape like a fox."

The war which began in 1741, upon the accession of Maria
Theresa to the Austrian throne, gave Lally an opportunity to dis-
tinguish himself, and he displayed such ability in the campaign
in Flanders that Marshal de Noailles appointed him aide-major-
general. In that capacity he took part in the battle of Dettingen,
and in the sieges of Menin, Ypres, and Furnes.

In 17/1/1 a new Irish regiment was created for Lally, to be
called by his name, and in four months he had it so well organ-
ized that it gained much credit at the siege of Tournai. At
Fontenoy Marshal Saxe avowed that the Irish brigade decided
the victory by dispersing the terrible English column that had
successfully withstood the artillery of the Due de Richelieu and

1 882.] THE BRAVE LALLY. 675

the king's household cavalry. Lally so distinguished himself
that Louis XV. named him brigadier on the battle-field.

In 1745 began that fatal expedition of Prince Charles Ed-
ward into Scotland, which is so well described in Scott's " Wa-
verley." Lally proposed to the cabinet at Versailles a plan to
aid the cause of the Stuarts by sending an army of ten thousand
men to co-operate with the prince. The project was accepted,
but executed in part only. The Due de Richelieu was named
chief of the expedition ; and Lally being appointed quartermas-
ter-general of the army, set out with some volunteers and joined
Charles Edward in Scotland. Here he served as aide-de-camp
to the prince at the battle of Falkirk. After the defeat of Cullo-
den he fled to London, thence to Ireland, and back again to Lon-
don, where a price was put on his head. He finally escaped, dis-
guised as a sailor, to Dunkirk.

Having again entered the French army in 1747, Lally was
found in the first ranks at Anvers, and at the battle of Laffeldt.
He just missed being swallowed up by the explosion of a mine
at Berg-op-Zoom, but was taken prisoner in an ambuscade.
Exchanged some time after, he was again wounded at the taking
of Maastricht, and gained the grade of marechal-de-camp, or
major-general.

The difficulties between the French and English colonies in
this country, which culminated in the unfortunate expedition of
Braddock in 1755, gave a new opportunity to the adventurous
spirit of Lally. He proposed that the French ministry should
fit out a new expedition to England for the young Pretender,
and at the same time prosecute a vigorous war upon the English
establishments in America and India. His advice was not acted
upon at the time, but it was finally determined to send Lally him-
self to India. The French Compagnie des Indes had at no time
been a financial success, but in 1757, when France was threatened
with the loss of her colonies in North America, it was natural
that she should jealously guard the others. The powers con-
ferred upon Lally, who was chosen on account of his hereditary
hatred of England as well as his military abilities, were of the
most comprehensive kind. He was named lieutenant-general,
grand cross of St. Louis, king's commissioner, syndic of the Com-
pagnie des Indes, and general commander of all the French
establishments in eastern Asia. The directors of the company
specially charged him " to reform the abuses without number, the
extravagance and mismanagement that absorbed their revenues."

The prospect that the sanguine mind of the warrior now pic-

676' THE BRAVE LALLY. [Feb.,

tured to itself was of the brightest. He had a high command
and an enterprise before him well suited to his ardent temper.
The task which he undertook was nothing less than driving
the English out of India. His destination was the Carnatic,
the country of riches, and Pondicherry, the best-provided place
there, would be his headquarters. Among the officers of his lit-
tle army were scions of some of the best families of France. He
was to be seconded by the troops of the company under the com-
mand of Bussy, an able officer, and, above all, he was to have with
him his own Irish regiment.

After a voyage of nearly a year the squadron, consisting of
four vessels of the line with transports, under the command of
Comte d'Ache, landed Lally, with his force of four thousand
men, at Pondicherry on April 28, 1758. At that time nearly every
practicable place along the whole coast of Hindustan was occu-
pied by European trading stations, and the foreign commerce was
entirely in the hands of the English, French, Dutch, Danes, and
Portuguese. In the southeast, on the Coromandel coast, lay two
important places which were natural rivals for the trade of
the Carnatic : Madras, the chief seat of British commerce in In-
dia ; and, lying not far from one hundred miles to the south
of it, Pondicherry, an important French trading station. For a
number of years previously a war had been carried on between
the French and English, assisted by the native princes, until, in
1755, a conditional peace was declared, which left the English in
possession of some places they had captured.

As the vessel which carried Lally sailed into the port of Pon-
dicherry it was saluted with a volley of cannon-balls, and much
injured ; a circumstance which the judicious as well as the su-
perstitious might have considered a bad augury on account of
the lack of discipline which could make such a blunder possible.
However, the general immediately set about the vigorous prose-
cution of his enterprise. Despatching Comte d'Estaing to invest
Gondelur, a little commercial city near Pondicherry, he himself
marched upon Divicoty, which surrendered upon his approach,
and determined upon the capture of the citadel of St. David. In
the meantime an English fleet, under Admiral Pocock, attacked
the squadron of D'Ache at Pondicherry, the count and his captain
being both wounded and the vessels damaged. All the authori-
ties at Pondicherry opposed the expedition against St. David,
and Lally — who had meantime reduced Gondelur — could ob-
tain from there neither provisions, money, nor necessary muni-
tions. In spite of every obstacle he captured the fort, which was

1 882.] THE BRAVE LALLY. 677

defended with one hundred and sixty-four guns, and, according1
to orders which he had received from the ministry, destroyed it.

The neglect, corruption, and laxity of discipline of the officers
of the French company at Pondicherry drew from Lally the bit-
terest complaints, which were often couched in very harsh and
offensive terms. Under the circumstances, he being a stranger
to the country, and set up suddenly over the head of the whole
French establishment, this was a grave mistake, as the sequel
proved. For the present, however, he pushed his operations so
vigorously that of the hostile posts that covered the Carnatic
two were carried by assault and the rest capitulated, so that in
the space of thirty-eight days there were no English left along
the south of the Coromandel coast. With characteristic impetu-
osity he now urged forward a project of attacking Madras, a
large city defended by the strong fort of St. George. Writing
to Bussy, he says : " When I am master of Madras, I go to the
Ganges, either by land or sea. My policy is contained in six
words : no more English in the Peninsula."

There was now another naval combat at Pondicherry, and
D'Ache, who was again wounded, insisted, in spite of the pro-
tests of the general and the other authorities, upon retiring to
the Isle of France. For the expedition to Madras money and
material of war were wanting. The chief of the squadron declin-
ed to join in the enterprise, and the governor of Pondicherry an-
nounced that he could supply the troops only five days longer.
The only resource was a disputed claim for thirteen million
francs which the Compagnie des Indes held against the rajah of
Tanjore, and Lally with his army might hasten the payment if he
could. How one evil leads to another was well illustrated in
this case. Lally, on his way to Tanjore, was compelled by lack
of provisions to pillage a place belonging to the English. Arriv-
ing at Tanjore, he took the city and about half a million francs.
A force of fifteen thousand natives, under British officers, has-
tened to the relief of the rajah, and the French, receiving no aid
from Pondicherry, were compelled to retreat.

A bold attempt to assassinate Count Lally, which was made
at this time, just missed of success. A native captain from Tan-
jore rode into the French camp one morning at the head of a
troop of fifty men, and asked an audience of the commander un-
der pretence of wishing to enlist in his service. Lally, who had
just risen, appeared from his tent half dressed, when the captain
attacked him sabre in hand. The general defended himself as
well as he could with his blackthorn stick, but the rest of the

678 THE BRAVE LALLY. [Feb.,

troop threw themselves upon him, and would doubtless have
despatched him had not his guard immediately rushed to the
rescue. As might be supposed Lally did not escape unwounded,
but the would-be assassins were nearly all killed.

Disasters now accumulated upon the French. General Bussy,
who hitherto had been uniformly successful, was defeated by a
force inferior to his own. The French company was threatened
with expulsion from the whole north of India, and even Pondi-
cherry was menaced. Lally during his difficult retreat wrote to
the governor of that place : " Rapine and disorder have followed
me since I left Pondicherry, and now bring me back. All this
must be changed or the company will fall." The breach between
the general and the civil authorities was rapidly widening.
Commissioned as he was to cut up by the roots all the abuses
that had sprung up in an establishment in which the officers
grew rich while the proprietors were being ruined, the case was
exactly as Voltaire stated it : " Had he been the mildest of men,
under these conditions he would have been hated." But Lally
at his best was far from being a mild man, and in the face of
abuses* 'which were ruining his great projects he grew outra-
geous. In his fury he declared that Pondicherry was another
Sodom, which either fire from heaven or the English would sure-
ly destroy.

The return of Lally to Pondicherry gave a somewhat differ-
ent aspect to affairs for a time. He drove the enemy from about
that place, and without delay revived his favorite plan of attack-
ing Madras. The defection of D'Ache, who had in the meantime
returned to Pondicherry, and who now again sailed for the Isle
of France, did not deter him. The company's chest was nearly
empty, but, taking what money there was, the general, having
ascertained that the English fleet had sailed for Bombay, pushed
forward and seized the, city of Arcot, which is situated nearly to
the west of Madras. Here he was rejoined by Bussy, who com-
manded in the Deccan, which lies to the north of the Carnatic,
between that province and Bengal. Lally, who had promoted
Bussy from the rank of lieutenant-colonel to that of brigadier,
desired to borrow from him a sum of five million francs, which
was in his charge. The refusal of Bussy, who feared to risk the
money in a doubtful enterprise, opened the way to a difference
between him and his commander which spread to the army.
The royal troops sided with Lally, while the company's forces
wanted to serve under no one but Bussy.

Notwithstanding every obstacle the expedition was got un-

1 882.] THE BRAVE LALLY. 679

der way, and on December 14, 1758, the French appeared before
Madras. The Black City, which was the most populous part
of Madras and the one least capable of defence, ' was surprised
and taken almost without a struggle. According to the custom
prevailing in India at that time, the victorious soldiers betook
themselves to pillage, drunkenness, and every possible excess.
The English commander took advantage of the disorder to make
a sortie, and Count d'Estaing, who was serving with Lally, run-
ning single-handed against a troop of the enemy, was taken pri-
soner. The French were driven back, and would have suffered
a defeat had not Lally managed to collect a party to hold the
enemy in check. He lead the way to the bridge over which the
English had come from the fort, and would have cut them off if
Bussy had not refused to co-operate with him.

Trenches were now opened before Fort St. George and an
ill-conducted siege begun. The character of Lally as a warrior
is illustrated by the fact that he undertook to reduce a well-
fortified place, defended by 1,600 whites and 2,500 sepoys, with a
badly equipped force of 2,700 infantry and 300 cavalry. At the
same time he had to defend his rear from a relief corps of 5,000
men, which he had to beat in four separate engagements. The
lack of pay and provisions, as well as dissensions among the
officers in his army, caused numbers of the men to desert, two
hundred of them at one time going over to the enemy in a body.

However, the grand prize which lay almost within his grasp
impelled Lally to proceed in spite of these discouragements, and
after a siege of forty -six days a breach was made in the wails of
the fort. Preparations for its assault and capture were almost
complete when suddenly a fleet of six English vessels, bringing
reinforcements of men and material, sailed into the harbor. All
hope of success was at once abandoned, and nothing remained
for the French but to raise the siege and retreat in haste to Pon-
dicherry which was once more in danger.

From this time forward the fortunes of the French in India
seemed to be under the control of some evil genius. While ly-
ing before Madras in December Lally had sent orders to Pon-
dicherry for a small force to go toward the north, to the relief
of the factory at Masulipatam, which was in danger of capture.
Such was the slackness of the officials upon whom he had to de-
pend that it was four months before the expedition was ready,
and it arrived at its destination only two days after the place had
been taken by the enemy. The baffled commander of the party
then saw fit to attempt the extortion of a pretended debt from a

680 THE BRAVE LALLY. [Feb.,

native prince, and lost four-fifths of his men. Count d' Ache once
more appeared at Pondicherry, was beaten again by the English
fleet, and departed for the last time, after leaving eight hundred
men and a small sum of money. Lally, after his return to Pon-
dicherry, was attacked by a fever caused by chagrin and disap-
pointment, and aggravated by the insults of his enemies in the
city. The condition of things was not improved by a revolt
among his soldiers, who were clamoring for pay, clothes, and
provisions, and who were placated with difficulty.

The English now appeared before the fortress which covered
the French establishments in the province of Arcot, but Lally,
once more taking the field, compelled them to retreat. A similar
movement was again defeated by Geoghegan, one of Lally's
officers, but the demoralized Frenchmen could not withstand the
third attack, which was made two months after, and were com-
pletely beaten, Bussy being taken prisoner. This misfortune was
followed be a revolt of Lally's cavalry, who were only prevented
from joining the enemy by means of money which had to be bor-
rowed from private persons and the purse of the general. Dis-
aster quickly followed disaster, and the remnant of the French
were driven from post to post, until at last Lally was forced to
shut himself up in Pondicherry, where, on March 18, 1760, the
enemy came to blockade the city by sea and land.

Under such hopeless circumstances, with only slight hope of
relief from abroad and discord and want prevailing within, the
French underwent a siege which lasted ten months. Lally, al-
ready nearly driven mad by disappointment, had now worse ene-
mies to contend with than the British and blacks without, whose
number was more than ten times that of his own force. He
wished the employes of the company to dress in military uniform,
in order to deceive the enemy by a show of strength. This pro-
posal was resisted by the servants and their officers, and had to
be abandoned. When food became scarce the general ordered
that every house, including his own, be searched for surplus pro-
visions to subsist the soldiers and the more needy of the people.
The civil officers, who endeavored to thwart all his plans and
render him odious, pretended to be outraged by this proceeding,
and became more bitter against Lally than ever. At length the
means of subsistence were almost exhausted, four ounces of rice
being the daily ration afforded to each soldier, when the general,
sick, threatened by iron and poison, and hated and betrayed on
every hand, was obliged to surrender at discretion.

It should be remembered that the foreign policy of France

I882.J THE BRAVE LALLY. 681

was at this time dictated by the Due de Choiseul, the protege" of
Mme. Pompadour and the pet of the sceptical philosophic set of
the period. His ministry was a most unfortunate one for his
country and lost to it the greater part of its colonies. It also had
its share in Lally's misfortunes, which were now approaching
their culmination. While being conveyed in his palankeen out of
Pondicherry, and just able to hold a pistol in each hand, Lally
was only saved from a mob which threatened his life by a little
guard which the English commander had granted him. The
council of Pondicherry and the principal employes of the Com-
pagnie des Indes were carried with him to England as prisoners
of war, and the city itself was destroyed. On their arrival Paris
was inundated with accusations charging Laliy with corruption,
tyranny, and treason. His first care after being liberated on
parole was to pay the debts which he had privately contracted
in the public service. He then betook himself to the French
court at Fontainebleau, and in spite of the warning of the Due
de Choiseul, who advised him to flee, delivered himself up as a
prisoner. He was thrown into the Bastile, whence he wrote to
the minister : " I carry here my head and my innocence. I await
your orders."

It was fifteen months before the proceedings against Lally
were begun, on July 6, 1763. The weighty influence of the di-
rectors and officers of the Compagnie des Indes, of D'Ache, of
Bussy, and of all the enemies which Lally's imprudent and out-
spoken reproaches had raised against him was brought to bear
upon the judges. Besides the absurd charge that he had sold
Pondicherry to the English, the most trivial accusations were
considered. He was refused counsel upon a technicality, and
even time to prepare his defence was not granted. Toward the
end of the long trial, upon being cross-questioned, he exclaim-
ed, pointing to his wounds and his white hair : " See, then, the
reward of fifty-five years of services." On the following day,
May 6, 1766, he was declared to be duly convicted of having be-
trayed the interests of the king (trahi les inUrets du roi), of the
state, and of the Compagnie des Indes ; of abuse of authority and
tyranny, and was condemned to be beheaded.

When the verdict was read to Lally, he was for the moment
overcome by surprise and indignation. He happened to have in
his pocket a pair of compasses which had been used for draw-
ing maps. At the words " betrayed the interests of the king "
he cried, " That is not true. Never ! never ! " and plunged the
iron into his breast. The wound was serious but not mortal, and

682 THE BRAVE LALLY. [Feb.r

his enemies, fearing that he might escape the scaffold, had the
hour of execution advanced. Gagged lest he should attempt to
address the people, and borne to the block amid the applause of
his persecutors, but conducting himself with Christian fortitude
to the last, perished the man whom Carlyle has named " the brave
Lally."

In judging Lally 's responsibility for his rash attempt upon
his own life the circumstances must be considered. The act was
unpremeditated, and his misfortunes had at different times caused
his mind to wander. He had always been a consistent and good
Catholic. On the scaffold he delivered this message : " Tell my
judges that God has done me the favor to pardon them." His
confessor, the Abbe Aubry, wrote to Lally 's friends as follows :
" He struck himself like a hero of old, but he died like a Chris-
tian."

It was not long before the fact was generally recognized that
a judicial murder had been committed. Many faults had been
proved against Lally, but no crime worthy of capital punishment
whatever. The verdict of his judges did not pronounce him
guilty of high treason, and Louis XV. himself said : " They have
massacred him." It remained for the only son of Lally, the Mar-
quis Trophime Gerard de Lally-Tollendal, to devote himself to
the rehabilitation of his father's name, and it was only after
twelve years, during which he pleaded in court after court with
a simple and pathetic eloquence, that the sentence of attainder
was reversed. Of him it was said that his filial piety made of
him a jurisconsult and orator, and gained him the esteem of all
honest men.

1 882.] EVOLUTION. 683

EVOLUTION.

THE controversy over the truth of the theory of creation by
evolution presents one rather curious phenomenon. When this
theory was first advanced it was met by a storm of dogmatic
abuse. It was ridiculed, pooh-poohed, abused, called the "dirt
theory/' and scarcely given a hearing. Now the tables are com-
pletely turned, so that the man who to-day opposes it is treated
in very much the same way as if he denied the revolution of the
earth around the sun. He has difficulty in getting a respectful
attention. The hypothesis is no longer treated as such, but as a
proved fact ; and, such is the force of repeated affirmations, there
are now a great many people who call themselves evolutionists
without any knowledge of the arguments by which the theory is
sustained, or by which it is opposed. It is also a very prevalent
idea that there is some mysterious opposition between the evo-
lutionary hypothesis and revealed religion, that the same man
cannot believe in both at the same time. This idea receives sup-
port from the well-known fact that the originators and*most able
defenders of the theory are not religious men, but rather the
contrary. Now, this is a serious matter, for it frequently hap-
pens that the man who believes in creation by evolution, he
knows not why other than because certain wise men believe in it,
gives up his religion for no other reason than that these same
wise men have given up theirs. It is a question of importance,
both to the man himself and the community in which he lives,
whether he shall be a believer in Christianity or a contemner of
it, and yet men become from the one the other for no other rea-
son than that " they believe in evolution." The literature of this
subject is voluminous enough, but scarcely popular. The ma-
jority of people are either too busy or too intellectually indolent
to take the trouble to inform themselves of the merits of this
question. They prefer to have some one else pass upon them,
and content themselves with endorsing his opinion. This is
neither right nor wise. The object for which this article is
written is to present as plainly and as simply as possible the
main arguments, or, more accurately, lines of argument, on both
sides of this question, with a short consideration of the alleged
contradiction which evolution presents to religion ; meaning by

'684 EVOLUTION. [Feb.,

religion, religion based upon revelation — i.e., Christianity — thus
making it possible for one who for any reason is unable to study
the voluminous literature of this subject to come to a conclusion
as to its merits and probable influence on morals which shall be
sustained by something more substantial than a name.

It will not be questioned that an evolution of ideas is shown
in the universe. The invariable procedure of nature is from the
lower to the higher, from the simpler to the more complex. This
is as true in the history of race as in the history of the indivi-
dual, of inorganic matter and of organic life. In the beginning
the world was a mass of inorganic matter. The lowest forms of
life appeared first ; there were plants before there were animals,
and the first animals had organizations of great simplicity. Later
the forms of life became more numerous and more complex. In
each age the prevailing time was superior in kind to its pre-
decessor and inferior to its successor. Here the most recent
discoveries of paleontology offer no contradiction to the nar-
rative of creation as given in the book of Genesis. To the ex-
istence of an ideal, a typical evolution we need give no further
discussion.

There is only a faint opposition to the doctrine of evolution
in the inorganic world. The universe as we see it is in a state of
perpetual phange. As far as our knowledge goes it convinces us
that the differences existing between the various members of the
solar system are simply the results of the different temperatures
of those members. Every body having a high temperature is
approximating by radiation the condition of those of lower tem-
peratures. Beyond the solar system we see nebulas or masses of
luminous gas, and stars whose different colors suggest the idea
that they are bodies in various states of incandescence. This sug-
gestion the spectroscope asserts as a fact. The conclusions natu-
rally drawn from these facts are that the common history reveal-
ed here is simply one of cooling by radiation ; that the common
origin of all was an incandescent mineral fog. This is the nebular
hypothesis. An unproved hypothesis it may be, but it is not
susceptible of demonstration, and therefore a demonstration of
its truth cannot be demanded. There is no valid objection to it
in the field of physics. It explains simply and beautifully the
motions and conditions of the members of the solar system, as
well as some of the primary problems of geology. It is univer-
sally accepted by scientific men, and what opposition there is to
it is neither scholarly nor intelligent. From it, then, we can infer
the history of the earth. First a mass of fire-mist, as it cooled it

i882.] EVOLUTION. 685,

shrunk in size and was precipitated as a ball of molten matter.
As this matter cooled it solidified, a crust was formed on the
surface and a solid nucleus at the centre. In time the aqueous
vapor in the atmosphere condensed, as its temperature was les-
sened, and the waters covered the earth. At about this period
the shrinkages of the crust, the germs of continents, appeared.
The growth of the earth as we know it from these continent
germs is the story told by geology. What bearing does all this
have upon our discussion ? It is an evolution.

It is when the hypothesis of evolution is applied still further
to explain vUe vast and innumerable diversities existing in the
organic world that the great discussion on this topic arises.
The foundations of the hypothesis have been assailed with ob-
jection and denial, and the assailants have in turn been " hand-
led " by its supporters. But the assailing or the handling of an
opponent does not necessarily involve his ejectment from his po-
sition. I shall therefore state propositions which have been met
by objections, and objections which have been assailed and de-
rided. In considering the arguments in favor of a genetic evo-
lution I shall content myself with a brief and concise statement of
them. They are :

1. The graduated succession of forms of life shown in geolo-
gical history.

2. The prominent phenomena of types and archetypes. Thus,
all animals are divided into four great groups ; and between the
members of each group a profound relationship exists. Every
vertebrate resembles every other vertebrate in a hundred more
particulars than any mollusc, radiate or articulate. All verte-
brates are formed upon one plan, so that, widely as two may dif-
fer, we find bone in the one answering to bone in the other, and
to a certain extent muscle answering to muscle. In each one all
the others exist potentially, or, to be more accurate, each is a
modification of the great original idea on which all are construct-
ed. From which it is inferred that between all the members of
each family an actual genetic relationship exists.

3. The remarkable progression of form shown by embryos in
the process of development. Each embryo passes through all
the intermediate forms between a simple germ-cell and that of
its developed parent. The argument here is that the history of
the race is repeated in the history of each individual of it.

4. The exceedingly simple and beautiful explanation which
this theory gives of all the complex phenomena of organic life.
This is the sum and substance of much of Mr. Spencer's writings.

686 f EVOLUTION. [Feb.,

5. The vast economy of force which a creation by evolution
shows when contrasted with a creation by fiat. The weight of
this argument is greatly augmented when it is considered in con-
nection with the theory of the persistence and conservation of
energy now 'universally accepted.

6. The singular phenomena of prophetic and retrospective
types. For example : before there were any birds their appear-
ance was foreshadowed in flying reptiles ; and the first bird —
the archeopteryx — in its long vertebrated tail, bilaterally quilled,
seems to have retained some prominent reptilian characteristics.
The ornithorhyncus of Australia, with its quadrupea body, and
bill closely resembling that of a duck (whence its common name,
duck-bill), is an example of a retrospective type now extant.

7. The known fact that, while species are in general true to
their lineage, they vary sufficiently to give rise to the phenomena
of races and varieties. This fact is supplemented by the hypothe-
sis that the variation is a definite and constant quantity ; and that,
as it shows a definite result in a brief period, the longer the period
the greater will be the difference between the original and the
varied types. In other words, that variative improvement is
capable of indefinite extension.

8. The admirable correspondence between the organs of ani-
mals and their environment.

9. The assumption that in the struggle for existence those
animals least fitted to survive would be destroyed, and in this
manner the race would improve. This argument is closely asso-
ciated with

10. The improvement in species resulting from natural selec-
tion.

11. It is also supposed that hybridism would occasionally re-
sult in a form superior to either parent ; and, finally,

12. The probability that this acknowledged method of nature
in the inorganic world is also the mode by which the various
forms of life were created. In other words, the grand unification
of phenomena which this theory presents. There is something
fascinating in this idea of one universal process, so simple and so
adaptable, by which such different results have been accomplish-
ed. It is, perhaps, the most potent of all the arguments in favor
of genetic evolution, being so reasonable.

These arguments have been met by the following ones :
i. Notwithstanding variations of species there is no authen-
ticated instance of the derivation of one species from another,
still less of one family from another, still less of one kingdom

1882.] EVOLUTION. 687

from another, and least of all of living organism from dead mat-
ter. The world has been ransacked for such an instance, but in
vain. Geology has been appealed to, but has not responded. " In
successive geological formations, although new species are con-
stantly appearing and there is abundance of evidence of progres-
sive change, no single instance has yet been observed of one
species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications
into another." Moreover, if the hypothesis under consideration
be the true explanation of nature's methods varieties should
occasionally come into existence so different from the original
stock that the joint offspring of the original stock and of the
variety, or of two different varieties of the same stock, should be
incapable of generation. But Professor Huxley says, in On the
Origin of Species, at page 141 : " I do not know that there is a sin-
gle fact which would justify any one in saying that any degree
of sterility has been observed between breeds absolutely known
to have been produced by selective breeding from a common
stock." " If it could be demonstrated that it is impossible to
breed selectively from any stock a form which shall not breed
from another produced from the same stock ; and if we were
shown that this must be the necessary and inevitable result of
all experiments, I hold that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis would be
utterly shattered." Mr. Darwin himself says (Origin of Species,
fifth edition, p. 305), " I do not know of any " instance of this
kind. He modified this statement in the next edition of his book,
saying, at p. 240 of the sixth edition, " I know of hardly any."
But he does not mention a single instance, as he would be apt to
do if he knew of one ; so we may fairly conclude that the force of
his first statement is unimpaired. " A group of animals having
all the characters exhibited by species in nature has never been
originated by selection, whether artificial or natural " (Lay Ser-
mons, page 323). The conclusion seems to be that, while the
theory of evolution by natural selection demands that a species
shall be capable of assuming by insensible degrees generic and
ordinal characteristics, observation only shows that individuals
are capable of exhibiting variations wholly within the limits of
the specific type ; and that when the causes of these variations
are removed the individual quickly reverts to the original form.

2. The known constancy of species. The animals contem-
porary with man during the stone age in Europe were not per-
ceptibly different from the same animals at the present time.
The reindeer, dog, and cat of paleolithic and of recent times are
the same. The bull, dog, and cat of ancient Egypt, as shown by

688 EVOLUTION. [Feb.,

the mummied specimens of those animals exhumed from tombs,
differed in no respect from the same animals of to-day. This
testimony becomes more weighty when it is considered that
these animals have been transported all over the globe and have
endured all changes of environment. The earliest human skele-
tons found are recognized without difficulty as belonging to man,
while the skeletons of apes contemporary with these are but the
remains of apes. There is no confusion. The " missing link "
has not yet been found.

3. The vast periods of time which these facts, compel the sup-
porters of this theory to demand cannot be granted. Mr. Dar-
win requires three hundred millions of years for the latter part of
the secondary geological epoch. How great, then, must be the
interval to the Cambrian epoch ! Yet he says (Origin of Species,
sixth edition, p. 286) : " If the theory be true it is indisputable that
before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods
elapsed, as long as, or probably longer than, the whole interval
from the Cambrian age to the present day." But modern astro-
nomy refuses to allow these inconceivably great periods of time.
In Nature, I2th of May, 1870, Dr. Gould says : " We could not as-
sert so long a period as eighty millions of years for the past
duration of the sun's heat."

4. The lack of evidence of the derivation of species from
species becomes a colossal weakness in the theory when the
change from dead matter to living organism is considered. The
gap between man and his alleged progenitor is another appar-
ently insurmountable obstacle. Experience and reason lead to
the conclusion that life cannot come from anything but life. The
differences between the mineral and a living organism are funda-
mental. The one only increases by the addition of like particles
from without ; internally it is at rest. The other grows by as-
similation from within ; the atoms of which it is composed are in
constant motion. The experiments of Professor Tyndall to dis-
cover whether there be such a thing as spontaneous generation
gave a testimony against it clear and decisive in direct propor-
tion to the care taken to destroy living germs in the subject of
the experiment, and to prevent their accession during its pro-
gress. But even had the result been different, it would not have
been considered conclusive ; and for this reason : the materials
used were infusions of turnips and chopped straw, which were
first boiled to destroy all living germs. It would, therefore,
surely be asked, Why start with living matter and destroy its life
when dead matter can be easily obtained ? Why not use a solu-

1 882.] EVOLUTION. 689

tion of some soluble salt, for example ? For the object of the ex-
periment was to discover if life would generate spontaneously in
inorganized matter. But this is unimportant now. The experi-
ments went to prove that no matter can live unless transmuted
by or transmitted from some living organism. " Between the
living state of matter and the non-living there is an absolute and
irreconcilable difference ; that, so far from being able to demon-
strate that the non-living passes by gradations into the living,
the transition is sudden and abrupt " (Dr. Beale in Medical Times
and Gazette). It does not remove the difficulty to call life a pro-
perty of matter, for no explanation is given why certain atoms
have this property while others lack it. It has been said by deri-
vationists, who declare that they have traced all forms of life
back to the simple monad cell, that from this to dead matter is
but a step. It may be, but they have not yet been able to take
it. It is a greater one than from that same simple monad cell to
man.

The gulf that separates man from the anthropoid ape is an-
other weak point in this hypothesis. And here it must be borne,
in mind, as Professor Winchell well says, that, assuming the-
theory to be true, man's immediate ancestor is not to be sought
among the quadrumana of to-day most akin to him. They are*
but little if any older than he. " If man be a derived forma he:
must look for his crest among the ruling families of monkeys ex-
isting in the miocene or eocene age." When man with all hd&faCr-
ulties and endowments is considered, the chasm seems vast.. It
cannot be crossed by a single flight of conjecture. Even granting;
— and eminent physiologists, including Cuvier, Owen, and Wal-
lace, do not grant it — that so far as physical structure is concern-
ed man differs no more from the animals which are immediately
beneath him than these do from other members of the same order,,
the main difficulty is unsolved. It is not his physical structure-
only, but man in his completeness, that the theory is called upon-
to explain. And here we come upon the heart of all objection to-
this theory, viz., the disparity between the results observed and'
the causes assigned. Any one of the evolutionary forces, or all
of them combined, cannot account for the moral nature and reli-
gious instincts of man. The ideas of God, immortality, honor,
beneficence, and generosity could not be produced by purely
physical causes. It cannot well be said that they are modified'
forms of bestial sensations ; for since they have now no trace of
their alleged origin, the method of their development is inscruta-
ble. Viewed in this aspect genetic evolution appears. as. a phi-

VOL. xxxiv.— 44

690 EVOLUTION. [Feb.,

losophy which ignores the highest characteristics of the philoso-
pher, a generalization which omits the leading facts.

5. If the various organs of the higher forms of life have been
acquired in the way asserted by this theory it is difficult to ac-
count for the suddenness of their acquisition. A strictly genetic
evolution leaves no room for rudimentary and prophetic organs ;
they can only be attributed to an intelligent creator. How could
a fish, for example, stranded on the shore acquire lungs with a
rapidity sufficient to prevent his death in the first stage of his
evolution from a water-breather to an air-breather ? And yet as
the first vertebrates were fishes the evolutionist must attribute
the existence of land animals to some such event. So when the
first mammals were evolved the mammary glands of the females
must have been perfectly developed in the first generation.

Herbert §pencer defines evolution as a change from an in-
definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent hetero-
geneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.
Now, endeavor to grasp the meaning of this definition. The
homogeneous has no differences between its parts. Its ultimate
atoms are precisely alike ; their motions, if they have any, are the
same ; they are equidistant. No part of the mass can possess any
function not possessed equally by each and every other part.
This, incoherent and indefinite, is simply chaos. But let one
part begin to differ from the rest, and the homogeneity and co-
herence disappear. The work of evolution has now begun. If
this differentiation continue, that which was homogeneous, in-
definite, and incoherent will become coherent, definite, and hetero-
geneous. From chaos the universe will emerge. Granting that
this is the method in which the work of creation was done, and
it cannot be successfully denied, what bearing does it have upon
theism, upon religion? In the first place, whence came those ti-
tanic throbs whose pulsations caused the vast, inert mass of chaos
to form itself into the glorious results we see around us ? These
serial changes of matter must be finite, they must have had a
beginning, since evolution starts with the homogeneous. Then
they must have had a cause. This cause must have been some-
thing outside of the chaos, since that, by its homogeneity, was
incapacitated from changing except under the influence of exter-
nal energies. Men anxious to exclude the Deity from the uni-
verse because they cannot see him with the microscope, nor find
him in the absorption band of the spectroscope; who deny his ex-
istence because he eludes their methods, say that evolution is the
result of an inherent property of matter, according to the laws

1 882.] E VOL UTION. 691

of which it is developed. But this view of the subject does not
eliminate the Creator from creation. It removes him but one
step further back in the process ; it is a petitio principii. How did
the atoms which first began to differ from the rest come to have
this developmental property not shared by all, so that the evolu-
tionary ferment could begin ? For in chaos every atom was pre-
cisely similar to every other atom. Lewes, in his History of
Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 701, defines law as " the invariable relation
between two distinct phenomena according to which one de-
pends on another." It is, then, neither intelligent nor volitional ;
it is not a force, but a mode of action. But as there can be no
law without a lawgiver, so there can be no action without an
agent. Who, then, was the agent who impressed this evolving
property upon the primordial atoms ? No matter in what light
we consider evolution we find that it inevitably involves an evol-
ver. It is finite, and, therefore, must have had a beginning. It
is not self-inaugurating, and therefore must have had a cause.
It is not self-sustaining, and therefore must have a conserver.
Science can lead us back to the incandescent mineral fog in
which all things potentially existed. But when we seek the
cause of this igneous vapor, and of the marvellous properties in-
herent in it, she cannot answer. The beginning she shows us, but
of the cause and antecedents of that beginning she is ignorant.
Having come as far as this, we do not care to stop. Since science
can guide us no further we turn to reason, to revelation. Reason
assures us that the first cause, the causa causarum, can be no other
than the absolute, the unconditioned being. The first words of
revelation are: " In the beginning God."

We have alluded to that phase of thought that contents itself
with the conclusion that evolution is the result of certain agencies
inherent in matter. What are these agencies, or rather, since the
doctrine of the conservation and equivalence of energy is now
firmly established, what is force? The sum of the actual and po-
tential energies in the universe is unchangeable. There is one
constant force ; there are many modes in which it manifests itself.
Now, to say that force may inhere in matter is to make a state-
ment absolutely without foundation in fact. " Force is that
which is expended in the production of motion" (Force and Energy,
Thompson and Tait, p. 294). Motion itself cannot be the cause
of motion, for it is not an entity. A ball fired from a cannon
shivers the target to pieces. According to all phenomena, as
verified by experiments, the atoms of iron of which the cannon-
ball is composed are never in actual contact. They can always be

692 EVOLUTION. [Feb.,

brought closer together if subjected to sufficient pressure. It is,
then, intellectual temerity to assert that there was atomic contact
between the ball and the target. Reason points to the contrary
conclusion. Motion takes place without actual impact ; it is the
result of force. Force is the mover, motion is the mode. Now
the only force that we can trace to its origin emanates from will.
All our actual knowledge of force is as the result of volition.
The grand results of energy seen in the universe do not differ
qualitatively from those produced by the human will, however
much they differ quantitatively. We must, therefore, refer them
to the same category of causation. But since they are far too
great to be the results of the human will they must be the results
of a superhuman, i.e., a divine, will. All activity, all energy in
the universe is but a manifestation of God's present volition.
His power keeps the planets in their circling march around the
sun and maintains the equipoise of the universe. And just as
truly not a sparrow falleth to the ground without his will. View-
ed in this light the facts of physics become sublime. It is not, as
some materialists would have us believe, that God is force, but
that force is from God.

Evolution, if rightly understood, has no theological or anti-
theological influence whatever. What is evolution ? It is not
an entity. It is a mode of creation. It leaves the whole field of
Christian faith where and as it found it. Its believers and advo-
cates may be theists, pantheists, or atheists. The causes for these
radically different religious views cannot be sought in the one
theory. They are to be found elsewhere.

1 882.] SOME Sco IRTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 693

SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS.

INTERESTING as it is to trace the history of any nation's de-
velopment as shown by the substantial records left in the shape
of buildings, churches, castles, towers, sepulchres, etc., or in that
of parchments, coins, embroideries, and such like more perishable
memorials, it is not less so to watch the lower walks of mental
progress, the landmarks of which lie in legends, superstitions,
and family traditions. When we call to mind a nation's succes-
sive poets, philosophers, historians, we see before us picked men,
representing the highest culture of their time, but we gain no
idea of the thoughts of the people, no insight into the common
life, the hopes and fears, the yearnings and beliefs, that formed
the springs of the existence of millions of human beings who in
the aggregate made up the nation. It is this kind of life that we
must study if we want to throw ourselves into the atmosphere
of the past and understand our forefathers.

In a work by a Scotch Episcopal clergyman, the Rev. John
B. Pratt, this idea is well rendered.

" These tokens of distant ages," he says, " the manners, customs, habits,
opinions, prejudices, now obsolete, but with which our own blood-relations
of former times were probably actively familiar, ought to have a profound
interest. It is from these memorials that we have gathered all that we can
ever hope to know of the rude domestic occupations, the fierce warlike
dispositions, and the astonishing manual achievements of%the ancient in-
habitants of the country. In following the downward course of time we
have been enabled from the same slender materials to mark how the light
of knowledge gradually broke in on every succeeding period of our na-
tional existence, and how the arts and sciences, with their attendant civili-
zation, steadily advanced among our ancestors."

The superstitions of a country form one of its most national
characteristics. Of Scotland this is pre-eminently true, though
the fact points to a curious anomaly : for the Scotch, certainly one
of the most practical of nations, are also one of the most prone to
belief in supernatural appearances. Stranger still is the fact that
they retain much of this tendency in our own day, notwithstand-
ing their unerring common sense, so that it is an easy matter to
find out what the Scotch of many centuries ago believed in the
way of fairy-lore and magical power by observing what their
descendants believe now. The rest of the traditions is handed

694 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

down as part of the national history, and, though not actually be-
lieved in, remains in fiction and in song as something to be proud
of because it is connected with the proudest memories of the
past or relates to the chieftains who made the country great.

Most people admit that superstition comes of ignorance, but
in the case of the Scotch and Irish, and of the Norse nations as
well, there was a kind of patriotism mixed with it. Their old
religion was identified with their national existence, and the fact
of Christianity being a foreign religion was more against it than
any mere doctrinal novelty. Now, Celtic superstitions mostly
descend from the suppressed religion of the Druids, as understood
by the people. They have clung to old customs because they
were national, and to old beliefs because these generally tended
to the glorification of their own clan or family. The Druid
among the old Gaels was a magician.* The Druids were
priests, prophets, philosophers, teachers, and judges — in a word,
the only learned class. Their religion was originally mono-
theistic, but it is supposed that they gradually fell into idolatry,
adoring as gods what had been at first but symbolical represen-
tations of the only God. Their chief divinity was the sun,
equivalent to Balder in Norse mythology, and to the Baal of
Eastern and the Apollo of Western heathendom, as Hecateus,
a Greek historian, quoted by Matthew Holbeche Blonan (in
his treatise on Sepulchral Remains of Great Britain), seems to
imply. Like the prophets of Baal, the}'' worshipped in thick
groves ; their festivals were distinguished by the use of fires and
—but some dispute this — human sacrifices. As the Druids were
judges, these* supposed victims may have been simply criminals
regularlv condemned to death.

The four festivals of the Celts were the eve of the ist of May,
Midsummer eve (since St. John the Baptist's), the eve of the
ist of November (since Hallowe'en), and the eve of the loth of
March. The Hallow Fires and St. John's were kept up in Scot-
land till a very late period, and probably in many remote places
are so at the present time. On the eve of the ist of November
all the fires in the kingdom were extinguished, and every master
of a family was religiously bound to take a portion of the con-
secrated fire from the earn, or altar, with which to kindle the fire
on his own hearth anew for the ensuing year. If he failed in this
none of his neighbors durst let him have the benefit of theirs un-
der pain of excommunication. Something of this was adopted
by the Christian Church, or at least the two customs, Eastern

* Duir or dair is Gaelic for oak-tree.

i832.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 695

and Western, were fused into one and commemorated in the
symbolical ceremonies of Easter eve, when fire is struck from a
flint, and from it the candles in the church are lighted. In some
parts of Aberdeenshire it is still customary for a tenant remov-
ing- from one house to another to carry " kindling " along with
him — that is, live coals with which to light the fire in his new
dwelling. This custom is believed to have come down from
Druidical times.* The superstitions connected with Hallowe'en
are as numberless as they are childish, but with what wonder-
ful tenacity they survive is well known to Celtic nations. The
Christian Church put its seal on the day of the ist of November
by calling it the festival of All-Hallows, and on Midsummer
eve by turning it into the festival of St. John the Baptist. The
May festival, originally a commemoration of the change of sea-
son, became Rood day, and was shifted to the 3d of the month to
correspond with the Latin festival of the Holy Cross. Pagan
and Christian customs were so mingled that it was difficult to
tell one from the other. In remote parts of Scotland, though the
observance of festivals was discontinued after the so-called Re-
formation, their traditional influence was more or less felt down
to the earlier portion of the present century ; for instance, on
Rood day it was customary to make small crosses of twigs of the
rowan-tree, and to place them over every opening leading into
the house as a protection against evil spirits and malevolent
influences :

" Rowan-tree and red thread
Keep the witches frae their speed."

In which did the people believe most, in the virtue of the wood
of the rowan-tree or of the shape of the cross? f

The May-day festivities, the May Queen, the May-pole, and
the attendant mummeries were undoubtedly relics of the Drui-
dical festival ; but the mediaeval church called the month of May
the month of Mary ; and though we can discover no such direct
overlaying of a heathen feast by a Christian one in the case of
the eve of the loth of March, yet every one knows that the 25th
of March, or Lady day, became an important day in business

* This is identically the same custom that prevails among the peasants in Russia, who be-
lieve in a " house-spirit" whose especial seat is the hearth. The oldest woman in the family is
generally chosen as the carrier of the pot of embers from the old house to the new, and the
earthenware pot is required to be a new one, and is broken on the hearth of the new house a.s
soon as the embers have been emptied.

t But the pagan custom of lighting fires on the ist of May— in Gaelic Z£ Baeltinne, that is,
day of Baal fire— was kept up in Scotland through the middle ages, as it still is in Ireland, and
the beacons were termed the " Beltane tree."

696 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

transactions, being the spring quarter-day, determining leases and
judicial sessions. Christmas was originally a Norse festival —
Yule ; but the missionaries knew how to turn it to milder pur-
poses and make it a day of " peace to men of good will." The
Scotch never gave up their fairies, elves, etc., but they added
Christian saints to them and took up the prevailing notion that
the gods they had worshipped were demons. This was not the
way to lessen belief in supernatural occurrences, for with an igno-
rant people fear is more powerful than love. Then began to be
traditions concerning Christian mysteries, and legends relating
to Christian saints ; the old facility which fairies had possessed
to control nature was transferred to hermits and holy men, and
miracles were readily believed. Above all, the people loved—
was it with some sense of sly humor of which they were per-
haps unconscious ? — to pit saints against devils, and assist in
spirit at skirmishes between their old gods and their new teach-
ers. Some of the mediaeval tales of demons assaulting hermits
turn on the most ludicrous and grotesque situations. Then
followed the belief that saints were magicians and learned
secrets from the demons, as was the case with St. Dunstan,
who was simply a very learned man, the wise counsellor of
several Saxon kings, and a great promoter of education as
well as reformer of abuses. We shall not have many wholly
Christian customs to record, so we will place the few we
have before the others. Good Friday, though, like Christmas,
stricken out of the Scotch calendar, claimed a popular mark of
respect till our own day. There was a general prejudice against
its being made a day of ordinary labor, and the blacksmith es-
pecially was a bold man who ventured to lift a hammer, and his
wife a bolder woman who dared to wear her apron, on that day,
since — according to tradition — it was a smith's wife that was
employed to carry in her apron the nails which her fyusband had
made for the sacrifice on Mount Calvary. How old this tradi-
tion is we cannot tell ; it does not exactly tally with the dress of
Oriental women, but the general spirit is beautiful and reverent.
Along the eastern coast of Scotland the equinoctial storm, which
very often occurs some time before Easter, is known among the
fishermen as the Passion Storm. There are legends also con-
necting the aspen-tree, the robin-redbreast, and the cross-bill
with the Crucifixion : it is said that the leaves of the aspen can
never cease shaking, because the cross was made of aspen-wood,
and that the two little birds, compassionating the Saviour's
agony, tried to pick the nails out from his hands and feet, and

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 697

that in their endeavors the one got his breast crimsoned over
with the blood of Christ, and the other bore ever after the mark
of the cross on his crooked bill.

The belief that a curse hung over those who meddled with
things dedicated to God was generally held in Scotland. Even
" the Reformation " did not do away with it. In 1591 John Knox
wrote to the General Assembly at Stirling, adjuring his brethren
that " with uprightness and strength in God they withstand
the merciless devourers of the patrimonie of the kirk." Else-
where he bids them hold no communication with such men,
whose crime he calls a " robberie, guhilk will . . . provock God's
vengeance upon the committers thereof." * An old rhyme em-
bodied the popular feeling :

" Meddle nae with holy things,

For gin ye dee

A weird, I rede, in some shape
Shall follow thee."

The weird, or fate, generally took the form of the death of the
heir before his majority, or the utter want of an heir. A Scotch
book, relating to Britanes Distemper from the yeares of God 1639
to 1649, says that

" To adwice other noblemen to bewar of meddling with the rents of the
church — for in the first fundation thereof they wer given out with a curse
pronounced in their charector, or eviden of the first erectione, in those
terms : Cursed be those that taketh this away from the holy use wherwrito
it is now dedicat — "

he will tell of a vision which he thinks not unworthy of remem-
brance. The family in question was that of the Keiths, Earls
Marischal of Scotland, who appropriated the Abbey of Deer, in
Aberdeenshire, in the middle of the sixteenth century. The
" wonderful! vission " was as follows — we give it in the original :

" In her sleepe she (the wife of Earl George) saw a great number of re-
ligious men in their habit cum forth of that abbey to the strong craige of
Dunnotture, which is the principal residence of that familie. She saw
them also sett themselves round about the rock to get it down and demo-
lishe it, having no instruments nor toilles wherwith to perform this work,
but only penknyves, wherwith they follishly (as it seemed to her) began to
pyk at the craige. She smyled to sie them intende so fruitles an enterpryse,
and went to call her husband to scuffe and geyre them out of it. When
she had fund him and brought him to sie these sillie religious monckes at

* Booke of the Universall Kirk.

698 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

their foolish work, behold, the wholl craige, with all his stronge and state-
lie buildinges, was by their penknyves wndermynded and fallen in the sea,
so as ther remained nothing but the wrack of ther riche furnitore and
stuffe flotting on the waves of a rageing and tempestuous sea. Some of the
wyser sort, divining upon this vission, attrebute to the penknyves the lenth
of tym befor this should com to pass, and it hath been observed by sindrie
that the carles of that hous befor wer the richest in the kingdom, but ever
since the addition of this so great a revenue theye have lessed the stock
by heavie burdens of debt and ingagement."

The belief in elves and fairies, water-kelpies, water-wraiths,
and various other supernatural beings was strong in Scotland,
and many traces of it remain to this day. They were considered
capricious creatures, easily offended and not so easily propitiat-
ed. " Like other proprietors of forests," says Sir Walter Scott,
with sly allusion to the game laws, " they are peculiarly jealous
of their rights of vert and venison" This jealousy was also an at-
tribute of the Scandinavian duergar, or dwarfs, to many of whose
distinctions the fairies seem to have succeeded, if, indeed, they
are not the same class of beings. The Danes and Norwegians
brought over their superstitions with them, and how much these
mingled with the original Celtic beliefs may be easily surmised.
The Scotch called one class of their forest denizens duine sJiee
in Gaelic, or Men of Peace ; but, despite their name, they were a
peevish, discontented race, apt to do mischief on slight provoca-
tion, and particularly offended at mortals who talked of them or
wore their favorite color — green — or in any wise interfered in
their affairs. This was especially the case on Friday, when they
are supposed to be more active and possessed of greater power. In
Germany a strong belief prevailed as to the powers of supernatural
creatures on Friday, as being of old the day of Venus, and Chris-
tian writers have traced a natural connection between their activ-
ity on that day and the despair with which the thought of One
who conquered heathendom on a Friday always inspired them.
The Highlanders especially have a feeling as to green being an
unlucky color, and no doubt it originated with the belief in
fairies. Particular clans, families, and counties hold it unlucky :
the men of Caithness because their bands wore that color on the
fatal day of Flodden ; the Ogilvies for some similar accident, and
the Grahames from time immemorial. The elves were supposed
greatly to envy the privileges acquired by Christian initiation,
and gave to those mortals who had fallen into their power a cer-
tain precedence in their unseen realm. An old ballad puts these
words in the mouth of one of their human prisoners :

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 699

" For I ride on a milk-white steed,

And aye nearest the town ;
Because I was a christen'd knight
They gave me that renown."

The fairy rings, so often spoken of in romance, and not less
often pointed out to the traveller by the peasantry of Europe,
were either circles of grass encompassed by a trodden path or by a
ring of grass thicker and greener than the rest. Wells and springs
\yere also supposed to be their rendezvous. A belief in the noc-
turnal revels of the fairies still lingers among the people of Selkirk-
shire, where a copious fountain upon the ridge of Minchmore,
called the Cheesewell, is thought sacred to them. It was usual to
propitiate them by throwing in something upon passing it — a pin
was the general offering — and the ceremony is still sometimes
practised, though rather in jest than in earnest. Of the malevo-
lent instincts of some of these supernatural beings a dismal tra-
dition says that one night, when two Highland hunters had taken
refuge in a bo-thee, or hut built for hunting purposes, and were
making merry over their venison, they unguardedly wished for
some pretty lasses to complete the party. Hardly had they spo-
ken when two beautiful young women, dressed in green, came in,
dancing and singing. One of the hunters was allured out of the
hut, and the woodland damsel accompanied him. The other, sus-
picious of the second enchantress, repulsed her advances and be-
took himself to a common trump, or whistle, on which he inces-
santly played some religious hymn. When day came his beauti-
ful companion left him and he set out to search for his friend.
Deep in the forest he found his bones, and concluded that the
fiend in human shape had devoured him. This sounds rather
ghoulish for a mere fairy, but it shows how curiously indefinite
were the notions entertained of these pretended spirits. The
place where this tragedy happened was called ever after the Glen
of the Green Women.

There were spirits dwelling in the air and the streams, to
whose agency were ascribed storms, floods, and all such pheno-
mena as seemed to the people inexplicable. To them also were

ascribed the

"Airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses,"

as in the case of the building of the ancient church of old Deer,
in Aberdeenshire. The workmen were surprised to find that the

7oo SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

work was impeded by supernatural obstacles, when at last the
Spirit of the River was heard to say :

" It is not here, it is not here,
That ye shall build the church of Deer,
But on Taptillery
Where many a corpse shall lie."

The site of this building- was accordingly transferred to Tap-
tillery, a hill some distance from where the church had been be-
gun.* It is of this class of spirits that the poet Collins speaks
when he says that certain learned mortals can control them (it
is noticeable that persons born on Christmas day or Good Fri-
day were believed to have the power of seeing and controlling
spirits) :

" For them the viewless forms of air obey,
Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair;
They know what spirit brews the stormful day,
And heartless oft, like moody madness, stare
To see the phantom-train their secret work prepare."

Goblin-knights and spirit-warriors were also devoutly be-
lieved in by the Scottish as well as the English and German peo-
ple. In Marmion Sir Walter Scott tells how Alexander 111.,
King of Scotland, met Edward I. of England in these spirit-lists,
and vanquished him, compelling the demon who had taken the
king's form to show him the future. Edward I. was at that time
in Palestine. But these encounters could only take place under
certain favorable circumstances. It was by the light of the full
moon, in a deserted camp of the ancient Picts, and the king had
to go alone. The circle was deemed fatal to any one who trod
it in the night, unless shielded by supernatural power. A simi-
lar story, more seriously told, is related, in an old mediaeval
manuscript of Gervase of Tilbury, of the bold knight Osbert,
who fought a goblin adversary and overpowered him, though he
was wounded by the spirit's javelin. Tins took place in Eng-
land, near Ely, and the chronicler adds that " as long as Osbert
lived the scar of his wound opened afresh on the anniversary of
the eve on which he encountered the spirit."

A very curious popular superstition (a local one, however,
belonging to the Border mountains) was that of Gilpin Horner,
the lost imp or goblin. The account is taken from Sir Walter
Scott's notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel. Eskdale Muir

* Macfarlane's MSS.

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 701

was the place where the creature appeared and stayed for a
time. Two men engaged in fastening up their horses for the
night heard a voice crying at some distance : " Tint ! tint !
tint ! " (Lost ! lost ! lost !) One of them, named Moffat, called
out: "What deil has tint you? Come here." Immediately a
creature of something like a human form appeared. It was sur-
prisingly little, distorted in features and misshapen in limbs. As
soon as the two men could see it plainly they ran home in a
great fright, imagining they had met with some goblin. By the
way Moffat fell and the creature ran over him, was home at the
house as soon as either of them, and stayed there a long time. It
was real flesh and blood, and ate and drank ; was fond of cream,
and, when it could get at it, would destroy a great deal. It
seemed a mischievous being, and any of the children whom it
could master it would beat and scratch without mercy. After it
had stayed there a long time, one evening, when the women were
milking the cows, it was playing among the children near by
them, when suddenly they heard a loud, shrill voice cry three
times, " Gilpin Horner ! " It started and said, " That is me ; I
must away," and instantly disappeared, and was never heard of
more. No one in the neighborhood had the remotest doubt
of the story nor of the supernatural character of the foundling.
Besides often repeating the word "tint, tint" Gilpin Horner was
heard to call upon " Peter Bertram "; and when the shrill voice
called Gilpin he immediately acknowledged it was the summons
of Peter Bertram, who seems, therefore, to have been the demon
who had tint, or lost, the little imp. " No legend that I ever
heard," says Sir Walter Scott, " seemed to be more universally
credited." Of course practical people who delight in knocking
these harmless beliefs on the head, just as they would in dragging
a little bit of damp, soft moss from a comfortable cranny in the
wall, will call the imp a human dwarf lost in the woods, a child
with evil propensities, who had very likely run away from a ra-
ther hard master. They could not, however, persuade the Esk-
dale people that this view was the correct one, and the story re-
mains "in possession," which, as every one knows, is nine-tenths
of the law.

Will-o'-the-wisps and " spunkies " (Jack-o'-lantern) were com-
monly believed to haunt the bogs or " mosses," and fairy fires
were also seen on various occasions. It is said that a mys-
terious beacon, lighted by no mortal hands, greeted the sight of
Bruce, who, before his landing on the mainland, was watching on
the tower of the Brodick on the isle of Arran. For several centu-

702 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

ries ft was said by the peasants of the neighborhood that the flame
rose yearly on the same night of the year on which the king first
saw it, and some go so far as to say that if the recollection of the
exact time had not been lost it would still be seen. The place
has always borne the name of the Bogle's Brae (i.e., the Goblin's
Hill). In support of this curious belief it is averred that the
practice of burning heath for the improvement of land was then
unknown, and that any wandering flame in the marshes could not
have been seen across the breadth of the Firth of Clyde between
the mainland (Ayrshire) and Arran.

A belief current in the district of Buchan is mentioned by
Boethius, in his description of Scotland, which implies some mis-
chievous interference on the part of elves. He says that there
grows a kind of wild oats

" Which, if the reapers go purposely and in order to cut down, disap-
points them by proving to be nothing but husks ; but if one man goes se-
cretly, and without letting anybody know beforehand, he finds the oats
safe."

Between the traditions of fairy-doings and the power of hu-
man beings over supernatural things the distance is not great.
Glamour, or the magic power of imposing on the eyesight of the
spectators, had a great part in the legends of Scotland. Blows
by invisible creatures were often given. Glamour was also the
name given to any kind of spell that transformed one being into
the likeness of another, or that so deluded any one as to make
him act against his own reason or natural inclinations. Of such
a spell Titania was a celebrated victim. Supernatural citations
were not uncommon, and since there was always the convenient
alternative of referring them either to heavenly or lost spirits,
according to the necessities or desires of the parties cited, there
was no reason for trying to discover any trick or human agency
in them. Though Pitscottie, the Scottish chronicler, docs hint
at such a thing, still the fact of the summons delivered to James
IV. of Scotland from the so-called Cross of Dun-Edin (Edin-
burgh) is incontestable. Sir Walter Scott embodies the tradition
in Marmion where he speaks of

"A vision, passing nature's law,
Strange, wild, and dimly seen :
Figures that seemed to rise and die,
Gibber and sign, advance and fly,
While naught confirm'd could ear or eye
Discern of sound or mien."

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 703

One man alone, whether suspecting- a trick or afraid of the de-
mon character of the summons, appealed publicly from it, " and
took him all whole in the mercy of God and Christ Jesus his
Son." He alone escaped the doom; for when the "field [of
Flodden] was stricken [fought] there was no man that escaped
that was called in this summons but that one, . . . but all the lave
were perished in the field with the king."

The Celtic mind had a great reverence for running streams,
perhaps because the spirits of the waters were considered more
powerful than their kindred of the air and forest. It was a firm
article of popular faith that no enchantment can subsist in a liv-
ing stream. If you could interpose a brook between you and
witches, spectres, or even fiends, you were in perfect safety.
Burns' " Tarn o' Shanter " turns entirely upon such a circum-
stance. The belief seems to be of antiquity. Brompton, in a
Latin chronicle, Apud decent Script ores, informs us that certain
Irish wizards could by spells convert earthen clods or stones into
fat pigs, which they sold in the market, but which always re-
sumed their proper form when driven by the deceived purchaser
across a running stream. The river-spirits must have been very
honest in their way. All fairy gifts had this unsubstantialness,
and were apt to disappear in a moment, the most splendid
palaces and magnificent exhibitions vanishing away and leaving
their disconcerted dupe with his robes converted into the poor-
est rags, and, instead of glittering state, finding himself suddenly
in the midst of desolation and removed no man knew whither.
In many parts of Scotland a charm against witchcraft was a rope
made of the hair of horses' tails and manes, and long after hemp
and chain tethers became common for ploughs it was no unusual
thing still to see a few feet of hair-rope next the horse.

Another class of superstitions was that of omens, fore-
telling death or misfortune. One of the most common is the
" dead-bell," a tingling in the ears, which the country people look
upon as the secret warning of some friend's death. The baying
of a spectre dog is another, but by no means peculiar to Scot-
land. Most great families in the Highlands were supposed to have
a domestic spirit attached to them, who took an interest in their
prosperity and intimated by its wailings any approaching disaster.
This Ben-Shie is, of course, identical with the Banshee of the
Irish. * The old family of McLean of Lockbury have a presage
of their own. The spirit of an ancestor slain in battle is heard

* Two corrupt modes of spelling the one Gaelic term bean siodhe, signifying "silken
woman."

704 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

to gallop along a stony bank, and then to ride thrice round the
family residence, ringing his fairy bridle, and thus intimating the
coming death. Another and a savage kind of augury was often
used for determining who should be the victor in a battle. It
was thought that the party which first shed blood on that day
would come off victorious, but it was not necessary that the
blood-shedding should be on the field. The Highlanders under
Montrose were so imbued with this notion that they once, on the
morning of an important affray, slaughtered a defenceless shep-
herd merely to secure this advantage to their side.

•About the time of the Covenant, two hundred years ago, sig-
nal omens were observed by the Scottish people. The wars
and disturbances to which it would give rise were, to their minds,
plainly foretold by signs in the heavens. We are reminded of
the similar omens seen by the Jews and the Christians before the
fall and the attempted rebuilding of the Temple, of the portents
noticed by the Spaniards and the Aztecs during the disastrous
conquest of Mexico, and those observed at the time of " the Re-
formation " in France and Germany. Armies were seen joining
in battle, either on high hills or in the clouds; phantom drums
beat, and trumpets called, and ordnance thundered ; the affrighted
people carried away and buried their precious substance in bogs
and forests ; the sun was seen to turn the color of blood, which
was supposed to foretell the great loss of blood during the com-
ing war ; and other signs were interpreted by " curious heades " to
mean some " chainge of gouernement aither in church or state."
A tremendous discharge, as of a single enormous gun, was heard
simultaneously all over the land, and the effect is described in
words suitable to the Last Judgment. But local omens are more
interesting. The author of Britanes Distemper, who furnishes
the above details, also gives us the two following :

"Alt Ellen the preacher of that toune, being forced to arise betwixt
tuelue and one at night, did see the sune as if it had been at midday, arid
therefor, much astonished at so fearefulle a prodigie, called up his bedell
to sie it also. . . . Heir I cannot forgette our preacher, who presumed to
diuine of this prodigious omen in this sort: As the sune, said he, was sein
when the night was at his deipest and greatest hight of darknesse, so when
the obscurest and darkest plottes of the Covenant shall reach ther zenith
or greatest hight, God, piteing our extreame afflictions, sail raise to ws the
trewe sune or light of trewe religion."

There is plenty of scope left for explanation by these silent
marvels. Might not the pious Covenanter interpret the "pro-
digie " as signifying the light of his " trewe religion " tri-

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 705

umphant in the midst of the darkness of persecution which
was to drive him forth into the moors, and glens, and forests,
to worship according to his conscience ?

Omens are double-edged tools. Another singular story is
given in these terms:

" At Rethine, in Buchan, there was about the tyme of morneing prayer,
for diuerse dayes togither, hard in the church a queire of musicke, both of
woces, organes, and other instrumentes, and with such a rauishing sweet-
ness that they ware transported which in numbers resorted to heir it. . . .
The preacher . . . went with diuerse of his parisheners into the church,
% to try if ther eyes could beare witnes to what the ears had hard ; but they
were no sooner entered when, lo, the musicke ceassed with a long not, or
stroke of a ivioll de gambo ; and the sounde came from ane upper lofte where
the people vsed to heare seruice, but they could sie nothing."

The power of looking into the future was much prized in the
Highlands. Besides the ordinary consultation of witches and
magicians, there were oracles which the rude soldiery or pea-
santry could invoke without the help of any learned juggler.
One of the most noted of these was the Taghairm. A person was
wrapped up in the skin of a newly-slain bullock and deposited
beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a ravine, or in some other
strange, wild, and unusual situation where the scenery around
him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation
he revolved in his mind the question proposed, and whatever
was impressed upon him by his excited imagination passed for
the inspiration of the disembodied spirits who haunt the desolate-
recesses. , .

Second-sight, which has become characteristic of Scotch
superstition, but which, under the name of divination, must have
had the same existence in other countries during mediaeval trmes^,
was called by Dr. Johnson "an impression either by the Enindi
upon the eye or by the eye upon the mind, by whidb things-
distant and future are perceived and seen as if they were pre-
sent." The spectral appearances thus presented almost inva-
riably foretold misfortune, and the faculty was painful to those
who supposed they possessed it. There are many physical:
explanations of this phenomenon, and the persons -thus endowed
usually acquired the gift while themselves under the pressure of
melancholy. It is called in Scotch Gaelic Taishitar®Mgfi—{ro>m>
Taish, an unreal or shadowy appearance — and those possessed of:
it are called Taishatrin, which may be aptly translated;, says Sir
Walter Scott, visionaries. Martin, in his" Description: a£ the West*

VOL. xxxiv. — 45

706 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

ern Islands (in 1716), speaks thus (he himself is a steady believer
in it) :

"The second-sight is a singular faculty of seeing another invisible ob-
ject without any previous meansus ed by the person that used it for that
end ; the vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers that they
neither see nor think of anything else except the vision as long as it con-
tinues. . . . At the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected,
and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is. obvious to
others who are by when the persons happen to see a vision, and occurred
more than once to my own observation. ... If a woman is seen standing
at a man's left hand it is a presage that she will be his wife, whether they
be married to others or unmarried at the time of the apparition. To see a
spark of fire fall upon one's arm or breast is a forerunner of a dead child to
be seen in the arms of those persons. ... To see a seat empty at the time
of one's sitting in it is a presage of that person's death soon after."

The belief hardly exists now save in poetry, and perhaps
among the remote dwellers in lonely neighborhoods, but of these
there are many in Scotland ; it is a land that nature has carefully
shielded against the too great uniformity of civilization. It is,
perhaps, the land of the greatest contradictions in Europe, or
rather, we should say, the greatest contrasts. The mere belief in
ghosts and haunted houses is too' common to be worth discussing
here ; there are ladies in white wringing their hands, and grim
skeletons, and rustlings of silk, and the spirits of tortured prison-
ers haunting the scenes of their revels or their torments, in every
old house and manor in the land. The old legend of Birnam
Wood coming to Dunsinane, which Shakspere has immortalized,
was also claimed by the castle of Fedderat, in Aberdeenshire,
and was made to come true in the same practical way as Mal-
colm caused the other to be verified. The tradition was that
Fedderat should not be taken till the wood of Fyvie came to the
siege ; so the soldiers of William of Orange, having dislodged the
loyal followers of the Stuart from Fyvie Castle, and hearing that
they had taken refuge in Fedderat, cut down the wood and car-
ried it with them to the siege of the latter stronghold, where su-
perstition, no doubt, did more than fear could have done to in-
duce the hunted Scots to surrender.

Magic, or, 'in Lowland Scotch, gramarye, was as widely be-
lieved in as elsewhere, but popular belief, though contrary to the
doctrine of the church, made a favorable distinction between
magicians proper and necromancers, or wizards ; the former were
supposed to command the evil spirits, and the latter to serve, or
at least to be in league "and compact with, these enemies of man-

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 707

kind. The literal meaning of magician and wizard is, however,
the same ; the first word formed from a Greek, the second from a
Saxon root, both signifying wise. The arts of subjecting the
demons were manifold ; sometimes the fiends were actually
swindled by the magicians. It was believed that the shadow of a
necromancer was independent of the sun ; Simon Magus is said to
have caused his shadow to go before him, making people believe
that it was an attendant spirit.* People believed that when a
class of students had made a certain progress in their mystic
studies they were obliged to run through a subterraneous hall,
when the devil literally caught the hindmost in the race, unless he
crossed the hall so quickly that the arch-enemy could only lay
hold of his shadow. In the latter case the person of the sage never
after throws any shade, and those who have thus lost their shadow
always prove the best magicians. Among the wizards of gentle
birth in Scotland was Lord Gifford, celebrated in Marmion,
probably a clever scholar, far beyond his age, and perhaps a
dreamer imbued with genuine belief in his own supernatural
powers. There are many such now, as presumptuous, but not
as picturesque^ nor, above all, as sincere. Their spell is not su-
pernatural, but highly intellectual, which is the new reading for
" occult influence " over the minds of the masses. The wizards
of old did not disdain appearances quite so much ; they were
content to make use of a little more machinery. For instance,
they wore

" Oval caps, or like pyramids, with lappets on each side and fur within.
Their gowns were long and furred with fox-skins, under which they had a
linen garment reaching to the knee. Their girdles were three inches
broad, and had many cabalistic names with crosses, trines, and circles in-
scribed on them. Their shoes should be of new russet leather, with a cross
cut on them. Their knives were dagger-fashioned, and their swords had
neither guard nor scabbard. ... A pentacle is a piece of fine linen, folded
with five corners according to the five senses, and suitably inscribed with
characters. This the magician extends towards 'the spirits whom he in-
vokes when they are stubborn and rebellious, and refuse to be conforma-
ble unto the ceremonies and rights of magic." t

Michael Scott of Balwearie was the most famous magician of
Scotland, and lived in the thirteenth century. In reality all that
is known of his history is that he was a man of great learning,
chiefly acquired in foreign countries; he wrote a commentary on
Aristotle which was printed at Venice two hundred years after

* Heywood's Hierarchic.

t Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, ed. 1665.

708 SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

his death, and several treatises on natural philosophy. It was a
tradition that his books could not be opened because malignant
fiends were imprisoned therein. He was sent to bring the Maid
of Norway to Scotland after the death of Alexander III. An-
other embassy is ascribed to him by tradition. On being sent to
the King of France to remonstrate about the conduct of certain
French pirates, he took with him no retinue or servants, but
evoked a fiend in the shape of a huge black horse, whom he com-
pelled to carry him through the air instantaneously to Paris.
As they were crossing the sea the demon asked him what the
old women of Scotland muttered at bedtime. Had he answered
truly, " the Pater Noster" the fiend would have been allowed to
throw his rider off ; but Michael Scott sternly said : " What is
that to thee? Mount, Diabolus, and fly." When he entered
Paris he tied his horse to the gate of the palace and boldly
delivered his message to the king, who would not listen to so
shabby an envoy. The magician asked him to give no answer
till he had seen his horse stamp three times. The king laughed
and consented. The first stamp shook every steeple in Paris
and caused all the bells to ring ; the second threw down three
of the towers of the palace ; and the infernal steed had lifted his
hoof to give the third stamp when the king rather chose hastily
to accede to Michael's demands than to risk the probable conse-
quences. But the wizard was not always on the alert. A witch
Gtfice got hold of his wand and transformed him into a hare, so
that he barely escaped being torn to pieces by his own dogs.
Through some superior means he was enabled to throw off the
spell, and in revenge for this he bewitched the old woman, caus-
ing her and every one who entered her house to be seized with
an interminable dancing mania. She nearly died of fatigue,
when he good-naturedly removed the spell. His attendant de-
mons, it is said, gave him a good deal of trouble. One herculean
spirit beset him with constant demands for employment. He
commanded him to build a cauld, or dam-head, across the Tweed
at Kelso ; it was done in one night, and " still does honor to the
infernal architect." Michael next ordered that Eildon Hill,
which was then a uniform cone, should be divided into three.
Another night was sufficient to part its summit into the three
picturesque peaks which it now bears. The indefatigable spirit
asked for a more difficult task, and the enchanter at last got rid
of him by setting him the endless and hopeless one of making
ropes out of sea-sand.

The belief in common witchcraft, which of all superstitions

1 882.] SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. 709

has led to most cruelty, was very rife in Scotland and continued
very late. The devices of making and destroying wax effigies of
the persons to be made away with, the boiling in a caldron of
certain ingredients, the incantations pronounced under certain
combinations of the stars, the gathering of certain herbs at mys-
tic hours, etc., were all known and resorted to. The witches in
4< Macbeth " are a good specimen of the race. Not only persons
but animals and things could be bewitched. In 1594 we read of an
indictment for witchcraft against Ellen Gray ; the Earl of Errol,
" grit constabill of Scotland," presiding over the court in the ba-
rony of Slanis. Six charges were made against the poor woman,
some manifestly frivolous, such as her pretended appearance with
a fellow-witch, in the respective shapes of a cat and a dog, be-
tween her own house and that of the other supposed witch ;
others less explicable, such as taking the

" Haill substance of the milk of my lordis ky and youis [cows and ewes],
that when the same was milkit it wrought oure the lumes [pails] lyk new
aill. The guhilk miik being cassin furtht, Sir Alexander Traillis dogis wad
nocht preive the same : guhilk thou can nocht deny."

This provoking formula, " which thou canst not deny," was
used at the end of every separate indictment. Intercourse with
the devil, who appeared to her in the shape of an " agit man,"
and transformation of herself into the *' lykness of a dog," and
sundry mischievous and rather childish tricks, make up the rest
of the accusation, and are all charged seriously against her as of
equal weight and deserving equal punishment. Nothing was
trivial in the eyes of her noble judges ; a pin's prick given by a
witch was as dangerous as a sword-cut dealt in battle. Ellen
Gray was convicted, and, with fifteen others, was brint to the
deid ; so say the records of the Town Council of Aberdeen.
Three years later three women were accused of bewitching the
mill of Fedderat by casting a handful of sand " from the west
side of the north door of the mill upon the stones and wells," in
the name of " God and Chrystisonday " (whether Christmas-day, or
Christ, His Son's day, we cannot determine). The sentence was
that they were to be

" Hed out betwixt the hillis, bund to a staik, and wirreit thairat guhill they
be deid, and than to be brint in assis."

This was scarcely more merciful, perhaps less so, than mere
burning. Nothing brings out the innate barbarity of man like

SOME SCOTTISH SUPERSTITIONS. [Feb.,

religious fanaticism mingled with personal fear. No doubt these
scenes of " worrying " were more like the torture of savage com-
munities than the solemn execution of the death-penalty in a
Christian land.

James I. (the Sixth of Scotland), though constitutionally
afraid of the sight of a naked sword or dagger, seems to have
had no objection to witness the result, if not the actual sight, of
the torture. He took great delight in putting the proper ques-
tions to the victims accused of witchcraft, for it was one of his
weaknesses to think himself a very Solomon. Geillis Duncan,
a servant-maid, and Agnes Sampson, her supposed accomplice,
were brought before him on one occasion, both charged with
having wrought spells to bring shipwreck on the vesse.1 that was
bearing the king home from a visit to Norway. What lies or
tricks were confessed to by these wretched women can never be
known for certain, but they said that they had done their utmost
to get possession of some fragment of linen that had touched the
king's person, and that by applying incantations to this fragment
they could undermine his life. They and two hundred other
witches, they declared, had sailed in sieves from Leith to North
Berwick Church, where they had met the devil and feasted with
him. On the voyage they had drowned a cat, having first prac-
tised a mock ceremony of baptism over it, and immediately after
a fearful storm had arisen — the very storm in which the king's
ship had been separated from the rest of his fleet. Agnes then
took the king aside and tried to work on his mind by other
revelations of a nature unknown to any one but himself ; but
nothing availed the unhappy woman, and she was condemned to
the flames.*

These scenes, however, are not characteristic of Scotland and
the seventeenth century only ; they occur at intervals in nearly
every age of the world, our own not excepted. The latest witch-
murder was committed two years ago in Russia. "Anglo-Saxon "
communities have disgraced themselves in the same way. In-
deed, it is almost impossible to confine one's study of popular be-
liefs and their practical consequences to any given country, as
the likeness between certain groups of superstitions in different
countries is daily made more plain. The commoner forms seem
nearly identical among the lower classes of most nations, and
there is much more of this sort of credulity left among people
who read their newspapers and claim to be quite civilized than is
generally supposed.

* Lives of the Necromancers, etc., by William Godwin.

i882.] ALLEGORIA MARITIMA. 711

ALLEGORIA MARITIMA.

GIORGIONE — ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTI — VENICE.

UNMOOR, my gondolier, thy sable bark !

A tender glow, forerunning, bathes the dark

Behind the bulbous cupolas of Saint Mark ;

And every pinnacle and cross and spire,

The long-robed saints, the bell-tower's angel, higher,

In that lustration wait the kiss of fire.

With flutter of doves, as luminous glances search
The dream-bewildered sculptures where they perch,
A marvellous bower of night, blossoms the church

All gold and color and spray : floats up the moon :
The joy of the deep sea in plenilune !
A round face smiling over the lagoon !

O Night-beam, neither pale nor sad of tone !
Thus warm o'er wave-born Aphrodite's zone
Might complemental gold-green scarf have blown ;

And like unfading clouds of sunset seem
The rose-sheen of the ducal walls and gleam
Of painted fisher-sails on Adria's stream —

On tides that fed this halcyon's nest of yore,
Ere Freedom's fledgling grew a bird of war ;
That to grand bridals bore the Bucentaur,

With gonfalon and ring of sovereignty ;
That held Saint Mark for many a century
Inviolate in the inviolable sea.

As calmly smiled the moon as now she smiles,
When Power from these canals and lordly piles,
On winged lions, leaped to the far isles ;

Or, later, when from subject Cyprus came
A laughing Victress, child of foam and flame,
And Venice revelled in voluptuous shame.

She smiled when Austria's shackles crushed and galled;
She smiles on the brave city disenthralled
Save of the duties Freedom hath recalled.

712 ALLEGORIA MARITIMA. [Feb.,

O calm, cold irony of superior state !

0 perfect beauty, in itself elate,

Staring us down, as gods do, all too great !

Nay, Moon ! of myriad orbs in yon wide roof
Thou only art near, thy heart is not aloof ;
Thy lesson is sweet patience, fortune-proof !

Row to San Giorgio, to the Lido row !

Till the far city floats a fairy show,

And, dreaming, dreams no further grace bestow !

Dreaming I slept. I wakened. Far away
Had drifted on to sea my gondola,
And lo ! there was no more a moon in heaven :
Dark clouds above and waves below were driven
Before a mighty wind and flood, and, ere

1 could frame words of question, I was ware
I and my gondolier were not alone.

. One at my side, two fronting me, unknown
And awful as their advent, three cloaked Forms
Sat with me tossing on that sea of storms.
I did not mark, or else 1 could not brook
Their faces : he beside me held a Book
And wore the Winged Lion on his breast ;
One opposite revealed a knightly crest
And glimpses of a suit of mail, and he
Seemed youngest ; and the other of the Three
Somehow impressed me most benignantly.

Then rose a baleful glare upon the sea,

And, broadening swiftly, redly, wrathfully,

Roofed all the night. Up the Adriatic flew

A noble vessel with a demon crew !

From far a waif of storm — a burning wreck —

But, nearer, rolling deep her sides and deck,

Hull, masts, and rig looked whole and taut and strong.

On such a ship what meant that fearful throng?

Squat on the bulwarks those fierce, grinning apes ?

And, perched aloft, those bloated, bat-winged shapes ?

The gulfs had emptied upward : all the bark's

Hot wake was furrowed by the fins of sharks ;

And round her swam the phosphorescent breed

Of slimy things whose only sense is greed,

1 882.] ALLEGORIA MARITIMA. 713

All stomach ; and alongside, pilot-wise,
A horned monster leered with goggle eyes ;
And there was more of dire than I can tell
(But see Giorgione — he has told it well),
And over all the lurid light of hell !

" Ho ! ho ! " was shouted with infernal glee,
" We go to sink all Venice in the sea ! "

Then, of my strange guests, he at my right hand
Stood up, with speech and gesture of command :
" By God's Evangel, writ in this my book,
Clasped by the Cross on which ye dare not look,
Foul fiends, begone ! And, by the Master's will,
I bid the threatening elements be still ! "

Back into depths of sleep — more like a swoon —
I fell entranced ; till, lo ! again the moon,
The Lido, the lone reach of the lagoon,
And the long vistas in enchantment closed,
Where Venice on her hundred isles reposed,
And in the distance, clothed in peace supreme,
A vision of that vessel on the stream !

Spoke the same solemn Stranger, only he

The voice of that mysterious company :

" Yon ship is but a symbol, and the sight

That thrilled thee late a vision of the night —

The lesson of an acted parable —

The living truth in ancient miracle.

Yea, Venice in the time remote withstood,

By grace of God, the tempest and the flood.

With firm foundations on the unstable wave,

Its space and freedom to her son£ he gave,

And gloriously they kept from age to age

That empire and that priceless heritage.

In vain a Doria thundered at her wall, —

Her steeds unbridled, unprofaned their stall,

Chioggia saw the vanquished victor fall.

In vain the Powers in League of Cambray joined, —

Hers was the valor that no odds declined.

And the long glories of her earlier day

Shone culminating on Lepanto's bay.

Ah ! when the stout Republic drooped at length,

714 ALLEGORIA MARITIMA. [Feb.,

Not from without came that which sapped her strength,

From turbulent deep or ever-jealous foe —

Within, within was wrought her overthrow.

In this fair garden of the Hesperides

No watchful dragon by a Hercules

Was slain : the eternal vigilance they cost

Slumbered, and all the golden fruits were lost,

Or, rather, rotted from the boughs. Behold !

In lieu thereof, corruptions manifold,

Pleasure's lewd apples, cruelties, treacheries,

O'erran the garden's stately liberties ;

And the chaste daughters of the Evening Star

Fled with the immortal seed to lands afar.

" I speak in language of a heathen myth :

Truth is of God, hath all types, is the pith

Of many a fable. From her proud estate,

With the high qualities that made her great

And her imperial spirit, Venice fell.

Stalked in defiant insolence of hell

The bravo ; but the patriot's splendid pride,

Which had proclaimed the glorious Sea its bride,

Intolerant of a rival on the wave,

Was scornful only in its self scorn — a slave.

Let no false preacher, from a text precise,

Confound the highest virtue with a vice : ,

The pride whose level brow is honest, brave,

That watches the traitor and contemns the knave ;

Such fine disdain as an archangel feels

For grovelling fiends beneath his armed heels —

More, there's a gracious vanity that charms

In guileless maiden and young knight in arms.

What vanity survives a woman's shame ?

What pride in man with a dishonored name?

" The globe along its annual round is borne,
And Hesperus becomes the Star of Morn.
The cycle reascending gains its prime :
Returns the Golden Age of song sublime.
In new Avatars of immortal Good,
World without end, shall Evil be subdued.
So Venice, freed from bondage and from shame,
Is fit inheritor of her noblest fame.

1 882.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 7 1 5

As in the past (thou'st witnessed) God in me
Did work a miracle, for ever he,
By human means alone, is strong to save.
Behold yon bark how beautiful and brave !
The demons that denied hurled overboard,
And Duty to the helm and ropes restored,
On open sea, in shoal-beleaguered strait,
She rides right on, a gallant Ship of State ! "

" And thou, then," low I murmured, " art — '"

" Saint Mark !

These my companions in thy fragile bark —
This is Saint George ! and this Saint Nicholas !
Son of America ! it may come to pass
Thine own great land shall be in dismal plight
From evil spirits of the day or night :
Then may this Gospel of man's liberty
In Christ, the patron saint of chivalry,
And saint beloved of children, set you free !

11 Now bid the gondolier his oar to ply :

We go, even as we came, invisibly ;

But land us where our bones or relics lie."

Was I mistaken ? On that phantom craft,
Slow-melting in the moonlight far abaft,
Far over glistening sheet and shallow bars,
Was it the flutter of the Stripes and Stars?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LA SITUATION DU PAPE ET LE DERNIER MOT SUR LA QUESTION Ro-
MAINE. A problem of which the gravity grows each day (Times, nth
October, 1881). Paris: E. Plon et Cie. November, 1881.

This able pamphlet is anonymous, and we know nothing concerning
its authorship. It is addressed to all sincere men, especially to those who
are in political office, and reads like the production of a statesman or pub-
licist.

The author begins by laying down the position of the Catholic Church
that the papal power is of divine institution. Consequently it has a right
to an absolute, intrinsic, and permanent independence. All Catholics,
therefore, whether rulers, legislators, ecclesiastics, or private lay citizens,
are bound to recognize, sustain, and defend this independence. Moreover,
all others in Christendom who are not Catholics are bound to respect
those rights of the Catholic conscience by virtue of which they are entitled

7 1 6 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [Feb.,

to enjoy the advantage of this independence of the head of the Catholic
Church, and are bound by policy and regard to public peace and good or-
der to concur in protecting and defending those rights. The author pro-
ceeds to prove that the necessity of pontifical independence has not only
been proclaimed by the whole body of Catholic bishops, but also solemnly
recognized by M. Thiers in his capacity of President of the French Republic,
by Victor Emmanuel, by Cavour, by Visconti-Venosta, and all the statesmen
of Italy ; we may add, by the most eminent Catholic and non-Catholic
statesmen and publicists of Europe, and by its governments, including those
of England and Russia.

The Italian- government, after having taken possession of the Pontifical
State by violence, pretended to secure the independence and dignity of the
Pope by the Law of Guarantees. The author proves that this law is in its
principle self-contradictory, as professing to secure the independence of
the Sovereign Pontiff by means or his dependence on the Italian crown
and parliament. Moreover, it is a practical impossibility, since it could not
be put in practice without a serious intention to make it respected, which
the Italian government never had, and the power to make it respected — a
power which Italian ministers cannot exercise, after having been the first
to insult the church and its head both by word and deed.

The author shows the utter futility and complete failure of the Law of
Guarantees by the shameful history of the outrages perpetrated on the oc-
casion of the translation of the body of Pius IX., and proves that Leo XIII.
is both materially and morally a prisoner in the Vatican. The fact is no-
torious that his position in Rome is rapidly becoming insupportable. There
are only two ways in which he can be released from it. One is that he
should leave Rome, which involves as a consequence the triumph of the
Revolution and the overthrow of King Humbert's throne. The other is the
restoration to the Pope of his principality by the united action of the king
and the other European powers. The author proves that the conflict with
the Papacy which is the consequence of the unjust, and violent occupation
of Rome is not in conformity with the wishes of the people of Rome, the
wishes of the true Italian people, or the idea which underlies the movement
of Italian independence. He shows, moreover, that Rome is an unsuitable
capital for the Italian kingdom, which would lose nothing and gain much
by giving it up. We cannot agree with him in the restriction which he in-
sinuates as likely to be acceptable of the restitution which it is necessary
to make, to the city and Campagna of Rome, with Civita Vecchia. But we
have no space in a short notice to go into this subject, or to complete an
analysis of the able and solid argument of the pamphlet, which should be
read carefully and throughout in order to be justly appreciated.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. By Henry James, Jr. Boston : Houghton, Mif-
flin & Co. 1881.

With the introduction, a few years ago, of the " Ulster" overcoat, oddly
enough came in a flood of English ideas and absurd affectations of English
manners. In the same way as, when the old republican simplicity of Rome
was swamped by the wealth which conquest had brought, the Roman ex-
quisites aped the small arts and the vices of the Greeks, we, too, have our
GrcECuli, not in society only but in literature and in the daily press. Our Lit-

1882] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 717

tie Britons of the press studiously boycott whatever is distinctively Ameri-
can, so that if one desires to get at the real sentiment of the great body of
the American people he must as a rule turn elsewhere than to what is
styled in the English fashion the " metropolitan " journals. Of course this
is merely a momentary craze, but in the meantime, like everything else
that is insincere, it is doing harm to the moral sense of the people influ-
enced by it. A mild sort of cynicism is one of its perceptible effects.

This cynicism is apparent in all of Mr. James' writings, and shows it-
self especially in his studied belittling of whatever was formerly supposed
to be the particular pride of Americans. Yet, after all, Mr. James is perhaps
not so unjust as he is unmerciful. He aims at a minute picturing of man-
ners rather than of character. His lotus-eating Americans abroad, with their
small talk, their selfishness, their entire want of moral purpose, are perhaps
not so much caricatures as some critics would have us believe. They are, in
fact, the types of a generation that has practically thrown off Protestant-
ism, and, remaining without any but the very vaguest notions of religion,
is guided by its natural instincts only, instead of by an educated conscience.
In this volume of Mr. James', for instance, except two or three Catholic
nuns and a young girl brought up by them — and who all, by the way, are
given a very stupid look — not one of the personages seems to have any
belief in God or any idea whatever of duty. Even their ambitions, when
they have any, are petty and unsteady. Apparently they are only saved
from becoming real criminals by the lack of courage and of opportunity.
Mr. James himself, it is likely, has no ambition to be rated as a satirist, yet
all the same he is a satirist, and a tolerably effective one.

THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ART, MORE ESPECIALLY OF ARCHITEC-
TURE. By Leopold Eidlitz, Architect. New York : A. C. Armstrong &
Son ; London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1881.

Mr. Eidlitz has given to the public an instructive and comprehensive
work on architecture — a volume that evidently embodies the attentive
study of a life no less than the fruits of an extensive practical experience.
A book of this kind must be of great utility, theoretically and practically,
to all who are engaged or are interested in the study of this branch of art.
He is a master of his subject, and treats architecture in its varied and ne-
cessary relations with the other arts and sciences.

Occasionally he makes excursions in other branches of knowledge
where evidently he is not so much at home. Thus on page 8 he speaks of
" buying absolution for a price," and on page 9 of " selling absolution" This,
we apprehend, is a mere lapsus linguce, and we have marked several others ;
but as they do not affect the main subject of the work or alter our judg-
ment of its real value, we pass them by.

The volume provokes thought, because its author is an independent
thinker — not a thinker independent of the principles of art, but one who is
not a servile follower of any individual leader, or the fashion of a day, or of
the multitude. Whenever he meets with an author from whose views he
differs he does not hesitate to say so and give his reasons why, and in
language not at all ambiguous. His judgments are often as surprising as
just, and his views fresh, springing not from mere theorizing in art, but
from observation and practical insight.

7 1 8 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [ Feb. ,

The volume is divided into three parts : I. Present Condition of Archi-
tecture ; II. Nature and Function of Art ; III. Nature of Architecture.

The purport of the volume is, in a general way, stated as follows in its
introduction, page xx. : "To devise remedies which shall arrest the decay
of art, and especially of architecture ; to arrive at a clear understanding of
its nature and function, and to mature a system which shall direct its prac-
tice in the right channel, it becomes necessary, first, to review the pecu-
liarities of its present condition, the views held by the public, and more
especially by those who are recognized as of authority on such matters ;
to examine the relation of the professional architect to his client, to the
public at large, and more especially to the church, which has ever been the
greatest patron of architecture ; and, finally, to consider the existing theory
of art in general, and its influence upon architecture "

The volume consists of 489 pages, with an index, and is a good specimen
of fine book-making in type, printing, and paper.

CAMPAIGNS OF THE CIVIL WAR. III. The Peninsula. McClellan's Cam-
paign of 1862. By Alexander S. Webb, LL.D., President of the College
of the City of New York ; Assistant Chief of Artillery, Army of the
Potomac; Inspector-General Fifth Army Corps; General commanding
Second Division, Second Corps, etc. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons. iSSi.

The best argument against a large standing army for our country is the
ease and rapidity with which at the beginning of our late war enormous
armies were made up out of untrained citizens. Nor does it appear that mili-
tia training counted for much ; for while in some of the States a number of
militia regiments volunteered, yet mostly the personnel of such militia regi-
ments as really went into the field was new. As to the quality of these citi-
zen armies, we have — if we need a foreign opinion at all — the opinion of an
accomplished English engineer officer, who had made the campaigns of the
Crimea and India, and of the Austrian-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars,
and who had accompanied as an observer the staffs successively of Gens.
Johnson and Lee of the Confederate arm)^, and of Gens. McClellan, Burri-
side, Hooker, and Meade of the Federal army, during the Civil War. This
officer, in a volume of military biography published a few years ago, declared
the fighting of the American armies the most stubborn and fierce of mo-
dern times; and he pointed out, also, that while many a soldier of ours,
though scarcely out of his teens, was a veteran of fifty battles, it was sel-
dom that an old soldier of E.urope could number ten battles on his roll
of glory.

The literature of the Civil War is growing fast. Still, so far as the
career of the Army of the Potomac is concerned, little has yet been written
that can add to Swinton's excellent history published within a year of the
fall of Richmond. But of that little this volume by Gen. Webb must in
future hold a foremost place. Gen. Webb was a very active participant in
what he so well describes, and he has had recourse to new sources of infor-
mation which he has used skilfully and honestly. Though he has had to
deal somewhat with vexed questions, he has done so, as far as the reader
can judge, with a firm determination to get at the truth. In discussing the
clash of authority between McClellan and the War Department he places
the necessary facts before the reader to form an opinion. But the reader,

1 8 8 2 . ] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 7 1 9

if he belonged to the army involved, will have no hesitation from these
facts in agreeing with Gen. Webb that "we who-belonged to the Army of
the Potomac, the grandest army gathered on this continent, at all times
true to its commander-in-chief, whoever it might be, hope that he who or-
ganized that army will yet deem it wise and proper to give some fuller vin-
dication of the policy he adopted, no matter whom he may strike."

Gen. Webb's descriptions of battles and manoeuvres are exceedingly life-
like, and he goes sufficiently into detail to place the meed of honor for sol-
dierly conduct where it justly belongs ; but he might in one respect have
been a little less dry, without marring the accuracy or the dignity of his nar-
rative. For instance, the name " Irish Brigade " does not once occur; as
often as that illustrious body is mentioned, which is often enough, it appears
under its commanding officer's name only. Nor are the appellations that
were applied for some circumstance or other to other brigades, regiments,
etc., given. But condensation was no doubt needed to meet the scant
space which the plan of these volumes permits. Perhaps, too, in touching
on the battle of Kernstown — or Winchester — p. 89, attention might have
been called to the circumstance that the Senate refused to confirm Presi-
dent Lincoln's promotion of Gen. Shields to a major-generalship, and this
although Shields was the only commander who ever squarely beat " Stone-
wall " Jackson, and was apparently the only antagonist with whom Jack-
son at any time in his brilliant career deemed it necessary to be very cau-
tious.

Gen. Webb promises a fuller work on the same subject, but in the
meantime this little volume will meet and claim the attention of all who
desire to know the story of our Peninsular campaig^n.

LEAVES OF GRASS.

The animus underlying the songs of Walt Whitman entitled Enfans
d'Adam is characteristic of nearly all he has written, and if these had
been given their true heading they would have been entitled Enfans de la
Bete. Why not? The animal in Walt was free from all conscious re-
straint, young and lusty, and why should he not sing of its liberties and
joys, such as they are ? Had not his master proclaimed the precept, " Act
out thyself " ? and, having the courage of his convictions, with youthful vigor
on his side, the disciple was resolved, in spite of obtrusive advice, to act out
fearlessly, at least as far as language and type serve, what was in him.

Walt Whitman is a more recent and more genuine outcome of transcen-
dentalism. Less tutored, and for that reason — education being what it is —
less perverted, he is more a creature of his instincts, and, as it happens, not
of the higher sort ; and taking his stand on these, he utters himself in ac-
cents which at times make the more cultivated transcendentalists hold
their breath. Walt is the "enfant terrible" of transcendentalism. His
birth was hailed by the corypheus of this sect with a burst of parental joy ;
subsequently, on close inspection, he appeared to entertain suspicions of
his legitimacy, but now, with maturer examination, his doubts have van-
ished and he recognizes his lineage.

The difference between the master and the disciple is this : Mr. Emer-
son revolted against the false restraints of Calvinism, and, in the righteous

720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb., 1882

indignation of his repressed nature, expressed himself passionately and not
seldom unguardedly; while Walt Whitman, unconscious of the impious and
paralyzing repression of Puritanism, not having the inherited restraints of
seven or eight Puritan ministers wrapt in his skin, takes his master's utter-
ances to the letter and acts them out with all the force of the characteris-
tics of his personality, and in great glee " sounds his barbaric yawp over the
roofs of the world."

Is it a matter for congratulation that the sage of Concord, so-called by
his disciples, has not sufficiently recovered from the early strain which was
put upon him, seriously to listen in his advanced age to wise misgivings
and lawfully-begotten fears?

But man is a rational animal, and not like the beasts, which have no
sense ; and all effort on his part to play the irrational beast would be ridicu-
lous, were it not a degradation exacting so great a depravation of his na-
ture. But this attempt is never made with impunity, for man's rational
nature sooner or later will surely take revenge on him who makes, whether
maliciously or otherwise, the experiment. No, it is not a thing for laugh-
ter, but a serious matter, when a man is led to believe that he can with im-
punity violate any one essential law of his rational being. It is a more
serious matter when the leaders of public. opinion encourage in a commu-
nity a belief of this kind, or aid in the spreading of literature infected with
such opinions. It is a most serious matter, considering their effect on the
coming generation ; for the harvest of the poisonous seeds sown in the ten-
der minds of this, will be reaped in the next. And until men gather grapes
from thorns and figs from thistles every intelligent, every religious, every
moral man, every sincere lover of his race, will set his face fixedly against
the teachers and upholders of opinions so degrading to man and so perni-
cious in their tendency.

Let us have songs of the " Enfans d'Adam" — not of the old Adam, but
the new ! Let us have songs of that blissful communion which existed be-
tween God and man in the Garden of Eden — communion lost, alas ! by the
first Adam, but graciously restored by the second Adam. Songs that
spring from this source rise upward and imparadise men's hearts! These
are the songs men's souls crave, the age hopes for and is ready to receive.

A CORRECTION

To THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD :

SIR : While thanking you sincerely for the favorable notice of Marie Lataste's Letters and
Writings which appeared in your November number, I should feel obliged by your allowing me to
correct an error of fact into which the writer has inadvertently fallen. Tho collection which I
am now publishing is comprised in two volumes, the first of which has already been issued.
The second volume will contain writings of even a more practical character than those which are
given in the fii'st, as well as many letters of a spiritual and doctrinal nature. The biographical
letters, to which I allude in my Advertisement, or Preface, will form a third and separate volume,
if the sale of the two others prove to be such as to encourage me to make the venture. I ought,
perhaps, to add that the Life which I have published is not a translation, but an original work,
the result, indeed (as I have elsewhere remarked), of a patient study of existing materials, but
constructed on other and independent lines.

I am, yours faithfully,

EDW. HEALY THOMPSON.

PERY LODGE, CHELTENHAM, Dec. n, 1881.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIV. MARCH, 1882. No. 204.

THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO.

THE long estrangement that unfortunately existed between
Mexico and the United States from the time that the first be-
came independent is at an end, and friendly relations, which
should always have prevailed, are at length established. This
new era of friendship and active intercourse brings before the
consideration of statesmen : What policy, in their mutual rela-
tions, would be most advantageous for the happiness of both
countries ?

It may be stated as a general proposition that every problem
presented to the human mind must have a logical solution ac-
cording to the terms involved. This is true from a mathema-
tical or mechanical point of view, and might be said of political
and international questions were it not that the uncertain action
of men or nations introduces an unknown quantity into the prob-
lem and diverts from their natural results the logic of events.
Many statesmen have thus tried to change from their true chan-
nel the tendencies of their age ; but their efforts, though for a
time apparently successful, have merely served to disfigure the'
face of history, retard the progress of results, and finally have
been eliminated by the irrepressible power of leading events.

The greatness and power of the United States, and the ease
with which they have solved practically the most difficult ques-
tions during the brief period of their existence, make some ima-
gine that they are equal to any emergency, when in fact they

722 THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. [Mar.,

have had rather the good fortune only, or the good judgment,
to follow the natural results of surrounding circumstances, and
have never attempted to force the situation in order to obtain
whimsical ends.

The Mexican question is one of those problems upon the right
solution of which by the American people the very fate of these
United States may hang in the balance. Of course we do not
speak of that external policy between the two peoples which
could not be other than that existing between two sovereign, in-
dependent, and friendly powers, but of the invisible spirit, which
is only revealed in the secrecy of the Cabinet and is the real soul
and director of results.

The United States are the more powerful, and therefore the
active agents in directing the course to be pursued, and upon
them rests the initiative. Should, then, the policy of the United
States be directed to the absorption of Mexico, or merely to the
cultivation of closer relations with her as a friendly and neighbor-
ing nation, at the same time profiting by the commerce and re-
sources of Mexico ?

The late Secretary of State, Mr. Elaine, as well as other men
of penetration, decided in favor of the latter course ; but there
are some who look with wistful eyes across the line to the glit-
tering treasures of Mexico and sigh for the political control it-
self of that country. In an unguarded moment the fatal step
might be taken, whether with or without success it is not our
purpose to consider ; but in the calmness of the present, before
complications have arisen to confuse the understanding, it be-
hooves American statesmen to consider whether the fusion of
the two nations would be for the advantage of the United States.
The question touches to the quick the social and political struc-
ture of both countries, and, while it affects in the most striking
manner their present status, the problem contains factors reach-
ing back nearly four hundred years, and results that may re-
bound in undying echoes for generations to come.

The fifteenth century was ushered in with the discpvery of
America, opening the gates of a new world to European civiliza-
tion, and with the birth of the so-called Reformation, which divid-
ed that civilization into two hostile camps. The " Reformation "
was like a bombshell thrown into a powder-magazine. Bloody
civil wars rent the heart of northern Europe, and cruel persecu-
tions were instituted in the south of it ; while long and relentless
conflicts between nation and nation wasted their powers and crip-
pled their progress. In the fever of fanaticism, and amid the

1 882.] THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. 723

clangor and turmoil of war, the freedom of the people was
snatched by the monarchs, so that the sixteenth century saw the
disfranchisement of municipalities in Europe, the discontinuance
of parliaments, and the concentration of all the powers of the
state in the hands of the prince. Deep and lasting have been the
changes produced by that religious struggle, and,, though its
-effects took a different shape in different localities, it divided Eu-
rope into two groups, one comprising the countries which re-
mained steadfast to the faith, the other the nations which adopt-
ed the new doctrines. So divided, and representing different
forms of the same civilization, Europe undertook the coloniza-
tion of America.

Spain and Portugal established themselves in Mexico and
-South America, inspired by greed of conquest as well as by reli-
gious zeal. Their treasure and best blood were liberally squan-
dered in the enterprise ; and while they labored to bring out of
barbarism the conquered races, they transferred to the New
World the virtues as well as the vices of the mother-country, in-
cluding their political organization, riveted with the additional
grip of the despotic conqueror.

The colonization of the northern part of the New World fell
to the lot of England, though not by the deliberate act of its
government or people, but rather as a chance result of the trou-
bles brought on by the " Reformation " in England. The spirit
and purpose of that colonization were a counterpart of the Span-
ish system introduced farther south. The love of liberty, and
the desire to break away from the persecution of the mother-
country, brought the ancestors of those who were to be the fa-
thers of the republic to the shores of America. England was
glad to get rid of what she considered a factious element, and,
while chartering them to settle in the forests of the New World
under the semblance of her authority, she looked to the distant
future to reap the benefits of their hardships. Having risked no-
thing, she was content with a nominal allegiance from these
willing exiles. The colonists, in their turn, thus left untram-
melled by any very active interference of the home government,
set to work to establish communities based upon the broadest
principles known to the English Constitution and European civili-
zation. The religious zeal of the English colonists did not ex-
tend to proselytism, and the conversion of the aborigines formed
no part of their plan. Hence the progress of English coloniza-
tion marked everywhere a proportionate extinction of the In-
dian tribes.

724 THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. [Mar.r

These circumstances form the basis of the grand republic of
our day, the features of which are so peculiar that it would
have puzzled the wildest illusionist who ever wrote a Utopia to
conceive it.

These two forms of European civilization have therefore met
again face to face in the New World, changed, it is true, in many
respects by local influences, but yet presenting marked features
of distinction in their social and political organizations which
render them incompatible of union under a common govern-
ment.

But let us take up the case, for the sake of argument, of a
union of Mexico and the United States in one nation. The first
problem that presents itself is, How is that union to be effected ?
There are two ways — first, by conquest ; and, second, by common
consent.

In the first place, the conquest of Mexico is a total impossi-
bility under the principles which rule and govern the United
States. Not that the United States lack the power to over-
whelm Mexico from end to end, but because, that being done,
they must either abandon the conquered country or change
their own political institution. Conquest is the subjugation of
one people to another, and its object is to make the conquered
people subservient to the interest of the conquerors. Whence
it follows that a nation, to enter on the career of conquest, must
possess a unity of race, a concentration of individualism, and a
selfishness of purpose, so as deliberately and remorselessly to
crush another people for the sole purpose of self-aggrandize-
ment. We may look back as far as history reaches, and we shall
find such to be the character of all conquering nations. But the
present affords us a deplorable example.

England gives us a case wherein a free people appear in the
role of conqueror. While professing to be the mirror of liberty
at home, her acts in the struggle for conquest and empire give
her the character of the crudest tyrant that ever disgraced the
human race. England, the fair-haired angel of freedom, under
whose wing take refuge the persecuted exiles of the world — she
but crosses the Channel to be transformed by the spirit of con-
quest into a demon of greed, cruelty, vengeance, and extermina-
tion. Her gigantic power circumvents the earth like the sha-
dow of Satan described by Milton in Paradise Lost. Her course
is marked by starvation and wretchedness, and groaning mil-
lions, with gestures of despair and helpless impotence, at once
curse and supplicate at the foot of her throne. She starves Ire*

i882.] THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. 725

land to feast her voluptuous nobility, and she delivers up to the
greed of her merchants the helpless Hindoo ; the few trinkets
of an African savage arouse her covetousness and put her armies
in motion on the career of .destruction ; and the fear that a rival
power is approaching too near her blighting empire she con-
siders a sufficient cause to invade a friendly neighbor, to devas-
tate her territory, to destroy her citizens, to overthrow her gov-
ernment, and, if she could, to add another slave to her dominion.

The flight of the Pilgrim Fathers was a protest against such
tyranny ; the organization of the colonies was the repetition of
that protest ; the Declaration of Independence was the promul-
gation of the protest to the world, the announcement of a new
political gospel in harmony with the purest principles of Chris-
tianity ; and the construction of the republic upon those princi-
ples was the confirmation of that protest and its practical de-
monstration as a political system. The Declaration of American
Independence forms a new era in the annals of the human race.
It proclaims in the voice of thunder the rights of man, the mis-
sion of nations, and the objects of government. The subjection
of one people to another is emphatically denounced, and govern-
ment is declared the creature and servant of the people. The
wiseacres of Europe, clogged by prejudices and their horizon
circumscribed by selfishness and nationalities, pronounced the
American proclamation a bombastic trick, to live its day, per-
form its part, and perish. But the colonists were in dead earnest,
and upon that Declaration they reared the political edifice whose
pinnacles now tower above even the oldest structures of political
wisdom. Nor can it be said that the United States have ever
deviated from the principles of the Declaration of Independence
without immediately returning to them. The great Rebellion
appeared for a time to have shaken these principles ; but though
amidst the tragic scenes of war the Union conquered the South,
after peace was re-established the conquered States could not be
held in subjection. The Southern States resumed, their auto-
nomic action in the Union, and to-day they hold the balance of
power.

The history of Utah is another instance of the impotence of
the United States to deal with a people against their will, even
when in the interest of justice and freedom ; and under the pro-
tection of the institutions of the country we see this commu-
nity of fanatics raise the standard of barbarism and flaunt in the
face of civilization worse horrors and abominations than Mo-
hammed ever invented. The rights of man and self-govern-

726 THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. [Mar.,

ment are so respected that Congress dares not interfere even
with the savage children of the forest ; and, while it were charity
to force these men into the habits of civilization, rather than
break with principle the Indian is indulged in his savage free-
dom, though it leads to certain extermination.

Could, then, the United States, with such an origin and such
a system, break from their traditions and embark on a career of
conquest ? Could they, consistently with the declaration that
government is the creature and servant of the governed, force
a government upon Mexico against the will of its people, and,
when they admit that all governments are for the benefit of the
governed, use that government to oppress and overtax the con-
quered people for the benefit of the Union ? If the United
States had attained to that solidarity of political union which
merges the individual in the nation, as in France, England, or
Prussia — with whom the sovereignty of the nation has all the
attributes of a personality, while the people are lost in their in-
dividual insignificance — such sudden change from their principles
might take place without injury. But in the United States the
unit of sovereignty is in the individual, represented by majori-
ties. No American considers the nation or the government
greater than himself, as in other nations. He sees in the nation
a partner, in the government an agent, in the Constitution a con-
tract. And though the sovereign American citizen does not in-
dividually lack selfishness and greed to grow into a well-devel-
oped tyrant himself, he does not like to see his partner, who is
the nation, or his agent, who is the government, play the role of
a Nero, fearing their preponderance, and therein the loss of his
own freedom. Hence' the American citizen has preferred to
see barbarism thrive in Utah, and to keep, at the expense of mil-
lions, the wild Indian in all the glory of his savage life, rather
than violate the fundamental principles of his institutions ; and
all the treasures of Mexico are insufficient to tempt him from this
course.

The patriotism of the American is not the love of country
with the blind fanaticism and idolatrous abnegation found in
other people. The soil is not the object of his love, nor, again,
the people that live on it, but the political organization which
guarantees his liberty and protects his property and life. This
to him is flag, country, and nationality, for which he is ready to
die as other people would in defence of native hearth and race.

Therefore the acquisition of Mexico, whether by war or treaty,
would eventually amount to the merging of that people in the

i882.] THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. 727

American Union, not as a conquered people, but as a component
part in it, with all the. rights of the oldest States and citizens.

And now comes the other alternative problem : What would
be the consequence of such an event ?

It were difficult to conceive a more perplexing field of possi-
bilities than is presented by the introduction of Mexico into the
political system of the United States. The complications to
which it would give rise can be more easily imagined than de-
scribed ; but, without considering the fortuitous consequences
which may follow such political union, we can foreshadow some
results with tolerable accuracy. Mexico is a nation in the Eu-
ropean acceptance of the word. Her origin, and three hundred
years of training under the tuition of the mother-countVy, made
her so. In race she is not homogeneous, but the assimilating
powers of the Spanish system have so interwoven the European
with the native races that Mexico, socially and politically, is as
compact as France. Language, religion, habits, laws, sentiments,
faults, virtues, and vices unite and knit them together into an
absolute unit. In this, as in other characteristic points, Mexico
is the opposite of the United States. The numerous changes in
the system of government have had no effect upon her nation-
ality. The empire of 1821, the confederation of 1824, the central-
ization of 1835, and tne republic of 1857 never for a moment
menaced the integrity of the nation. There were revolutions in
opposition to each of those systems, but the sovereignty of the
nation, in whatever mould it may have been cast, to a Mexican
was always an individuality or a divinity, to which he owed life
and being ; and whether his country governed justly or other-
wise, as a republic or a despotism, he felt equally bound in alle-
giance to her. The Californians and New Mexicans born under
the Mexican rule, and even their children, have a corner in the
depth of their hearts to honor and love their lost country.
For thirty-five years overwhelmed by numbers, beleaguered by
strange customs and creeds, their ancient laws overthrown and
others made diametrically opposed to them — all these things
have battled in vain against the rock-like immutability of their
nationality. So that it is not difficult to foresee that the acqui-
sition of any large blocks of Mexico, where the population is
more numerous and better established than they were in Cali-
fornia and New Mexico, will not change the social status, habitual
instincts, and political aspirations of the people. Mexico would
come into the Union as a captive nationality, like Ireland in the
British Empire, or Hungary in the Austrian, hating even the

728 THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. [Mar.,

bounties and freedom proffered to her, and having no aim save
the interest of her own citizens, and no sympathy for the institu-
tions and aspirations of the United States.

The United States, with all their greatness, are but a grand
conglomeration of ail the nationalities of Europe, blended to-
gether under the general principles of a common civilization,
boiling and seething in one great political and .social caldron ;
and it is yet a problem what shall be the outcome and final re-
sult. This being so, we may be pardoned for indulging in a re-
trospective view of the political history of the United States, so
as to see in its full light the effect likely to result from the an-
nexation of Mexico.

When the United States were established the colonies, fresh
from the struggle against England and the oppression they had
endured at the hands of one government, framed the Constitu-
tion with the deliberate purpose of keeping alive each State as
a political autonomy, with all the prerogatives of independent
power, save as limited by the Constitution. It cannot be denied
that at that time, just after becoming independent, each colony
was and felt all the importance and responsibility of an inde-
pendent nation. In forming the Union the colonies were careful
to provide explicit clauses to that effect, making the general
government the representative, while the States should remain
the political units of sovereignty. Had the United States never
advanced beyond the original thirteen States the doctrine of
state-rights would have been sustained without a contradiction.
The Federalists and Jeffersonians at that time understood the
situation perfectly well. But fearing the future attempts of
Great Britain, the necessity of union obliged both parties to be
conciliatory, and the declarations of state-sovereignty were al-
lowed to follow the contradictory preamble, saying, " We, the
people of the United States," etc., which refers all the power of
the general government to the people as the source of sover-
eignty. The perils of the moment were pressing, while the new
government was but an experiment, and each party secretly
exulted in having over-matched his opponent and in the hope of
eventually carrying his point. But the increase of the United
States in foreign population and new States, the successful
operation of the Constitution, and the restless moving of the
masses of the people from place to place obliterated to a great
extent State lines, and the -strong feeling for state-rights faded
away even in what had been the old colonies. As for the new
States, composed of people from all parts of the Union and of

1 88.2.] THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. 729

recent arrivals from other countries, the doctrine of state-rights
had no existence in the hearts of the people, except as a political
plank in campaign platforms. On the other side, the continuous
exercise of the political power by the people strengthened their
sovereignty, so that by 1861, at the time of the breaking out
of the Rebellion, we find the individual citizen, as the unit of sov-
ereignty, suppprting the general government against the doc-
trine of state-sovereignty of the South in their attempt to break
up the republic. It is true that the question of slavery entered
largely into the issues of that day, and it is difficult to say
whether slavery had not more to do with the overthrow of the
South than the spread of federalistic principles among the peo-
ple. However, the adroit management of the dominant political
party has shaped events to look as if their principles had won
the day. But a close examination of facts raises a doubt, and
prudent men would defer passing an opinion as to whether
state-rights are really dead.

This country is like a kaleidoscope, changing almost as rapid-
ly as trees do their foliage between a winter's blast and the gen-
tle breath of spring. Since the breaking out of the Rebellion,
and largely aided by that gigantic war, there has arisen in the
United States a new element of power in the political arena,
which, having no place in the Constitution except to be anathe-
matized, and no political or legal standing in the government,
yet seems to hold with the grip of death the hands of people,
States, and general government. This new element of power
consists of the great monopolies that override the country.
Such eventuality was feared by the founders of the republic as a
dire enemy of liberty, and so much so that they specially provid-
ed against it. Lo and behold ! the monster is already here and
playing its part. These monopolies, for the present, have no
political aspirations. All they aim at is the accumulation of co-
lossal fortunes by using the government, the States, the people,
and everything for that purpose, and turning the laws into in-
struments of extortion, to make the people hewers of wood and
drawers of water for their use and benefit. It were tedious to
follow the monopolies through the insidious ways they adopt to
gain their object. Suffice it to say that no political aspirant can
antagonize them and succeed ; that they deceive the people and
corrupt their representatives ; that legislatures are their servants
and governments their instruments. This power desires the cen-
tralization of government, and constantly strives for the revival
of entails by engrafting systems of perpetuity in their families.

730 THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. [Mar.,

Therefore the political field of the United States at this junc-
ture presents four distinct powers striving for mastery : the
people, or the individual as the unit of sovereignty ; the party of
state-rights ; the party of centralization ; and the monopolies.
In the midst of these contending elements we introduce a fifth
source of disturbance — Mexico annexed.

It would not be difficult to foresee what would follow. The
Mexicans, having no affinity or interest with any of the parties,
would look to their own interests first and last. They would
join now one party and then another to obtain their ends ; but
naturally they would belong to the state-rights party, so as to
enlarge the sphere of their state-independence, and possibly pre-
cipitate the breaking up of the Union, thereby to regain their lost
nationality. In finance they would be the natural allies of the
anti-tariff party, as producers of the raw staples, and their com-
merce would gravitate towards the European markets. It is
true that many Americans, emigrating to Mexico, might ac-
cumulate immense fortunes ; but they can do the same now, and
if good understanding and reciprocity treaties are introduced
between the two countries the advantage to Americans will
be greater with Mexico independent than with Mexico annexed.

Some may imagine that fifty millions of people mixing with
ten millions would soon merge the Mexican in the American
forms and habits, but they forget that the ten millions have the
advantage of locality ; that only a few hundred thousand a year
could possibly transport themselves into Mexico, and that before
these strangers could effect a change in the people they came
amongst they themselves would perhaps become Mexicanized,
to swell the strength of the old institutions. Besides, it is well
to remember that Mexico has deep-rooted habits and convictions,
and, socially and as a nation, has a clean-cut character, which has
stood all the vicissitudes of anarchy and will not succumb before
the feeble attacks of a few strangers who have no settled morals,
manners, or nationality, whose social character is still a problem,
and whose only aim and purpose of migration would be the ac-
quisition of wealth.

The annexation, therefore, of Mexico by the United States,
while it would offer no advantage to the United States, would be
apt to produce a convulsion and break up the republic before
she has fulfilled her ends in the interest of free government and
humanity. On the other hand, Mexico, once convinced of the
perfect good faith of the United States, would open her arms to
their commerce and enterprise, by which means both nations and

1 882.] THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. 731

their citizens would profit, without interfering with the march of
each in the natural development of their resources and the ideal
of their civilization till each in its own way fulfilled the ends
marked out for them by destiny.

" Latin " civilization has been habitually disparaged by the
" Anglo-Saxon " and Teutonic nations, and Bismarck has said
that it is " worn out and rotten." But while he was yet pro-
nouncing those words the establishment of the French Republic
in the heart of despotic Europe showed that that civilization has
at least been as true as the " Anglo-Saxon." And while the
United States, with their freedom, originated in the despotism of
England, and have thrived through the immigration of oppress-
ed millions fleeing from the tyranny of Teutonic rule, the
" Latin " nations, imbued with higher aspirations, in Europe as
well as in America, in the midst of convulsions and in spite of
many grievous errors strive to reach the perfection of the ideal,
and to establish political systems that shall guarantee to man
equality and liberty, and make the government the servant and
not the lord of the people.

Mexico marches in the road to liberty in the forms peculiar
to her institutions, and, if allowed to go on undisturbed, will
reach the ideal of European civilization. But the violent attempt
to hasten the development of Mexico by the forcible fusion of
" Latin " and " Anglo-Saxon " civilizations will either defeat the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, subvert the re-
public, and re-establish despotism in America, or cause the dis-
memberment of the United States into several independent na-
tions, with their jealousies, standing armies, wars, usurpations
and tyrannies, and all the evils the colonists left behind when
they emigrated to this continent.

NOTE. — Government is " the servant of the people," inasmuch as it is instituted for their
common good ; but government is not " the creature of the people," inasmuch as its authority is
derived from God, though it be through the people. This statement will explain the above and
similar expressions in this seasonable article. — ED. C. W.

732 Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,

SIX WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881.

WE had all been thinking, talking, and arguing a great deal
about Ireland for many months past. Parliament had reassem-
bled some weeks earlier than was usual, on the grounds that im-
mediate and special legislation was imperatively required for the
sister island. No sooner did Parliament meet than the Irish
members, and the obstruction to ordinary business which they
thought well to organize, were the subject of wonderment to
sympathetic Englishmen, and of exasperation to the more com-
mon type who would criticise and condemn any conduct of the
Irish members merely because the actors were Irishmen. Lon-
do*n conversation for a fortnight was divided between discussions
on the coldness of the weather and the warmth of the debates ;
and whilst the outer world was frost-bound and snow-covered
to an extent almost unprecedented in England, some alleviation
for the unusual severity of the winter may have been found in
the heat engendered by the exciting and fiery talk, both within
and without the House, touching obstruction, coercion, outrages,
landlordism, and land-bills. So things went on for some months,
the philo-Irish dwelling mainly on the absurd exaggerations gene-
rally to be found in the accounts of outrages ; on the terrible pro-
vocation which had goaded the poor tenants to commit acts of
revenge almost justified by the injustice allowed by English-
made law, English indifference, and English misgovernment.
They reminded us, too, that if such misgovernment was now
slowly striving to mend itself it was still only ameliorated so far
as and when, by violent and almost lawless agitation, England's
attention was forcibly directed to the sores and wounds of the
people whose lawgiver arid ruler she had ignorantly and pre-
sumptuously dared to elect herself. The anti-Irish, on the other
hand, could discuss nothing beyond the general unreasonable-
ness of a whole people taking the law into their own hands ; of
the horror of outrages ; of the cruelties practised on defenceless
animals ; of the power of England, which they were longing to
put forth ; of her sharp sword, which they would gladly see red-
dened with the blood of " those Irish," rebels in heart if not ac-
tually indeed. As their words touching a people the very ele-
ments of whose character they misunderstood and of whose his-
tory they were profoundly ignorant increased in violence, they

i882.] Six WEEKS IN ICELAND IN 1881. 733,

heightened the excited hatred from which they sprang, until we
have listened to talk, concerning those who are somewhat ironi-
cally considered as forming part of a united kingdom with our-
selves, by the side of which the most violent anti-English de-
clamations of a Parnell or an O'Connor, or even the incendiary
speeches of O'Donovan Rossa, became the mere commonplaces of
justifiable political differences.

Feeling the difficulty of arriving even at an approximation to
the truth, not exactly of the two views of the Irish difficulty — for
these had their root in the tone of mind and character of those
who held them — but of the facts on which, however erroneously,
they professed to be based, we decided to combine the holiday
which is due to every English man, woman, and child in August
with the prospect of acquiring in Ireland itself a little know-
ledge of what was really going on in Ireland, and for the first
time to make a short tour in the island which is comparatively
so little visited by English tourists.

Finding ourselves in the west of England, we ventured to risk
a twenty hours' crossing from Bristol to Cork — a step we should
not recommend any to take who are seriously inconvenienced
by the sea, for the Channel is rarely quite smooth and on this
occasion was decidedly rough. The steamers, too, on this route,
though fine and comfortable boats, cannot compare with the
really magnificent mail-packets which ply between Holy head
and Kingstown. All ills, however, have an ending ; and, though
rather behind time, we steamed safely into Queenstown Harbor
on a fine August afternoon.

The first glimpse of Ireland which meets the eye of those
who choose the above crossing is typical and characteristic of the
country. A magnificent modern cathedral stands out in bold
relief on the top of the hill, while below and around it are speci-
mens of the habitations of the poor — habitations the poverty and
misery of which, at least in the country districts, are perhaps
unequalled in the world. The Irish cabins alone are one ever-
present reproach to the alien people whose misrule has allowed
its victims to be housed in so wretched a fashion that we may
confidently affirm no English gentleman would suffer the like
even for his ox or his ass. It is a mark, however, of the religious
fervor which has always characterized the Irish race that as the
iron grasp of oppression has been relaxed and some measure of
prosperity has been developed in the island, the earliest signs in
which it has manifested itself have been the erecting of beautiful
churches and the founding and endowing of religious houses,

734 Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,

whilst the homes of the poor still remain as squalid as ever.
The first-fruits of a returning prosperity have been devoted to
God ; and we may rest assured that in his good time he will
not fail to remember and prosper, even in this world, those whose
scanty earnings have not been devoted to easing their own
wretched condition until his honor has been secured and his
worship inaugurated in a building worthy of him to whom it is
dedicated. We must ever bear in mind that the fine modern
churches which we see in every Irish town are not the offerings
of the few and isolated rich, but are built entirely by means of
the pence of the poor.

There is a large emigrant ship at anchor in Queenstown Har-
bor this afternoon, and as we gaze on its crowded decks, peopled
with many who will never again set foot on the well-loved soil of
their native land, the cathedral crowning the heights above the
port assumes a new and melancholy interest. To how many
"exiles of Erin" must not this sacred pile have been the last
vision and the last memory carried with them across the Atlan-
tic of their well-loved country ! As they steam out to the West
it must still keep within view when all else has vanished ; and
when their misty, dew-wet eyes can no longer descry the green
fields of Ireland, clearing away the tears which dim their vision,
they may yet behold the consecrated and consecrating figure,
the Marts Stella, which sheds her gracious benediction from afar,
and, remembering and re-echoing the prayer which perhaps an
hour ago they prayed beneath her shadow, implore Our Blessed
Lady's help and intercession, if for the future life before them,
yet still more fervently for that land and for those loved ones
the parting from whom is tearing their very heart-strings.

Our steamer does not stop at Queenstown, but quietly makes
its way up the magnificent harbor, half sea, half river. The
banks are ornamented with numberless villas and country
houses, and the beautiful green lawns and woods which sur-
round them combine to make Cork Harbor one of the loveliest
in the world. The verdant green is striking even to an English
eye fresh from an English pastoral county. The scene is so
peaceful that it is with difficulty we can realize that we are
really gazing on the disturbed country which has lately roused
such furious passions in our fellow-countrymen. It is evident
that all the cattle have not perished at the hands of " Captain
Moonlight " and his associates, as the excited imaginations of
some have fancied ; for herds are quietly grazing in the sunlit
meadows as peacefully as if houghing and maiming had never

i882.] Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 735

been practised since the first Saxon vanquished the original Celt.
When, however, we stop alongside the wharf the steamer is
boarded by some officers of an unusual appearance. As no cus-
tom duties exist between the two countries, we are rather sur-
prised to see some trunks fixed on and forthwith opened and ex-
amined. Our luggage is not touched, owyig, no doubt, to the
innocent and tourist-like appearance which we present ; so, being
free to leave the ship at once, we select a powerful-looking and
very dark Celt from amongst a crowd of car-drivers who are
noisily clamoring for a fare, and, indicating our box, which he
quickly shoulders, follow him to his car and for the first time
mount the national conveyance.

" Why are they examining the luggage? " we ask as we drive
off, already half guessing the answer.

"Arra, but shure these be such busy times they are hunt-
ing for firearms," answers Paddy ; and we are at once reminded
that after all, and in spite of the peaceful aspect of the country,
there has been repressive legislation, and that the Arms Act is
an existing fact.

After securing a room at the hotel we sally forth to have a
look at the town. The streets are wide and the shops are hand-
some ; but Cork, like all the Irish towns we visited, is neither pic-
turesque nor attractive. The ruin of the old has been too com-
plete, leaving neither the moss-covered walls nor the ancient
gabled houses which in the majority of European cities contri-
bute so much to the irregular beauty of the streets. From its
modern aspect Cork might have been built yesterday. We had
heard rumors that an unusual incident, typical of the times, was
just now taking place — viz., the unloading by the military and
the constabulary of the " boycotted " ship, The Wave. We has-
tened, therefore, to the spot where we were told that this
strange mingling of the arts of war and commerce was proceed-
ing, and found that in this instance report was based on substan-
tial fact.

With the original merits of the story we need not trouble our
readers. Obstinate self-will and tenacity of legal rights on the
one side may been balanced by overstrained sensitiveness and
personal hatred on the other. Sufficient to say that the inhabi-
tants of Cork had decided that if the unlucky vessel succeeded in
discharging her cargo it should be by means of no help from
them, and that no fellow-townsman of theirs should lend a help-
ing hand to assist Mr. Bence Jones out of the difficulty in which
he had- placed himself. He had, therefore, obtained the assist-

736 r Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,,

ance of the military and the constabulary ; and whilst we
watched the unloading all was proceeding as quietly as if it was
the natural business of soldiers to unload a cargo of bricks and
timber, and of artillery wagons to carry them to their destina-
tion.

The ship was anchored close to the headquarters of the con-
stabulary, where a troop of dragoons and a detachment of the
Rifle Brigade were mounting guard. The surrounding bridges
and wharves were peopled by a quiet but somewhat sullen-look-
ing crowd of men, who watched the proceedings with calm
though far from uninterested eyes. They remained quiet, how-
ever, only so long as they saw that the soldiers alone were at
work. The appearance of a civilian, who was wheeling about a
truck apparently in the interest of the enemy, was a signal for
the quiet to change itself into angry hisses and groans. On
several occasions no sooner did this individual in blue shirt-
sleeves appear on the wharf than the cries and derisive shouts
were renewed, and, although he was safe whilst at work, sur-
rounded and guarded by the united forces of Great Britain and
Ireland, we fear that as soon as this protection is removed he
may suffer some rough usage at the hands of those whose feelings
he is now outraging ; for he is no more nor less than a Cork man
who is disobeying the order to have nothing to do with the
boycotted ship, and who has thrown in his lot with his towns-
men's enemy instead of with his fellow-townsmen. If it was
tyranny on the part of these last to object, we fear that it is a
tyranny that has been and always will be largely practised where
a community is divided into masters and workmen, or a country
into the conquered and the conquerors.

Our time being limited, we were unable to devote many days
to Cork. There is, however, one excursion which none ought
to omit, and that is a drive to the castle and groves of Blarney..
The distance from Cork is but a few miles, and a car will convey
the traveller thither in an hour. We refrained from the attempt
to kiss the Blarney stone, and thus lost our chance of exchanging
our Saxon slowness and dulness of speech for the fire and readi-
ness of Celtic eloquence.

In the city itself there are numerous handsome churches and
religious houses to be seen ; nor must we forget the world-
famous butter-market and other evidences of the commercial
activity of Cork. Its comparative proximity to America gives
this city exceptional advantages in this last direction ; indeed we
may say specially of Cork that which is more or less true of

i882.] Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 737

all Ireland — that its interests, hopes, and expectations are all fixed
in a westerly direction, and that it dreads and hates all that
comes to it from the east. Nor can this be wondered at, for
all the sorrow, oppression, and injustice under which this poor
country has for so many centuries groaned have originated in
the east. From the east in the early days of its history came
the savage and desolating Dane, arid with reckless, ravaging
sword destroyed a promising and already far-advanced civiliza-
tion. When, after a fierce struggle of three hundred years, he
was finally repulsed, he was succeeded by the proud and not less
cruel Anglo-Norman, who again appears on the scene with the
rising sun. And so through the middle ages down to the period
of modern history — a history the beginning, middle, and (till our
own day) ending of which may be said to be the story of Ire-
land's oppression, confiscation, massacring, and ruin at the hands
of the hated Englishman, who again comes across the Irish Chan-
nel, and not across the Atlantic, to work his evil deeds.

All Ireland's foes have come from the east; whilst, in pleas-
ing contrast, from the west have come sympathy and substantial
help in time of trouble, and cheap and useful articles of com-
merce in time of plenty ; whilst the poor Irish feel that when
driven to the sorest straits by grinding poverty they have but to
let their need be known to those who are already in America,
and they will be relieved. Again, most Irish believe that, in the
vague future Ireland and the United States will in some way
clasp hands across the Atlantic even more closely than they do
to-day. The millions of Irish in America never forget the land of
their fathers, if not of their own birth ; whilst the Irish in Ireland
feel a sort of melancholy comfort in the thought that, should
hard fate drive them to desert their passionately loved country,
they will find a welcome and material comfort amongst those
who have preceded them to that land of plenty which comes only
second to their own country in their affections. We were sur-
prised to find how completely all Irish hopes and interests centre
in the New World ; and we were told that the intense hatred of
England and everything English which animates the native Irish
pales before the savage contempt and loathing against the Brit-
isher with which the Irish-'American is imbued. The two
branches of the Celtic family have strong bonds of sympathy,
both in their common love of Ireland and their common hatred
of England, the selfish misgovernment of whose rule the first
may truly consider as the cause of their misery, and the second
hold responsible for their exile.
VOL.- xxxiv. — 47

738 Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,

From Cork we took the regular tourists' road through Ban-
try to Glengariff, a spot of wild and rare loveliness, where, how-
ever, to all but the most callous the enjoyment of the beauties of
nature must be sadly marred by the wretched poverty of the in-
habitants. No doubt the bare rocks and steep mountain-sides
which add so, much to the beauty of the scene are largely re-
sponsible for the misery of these poor people — for, as we have
recently been told by an enthusiastic admirer of the state of
agrarian law which, thank God ! is now a matter of the past,
" Boulders will not grow turnips " (although, .by the way, land-
lords have contrived that they shall yield them handsome in-
comes)— yet we cannot doubt that under a more equitable land
tenure the inhabitants of the wilder parts of Cork and Kerry may
yet enjoy, if not actual comfort, yet at least some alleviation from
their present state of unexampled wretchedness.

Anxious to see for ourselves the actual habitations (it were
mockery to call them houses) of this part of Ireland, which, we
had been told by one who had visited well-nigh every corner
of the globe, including the wild islands of the Pacific, were un-
equalled in the whole world for squalor and misery, we spent
some days in visiting and talking to the people in the cabins and
hamlets around Glengariff. To any who are at all acquainted
with the Irish peasant I need not say that we were cordially
and kindly welcomed by all whose houses we entered. The
courtesy and intelligence of the Irish are only equalled by that
of the bright, high-bred Italian peasantry, and both may be said
to belong to the aristocracy of nature. We had, however, not
been misled as to the condition of these people. If, stepping off
the highroad, you follow sometimes a path, sometimes a few
stepping-stones across a bog, sometimes a mere track, or no track
at all, to the cluster of hovels which constitute an Irish village,
your worst expectations will be realized. One such near Glen-
gariff stands a quarter of a mile from the main road to Baritry.
Skirting here and there a patch of barley or potatoes, but having
to walk carefully to avoid stumbling over the loose stones and
hard rocks, amongst which the nimble Kerry cattle somehow
contrive to pick up a living, we reached a village which, we had
been told, was typical of this district. It consisted of an irregular
circle of a dozen or fifteen cabins. A rough and slightly raised
foot-path ran round it, and this enabled us to enter the hovels
dry-shod ; for although it was a fine August afternoon, had it not
been for the path this would have been impossible. The open
space round which the village was built was evidently the play-

1 882.] Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 739

ground and most favored wallowing-pit for the collective pigs of
the hamlet, and we were glad to be spared the necessity of even
crossing it. The ground was a deep mass of black, filthy mire,
and in this dirt the pigs rolled and waded, and, after their un-
savory bath, would unchecked enter the open doors of the ca-
bins and again take up their position as honored members of the
cotter's family. There were no windows or chimneys to the
majority of the cabins, and it is difficult to understand how these
poor people can exist in the cold winter weather when it must
be necessary to keep the doors shut. To-day they are wide
open ; yet in spite of this, and of the bright sun shining without,
we could hardly see on entering the first cabin we visited, and
the smoke from the peat-fire burning on the chimneyless hearth
still further darkened the dim little room. We descried, however,
a few women, one cooking and two or three more squatted on
the earthen floor, and a voice bade us welcome, whilst a hospita-
ble hand contrived to find a rickety stool where no furniture had
been visible to our eye, and on which we sat down, not without
some misgiving that we should shortly find ourselves resting on
a still lower level. As our eyes became accustomed to the half-
light we discovered close to our hand a black cow, whilst a
second was lying a yard or two off. Close to the fire was a
rough pen, from which issued sounds of loud cackling, and which
we found to be full of hens, who are said to lay more eggs when
thus confined in a warm corner than if at large ; whilst several
children filled up any space in the hut not yet occupied by their
elders or the live stock.

This household may be taken as a fair specimen of the south-
west part of Ireland ; and a worse-housed, worse-fed, and worse-
clothed people it would be impossible to find on the earth. In
this case the father of the family farmed a few acres of soil, much
of which be had himself rendered capable of producing even the
poor crops which he was now engaged in harvesting. For his
land and cabin together he paid six pounds a year to a landlord
who, although resident, was hardly known, and who seemed
neither loved nor respected. At the time we visited Glangariff
he was guarded by two policemen ; and however disagreeable this
may have been to himself, it was a fact which told still more
against him than it did against his people. We found, whether
in the case of landlord or agent, that those alone considered
themselves in danger or took precautions of defence who had by
their harshness, if not by their positive injustice, justly earned the
hatred of those amongst whom they lived. Far be it from us to

740 Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.r

excuse or to palliate the manner in which the injured peasants
have occasionally taken the law of vengeance into their own
hands and worked a rough-and-ready justice for themselves.
Yet we found that the mere fact that a landlord was specially
protected was evidence that he was specially and deservedly
hated by tenants whose friend and protector he ought to have
been. We visited many a kind master, and conversed with
charitable and considerate agents, and these we found moving
freely about the country, both by day and by night, with no fire-
arms concealed in their pockets and with no constabulary watch-
ing their coming in and their going out. These, too, had re-
ceived rents which, if not quite up to the usual mark, were yet as
much as those to whom they were paid were convinced that the
people could afford, whereas the former class in many cases re-
ceived nothing. In many parts of Ireland during the last two
years the old yet ever-true sentence, " As we sow so shall we
reap," has been vividly confirmed and exemplified.

To return, however, to our typical cotter of Glengariff. The
six pounds rent he did not pay in actual money, but in labor. He
was half tenant-farmer, half farm-laborer. His labor was paid at
the rate of tenpence a day without food, or of five shillings a week ;
it was therefore only after twenty-four weeks' — nearly one-half a
year's — work that he was able to devote himself to his own little
homestead. Moreover, the landlord was at liberty to call on him
for each of his one hundred and forty-four days' work on any day
he pleased ; and the peasant bitterly complained of his master's
choosing all the fine days and leaving him only the wet ones at his
own disposal. The tenant's crops rotting in the ground whilst
he is harvesting his landlord's unpleasantly reminds us of pre-
revolution French days and the ancien regime with its corvdes and
similar tyrannies. We did not find that in this instance the rent
had been very recently or exorbitantly raised, but certain graz-
ing rights on the hillside had been curtailed. How the poor
man and his family managed to exist is wonderful. Even in
prosperous years there can never have been food enough grown
on the little plot of ground which we saw to keep alive the six
or seven people who were supposed to live off it ; whilst any
failure of the crops or unseasonableness in the weather must
have brought them face to face with actual starvation. No
doubt here, as in the general run of such cases, body and soul are
kept together by the extra helps which most Irish peasants re-
ceive. A brother or son is perhaps already in America or in
the colonies, and will yearly remit three or four pounds to

1 882.] Ssx WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 741

those in the old home. Or the father will come over to England
for a couple of months' harvesting work, and return with from
six to ten pounds in his pocket, which he will husband with
almost miserly care. Then Paddy's true friend, the pig, will
.also come to the rescue; and in some cases the sale of a pig
will pay the rent of the cotter, whilst his hens' eggs, sold to an
itinerant egg-merchant, are also a source of small gain. Never-
theless, when all profits are told the peasantry along the coasts
of Cork, Kerry, and Clare are miserably poor ; and though no
doubt the security of tenure which the recent Land Act has
.given to the tenants will induce them to reclaim more land — and
in this way their condition may be slowly amended — we yet fear
that the inhabitants of that lovely but barren district will never
enjoy ease or real comfort. It remains to be seen whether the
generation which is growing up and being well educated will be
content to continue so hard a struggle for existence as their
fathers have had. With knowledge comes power, and with
recent legislation a certain amount of independence ; and no
doubt both these factors will not be without their influence on
the future Irish peasantry — a peasantry which even to-da}7 is re-
markable for its bright intelligence and clear far-sightedness.

The cabins at Glengariff, although owned by different land-
lords, are very like one another. The poverty, the want of fur-
niture, and the lack of all sanitary and even decent arrangement
were the same in each ; and when once the primary and funda-
mental question of the land is put on a satisfactory footing we
trust that it will not be long before the legislature takes steps to
ensure the disappearance of habitations which are a disgrace to
our civilization. The moral as well as the physical results of
living in such abodes make the question of the dwellings of the
poor only second in importance to that of the agrarian rights of
the poor.

From Glengariff we took the lovely road over the mountains
to Kenmare — a road the wild scenery of which is only equalled
in Europe by that on the heights of some of the Swiss passes,
whilst from the Irish mountains you obtain glimpses of the sea,
glistening in the sun far below you, which add a charm that is
wanting in the beauties of Switzerland. We stayed a few hours
in Kenmare, in order to visit the lady commonly known as " the
Nun of Kenmare," to wrhom we had an introduction. The hand-
some new church stands close to the convent of the Poor Clares,
amongst whom Sister Mary Francis is distinguished not only for
her literary labors, but still more honorably for her philanthropic

742 Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,

zeal and for the charity with which she has espoused the cause
of the poor and the oppressed Irish. Especially during the
famine of two years ago was her energy well directed ; for she
then by her zealous efforts collected fourteen hundred pounds to
feed those who but for her care and forethought must have
starved.

From Kenmare the highroad winds over a second pass to
Killarney. The scenery, though at first hardly equal to that near
Glengariff, is of much the same character ; but when once you
have reached the summit of the hill a fresh and almost unrival-
led panorama opens before you. Amongst Avild mountains lie,
nestling at their feet, the lovely Lakes of Killarney. With one
coup d'ceil you take in the whole beauty of the Irish lake district..
The color of the mountains is rich brown, and the water is a soft
blue green ; both are mellow, and, though wanting in the bril-
liancy of tone which would gild such a scene in Italy, the har-
mony of the whole is perfect ; whilst the fine outlines of the
mountains add the beauty of form to that of color. This view
breaks on you suddenly as you crest the hill, and is a lovely sur-
prise. But though apparently lying close below you, it yet takes
two hours to drive to the principal lake, on which is situated the
town of Killarney — a drive, however, through such sylvan woods
of arbutus, oak and fir trees that you in no way regret its length.

Killarney is no exception, in one respect, to most Irish towns.
A grand modern cathedral, designed by the elder Pugin, has
been built here, whilst a bishop's palace, a seminary, more than
one new convent or school-house, are to be seen resting under
the shadow of the huge church. The activity which has been
shown of late years both in church and convent building, and
equally in all matters connected with education, in Ireland is, as
we have already noticed, remarkable. The thirst for know-
ledge is unquenchable. It may arise partly from a reaction-
against the penal times, when education was a crime and a price
was set on the head of the schoolmaster ; or perhaps from the-
feeling on the part of parents that any day it may be their chil-
dren's lot to seek their fortune across the Atlantic, and that, in
America, without education success is impossible ; or it may be
caused by the natural delight of a quick-witted people at finding
any opening for the development of their intelligence. Whatever
may be the reason, the fact remains that, however humble the
hamlet, there is always a school, and that in the wildest moun-
tain district the apparent solitude is often disturbed by the fami-
liar small, square, white-washed house which the eye soon gets

1 882.] Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 743

accustomed to expect and to recognize as the " National school-
house." Although a stranger may suppose the district to be
bare and uninhabited, yet from near and from afar a sufficient
number of young scholars will always be found to fill the school-
room. We heard nothing but satisfaction expressed on all sides
as to the education given in these schools. It is legally unde-
nominational, but is practically in the hands of the priests, and
we may therefore confidently hope that the rising generation of
Irish will in no way be inferior in religious zeal and faithfulness
to their forefathers.

Space forbids our dwelling on the beautiful excursions to be
made from Killarney, and even with most graphic pen sce-
nery which ought to be seen to be enjoyed is with difficulty
brought before the reader by mere word-painting. Moreover,
it was with the idea of studying the complicated political prob-
lem which is now distracting Ireland, more than with a view of
enjoying the scenery, that we had planned our trip ; so we will
not ask our readers to linger either at the Irish lakes, nor at the
picturesque bathing village of Kilkee, nor, again, along the wild
coast of Clare, where the magnificent rocks of Moher rise six
hundred or eight hundred feet straight out of the sea, though all
the west of Ireland will well repay any who visit it with the hope
of seeing fine scenery.

We will transport our readers, without any lingering on the
way, to a wild spot in County Galway where we again saw some
aspects of the land question. These, if less painful to the ten-
der-hearted than the cases at Glengariff, were hardly more sat-
isfactory, if we view them as showing the want of any sound or
healthy system of land tenure, or in the commercial relation
which must be always one element in the connection between
landlord and tenant. We were the guests of a landlord who,
whilst owning land hardly more fertile than the wilds of Cork,
was yet honored, respected, and loved by his tenants. We visit-
ed in his company a series of cabins on a bare hillside, the in-
habitants of which were but little more prosperous than the
peasants of Glengariff, though the habitations themselves were
not so disgracefully wretched. Our approach was the signal
for all within doors to rush out and see their landlord, who had
a kind word for all and who was welcomed with apparently
genuine good feeling. At the door of one cabin our host was
met by an unfamiliar face, a fine, strong young woman's, who
had but recently married one of his tenants. "And .what in-
duced a handsome young woman like you to rqarry a fellow liv-

744 S/AT WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.,

ing on this wild hill ? " he asked. " Sure, then, but it was your
honor's character that made me take him," was the prompt an-
swer. " You see," explained our friend, " they look more to
their husband's landlord's character than to his own in marry-
ing." And, indeed, in this instance the landlord well deserved
his good reputation. Conscious of the people's poverty, he had
not enforced the payment of, or even asked for, his rent (which
was below Griffiths' valuation), in one case at least, for the last
twelve years. He told us he knew they could not pay, and
therefore he did not go through the form of endeavoring to
get that which was lawfully his own. Surely a system must be
faulty which, in the case of a kind-hearted man, deprives him of
his income, and which, on the other hand, allows the hard-heart-
ed to hold the very existence of his tenants in his hands. Indeed,
in Ireland the accumulated wrongs of ages seem visited on those
now living ; and the misdeeds of centuries will hardly take less
than generations to undo. May the amendment which has at
length been set going at any rate be in the right direction !

Although we travelled for six weeks through that part of
Ireland which was considered the most disturbed, we may here
remark that, beyond the appearance of an unusual number of
the constabulary and soldiers, we saw no signs either of outrage
or riot. No doubt outrages have been committed, and since
we left the country, and the government have changed their
tactics both towards the people and their leaders, riots have,
occurred ; but the number and gravity of both we believe to
have been grossly exaggerated. Certainly last autumn tourists
— ladies included — could wander through the length and breadth
of Ireland without running the risk of any danger, or even of
any annoyance.

With the present short days we are no doubt brought face
to face with an unusual and alarming amount of crime, and, in
spite of the suspension of the laws of personal liberty and the
suppression of the organization which last year was held re-
sponsible for every misdeed, this seems on the increase. No
doubt, the present is a disheartening state of things for English-
men to contemplate as the result of a session's work devoted to
the pacification of Ireland. But if we consider that, in the eyes
of most Irishmen, the first half of the session was devoted to ex-
asperating Ireland, it is less difficult to understand ; for we may
truly assert that the majority of Irishmen were more enraged' by
the Coercion Act than they were gratified by the Land Bill.

The subject of the relation between the two countries is a

1882.] Ssx WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. 745

long one, and far too important to be brought in as a mere finish
to the foregoing pages. We ourselves believe that the most
stupendous and all but unconquerable difficulties exist as to the
finding of any happy modus vivendi between these two peoples,
differing as they do in race and creed, in disposition and temper,
in aims and expectations, and in hopes and fears, and who are
yet locally placed in such unfortunate geographical proximity to
one another as to explain the fact that the stronger has always
willed to hold the weaker in subjection.

Six weeks in Ireland, though a short time, was long enough
to impress on us strongly the radical difference between the
races. Neither understands the other. The Englishman, con-
scious of having at length repented of his former sins and being
anxious to undo the past, is irritated at finding his best inten-
tions misunderstood and his plans for the prosperity of Ireland
frustrated by what he considers the impracticability of the peo-
ple. He fails to realize that it is not the being well governed
from London that will content the Irish, but that their happi-
ness as a people requires that such government should cease al-
together. Good laws coming from the hand of the hated op-
pressor are only one degree better than bad ones originating at
the same source. Ireland wishes neither for our good- will nor
for our ill-will. She wishes that we should simply ignore her
and let her work out her own salvation or her own ruin in her
own way! Even England's best efforts at good government she
mistrusts ; and, considering the unfortunate results of some re-
cent well-meant acts of Parliament, this is not surprising. An
Englishman, again, feels aggrieved that as fresh and more liberty
is given to Ireland by England it is mainly welcome as allowing
freer agitation against England. But if we persist in governing
a people hating our rule, is it wonderful "that they should use
against us the weapon of liberty, even if put by ourselves into
their hands? All is fair in war, and none can afford to be gen-
erous. Liberty and self-government such as are happily en-
joyed in England implies a willingness to be governed ; but if
this element is absent surely self-government is a contradiction
in theory and ends in an absurdity in practice. Ireland has
the same form of government as England ; but seeing that coer-
cive and repressive legislation has been fifty times resorted to
during the last eighty years, and that at this moment her most
trusted representatives are imprisoned by England, surely it is
only the form that is similar ; the substance is something very
•different.

746 t Six WEEKS IN IRELAND IN 1881. [Mar.r

England finds herself in an unpleasant dilemma. The fore-
most champion of liberty all over the world, yet if she will main-
tain her authority in Ireland she finds herself driven to hold
down by military force a hostile body of her subjects at her
very door. This is one result of trying to do the impossible — of
trying to govern those who hate and distrust us after the man-
ner which succeeds with those who love and trust us. All right-
thinking Englishmen detest the means now taken to hold Ire-
land ; whilst Ireland herself considers that she lies chained and
manacled by tyrannical force — a force that changes the very na-
ture of things and calls virtue vic.e, and patriotism a crime. She
longs for and looks for a saviour as no happy people have ever
looked and longed. Any who will promise her freedom from
the hated power of England is welcomed with fanatical joy, only
equalled by the bitter reaction which follows on the failure of
each vain and fruitless effort. The intense longing for separa-
tion which exists, added to the feeling that a whole people is
mourning its captivity, is certain painfully to strike an English-
man fresh from his own happy land of liberty. As in the past
we mourned with the Jews in Babylon, with the Greek held in
bondage by the Turk, -or the Venetian by the Austrian, so would
Ireland to-day have us mourn with her. We will conclude this
slight sketch of a hasty tour by giving an instance of this long-
ing which met us at the very commencement of our trip. On
first entering Queenstown Cathedral we were struck by one
tomb around which several persons were praying, devoutly. It
was that of the late Bishop of Cloyne, and attached to the railing
round the monument were the following verses :

" Hibernia has reason to be broken-hearted,

And bitterly grieve for the loss she's sustained,
In his sad demise who this life has departed,
And who her just claims for a long time sustained.

" Death's frozen hand hath that spirit prostrated

Which was alwa}^ a stranger to falsehood and fear ;
Leaving poor Erin, with her prospects frustrated,
To shed to his memory heartrending tears."

These verses may be unnoteworthy as poetry, but we cannot
but look on them as a straw indicating from which quarter the
wind blows and we may confidently ask, In what European coun-
try in the year 1881, if we except Poland, would such words find
an echo in the heart of a people ?

1882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 747

MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE.

" Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses may make not only moles
but warts in learned authors." — SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S Christian Morals, part ii. sect. ii.

AMONG the High-Church magnates who exerted a large in-
fluence at the period when the Tractarian movement agitated
the religious thought of England was the venerable Dr. Martin
Joseph Routh, president of Magdalen College. The senior by
many years of the men then moulding the opinions of Oxford,
his sympathy and approbation were highly esteemed by the
younger generation of scholars, who were warmly attached to
him. Cardinal Newman, then at the height of his power at the
university, dedicated to him those lectures on the Prophetical
Office of the Church which contain his last effort to define and
apply the doctrine of the via media of the English Establishment.
Living in the dignified retirement which befitted his advanced
age, Dr. Routh still maintained an interest in the questions
disturbing the tranquillity of Oxford. His opinions were of
special value to the scholars of eager intellect passing from the
academic halls of their alma mater into the wider arena of the
world to do battle for Anglican principles. John W. Burgon,.
a man of brilliant promise, subsequently well known as the
author of a Plain Commentary on the Gospels, was one of the favor-
ite disciples of this Nestor of the university who connected the
elder with the later generations of Oxford life. Before quitting
his college young Burgon besought his patriarchal friend to
give him from his plenary experience some sentence of wisdom,
some golden postulate, which he might carry in his memory
as a kind of intellectual talisman. Imagine the surprise of the
young Oxonian when the oracle of Magdalen responded to his
ardent entreaty: "Always verify quotations"! The late Dr.
Stanley, Dean of Westminster, when addressing the theological
students of the Union Seminary of New York, endeavored to
impress the importance of the same thought on the minds of
those for whom his words were intended ; and some of the re-
ligious journals of the day echoed the sentiment, as though it
were a newly-discovered dictum in the mental growth of our
times. Its value as a safeguard in the world of English let-
ters has long been known to the scholar trained in habits of
Catholic thought, who recognizes in this maxim, perhaps at first

MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

sight so trite, the great underlying principle of common fairness
and honesty without which the intellectual life of any age is
shorn of its moral power and beauty.

The average scholar, whose literary horizon is bounded by
the limits assigned our English speech, is familiar with the great
forgeries which occupy a unique place in England's literature —
the forgeries of Chatterton and Ireland, of Macpherson and Psal-
manazar ; but the unfairness and dishonesty interwoven into the
very fibre of the language which has been, since the revolt
of the sixteenth century, the chief medium of Protestant
thought and Protestant utterance may never have dawned
upon him, from the fact that no necessity may have arisen
compelling him to assume the defensive as regards codes of
ideas, modes of expression, and facts of history. Literary con-
troversies per se involve in the main no higher questions than
those which relate to style, in which are included not merely
the form of dress but also the general treatment of the subject-
matter. Occasionally some question of fact, the affirmation or
negation of which compromises no great ethical principle,
the wrong side of which does not expose its advocate to the
charge of intentional misrepresentation, may engender rancor
among disputants, and their reputation in the republic of let-
ters may awaken an ephemeral interest ; but later times view
such exhibitions as the badinage of scholars or the dexterous
feats of intellectual acrobats. The literary world knows that
" wits," as Gay says, " are game-cocks to one another." London
society enjoyed the persistency with which Croker and Macau-
lay belabored each other, and men of letters entered the lists as
champions of one or other of these two distinguished antagon-
ists. The bloodless encounter which they waged as to whether
such a book as the Memoirs of Prince Titi* attributed to Fred-
erick, Prince of Wales, existed in English, and as to whether the
Marquis of Montrose was beheaded or hanged, amused the higher
circles of the metropolis, and called forth a fierceness of language
from the two leading British reviews quite worthy of the cock-
pit, whose usages supplied the poet with his remarkable simile.

The Catholic— and we speak of such only as have been edu-
cated in the habits of the Catholic thinker — who subordinates
every production of the human intellect, however grand or im-

* Mr. Croker possessed a copy of this book containing the book-plate of Lord Shelburne,
father of the Marquis of Lansdowne, to whom he sent it with the request that it be restored to
the library of Lansdowne House, which Macaulay constantly used. At the time of Croker's death
he owned a number of copies of the book.

1 882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 749

posing, to the paramount test of truth develops a judicial cast of
mind which is destructive to that spirit of literary and historical
writing- known as sentimentalism. By it we mean the substitu-
tion of the emotional, in its largest sense, for definite principle
as a guide in thought as in conduct. The judicial trait in litera-
ture, more common among Catholics than among Protestants,
has been fostered by the hostility of English civilization toward
everything savoring of Catholicism. The long and deadly strug-
gle "which followed the Protestant revolt organized an apparatus
of statecraft in England that did its work effectively, and pro-
duced results the like of which are only manifest in periods of
great religious revolution. An order of men and a code of ideas
became at once both popular and powerful, and every instru-
mentality was employed to protect and defend the new thought
and the new life of the nation. While writers like Milton could
" to states and governors of the commonwealth direct their
speech" heroically for the liberty of unlicensed printing, yet for
the Catholic Church and all that bore her semblance the poison
of asps was under their lips. Religious hate, at first animating
the state, finally usurped the seats of learning and perverted the
thought of the two universities of England, whose majestic tow-
ers and ancient foundations still attest the loyal faith of their
Catholic builders and patrons. The literary spirit engendered
in the restlessness of prejudice and passion corrupted the " well
of English," till then " undefiled," and successive generations have
drunk of the bitter waters. The literature of the language in
which a Sir Thomas More thought and wrote perpetuated as
an heirloom to our times that systematic antagonism to the
church which continues to envenom the insolent assertion and
the reckless statement by which her principles are misrepre-
sented and her children maligned.

The origin of this spirit of hostility can be traced to that law-
lessness of the human mind whose raison d'etre is the logical out-
come of a religion of negation— we mean the intellectual vanity
which the system tends to beget, and which, Wordsworth says,

" Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness."

A literature moulded by the complex elements of private judg-
ment, by the traditions of the English Establishment, by its con-
troversial energy, and by its historical characteristics developed
an insular spirit that pervades it to this day as its chief est weak-
ness. Wanting that mental ballast which Catholicity supplies,

750 MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

the literary path is beset with enemies more subtle and more
formidable than those of the field. The contest lies within —
against pride of intellect, the aberrations of reasoning, the deli-
rium of applause, and the dishonesty of thought and of act to
which they alJure. " There is no democracy," says Mr. Glad-
stone, " so levelling as the republic of letters. Liberty and equal-
ity here are absolute, though fraternity may be sometimes absent
on a holiday." * Because it is so it has its perilous side, and
these splendid qualities that men so highly prize for the vast
opportunities which they afford have responsibilities equally
vast. Unless an ingenuous hatred of falsehood in its tangled and
manifold operations be the substratum of the mental as well as
the moral character, the intellectual, like the social, world will be
infested by a set of clever parvenus who court originality, show,
and popularity at the expense of truth.

The complacency with which Hamlet's advice to his mother
has been followed by astute charlatans who assume the habitudes
of scholarship f is a fact of literary history so phenomenal that
one is bewildered by the multitude of examples which suggest
themselves. Those who have read Person's Letters to Archdea-
con Travis, whom Dr. Parr declared a " superficial and arrogant
declaimer," \ may recall the peculiar manner in which the great
Grecian always refers to St. Gregory Nazianzen. Indulging in an
irony which covered his antagonist with confusion, some readers
of the Letters would imagine that Porson was " extremely fond" §
of this doctor of the church. This and kindred expressions used
by him are misleading, but the explanation is highly amusing. It
illustrates the folly of that literary dishonesty of which we have
been speaking in a dignitary of the Establishment whom Southey
accuses of certain clandestine preferences relating to the Thirty-
nine Articles.! Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff, better known as the
author of an Apology for the Bible, in a series of letters address-
ed to Thomas Paine, T says of the period when he was regius
professor of divinity in the University of Cambridge : " I reduced
the study of divinity into as narrow a compass as possible, for I

* " Is the English Church worth preserving ? " Contemporary Revieiv, July, 1875, p. 214.

t " Assume a virtue, if you have it not " (Act iii. scene iii.)

\ Bibliotheca Parriana, p. 601.

§ Letters, p. 223.

|| Southey said Watson's conversation showed that "the articles of his faith were not all to
be found among the Nine-and-thirty, nor all the Nine-and-thirty to be found among his " (Let-
ters , by Waiter, vol. i. p. 391).

If When this work was published George III. remarked : '* Apology ! I did not know that
the Bible needed an arjblogy."

1 882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. ^ 751

determined to study nothing but my Bible ; being much uncon-
cerned about the opinions of councils, fathers, churches, bishops,
and other men as little inspired as myself." * In talking with
a friend on the subject of one of his proposed Latin lectures
the professor was informed that there was a fine passage in St.
Gregory Nazianzen which admirably suited the line of thought
pursued in his discourse. Dr. Watson replied : " But I have
never read a line of him." To which his learned friend respond-
ed : " I will send you the volume with the passage marked in it."
The promise was kept, and Dr. Watson committed the passage
to memory and delivered himself of it, concluding with these
words : " H&c ex Gregorio illo Nazianzeno, quern semper in deliciis
habui" f In his pretended partiality for St. Gregory, Porson
was levelling the shafts of his satire at Dr. Watson, whom the
then master of Peterhouse aptly called the self-taught divine.

In an age like ours, when the appliances for the multiplication
of printed matter of all kinds are so vast and so varied that a
wilderness of books is almost of annual growth, it does seem
passing strange that with the widespread diffusion of knowledge
.among the masses there should not be a corresponding, increase
in the power of discernment, and that a sort of inspirational reli-
ance on the veracity of the printed page -should still f5e the weak-
ness of men not otherwise lacking in ordinary mental force.
There is a simplicity of character which we all admire, not infre-
quently combined with a fair degree of intellectual shrewdness,
but we cannot comprehend that condition of mind which pro-
duces a blind reverence for the authority of books, almost
.amounting to fetichism, that one encounters under such argu-
mentative conclusions as these : But this is the derivation or defini-
tion of the dictionary, this is a well-attested fact of history, or this is
the view of great writers, such as Macaulay, Froude, Lecky, or some
popular author in literature ; as though dictionaries were unerr-
ing, the so-called facts of history unchallenged, and the present-
ments of great writers always complete and true. Simplicity of
character may be preserved by ignorance of the world, but it
leaves us at the mercy of its malice ; and ignorance of the intel-
lectual vanity of men may enhance our esteem of authors, but it
makes us the victims of their subtle sophistries. Dr. John Ash,
who was pastor of a Baptist congregation in Worcestershire, Eng-
land, was a man of some literary importance in the last century.

* Memoirs of Bishop Watson, prefixed to Apology, p. 6.

f " These are the words of Gregory, him of Nazianzen, who has always been my special de-
light."

752 MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

He founded a club in London called in his honor the Eumelian,
alluding to the epithet which Homer applies to Priam, dex-
terous in the use of the w til-Ashed spear :

Kal TliaiioS ua.1

Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, speaks of Dr. Ash as a
" learned and ingenious physician," f but withal his vanity, like
his memory, sometimes played him false. He published a New
and Complete English Dictionary, in two volumes, in 1775, just
twenty years after the first edition of Johnson's. If the reader
who has access to it will turn to the word curmudgeon, he will
discover a feat of etymological skill which is without a parallel in
the history of lexicography. For the sake of illustration we
transcribe the full text of the passage as it stands in the Diction-
ary of Dr. Ash :

" CURMUDGEON (sub. from the French coeur, unknown, and mechant, a
correspondent). A miser, a churl, a griper."

How could a learned lexicographer perpetrate a blunder which
rivals the absurdities of a Mrs. Partington or the drollery of a
Mark Twain? When Dr. Johnson was compiling his Diction-
ary he exacted tribute from all sources by virtue of his right as
autocrat of letters. Known and unknown friends contributed ta
the stock of his knowledge. The information thus derived from
various quarters he turned to use with the skill of a master in
word-building, while Dr. Ash, his successor in lexicography, be-
trayed at every opportunity the blunderings of the journeyman.
The former had often sat at a great feast of languages, but the
latter had lived just long enough in the alms-basket of words
to steal the scraps.^ Unable to determine the derivation of
curmudgeon, Dr. Johnson inquired in a London periodical as to
the origin of the word. A correspondent suggested that it came
from the French coeur, heart, and mechant, bad. Johnson accepted
the derivation as probable, and, without translating the French,
engrafted it into his Dictionary, giving credit to an unknown cor-
respondent. Hence the pedantry and the theft of Dr. Ash are
alike exposed.

Accuracy of thought and accuracy of statement are among
the rarest gifts of intellectual culture, and it would be perhaps
unreasonable to expect these qualities, in any large degree,

* Iliad, vi. 449 and iv. 165.

fCroker's BoswelPs Life of Johnson, vol. viii., note, p. 393.

J " Love's Labor's Lost," act v. scene i.

1 882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 753

among writers who follow letters as a profession. The high
pressure of modern literary life, its requirements and its emer-
gencies, have come to adjust themselves to the all-important
factor of success, which is but another name for wealth, so that
the incessant turmoil of money-getting affects all classes of socie-
ty and all kinds of work. The market-value is the standard that
measures the products of the brain and the products of the field.
The haste and hurry which pervade every avenue of activity,
and assume the intensity of a life-and-death struggle for suprem-
acy over material interests — the masters rather than the servants
in our civilization — exempt none from the whirl of the industrial
maelstrom in which we are ever revolving. The literary work-
ers, rarely independent of the demands of the bread-winners,
make merchandise of their ideas, write in chronic haste, and
write for readers moved by the same irresistible spirit which
pursues them in their business places and even haunts them in
their homes. Neither class has leisure — the one for thoughtful
writing, the other for thoughtful reading. Thus has the environ-
ment of authorship in our day become too narrow for the full
development of any high ideal in literature, and the many-sided-
ness which is so desirable as an aim is made too often the end of
contemporary culture. Of the unorganized mass of literature in
every department, only " capital truths," as Sir Thomas Browne
quaintly says, "are to be narrowly eyed; collateral lapses and
circumstantial deliveries not to be strictly sifted. And if the
substantial subject be well forged out, we need not examine the
sparks which irregularly fly from it." * One who is familiar
with the historical antecedents which have developed the litera-
ture of the language knows that the time is at hand when
neither the interests of religion nor the interests of culture can
longer be subserved by\ obstinate adherence to the prejudices
and the principles bequeathed to us from the revolt of three cen-
turies ago. Literary criticism now admits that fidelity to truth
has both its positive and its negative sides, and the recognition
of the fact that there are errors of omission and of commission is
as absolutely essential in the intellectual as in the moral order
of the world. So also the question of degrees enters largely into
the present methods of criticism, for literary sins have a venial
or a mortal character in their influence on literature in general
as well as on authors themselves. If we were to take up all the
instructive examples illustrating our remarks we should never
come to an end. Passing over the great writers who adorned

* Christian Morals, part ii. section ii.
VOL. XXXIV. — 48

754 - MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

the age of Elizabeth, and made it the most brilliant in the annals
of English letters, let us stop for a moment to consider two typical
authors of our own day who represent its culture and divide its
admiration. Of the higher and greater we speak first. In what-
ever light we view the pictures of the English humorists of
Queen Anne's reign as drawn by the inimitable pen of Thack-
eray, we cannot fail to remark the incompleteness of the portrai-
ture of Steele, " whose life," as Macaulay says, " was spent in in-
culcating what was right and in doing what was wrong." * The
author himself, as we shall presently see, discovered the defect.
Charter-house, as all know, is an old foundation, whose name —
Chartreuse — implies its Catholic origin. It was the school of
Steele's boyhood, as well as of Thackeray's, and when the latter
was reviving the recollections of his early life at Charter-house
— the youthful friendships, the Latin verses, and the sound flog-
gings which live in memory when all else has faded — it is strange
that he makes no reference to Steele's paper on flogging in The
Tatler. We are informed that the late Hon. W. B. Reed, of Phila-
delphia, an intimate of Thackeray's, first drew his attention
to it, and that the author of the Humorists remarked in his
frank way : " Has Steele written on the subject ? By Jove ! I
would have given fifty pounds to have known it sooner." Such
candor, so earnest and hearty, in one of the most charming of
authors, simply disarms criticism, and we are quite willing to
forget that even a great master like Thackeray sometimes nods
— "Bonus dormitat Homerus" f

No writer of the century has enjoyed the wide popularity of
Charles Dickens, and of none can we affirm a greater revision of
judgment in everything that pertains to him as a man and as an
author. None doubt that he had genius, but many that he had
honor. He painted the wrong which festers in the heart of so-
ciety, but he was lacking in any lofty ideal of right. He was an
actor through life, and used all the methods of the stage. One
detects between the lines the art which all his art could not con-
ceal. The personality of Dickens is of a dual character. Strip-
ped of the visor, much is revealed which the few may excuse but
none can praise. When placed in juxtaposition his life and his
works present the strangest of contradictions — so much greatness
and so much littleness. We have neither the space nor the dis-
position to dwell on facts in his domestic history now known to
everybody. In a paper on Mrs. Landorin the London Athenceum
a writer expresses what we believe will be the ultimate criterion

* Essays, " Addison," vol. v. p. 105. t Horace, Ars Poetica^ 359.

1 882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 755

by which Charles Dickens will be judged by posterity : " Not-
withstanding all that may be said in laudation of any hero, lite-
rary or other, how a man treats women — this is the great, the final
test of what a man is."* Miss Harriet Martineau has left some
curious revelations about Dickens and the conduct of the maga-
zine, Household Words, which he edited in connection with Mr.
Wills. In the autumn of 1849, at tne request of its proprietors,
Miss Martineau wrote a tale for Household Words, which Dickens
declined to publish on the ground that the hero was a Catholic
priest and a good man — an impossible combination in the ethics
of the managers of that periodical, who " never would publish
anything, fact or fiction, which gave a favorable view of any one
under the influence of the Catholic faith, "f Miss Martineau
continues : " This appeared to me so incredible that Mr. Dickens
gave me his 'ground' three times, with all possible distinctness,
lest there should be any mistake : — he would print nothing which
could possibly dispose any mind whatever in favor of Romanism,
even by the example of real good men." It is needless to follow
the sequel of this strange story, which exhibits at greater length
the intolerance of Dickens, or to quote the remonstrance of Miss
Martineau as the antidote; it is the fact recorded by her to
which we desire to call attention, but to her honor be it said that
she resigned her place as a contributor to Household Words.

We are here brought face to face with that virulent and dog-
ged prejudice in literature which so severely tries the patience
of the cultivated Catholic, and which is so difficult to deal with,
because it has made itself strong by the authority of name and
the fascination of genius — an excuse, if not a warrant, for all man-
ner of moral paradoxes and mental aberrations. The indeter-
minate expressions which clever but shallow writers employ
when speaking of Catholicity, and their assumptions of acquain-
tance with Catholic authors and literature, tend to augment our
labors and our responsibilities. The warfare is indeed unending.
As long as there is any sophistry to be exposed, any misstate-
ment to be corrected, any error to be destroyed ; as long as there
is any ignorance to be instructed, any aberration of thought or
of conduct to be directed — in fine, as long as the moral and intel-
lectual influences of literature, and science, and philosophy are
clouding rather than clarifying questions of truth, will the edu-
cated talent of the church, both clerical and lay, be confront-
ed by duties which each must discharge according to the gifts
and opportunities that the divine beneficence has granted. The

* May 3, 1879, P- 5^8. t Autobiography, Am. ed., vol. ii. p. 93.

756 < MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

moral sense of Catholic Christendom was shocked by the gratui-
tous charge made by the late Canon Kingsley, that " truth for its
own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy." If
he had here stopped short, the indefinite character of the slander
might have allowed it to pass unchallenged ; but, fortunately for
the cause of truth which he belied, he added : " Father Newman
informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be/'
However much we may dislike the impertinence of Canon Kings-
ley, we are not disposed, in view, of the results, to quarrel with
the necessity which broke the silence of Cardinal Newman, be-
cause the wanton rashness of the one produced the matchless
vindication of the other, and gave to literature the wonderful
self-analysis of the Apologia pro Vita Sua. If the prevailing pre-
judices concerning the elementary principles of Catholicity are
so obstinate and so violent that they betray men to write them-
selves down as licensed slanderers in the moral sense of Chris-
tendom, it ought not to be a matter of surprise that educated
Catholics manifest distrust of statements which with others may
bear the semblance of candor and truth. There is ample ground
for all this lack of confidence on the part of Catholics, who know
too well that the whole strength of human prejudices is set in
opposition to Catholicity and its defenders. Many years before
Canon Kingsley concentrated the venom of inferences, hearsays,
and surmises into a direct, specific impeachment of the honesty
of Cardinal Newman, a learned divine of the English Establish-
ment pictured him with an exquisite touch of rhetoric as one
who " appeared to be gradually losing the faculty of distinguish-
ing between truth and falsehood, and the very belief in the ex-
istence of any power for discerning truth — nay, as it seemed at
times, in the existence of any positive truth to be discerned." *
Like the Australian boomerang, the unwarranted attacks of both
Canon Kingsley and Archdeacon Hare recoiled upon themselves,
and at the time of Dr. Newman's elevation to the cardinalate
the culture of both hemispheres, irrespective of creed, recognized
the fact that in him practical judgment and moral dignity and a
sacred love of truth are united with the highest intellectual
power. Flippant writers like Mr. Justin McCarthy, who some-
times venture beyond their depth, may attempt an analysis of his
character and intend no misconstruction of his acts or his words,
but when such a writer speaks of a passage, appended as a foot-
note to an article on " The Life and Writings of St. Paul " in the

• * The Mission of the Comforter, and other Sermons, with notes, 2<d ed. revised, 1850, p. 725..

i882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 757

Dublin Review, * and distinctly quoted from the late Father Faber, \
as " Newman's touching and noble apostrophe to England's
•' Saxon Bible/ " J we cannot be justly censured if we question
the sources of his information or the correctness of his opinions.
And yet Mr. Justin McCarthy only imitated the example set by
an anonymous reviewer § on the other side of the Atlantic and
the Rev. Dr. Schaff || on this, both of whom display a kindred
inaccuracy of statement when treating of subjects distinctively
Catholic.

Another fruitful evil in literature, which has almost worn the
patience of the scholar threadbare, springs as a normal and neces-
sary consequence of inveterate prejudice. We mean that abso-
lute indifference to truth whenever falsehood can subserve the
interest of a cause or a system. When men cease to value truth
for its own sake, and make attachment to party or to creed the
standard of veracity, then all earnestness of purpose and of
thought has departed, and in its stead arises an indolent acquies-
cence in mere hearsays and common reports, which Thucydides
laments as a fatal characteristic of the early pagan mind.T Then,
indeed, the so-called Christian veracitj* and manliness will be
little better than Punic faith and honor, and the rationalist will
ask, with increased vehemence, if there be any essential differ-
ence between morality and the worship of Christ and morality
and the worship of Pan.** Let us pause for a moment to con-
sider a few popular errors which have, to borrow an art term,
become encaustic in literature as proverbs. There is a certain
craft in language which, when skilfully employed, deceives by its
plausibility. The adroit remark of Llorente, "// ne faut pas
talomnier meme r Inquisition" prepares the way by an assumption
of historical fairness which deludes the uncritical mind. To one
possessed of insight and experience in human character a single
sentence from the lips of a person will sometimes afford a clue to
his history and mental habitudes ; so also the subtle art which
aims to conceal rather than to express will often betray by a
hint its occult purpose. If an author of reputation, ignoring the

* For June, 1853, p. 466.

t " The Interest and Characteristics of the Lives of the Saints," prefixed to the Life of St.
Francis of Assist, p. 116, vol. xxv. of the Oratory series.

{"The Two Newmans," the Galaxy for November, 1871, p. 646.

§ North British Review, March, 1869, note, p. 63.

|| Mercersburg Review, July, 1857, P- 337-

T Oiirw? aTaAaiTrwpos TOI? TroAAois »? £riTr)cris TTJS dArjfletas, /eat €7rl rd eroi/ma ju.aAA.ov Tpenovrai. —
jfist. Pelop. War, i. 20.

**The Nation, of New York, February 6, 1873, p. 86.

758 MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. [Mar.,

•

fact that both Catholic and Protestant writers have exploded the
absurd stories about Galileo and his tortures by the Inquisition,,
continues to repeat the myth which usually follows a dramatic
portrayal of his recantation, " E pur si muove" we are justified
in concluding that such a man of letters is deficient in accurate
historical knowledge, which, in part at least, vitiates his claim to
literary consideration. Quaint old Bayle says that " it is quite
enough to publish anything, however false, against the Jesuits, in
order to secure its being believed by the majority," with whom
we ought not to class trained intellects capable of weighing the
force of evidence and deducing results. If an opponent of the
order quotes in apparently good faith the Monita Seer eta Societa-
tis Jesu, we must either pity his credulity or his ignorance of the
science of bibliography. On the other hand, if an antagonist of
average ability summarize his objection after the manner of
Charlotte Bronte, that Catholics are " always doing evil that
good may come, or doing good that evil may come," * it would
be sufficient to reply that such a principle of ethics, as far as Ca-
tholics are concerned, was evolved from the imagination of a
lonely novelist who knew little of the world beyond the sad ex-
periences of her father's parish on the bleak moors of Yorkshire.
And what a gloomy picture of rural clerical life in England the
story of the unhappy Brontes presents ! Life in Hawrorth par-
sonage was enough to conjure up any sort of phantoms of the
. mind, and charity suggests many excuses for the intellectual
idiosyncrasies of a gifted but misdirected woman. But the as-
sertion is frequently made that, if all Catholics do not recognize
such morality, the Jesuits certainly do, for they have formalized
it into a maxim of casuistry, "The end justifies the means" for
the guidance of the sons of St. Ignatius. Here again it might
suffice to deny the fact, and challenge proof from the authentic
writings of Jesuit theologians, but for the conviction that an an-
tagonist who indulges in such flippant charges would not accept
ex animo a denial, for he thinks it a part of the policy of the
Jesuits and their defenders to act on the very principle while
arguing against it. Any hypothesis which assumes such a
shape is beneath the dignity of argument. It simply presents its
advocate as a psychical phenomenon interesting to those who in-
vestigate the expressions of moral mania. He who entertains
such an opinion, in ignorance of the fact that he is giving assent
to a traditional falsehood, deserves some consideration, and on
that account we remark that the sentiment imputed to a de-

* Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 65.

1 882.] MOLES AND WARTS IN LITERATURE. 759

famed religious order was the motto of the first President of the
United States.* It is, however, of pagan origin, and centuries
before his birth it was appropriated from the poet Ovid as the
legend of the family escutcheon of the Washingtons. The words
" Exitus acta probat" f are those which Phyllis, daughter of L}^-
curgus, when reproaching Demophoon, the son of Theseus, at-
tributes to the Thracians in their rejection of her as their sove-
reign because of her having preferred an alien to her own coun-
tryman.

The last popular error, in proverbial shape, which we will
mention has been noticed by every one who takes any interest
in the great question which so long divided political parties an-
terior to our civil war. Partisan zeal seized the sentence from
the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, that the negro
" had no rights which the ivhite man was bound to respect" wrenched
it from .its context, and put it forth as the opinion of the late
chief-justice who presided over that august tribunal. However
men may differ in their views of that remarkable case, now num-
bered among the causes ceTebres, it is manifestly impossible for
an enlightened Catholic who knows anything of the character
of Judge Taney to believe that he used these words in the
naked, unrestricted way which the quotation implies, for they
enunciate a principle antagonistic to the spirit and teaching of
the Catholic faith. An examination of the decision shows that
the late chief-justice was sketching historically " the state of
public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which pre-
vailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at
the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Con-
stitution of the United States was framed and adopted." J In
this sense for more than a century before had the negro been
regarded by a certain class as an inferior being, possessing no
rights which the superior race felt bound to respect. Uncatholic
as the sentiment may be, it is the historical fact with which pub-
licists must find fault, and not with the jurist who declared it.

In a literature like ours the seekers after wisdom must nar-
rowly scan the complex influences, some of whose tendencies are
to subordinate vital verities to purblind prejudices. It is the
spirit which animates all efforts in the domain of knowledge
to which we must apply the rigid test of conscience and of truth,
for the spirit which dominates a literature works for good or
for evil when the authors who created it are forgotten :

* Lossing's Home of Washington, p. 30. \ Heroides, Ep. ii. 85.

% Howard's Report, Appleton & Co., 1857, p. 407.

760 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.,

" Sunt qui scire volunt, eo fine tantum ut sciant, et turpis curiositas est.
Et sunt qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi, et turpis vanitas est.
Et sunt item qui scire volunt, ut scientiam vendant, et turpis quaestus

est:

Sed sunt quoque qui scire volunt, ut aedificent, et charitas est :
Et item qui scire volunt, ut aedificentur, et prudentia est."*

JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

ii.

ERASMUS has left on record a description of Dr. Fisher's ap-
pearance as he left Westminster Hall upon receiving sentence of

death :

" One would think that he was returning from some festive scene. His
countenance was radiant with joy ; his step was light and steady ; his whole
manner bespoke an interior gayety of heart. One could see that the holy
bishop now felt that his soul was nigh to that harbor of eternal rest after
which he had so long yearned."

The few days of life now allotted to Dr. Fisher were chiefly
occupied in prayer. Nevertheless he was cheerful and pleasant ;
he asked the cook for his dinner, and the former replied that he
had " prepared none that day, because he had heard it rumored
that his lordship's head had been chopped off on yonder hill, and
therefore he would not want a dinner." " Well," said the bishop,
" my good cook, you see I am still alive, and am very hungry
just now. Whatever you hear of me, let me no more lack my din-
ner, but make it ready, as thou art wont to do, and if thou seest
me dead when thou comest, why, then, eat it thyself ; but if I am
alive I mind, by God's grace, to eat never a bit the less."

" In stature," says Bay ley, " Dr. Fisher was tall and comely,
exceeding the middle sort of men ; for he was to the quantity of
six feet in height ; and being very slender and lean, was never-
theless upright and well formed, straight-backed, big jaws, and

* St. Bernard, Serm. xxxvi. in Cant. :

" There are those who wish to know, for the sole purpose of knowing, and this is base curiosity.
And there are those who wish to know, that they themselves may be known, which is base

vanity.
And there are those likewise who wish to know, that they may sell knowledge, which is base

self-seeking :

But there are also those who wish to know, that they may instruct, which is charity :
And those likewise who wish to know, that they may be instructed, which is prudence."

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 761

strongly sinewed ; his hair by nature black, though in his latter
days, through age and imprisonment, turned to white ; his eyes
large and round, neither full black nor full gray, but of a mixt
color between both ; his forehead smooth and large ; his nose of
a good and even proportion ; somewhat wide mouth and big-
jawed, as one ordained by nature to utter much speech, wherein
was, notwithstanding, a certain comeliness ; his skin somewhat
tawny, mixed with many blue veins ; his face, hands, etc., all his
body, so bare of flesh as is almost incredible, which came by the
great abstinence and penance he used upon himself for many
years, even from his youth. In speech he was mild, temperate,
and kindly."

Those who approached Dr. Fisher at this juncture were
struck with his heroic fortitude, and piety ; he expressed some-
thing kind and endearing to all, even the executioner. On the
morning of his death he asked the lieutenant of the Tower
" to indulge him with a sleep of two hours longer," adding : " I
have been coughing half the night ; I could not sleep ; I am very
weak ; but remember, my weakness does not proceed from fear.
Thank God, I have nothing to fear in meeting death." At seven
-o'clock he arose, and dressed with more than ordinary care.
" This is our wedding-day," he observed, " and it behooves us,
therefore, to use more cleanliness in preparing for the marriage
table." At nine of the clock a procession was formed, headed by
the lieutenant of the Tower ; the venerable prelate was so weak
that he had to be carried in a chair to the place of execution, to
which — as the " king's mercy " had changed the brutal sentence
at Tyburn to decapitation on Tower Hill — the distance was
short. In one hand the bishop held the crucifix, in the other
a copy of the New Testament. Having reached the scaffold, he
seemed to have received renewed strength. The executioner
made his usual address, " begging forgiveness," etc., to which
Dr. Fisher replied: " I forgive you very heartily, and I hope
you will see me overcome this storm lustily." When his gown
and tippet had been removed " he stood in his doublet and hose
in the sight of the multitude ; and they marvelled to see a long,
lean, and slender body, having on it little other substance besides
skin and bones, insomuch as most part of the beholders wondered
to see a living man so consumed, as he was the image of death
itself ; and the people thought it mighty cruel for the king to
put such a man to death, he being so near his end." *

Notwithstanding the death-like appearance of Dr. Fisher, his

* Bay ley's Life of Bishop Fisher ; State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII.

762 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.r

mind was still vigorous, and he addressed the populace in a clear
and audible tone. Coming to the front of the scaffold, he said :
" Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of
Christ's holy Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my
stomach hath served me very well thereunto, so that yet I have
not feared death. Wherefore I desire you all to help and assist
me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of
death's stroke I may in that very moment stand steadfast without
failing in any one point of the Catholic faith, free from any fear.
And I beseech the Almighty God of his infinite goodness and
mercy to save the king and this realm, and that it may please
him to hold his hand over it and send the king's highness
good counsel." And then, opening the New Testament, the
bishop's eye rested on these words : " This is life eternal, that
they might know thee, the only True God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth, I
have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Upon
this Dr. Fisher closed the book, saying : " Here is learning
enough for me to my life's end."

Having engaged about ten minutes in prayer, the holy pre-
late rose from his knees, and, looking towards the east, he said :
" The sun shines upon the scene about to be enacted." Then,
surveying the vast crowd with compressed lips, he made the
sign of the cross with great solemnity and surrendered himself
to the executioners ; his eyes were bandaged ; an awful silence
pervaded the vast multitude ; he laid his head upon the block ; a
murmur thrilled amongst the on-lookers, and the throbbings of
their hearts became painful ; two minutes and ten seconds had
passed, a signal was given, and at one blow the executioner
severed the head of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, from the
body. " The populace," writes a spectator, whose words I
modernize, " stood horrified ; a hoarse sound of grief and terror
arose from the men, followed by the wild shrieks of the women
of Rochester — domestics, old retainers, pensioners, and friends.
The whole scene was one the like of which England had never
seen before." Another writer says: "The people were aston-
ished to see so much blood flowing from so lean a body." Bay-
ley relates that the executioner put the head in a bag, in-
tending to place it on London Bridge that night, as he was com-
manded to do ; but the queen wished particularly to see the
head " before it was spiked " ; that it was " carried to her" and\
looking at it some time, she said : " Is this the head that so often ex-
claimed against me? I trust it shall never do me more harm''"

i882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 763

"The queen" writes Bay ley, "struck it upon the mouth with the back
of her hand, and hurt one of her fingers by a tooth that stuck some-
what more out than the rest did, which finger afterwards grew sore
and put Jier to pain for many days ; and when cured the mark of the
tooth remained to be seen on the said finger'' Henry Griffin, of
Rochester, who was present at the execution, says that the
headsman carried away the head in a " white bag," but makes no
allusion to this shocking narrative respecting Anna Boleyn.

Margaret Lee relates " that on the morning of Fisher's ex-
ecution the queen received Holy Communion (the Lorde's
Bodye) and expressed herself troubled in mind for the bishop" If
this statement be correct I do not think it possible that there is
any foundation for the appalling story respecting the bishop's
head. At the time Bayley wrote the Catholic party had an
intense feeling of hatred to the memory of Anna Boleyn. The
Puritans became her champions, as she was reported to have been
" a stanch Protestant " ; whilst the Catholics execrated her as a
renegade, and, judging of her history from the pages of Sander,
Allen, and others, they looked upon her as not only false to Ca-
tholicity, but by birth something that was abominable and un
natural.* Lingard observes that " Catholic writers were eager
to condemn, and the Protestant historians to immortalize, the
memory of Anna Boleyn." f So much for the introduction of
party feeling into the pages of what is supposed to be honest
historical relations of other days.

In another work I have proved the errors of Sander respect-
ing Anna Boleyn's mother, the stainless Elizabeth Howard.
However, Sander's work was not published for some years after
his death, so it is possible that the MS. underwent many changes
and additions. It may appear strange to the Protestants of the
present day, who have' faith in Burnett and those writers who
have adopted his statements, to learn that Anna Boleyn never
abandoned the religion of her fathers. She utterly repudiated
and ignored Protestantism. She was, however, thoroughly de-
ceived by prelates like Archbishop Cranmer, who, whilst cele-
brating Mass daily with the most apparent piety, were at the
same moment engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to overthrow the
ancient religion of England. It is difficult to elucidate the truth
where deception, fraud, and perjury have become interwoven
and carried to a conclusion with a blasphemous courage that in-

* I refer the reader to vol. i. p. 92 of the Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty for
an inquiry into these vile accusations,
t Lingard, vol. v.

764 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.,

yokes the " Holy Trinity and the High Court of Heaven " to
attest the truth and equity of its proceedings.

It is true that King Henry himself accused the queen of be-
ing the cause of Sir Thomas More's death ; and the reader is
aware that Wolsey had described her as the " night-crow," who
haunted his path and pursued him to the death ; yet these are
mere allegations, which have never been proved. Neither Pro-
testant nor Catholic seems to have understood the construction
of Anna Boleyn's mind ; and the problem is certainly not clearly
solved even now.

Another revolting spectacle was that of the remains of the
bishop being flung on a heap of sand by the headsman, and
remaining in that condition, guarded by unfeeling halberdmen,
until night, when an order came from Lord Crumwell that the
body was to be immediately buried. Accordingly " two of the
watchers took the corpse upon halberds between them, and so
carried it to a neighboring churchyard named Barking, where,
on the north side of the cemetery, near the wall, they dug a hole
with their halberds, and therein, without any reverence, tumbled
the body of the good prelate. No Christian rites were per-
formed. Such was the funeral of the Bishop of Rochester." *
No priest, no friend, no relative was present. It is impossible to
defend the clergy and bishops from a large amount of censure
for their conduct at this period. The prelates were silent ; there
was no remonstrance, no petition, no supplication on behalf of
their martyred brother. It is declared that Dr. Fisher had even
to petition Lord Crumwell to grant him the favor of a confes-
sor and a few pk>us books to read. There is some error in the
statement that Dr. Fisher had to "petition for a confessor." At
that period there were several priests attached to the Tower
chapel, where Mass was daily celebrated. Perhaps Fisher de-
sired the services of some particular confessor from his own dio-
cese of Rochester. In the case of Anna Boleyn, Lord Crum-
well sent three priests to her of her own selection ; and those
clerics remained with her for several days and up to the last
scene on the scaffold. But the king had a special hatred against
his old preceptor. Surely the bishop and clergy of London could
have prevented the outrages heaped on the remains of the dead
prelate at Barking. Crumwell was not altogether such a mon-
ster but they could prevail upon him to give a suitable, or at
least a Christian, burial to the king's venerable preceptor, a
Privy Councillor of the realm, a bishop, a peer of Parliament,

* Bayley's Life of Dr. Fisher.

1 882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 765.

and a man without a shadow of reproach during his long life.
The conduct of Bonner, Gardyner, and Tunstal in relation to
Fisher adds to the general odium attached to the memory of
those prelates. Who can defend their conduct ? They simply,
and no doubt unconsciously, performed the work of the Reform-
ers, and it followed that retributive justice haunted them to the
death.

Three days later Dr. Fisher's head was " spiked " on London
Bridge beside the heads of the Carthusian fathers who suffered
a short time previously in the same cause. Immense crowds of
people came daily to look at the bishop's head. Some prayed,
and the thoughtless and unreflecting indulged in execrations
against the king and Lord Crumwell. The public feeling, how-
ever, was one of intense indignation ; the king and his council
were severely censured ; the bridge itself, and every avenue lead-
ing to it, was completely blocked up and business almost sus-
pended. After fourteen days Lord Crumwell ordered the head
to be thrown into the Thames.

On the Continent the excitement was great. Charles V. sent
for the English ambassador, and told him that Bishop Fisher was
" such a man for all purposes that the King of England had not
the like of him in his realm ; neither was he to be matched
throughout Christendom. " And then, with much feeling, impe-
rial Charles added : " Alas ! your royal master hath, in killing
that goodly bishop, killed at one blow all the bishops in your
England." * Francis I. informed Sir John Wallop, the English
ambassador in Paris, that " his royal master must have a very
hard heart to put to death his ancient preceptor and so good a
bishop." " I should," continued Francis, " feel very proud in-
deed if such a prelate was a subject of mine." f The execution
of Dr. Fisher was the topic of conversation in every city and
university in Europe ; and there seems to have been but one
opinion on the subject — namely, that King Henry " was a mon-
ster who dishonored the name of monarch."

I cannot help here remarking upon the system of misrepre-
sentation still carried out in reference to English historical lite-
rature. Only a few weeks back (November 3, 1881) one of the
best-written and the most influential of the London daily jour-
nals wrote as follows: " Henry VIII. , as we now all know, was a
much-maligned monarch, who killed his wives with the best intentions
in the world." With such public instructors in the press, the

* Sir Thomas Eliot's despatches to Lord Crumwell.
t Sir John Wallop's despatches to Lord Crumwell.

766 , JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.,

English people must remain in ignorance of the history of their
country in the bygone. Many years back Patrick Fraser Tytler,
an honest Presbyterian Scotchman, wrote these words : " The
greatest historical heresy an author can commit is to tell an Eng-
lish reader the truth." If the distinguished Scotch historian here
quoted lived nowadays he would substitute " reviewer " for
" general reader "; for, unfortunately, the English public are very
generally led by newspaper commentary, especially where any
question can possibly turn upon the history of the Reformation.
It is sad to think so, but it is true.

To return to Dr. Fisher's tragic story.

"In all things," writes Bayley, ." belonging to the care and
charge of a true bishop Dr. Fisher was to all the bishops of-
England living in his days the very mirror and lantern of light."
" He pressed, as it were," says Fuller, " into the other world, and
expired in constancy and greatness."

" He was one of the most worthy men of the side he espous-
ed," says Sharon Turner — a marvellous admission from such a
quarter. The Rev. J. H. Blunt, another high Anglican autho-
rity, observes that " the good bishop's death was worthy of him
and of the Master in whose footsteps he was humbly travelling,
while he felt for a light whose brightness he did not altogether
see on this side of the grave." Mr. Froude defends the deeds of
King- Henry and his council as essential to the ultimate success
of the Reformation. The learned gentleman favors pantomime
over the closing scene. " Many a spectacle of sorrow," he
writes, " had been witnessed on that tragic spot, but never one
more sad than this. Let us close our lips and not speak of it." *

The author of Two Queens is more favorable to Dr. Fisher
than Mr. Froude :

" A Yorkshire boy, born in the town of Beverly, though he
went to Cambridge early, had not lost his northern grit and
twang. His tones were rough, his phrases curt. What other
men hardly dared to hint Fisher would throw into the simplest
words. He called a lie, a lie ; a knave, a knave ; not caring who
might take offence. This roughness of his speech, combined
with his repute for piety and learning, took the world by storm.
A thorough scholar, armed at every point, he feared no combat,
and his nature was unyielding as a rock. But with this love of
combat he combined a childlike veneration for the see of Rome.

*The authorities cited throughout this narrative are all, with one exception, distinguished
Protestant writers. Bayley, the quaint biographer of Dr. Fisher, was a Catholic clergyman.
His real name was Richard Hall, of Cambridge. He died a canon of St. Ouen's in 1604.

1 882.] . JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 767

. . . Margaret, Countess of Richmond, had named him first of her
professors. Henry, her son, had made him Bishop of Rochester.
After Henry's death the aged countess had placed him near her
grandson by appointing him one of her executors. His rough-
and-ready talk amused the king. His High-Church views de-
lighted Queen Katharine. He enjoyed such large favor at the
court that, had he been more worldly and aspiring, he might well
have thought the primacy within his reach. But John Fisher
was a priest, and nothing could induce him to become a Privy
Councillor or Secretary of State." * " He was," continues Mr.
Hepworth Dixon, " the Cloth of his profession."

Dr. Fisher's warm sympathy for the poor and unfortunate
was the most remarkable feature in his character. He had fixed
days for visiting the hospitals and prisons of his diocese ; and on
such occasions he distributed alms in proportion to the necessities
of the poor. He had always some kind words for prisoners or
outcasts, and by his sermons to them " turned many wicked peo-
ple from the error of their ways." He visited the humblest cot-
tage and gave spiritual comfort to the sick and the dying. In
his palace he dispensed a liberal hospitality. Men of learning
from all nations were at times his guests. No sectarian feeling
was exercised against the learned Jew, or Mohammedan, or any
other Eastern thinker. Poor students were welcome to his
board. The Irish monks were his special favorites. " They are in
earnest in their Christian feeling," was his remark to the learned
John Leland. French and Spanish friars of learning were also
among his guests. Three hundred people were fed daily at his
different houses. He loved the people of Rochester, amongst
whom he had lived for nearly forty years. He seldom went to
court, which annoyed the king. Erasmus has drawn a genial
picture of his fine social qualities, and the fashion in which
Christmas was held in Rochester during the many years he
ruled in that diocese.

In the early part of Henry's reign he looked up to Dr. Fisher
as a father. He once told the French ambassador that he felt
assured that no monarch in Christendom could boast of having
in his dominions a prelate so wise and so holy as the Bishop
of Rochester. The great dignitaries of the Catholic Church
throughout Europe held Dr. Fisher in the highest esteem. The
Council of Lateran having been convoked, Dr. Fisher was
chosen to be the representative of the University of Cambridge ;
but just as he was about to depart on his honored mission the

* Hepworth Dixon's History of Two Queens, vol. iii. p. 12.

768 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.,

king- commanded him to remain in his diocese. The bishop
obeyed the summons of his former pupil, and remained with the
people whom he regarded with a father's love.

If Queen Katharine was not defended in the divorce case by
the most able and energetic theologians, she had certainly re-
tained the most honest and disinterested man to be found in the
upper ranks of the clerical body. His speech was a master-
piece, and was listened to for six hours on one day with breath-
less attention, when his broad Yorkshire accent rang through the
Justice Hall. Thorndale says that the king paid marked atten-
tion to Fisher's appeal, especially where he described " those
happy days when a certain young king and his lovely Spanish
bride went 'a-Maying' like other young folks in the woods and
on the sparkling waters, to the delight of the people, who
thought that no other country was blessed with such a king and
such a queen, both in the hopeful spring of life."

Dr. Fisher concluded his powerful appeal to the Legatine
Court, on behalf of Katharine of Arragon, in these words : " My
lords, I contend that the marriage of our Sovereign Lord the
King and the Princess Catalina [Katharine] cannot be dissolved
by any power, human or divine. Nothing but death can dissolve
an honest and lawful marriage. To this opinion I adhere in the
face of every danger that may arise ; and I am ready to lay down
my life in its maintenance. As St. John the Baptist, that Mirror
of Purity, in the far-off days of the world, regarded it as impos-
sible to die more gloriously than in the cause of defending the
honor of the marriage state, upon the very existence of which
society hangs, I cannot act with greater confidence, and re-
gardless of all worldly consequences, than by taking the holy
Baptist as my example. Then, in the name of Justice, I de-
mand judgment in favor of my client, the lawful queen of this
realm."

This speech decided the fate of Fisher. The king poured
out the vials of his wrath upon the courageous prelate. His de-
nunciation of him was terrible. He assails the character and
conduct of Fisher with unsparing violence and acrimony. Still,
with that cold-blooded calculation which characterized the ty-
rant king, he reserved the period for his immolation.*

For many years Dr. Fisher corresponded with, and frequently
visited, the Carthusian fathers. This was another of the " trea-

* A copy of King Henry's reply to Bishop Fisher has been preserved in the Record Office. It
is supposed that a portion of it was written by Sir Thomas Audley, and the entire of it somewhat
" amended " by Archbishop Crannier; for whom Fisher entertained the most supreme scorn.

i882.] JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 769

sonable practices " attributed to the good bishop by the king's
council, who detested the Carthusian community. Many Pro-
testant writers of recent times have done justice to the memory
of the pure and spotless brotherhood of the Charter-house. Mr.
Green, for instance, describes the Carthusian fathers as " the
holiest and the most renowned of English churchmen." *

Dr. Fisher was not what the world might call a " great per-
sonage," but he was that which no sectarian prejudice, no sen-
timent that acknowledges virtue can deny — a good and holy
Christian and a just man. He had very few equals on the long
roll of English prelates ; he used no weapons to enforce his con-
victions but those supplied from the armory of prayer and
kindly counsel. His execution was the first deadly sin in the
terrible calendar of judicial murders in England ; and although
the Carthusians had been favored with the semblance of a trial,
Bishop Fisher's case was the first which proved that the highest
offices and attributes of the law were merely the preliminary in-
struments of legal assassination.

In concluding this inadequate notice of the martyred Fisher
I cannot omit the following important attestation given by an
eminent Protestant divine, Professor Brewer, as to the position
and influence of the Papacy, and Henry VIII. 's relation thereto.
Such a testimony is well werthy the attention not only of the
student of history, but of every honest lover of truth :

''The Papacy was not only the highest but it was the oldest monarchy
of Europe. Compared with it all other royal and imperial offices of power
and majesty were of a recent development — no small consideration at a
time when aristocracy and long descent were so highly valued. ... It was
fenced round with traditions mounting up to heaven. It had been the
great and chosen instrument of God for propagating and preserving the
law, the faith, and the love of Christ among ignorant and unsophisticated
nations — a prophet among babes, an apostle among barbarians. It had
been the chief, at one time the sole, depository of wisdom, art, law, litera-
ture, and science to uninstructed and admiring men. . . . Circumstances
quite independent of St. Peter's residence at Rome ; deeds which the mid-
dle ages could understand ; services of the highest nature rendered to
mankind ; the silent and even the obtrusive attestation of spiritual truths,
of spiritual order and authority, rising above the confusion and the jang-
lings of this world — these and similar influences were the true causes of the
Primacy of St. Peter. For these warlike kings, emperors, and diploma-
tists felt themselves constrained to bow down before the representative of a
heavenly authority, seeking reconciliation and forgiveness at the papal foot-
stool.

"To be at amity with the Roman Pontiff, to be dignified with some dis-

* Green's History of the English People \ vol. ii. p. 116.
VOL. XXXIV. — 49

77° - JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. [Mar.,

tinction as his champion in the Faith, was an honor heartily desired by great
men, especially intellectual men. It was the more highly esteemed because
it was extended to a very few. To be one of so select a circle was to hold
a higher rank in the comity of nations. To stand aloof, to be excluded, was
to forfeit a distinction which ambitious monarchs and their more intelli-
gent subjects appreciated and desired.

" Now, looking at the whole career of Henry Tudor, considering his
education, the potency of long custom, his own character, his subtle influ-
ence pervading the very atmosphere of the time, it would be unnatural to
suppose that he now intended to break entirely with Rome and stand
alone in his defiance of the papal authority.* It is unlikely that he would
have braved the good opinion of Christendom had he not been betrayed
into a position from which escape was impossible."

The Rev. Mr. Brewer abstains from stating by whom the king
had been " betrayed." A close perusal of the State Papers and
records of the period at once impeaches Thomas Cranmer.

A few words as to Archbishop Cranmer's mode of action in
his final preparation of the judgment of divorce against Queen
Katharine. This affair has not been hitherto noticed with that
critical nicety which the dark intrigues of the chief actor re-
quire. There is a paper preserved amongst the Cotton MSS.
in the Record Office in London, which has been strangely
passed over by historians. The paper in question is the most
damaging evidence ever produced against Cranmer in relation
to the divorce of Queen Katharine.

In a moment of exultation King Henry assured Sir Anthony
Brown " that with Thomas Cranmer at his shoulder he could
carry out any changes in the religion of the realm." The king
proved to be an excellent judge of character when he selected
Archbishop Cranmer to become his tool.

* See vol. ii. pp. 256-7 of the Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty for the " last will
and testament " of Henry VIII., and the mode of executing the same by Cranmer and Somerset,
which presents an astounding amount of perjury, fraud, and villany. The majority of Eng-
lish historians are silent on this important matter, so deeply connected with the "rise and pro-
gress " of the Reformation in England.

i882.] A PRAYER OF DOUBT. 771

A PRAYER OF DOUBT.

THE mystery of life, O Lord ! do thou disclose :
Why riches, honor, happiness to those
Who love thee not are given without stint,
While they who pray for only faith remain like flint :
Lord, I believe ; help thou my unbelief.

Some feet are consecrate, O Lord ! from birth to thee ;
Mine have wandered reckless and uncertainly :
Show me the path — how sharp its thorny wall —
Oh ! take my hand or I shall faint and fall :
Lord, I believe ; help thou my unbelief.

The souls that love thee, Lord, thy sweetness know
My soul is cold as mountain capped with snow :
Touch thou its crest with ray of warmth divine :
Lo ! with thy glory doth the mountain shine.
Lord, I believe ; help thou my unbelief.

Some hearts thou fillest, Lord, with radiant hope :
My eastern windows rarely, dimly ope :
Glance thou this way : the curtains are withdrawn —
My house is burnished with thine eyelids' dawn !
Lord, I believe : help thou my unbelief.

772 ' A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,,

A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY.

CLEMENT THE FIRST.

THE modern way of evading the evidence from Scripture
and antiquity for those Catholic doctrines which Protestants
reject is by taking exception to it as not clear and abundant
enough to make these doctrines certain. It is pretended that
divine revelation ought to be so clear, explicit, and definite that
no reader of Scripture having common sense and common hon-
esty could possibly mistake its sense. In the instance of the doc-
trine of the primacy of St. Peter and his successors, the proof
from Scripture is set aside as insufficient because it is not expli-
citly stated that St. Peter gave commandments to the other
apostles, exercised immediate and supreme jurisdiction in every
part of the church, established his see in Rome, and bequeathed
his supremacy to his successors in that see. In respect to the
evidence of the same doctrine from the testimony of antiquity,
this is in like manner set aside because it falls short of the de-
mand made by its opponents for sufficient proof to satisfy their
exactions, in the first, second, third, and fourth centuries, and
down to the time of Leo the Great in the middle of the fifth, or
later still.

Those Protestants who wish to hold fast by any kind of his-
torical Christianity which is conformed to the ancient creeds,
and especially those who maintain episcopacy and wish to iden-
tify themselves with the Catholic Church of the first five centu-
ries, are undermining all their own foundations by such kind of
reasoning. It is true that this is only an argument ad homincm.
We cannot, however, at present undertake to refute it in princi-
ple. All we can do, before proceeding to our particular topic,
which is one of the earliest historical proofs of the Roman pri-
macy— viz., that which is given by the action and writings of St.
Clement — is to make one general remark. The true Catholic
theory of the primacy of St. Peter and his successors in the
Roman See requires no more, and the organization of the episco-
pal hierarchy under this primacy, considering the conditions of
the early church, could not have admitted any more, of actual,
immediate exercise of supreme power, than that which all the

1 882.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 773

evidence furnished by Scripture and ancient authors shows was
exercised by St. Peter and his successors from Clement to Leo.
The New Testament shows on the face of it St. Peter as the
first among the apostles, and early history shows the Bishop of
Rome as his successor and first among bishops. The other apos-
tles shared with St. Peter in the apostolate, and their power suffic-
ed for the ends which required the exercise of apostolic autho-
rity. There was no need for that continual and marked inter-
vention of St. Peter which would leave a distinct trace in the
Acts and Epistles of the apostles. The bishops share in the
episcopate which the pope possesses in plenitude. Moreover,
metropolitans and patriarchs received by apostolic institution a
delegation of a large part of the jurisdiction which the pope pos-
sesses,jure divino, over bishops. In the beginning episcopal au-
thority, for the most part, sufficed for ordinary exigencies. Be-
sides, during the period which elapsed between the beginning o'f
the persecution of the bloody Nero and the end of that of the
bloodier Diocletian, from A.D. 67 to A.D. 313, there were almost
insurmountable difficulties in the way of a free and open exercise
of their supremacy by the popes. The history of the first cen-
tury after the martyrdom of St. Peter has almost entirely per-
ished. That of the next two is scanty. What is left of the
record of this early period accords perfectly with that loud and
distinct claim of supremacy which the successors of Peter assert-
ed and the universal church admitted as soon as the occasion
arose. We do not rest this claim on these early historical evi-
dences. It rests on the authority of the Catholic Church, who
proves herself by her four manifest marks, and points to the
record which she presents in the Gospels, and to the Apostolic
Tradition which lives in her constitution and her universal con-
sciousness, as the authentic documents of her divine charter. The
scanty early records of history serve mainly to confirm the dis-
tinct and loud testimony which the church gives to her own
origin and nature at a later epoch, and to refute that negative
and cavilling criticism which labors to destroy the authority of
this testimony.

The first among the early historical proofs of the actual exer-
•cise of the power of St. Peter's primacy by his successors is
found in the action of St. Clement in the instance of the serious
dissension in the Church of Corinth between a party of the laity
and certain presbyters. The Letter which Clement wrote to
this factious party has made his name famous in all ages. Dur-
ing the earlier ages he held the highest place among all the com-

774 A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,

•

panions and immediate successors of the apostles, in the general
estimation of Christians, for many reasons, whose validity we are
enabled to appreciate by the qualities which he discloses in his
celebrated Epistle to the Corinthians, which is as clearly marked
by his individual character as any Epistle of St. Paul.

In his youth Clement was a companion and friend of the
apostles Peter and Paul. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Philip-
pians (iv. 3), says to some eminent person, apparently the bishop
(i.e., probably Epaphroditus ; vid. v. 18): "I entreat thee, my sin-
cere companion, help those women who have labored with me in
the Gospel with CLEMENT, and the rest of my fellow-laborers,
whose names are in the book of life." The Emperor Domitian
had a cousin named Flavius Clemens, whose wife, Flavia Domi-
tilla, was his niece, and whose sons he designated as his succes-
sors. These all became Christians, and when the emperor dis-
covered this fact he put to death his cousin, took the children
away from their mother, and banished his niece to an island.
The similarity of name denotes some kind of family connection
between the Roman bishop and the Roman senator. Clement of
Alexandria also bore the same name, Titus Flavius Clemens.
This does not prove, however, necessarily anything more in either
case than descent from some favored freedman of the noble
house, or some special patronage of one of its members on ac-
count of which his name was taken, as the name of Sergius
Paulus was assumed by St. Paul. It is not certain, moreover,
whether St. Clement was a Roman or a Jew by origin, since
there are no external data which determine the point, and the in-
ternal evidence of his Epistle bespeaks an equal familiarity with
Jewish and Roman affairs.

There was an early legendary history of St. Clement more
romantic than credible. A number of writings were also ascrib-
ed to him — viz., a Second Epistle, a Liturgy contained in the
compilation called Apostolical Constitutions, and the Clementine
Recognitions and Homilies, none of which are genuine, some being
even heretical in character and origin. These things show how
eminent was the position which St. Clement occupied in the
view of the Christians of that early period, as well from his
personal character as from his office.

Some non-Catholic critics have conjectured that St. Clement
was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Catholic scho-
lars do not acknowledge any validity in the reasons alleged
against St. Paul's authorship. Yet there are some who think it
probable on very good grounds, that Clement had a considerable.

1 882.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 775

share, under St. Paul's direction, in the composition of the Epis-
tle, at least in its translation into Greek.

Tertullian distinctly affirms that Clement was ordained bish-
op of the Romans by Peter. It is quite certain, nevertheless,
that Linus succeeded St. Peter, Cletus Linus, and Clement Cle-
tus, who is most probably the same person who is sometimes
called Anacletus. This is the order in which these three bishops
are commemorated in the Canon of the Mass, which is undoubt-
edly conformed to the original diptychs of the Roman Liturgy.
Tertullian's testimony must therefore be explained, in harmony
with that of Irenasus and Eusebius, in this sense : that St. Peter
consecrated St. Clement bishop, and designated him, with his
two predecessors, as a suitable candidate for canonical election
to the Roman episcopate.

Clement sat in the chair of Peter from A.D. 92 to A.D. 101.
His life was ended, it is commonly supposed, by martyrdom,
and his office in the Roman Breviary, which gives an account of
his exile and death, is one of the most singular and poetical of all
the offices which have been retained in common use, though not
one of the most ancient.

We come now to the examination of the one writing of St.
Clement whose authenticity is certain — the Epistle to the Corin-
thians. The date assigned to this letter by most recent critics is
A.D. 96. Until lately it has been known only in one Greek MS.
at the end of the famous Alexandrian Codex A, supposed to
have been written about A.D. 350, which belongs to the Univer-
sity of Oxford. In 1875 the Greek Archbishop Bryennios pub-
lished a new edition of this Epistle, together with the Second
Epistle, which is of very doubtful authenticity, from a MS. dis-
covered in a library at Constantinople. This MS. supplies one
leaf lost from the Alexandrian MS., and some few gaps occur-
ring here and there in the text. We possess, therefore, now a
more complete text than that which is found in the editions of
the apostolic Fathers which are in common use. The fact that
this Epistle was appended to a codex of the Holy Scriptures, and
the testimony that Eusebius gives to the custom prevailing
from early times of reading it in many churches, bear witness
to the high estimation in which it was held. Eusebius calls it
" great and wonderful," and St. Irenaeus " a most powerful let-
ter."

Strangely enough, this Letter is appealed to by those who
deny the apostolic institution not only of the primacy but even
of episcopal regimen in the church, and its universal existence

776 A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,

at the dawning of that second century in which they are fond
of imagining that the great change took place, in the dark, which
gave the church the form and aspect which she presents to our
view when fully emerged into the light of the age of Constantine.

That Clement was Bishop of Rome, and most probably the
third in succession from St. Peter, is such a manifest historical
fact that we do not think it worth while to say a word about it.
The only point deserving attention is the constitution of the
Corinthian Church at this particular epoch. The whole dispute
was between laymen and presbyters. St. Clement says nothing
of a Bishop of Corinth — the very person to whom his messengers
would have been accredited if there had been a bishop at the
head of that great church, and through whom Clement would
have exercised his office of pacification between the clergy and
the factious party among the laity. To infer from this non-ap-
pearance of a Bishop of Corinth in this particular imbroglio that
this church was purely presbyterian in its regular order of gov-
ernment, is to draw a conclusion from very slender premises.
There is abundant proof that the apostles established everywhere
episcopal organization. The earliest historical information ex-
tant concerning the Church of Corinth shows that it was not
only an episcopal but a metropolitan see, having all the bishops
of Greece Proper as suffragans, and itself subject to the see of
Thessalonica. That the Church of Corinth did not form an ex-
ception to the general order of episcopal regimen we hope to
show presently from the language of St. Clement himself. The
only probable conclusion we can make about the reason why no
bishop appears on the scene of the disturbance of the year 96 is
that the see was vacant ; very likely, also, this vacancy made it
easier for the laity to rebel against the presbyters, and the dis-
sension was an obstacle to the election of a new bishop.

The cause of the direct intervention of Clement in this dispute
is nowhere distinctly stated. It is shown to have been occa-
sioned by an appeal from Corinth, by the very words of St. Cle-
ment, who in the beginning of his Epistle explains the reason
why he had not sooner interfered to settle their disputes, saying :
" We feel that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our at-
tention to the points respecting which you consulted us." But
why did the Corinthians appeal to Rome, and whence came the
right and power to adjudicate and determine this case — a right
of which Clement and his clergy had no doubt, and which was
unhesitatingly recognized everywhere and by all concerned, both
then and afterwards, as legitimate ? It cannot be said that the

1 8 82.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 777

case was one absolutely requiring the judgment and decision of
a supreme tribunal and court of final appeal, yet no good and
legitimate ground of the actual appeal to Rome, and no suffi-
cient justification of Clement's language and action, can be found,
except the supremacy of the Roman Church and the universal
sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff over all ecclesiastical provin-
ces. There was no metropolitan to appeal to, Corinth being it-
self the metropolis, and a provincial council without an arch-
bishop at its head would not probably have weight enough with
the proud and turbulent Corinthians to bring them to submis-
sion. An appeal might have been made to Thessalonica. St.
Paul writes to this church : " You were made a pattern to all
that believe in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you was
spread abroad the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia; but also, in every place, your faith which is towards
God is gone forth " (i Thess.u. 7). This great city was the seat
of a Roman praetorian prefect, who governed two civil dioceses
^embracing eleven provinces. At the Council of Nice Alexander
of Thessalonica had his seat among the great prelates, and was
accompanied by two archbishops and more than five other bish-
ops subject to his jurisdiction. He was an exarch, subject to
no patriarchal jurisdiction, his exarchate being co-terminous with
the civil prefecture. It is well known that the Council of Nice
ascribed the origin of the privileges of the greater sees to the
very beginnings of the church, that the other Eastern councils
upheld the same principle, and the popes sustained it more con-
sistently and perseveringly than the councils. It was a part of
fixed ecclesiastical right and law that patriarchs and exarchs
could not interfere with provinces not subject to them, and
that precedence of honor among them carried with it no autho-
rity. It seems to us reasonable to suppose that even in the year
96 Corinth was subject to Thessalonica, and might properly
have appealed there instead of going to Rome. The Apostle St.
John was still living, and; although St. Jerome says that he exer-
cised his extraordinary authority in the Asian diocese only, he
could exercise the same elsewhere on occasion. Clement of
Rome certainly could not, by virtue of any canonical rights
vesting in the greater archbishops, exercise authority in the Co-
rinthian province. Only his primacy could make his exercise of
jurisdiction at Corinth legal and justifiable. Whether any pre-
vious appeal had been made or not, it was lawful to invoke his
supreme authority, and within his competence to exercise it.
The urgency and difficulty of the case probably prompted this

778 A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,

appeal to the highest tribunal. Moreover, as St. Paul had been
the great apostle of all those regions, and St. Paul was closely
connected with St. Peter in founding the Roman Church, his
memory doubtless drew them there with a powerful attraction.
The learned Dr. Ambrose Manahan remarks : " All the churches
founded by St. Paul were devotedly attached to Rome in the
early ages."*

That St. Clement was conscious of possessing a supreme
authority which was recognized and obeyed by all who were
not contumacious rebels is apparent by the closing sentences of
his Letter:

" IF ANY DISOBEY THE WORDS SPOKEN BY GOD THROUGH US, let them

know that they will entangle themselves in transgression and no small dan-
ger, but we shall be clear from this sin You will cause us joy and

exultation if, OBEYING THE THINGS WRITTEN BY us THROUGH THE HOLY
SPIRIT, you cut out the lawless passion of your jealousy." t

These sentences belong to the newly-discovered part of the
Letter, found and made known by Greek schismatics. Dr. Sal-
mon, Regius Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin,,
whose translation Mr. Allnatt has adopted, remarks : " Very
noticeable is the tone of authority used by the Roman Church
in making an unsolicited interference with the affairs of another
church.":]:

It would seem that the Epistle of Pope Clement, together with
the personal efforts of his legates who conveyed it to Corinth,
successfully allayed the disturbance. Though not intended as an
encyclical, the nature of its contents gave it actually all the force
and importance of one. Besides this highly authoritative charac-
ter, it has the dignity of a work by one of the Fathers of the
church, and the value of an extremely ancient historical docu-
ment. Its contents are, indeed, in several respects, of great
importance and interest, more so than appears at first sight on a
cursory perusal.

Its similarity to the Epistle to the Hebrews, from which it
quotes one passage and several texts of the Old Testament
cited in that Epistle, is remarkable. There are also citations,
allusions, or similar passages, noted by the careful editors of
the Ante-Nicene Library, to several proto-canonical books of the
Old Testament and to the deutero-canonical books of Wisdom
and Judith, as also to the first three Gospels, the Acts, the two

* Triumph of the Catholic Church, p. 247. f Allnatt's Cathedra Petri, p. 83.

% Diet., i. 558.

i882.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 779

Epistles to the Corinthians, the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colos-
sians, Romans, Titus, first to the Thessalonians, first and second
of Peter, and the Epistle of James.
Of SS. Peter and Paul Clement says:

" But, not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent
spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own
generation. Through envy and jealousy the greatest and most righteous
pillars have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes
the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one
or two but numerous labors ; and, when he had at length suffered martyr-
dom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul
also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times
thrown into captivity,- compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching
both in the East and West he gained the illustrious reputation due to his
faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the ex-
treme limit of the West, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus
was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having
proved himself a striking example of patience."

Toward the close of the Letter there is a prayer evidently
taken from the Liturgy and resembling a prayer in that composi-
tion of a later age which received the name of the Liturgy of St.
Clement.

The main argument of the Epistle is an upholding of the
principle of hierarchical order in the church, for the purpose of
convincing the factious party which had rebelled against the
presbyters that their action was illegal and unjustifiable, and per-
suading them to submit and become reconciled to their priests,,
under penalty of being cast out from the communion of the
church. Such is the mild but clear and decisive sentence which
he pronounces at the close of his long instruction :

" Ye, therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit your-
selves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending
the knees of your hearts. Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and
arrogant self-confidence of your tongue. For it is better for you that ye
should occupy a humble and honorable place in the flock of Christ than
that, being highly exalted, ye should be cast out from the hope of his peo-
ple."

We look with interest into the mode and reasoning of the
argument which precedes this sentence, in order to discover
whatever testimony they afford respecting the ancient and apos-
tolic polity of the church, the nature and office of the priest-
hood, and similar matters relating to that external order of re-
ligion which Clement expressly intended to uphold and explain.

78o , . A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,

As was natural and proper, Clement addresses himself to the
precise point at issue, which was the obedience and subordina-
tion due on the part of the laity toward the clergy who were
immediately over them. There was no question raised, so far as
appears, respecting doctrine, but only one of practical discipline,
and that in respect to some definite issue unknown to us, such as
occurs now occasionally in Catholic congregations when laymen
undertake to oppose and resist their parish-priest. It had no-
thing to do with the primacy of Clement, whose authority was in-
voked and submitted to without hesitation. Th.ere was no ques-
tion about the respective rights of different orders in the clergy,
or specific rules of ecclesiastical polity. Clement had no occa-
sion, therefore, to speak directly about these things, or explicitly
to state and define particular points of Catholic doctrine and
order. The rebellion was against presbyters, and the rebels were
laymen. The sin and disorder of rebellion against ecclesiastical
authority in general was, therefore, the only topic germane to
the occasion. And, as a matter of course, Clement makes an ex-
position of general principles universally known and admitted,
especially intended to emphasize the lawful authority of that
order of the clergy against which the rebels were contending,
and to show to them the inconsistency of their conduct with
these general and admitted principles. On the one hand, there-
fore, we look in vain for those formal and explicit statements con-
cerning the hierarchical order which we might be glad to find.
But, on the other, all that comes out or is latent, without express
intent of teaching, has a special value and interest from the fact
that, being taken for granted and alluded to in so informal a way,
it appears most manifestly as having an original and undisputed
possession which excludes all possibility of any effort to make
innovation on apostolic doctrine and orders.

St. Clement, in his splendid exposition of the fundamental
principle that order is God's first law, goes back to the universal
laws by which all nature is governed. He shows that the same
principle of order regulates God's plan of redemption and salva-
tion which culminates in the resurrection of the just to glory.
He derives further illustration from the Roman commonwealth,
from the organization of armies, and from the constitution of the
human body. He refers also to the political and ecclesiastical
constitution of the people of God, the holy nation of Israel.
Proceeding to the Christian Church, he declares that this also
has been organized and placed under fixed laws, which the
authors of sedition in Corinth had flagrantly violated. He does

1 882.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 781

not descend to particulars concerning- the organization and laws
of the church, these being supposed to be known, but confines
himself to the one practical issue — namely, that the priesthood
had been established by the apostles to fulfil certain sacred
offices and to govern the faithful in spiritual things. He refers
to the Jewish priesthood, ceremonial, and sacrifices, as being
types of corresponding institutions in the Christian Church,
which are more excellent and holy :

" These things, therefore, being manifest to us, and since we look into
the depths of the divine knowledge, it behooves us to do all things in
order which the Lord has commanded us to perform at stated times. He
has enjoined offerings and service (liturgy) to be performed, and that
not thoughtlessly and irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours.
Where and by whom he desires these things to be done he himself has
fixe.d by his own supreme will." " Christ, therefore, was sent forth by God,
and the apostles by Christ. . . . Preaching through countries and cities,
they appointed the first-fruits, having first proved them by the Spirit, to be
bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe."

Then, after speaking of the consecration of Aaron and his sons
to the priesthood, he continues :

" Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there
would be strife on account of the title of the episcopate. For this reason,
therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect foreknowledge of this,
they appointed those already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions
that after these had fallen asleep other approved men should succeed them
in their ministry."

The opponents of Catholic doctrine draw an argument from
the fact that the names of bishop and presbyter are, in the
usage of St. Clement, partly convertible terms, and that the dis-
tinction between the two orders or grades in the priesthood is
not explicitly stated. The convertibility of the terms bishop and
presbyter in the first century has been sufficiently treated in a
former article. St. Clement had no occasion to specify par-
ticularly the distinct grades of the sacred ministry. The real
distinction, however, between those chief rulers who possessed
the plenitude of the priesthood together with the supreme epis-
copal authority in the churches, and those priests of the second
order who were their assistants and subordinate helpers in the
pastoral episcopate or oversight of the flock, is alluded to and
indirectly appears in several passages of the Epistle :

" For [before the dissension] ye did all things without respect of per-

782 * A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. [Mar.,

sons, and walked in the commandments of God, being obedient to your
rulers, and giving all fitting honor to the presbyters among you." " Those,
therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times are accepted
and blessed ; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord they sin not.
For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high-priest, and their own
proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministra-
tions devolve on the levites. The layman is bound by the laws which
appertain to laymen. Let every one of you, brethren, offer thanksgiving
(Eucharist) in his own order, living in all good conscience, with becoming
gravity, and not going beyond the rule of the service (liturgy) prescribed
to him." " We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them
[the apostles], or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the
whole church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a
humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time pos-
sessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the min-
istry."

These faint and indistinct traces of the sacerdotal, liturgical,
and prelatical order existing in the first century are made legible
and intelligible, in the light of those clear general principles
which are laid down without any obscurity or ambiguity by St.
Clement. He teaches clearly and distinctly that the apostles
legislated after the manner of Moses, by the commandment of
the Lord, and that the order which they established throughout
the church cannot be violated without grievous sin. Whatever
obscurity we find in the record concerning the state of the
Corinthian Church, or whatever ambiguity adheres to the terms
in which St. Clement alludes to the existing hierarchical order,
must be cleared up by other testimony respecting the organiza-
tion which the apostles actually gave to the Catholic Church.
Clement was the disciple of St. Peter and St. Paul, and he had in
view the manner in which they gave perfect and final organi-
zation to the churches which they founded, Corinth includ-
ed ; which was known to those to whom he wrote. We must
look, therefore, to Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, and
Rome, and to the organization of those churches, as testified by
the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse, by St. Ignatius, St.
Irenseus, Eusebius, and St. Jerome, in order to obtain a correct
idea of the constitution of the Church of Corinth, and to find a
complement to the teaching of St. Clement.

His Epistle casts a light reflected from the apostles upon an
epoch involved in much obscurity, and one object is clearly illu-
minated by it — his own person as the successor of St. Peter in
the government and of St. Paul in the teaching of the universal
church. This idea is expressed, in a partial and limited sense,

1 882.] A POPE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 783

by an Anglican writer, in such appropriate and beautiful terms
that we may fitly adopt them as an expression of the complete
and Catholic truth which transcends his own intention :

" In the last decade of the century the eyes of the whole Roman
Church are turned upon him, amid the anxieties of perilous days, that he
may come forward to champion the Christian cause in the Imperial City,
a worthy successor to Linus and Anacletus, through whom the church
knits herself into the memories of its famous founders, St. Peter and St.
Paul. Cultured, learned, dignified, full of tender and wide affections, ruled
by an earnest wisdom, disciplined, by long and large experience, into a
love for orderly and chastened uprightness, possessed with the spirit of
prayer, with the grace of supplication, with the fervor of a steady and un-
fitful faith, he sits, the chief among his presbyters, the honored voice of
his congregation, clothed with something of the majesty and awe of Rome,
and worthily embodying in his person the weight and authority which be-
longed to the central apostolic see. . . .

" Such was St. Clement, as far as we may know him ; wide, large-heart-
ed, clear-thoughted, devout, he united in himself the culture of the Greek,
the dignity of the Roman, the piety of the Jew, the holy grace and fervor
of the Christian ; not distinctly originative, he possessed in himself, with
depth and reality, the many thoughts of differing teachers ; in these he
moved freely and naturally, holding them all within the unity of a strong
mind in beautiful balance and consistency. Thus trained and perfected,
endowed with the gift of earnest and tender devotion, he had power to
uphold the church to the level of her mighty task of ordering the world
into a catholic and harmonious unity ; he sustained in it that sober stabil-
ity which the East demanded of the West ; he preserved to it that spirit of
wide orderliness whose secret he had perhaps known by long experience
in the palaces of Rome. . . .

"Such a chief [the church] had found in St. Clement; and with such a
pledge for her enduring continuance she might well be of good cheer."*

* The Apostolic Fathers. By the Rev. H. E. Holland, M.A., student of Christ Church,
Oxford. Pp. 113 et seq. New York : Pott, Young & Co.

This is one volume of the series of " The Fathers for English Readers." The books of
this collection of lives of illustrious Fathers of the church are full of learning without any parade
or pedantry, and written in a most excellent popular style. There are shortcomings and errors
in them, yet they contain a great amount of historical and doctrinal truth and fine scene and
. character painting, and are written in a good spirit. I have seldom read books written by An-
glicans on similar topics with so much pleasure as I have found in these, and among them the
Life of St. Clement is one of the best. I may have occasion to avail myself of the contributions
to the true history of the Catholic Church and her great men contained in the other Lives, as I
have done of the Life of St. Clement in the present article, and to correct their errors and mis-
takes, in some future papers. Let this be my standing acknowledgment, therefore, of their
general worth and utility.

784 . THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,,

THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL.

From the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, by Mary H. A. Allies.

PART III.— THE FALL OF THE BLOSSOMS.

CHAPTER II.

THE AMBULANCE.

So the winter passed. Spring came, and with it the most
lamentable event which unfortunate Germany had then experi-
enced for the last three centuries. The war of the summer of
1866 was a forcible reproduction of the iniquitous Thirty Years'
and Seven Years' Wars.

Griinerode was full -of men, but the noisy life of former years
had departed. People spoke softly, and went lightly to and fro,
and whispered their sad fears or weak hopes to each other.
Doctors with grave faces, and Sisters of Mercy going about their
nursing with quiet devotedness, were to be met in the passages.
Tieffenstein, Edgar, and Vincent von Lehrbach had all been
through the campaign. Tieffenstein had comported himself as a
lieutenant who had to answer for nothing further than his own
regiment, and as one who preferred battle to lion-hunting. Ed-
gar had carelessly submitted to a necessity without any liking
for it. It was not so with Vincent. He was full of strong and
very clearly-defined notions of duty and right, and he was not
imposed upon by any phrases. He saw that Germany was in
dire distress, and he felt towards her as a good son does who
sees his mother at the mercy of a grasping brother.

He was at Griinerode with Tieffenstein. Both had been se-
verely wounded. Edgar had lost no time in telegraphing to his
father to send for Wilderich and himself from the hospital. The
baron set off at once with Isidora, who was almost in despair
and fancied that she would find a corpse. The baron took his
dying son-in-law and Edgar, who was slightly wounded, to
Griinerode in a railway compartment drawn by post-horses.
As the baron found Vincent von Lehrbach at the hospital as
their companion in misfortune, and as he had room for him in
the carriage, Vincent accompanied them to Griinerode, where
in the meantime Sylvia had made the most necessary prepara-

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 785

tions for sick-nursing. She would have done thus much under
any circumstances with care and forethought ; but when she
discovered that her uncle was bringing Vincent back, too, she
did it with all the more interest. The baroness sighed and la-
mented: "Aren't two wounded men enough for us? What a
piece of work we shall have with a third, and he a stranger, too ! "

" Don't worry yourself, Aunt Teresa," said Sylvia ; " you
know we have got two nursing-sisters, and I will undertake poor
Lehrbach myself."

" It's very kind of you, love — if only they don't bring us the
hospital fever."

" But they have been fetched away too soon for that."

" Your uncle has very odd notions now and then, love," said
the baroness. " Just listen to what he says : 1 1 am bringing Lehr-
bach with me, as I think people ought to do something for the
chivalrous men who give their blood for the honor and aggran-
dizement of their country.' I think people might do some-
thing else for them besides turning one's own^house into a hos-
pital."

There was nothing for it but submission. Like all persons
with whom selfishness is a leading passion, the baron was very
full of enthusiasm about the issue of the moment, whether it was
the result of material power in connection with outward circum-
stances or not. The last eighty years are richer than any other
epoch at once in prosperous events as well as in warnings not to
put a premature trust in them.

What a triumph was that of the first French Revolution, at
home with the guillotine and abroad with the force of its arms ;
yet in a few years France was crouching under an iron despotism.
How Napoleon triumphed by conquests which loaded Europe
with chains, except, indeed, that he was met by opposition from
two quarters — from England and the Rock of Peter ! How pitia-
ble to the conqueror were the consequences of his astounding
fortune ! A few years later there was another European event
—the advent of the Citizen- King. Europe for the most part
applauded and admired until one day the unfortunate street
royalty faded from view. Yet what did these various and ex-
traordinary fortunes, which awoke positive adoration on the
part of their different upholders, leave behind ? Was theirs a
lasting influence? They brought about destruction and deso-
lation; they involved the world in a decomposing process,
that of permanent revolution, and its consequences are neces-
sarily of a revolutionary character. Material force combined

VOL. xxxiv. — 50

786 • THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

with trickery, deception, and lies is the order of the day. The
right of conquest has taken the place of the right of nations,
and the world crouches before an usurpation which puts its seal
on wild aberrations, destroys convictions and characters, and by
so doing calls forth revolutionary manifestations.

It is a state of things unworthy of man, and consequently it
cannot last. The latest offspring of the Revolution may lord it
over others because they happen to be of royal birth ; their citi-
zenship will hardly save them from the ephemeral destiny of their
predecessors. Are such men to be treated with a servility truly
worthy of the Chinese ? Let people wait a few years to be sure
that they are not making themselves foolish with their idol-wor-
ship. But so it is : slavish minds have a positive need of ser-
vility, whilst manly characters require voluntary submission ; and
German statesmen are doing all they can to become slavish.

Baron Griinerode had devoted himself successfully to busi-
ness. Bold speculations crowned with success were the object
of his highest ambition, and so it was natural to him to view
success as the criterion of a thing. He indulged in golden
dreams of a peaceful era which would give immense scope to in-
dustry and trade ; and thus, to his wife's great astonishment, he
was most enthusiastic about the men who helped to bring about
so fruitful a period by the shedding of their blood.

Vincent von Lehrbach was pleased and touched at the bar-
on*'s offering to take him to Griinerode. A hospital is the abode
of unknown misery and bodily tortures. Not only does death
occur with an accompaniment of the most horrible sufferings,
but life itself within hospital walls is full of nameless fears ; for
men in their prime are struck down, crippled, or wounded when
their very bread for the most part depends upon the soundness
of their limbs. In addition to this there is the foul air to be
endured, inadequate nursing, the crowded misery, the dreadful
sight of wounds and operations, the cries of the suffering, the
wild ravings of fever, and the death-rattle. Vincent thought
himself very fortunate to be rescued from so sorrowful an atmos-
phere, although the doctor told him plainly that .the journey
might prove dangerous to the wound in his shoulder. But he
arrived safely at Griinerode, whereas Tieff^nstein was in a state
of unconsciousness from a bad wound in his head. Sylvia tele-
graphed at once to Frau von Lehrbach, telling her to set herself
at rest, as her son was being well taken care of at Griinerode.
She wrote a daily account to the anxious mother until doctor
and surgeon declared him to be out of danger and in a state of

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 787

convalescence. Edgar, who was only a little grazed, got a ner-
vous fever, to his mother's intense dismay. It frightened her out
of her usual way of going on, and she was quite unable to cope
with untoward events. Now she would want to go back to
town with Harry and Isidora's little girl of two, or to send
Sylvia thither with the children, and now she would not hear of
it. But Sylvia declared her firm intention of remaining at Grii-
nerode. A ruling spirit in the disturbed household was abso-
lutely necessary, and under existing circumstances the baroness
could not supply the need. Isidora had no eyes or ears except
for Wilderich, so that the duty fell upon Sylvia whether her
aunt stayed or went. The baroness chose a middle course : she
took Harry and the little girl back to town, and went backwards
and forwards, although Griinerode was a stiff day's journey from
the capital. Sylvia had to look after the ambulance even when
her aunt chanced to be there.

Vincent admired Sylvia's great presence of mind and skilful
management of others, and he wondered to see no apparent
traces in her of selfishness and vanity. She was at once an intel-
ligent housekeeper and a devoted sick-nurse. Edgar, Wilderich,
and Vincent were each of them in a more or less suffering condi-
tion which required a separate room and treatment. This made
the business of direction more difficult, for the nursing-sisters re-
quired to be relieved, like other people, and to be provided with
all that was necessary for the patient. Sylvia was very happy
in her new avocations. She gave her orders as mistress of the
house, and they were carried out. If her aunt chanced to come
she was amazed at Sylvia's clear and business-like account of
things, and gratified for the time, though not without a secret
misgiving that her niece might cultivate a taste for looking after
a regiment, seeing that she did it so well. But it was of no use
interfering just then, when she could not be sure of her own
movements from week to week. The baron very seldom appear-
ed, and only stayed a day when he did.

" Sick-nursing is women's business, and people who are not
absolutely necessary in a sick-room are superfluous, or rather
tiresome," he said one day. " You and those frightful sisters of
yours between you will cure our wounded men, you bewitching
little creature."

" / sha'n't ; perhaps the sisters may. But they are not fright-
ful."

" I'm not troubling my head about their merits, but about
their appearance. They are perfect scarecrows and give one the

788 • THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

cold shudders. Perhaps they were chosen on purpose, seeing
that they have to nurse young men. I bet you anything that no
one will fallin love with them. As to you — "

" Don't talk so lightly, dear uncle," interrupted Sylvia.

" Nonsense, my little fairy ! You know well enough how
pretty you are, and that men lose their heads to good looks. It
is simple truth, and the truth is never light."

" No, the truth isn't, but the way you say it is."

" You must have the last word, you little coaxer," said the
baron, laughing and patting her on the cheek.

When Edgar was well through a dangerous crisis of his ner-
vous fever the baron said quite confidentially : " The proverb
says, and says truly, ' 111 weeds grow apace.' I mean to set out
for Paris to see what sort of a moral pulse things have got at
this moment ; for, in spite of our laurels, this is best ascertained
on the banks of the Seine."

" How coolly you make this uncomplimentary assertion ! " said
Sylvia in an aggrieved tone. " Why, the Rhine is between us
and the Seine."

" You are young, Sylvia, and consequently you labor under
delusions about people and things," he answered indifferently.
" I am old, and my life has been spent in a way which puts me
on my guard against deceptions. I have seen too much behind
the scenes. Big words make no impression upon me, and if I
am carried away by a passing success and applaud with the multi-
tude I still never forget that one farce gives way to another, and
that the man who is the hero to-day may have a servant's part
to-morrow. So I shall go to Paris and bring you back the pret-
tiest winter suit which Phoebe can rout out."

Thus it came about that Sylvia was very much left to her
sick people. A most unexpected improvement in Wilderich's
condition set in. Day by day the unconsciousness, caused by
a frightful wound in the head, diminished. He recovered his
senses after a fashion — sufficiently, at least, to recognize the per-
sons about him. A light came into his weary eyes when he saw
Sylvia at his bedside, but it faded away as soon as he caught a
sight of Isidora.

Since his marriage Wilderich had visited his father-in-law and
mother-in-law as little as was consistent with propriety, and he
avoided Sylvia as much as she avoided him. When they could
not help facing each other they exchanged a few commonplace
remarks. Sylvia, at least, had lost any other feeling, and was
therefore not pleased to find that in his present weak state he

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 789

followed what was clearly his true instinct. Had he not wilfully
and knowingly sacrificed both their happiness to mammon ? But
in her heart shp triumphed over Isidora, and felt herself richly
rewarded for the pain and humiliation which Wilderich's faith-
lessness had caused her. Isidora would have been enchanted
with any other sign of life from her husband, but this particular
one was bitterer to her than his state of unconsciousness. Sylvia
had always stood in her way and been a thorn in her eye. Was
it going to be the same now ? Sylvia recalled the time when
jealousy had tormented her as it was then tormenting Isidora,
and she enjoyed the slight revenge for her dreams of happiness.
One day, however, she said indifferently enough to Isidora : " It
seems to me that visits excite your husband. The doctor has
prescribed the very greatest quiet, so I think I will give up com-
ing to your wing and devote myself more to Edgar and Lehr-
bach. They are both convalescent and find the time dreadfully
long. You know that my disappearance will not be due to any
want of sympathy."

" Well enough," replied Isidora in the same cold tone. " I
should have asked you long ago to stop coming, if it had not
been so disagreeable a request."

" Why, then, we are more of one mind than we suspected,"
replied Sylvia ; and, true to her resolution, she began to spend
her time exclusively between Edgar and Vincent, giving, indeed,
more of it to the latter. What was there for her to do in the
way of reading or talking with a youth of Edgar's general ig-
norance and superficiality ? She could have talked for a quarter
of an hour with a sportsman or with a man whose tastes were
for horses, dogs, or theatres, but Edgar cared for no other con-
versation all day long. He would have relished a certain kind
of book, which he could hardly ask Sylvia to read, since she had
told him plainly one day that a single low word or unseemly
joke would be enough to make her keep away from his room alto-
gether. Vincent was quite different. In the first place, she took
edification to herself from the calmness and patience with which
he bore his extremely painful wound on the shoulder ; and then
his deep thankfulness, and his willingness to do or take anything
which might be good for him, inspirited her. In short, the dis-
covery that something more than gratitude was at work in Vin-
cent awoke a very keen interest in her mind. He thought Syl-
via exceedingly nice and much more full of feeling than she had
ever been before. Daily in her whole manner of going on she
developed quite a new side of her character ; the fine-lady ele-

790 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

ment receded so completely into the background that he could
not help thinking her true calling was to a simple and quiet life,
where she would show forth all a woman's virtues, find her own
happiness, and make another's. These were the thoughts which
nestled in his mind like pretty birds whose sweet twitterings
were irresistible. Under other circumstances, and if he had
been able to occupy himself or to leave the place, he might per-
haps not have allowed the charming little birds a nest in his
heart. In his present condition he was powerless against them..
But more especially in the ordinary course of things he would
not have got to know Sylvia thoroughly or to appreciate her at
her true worth. Even now at times he was quite alive to her
defects ; but, he mused, love was powerful enough over the heart
of a woman to bring her back to her duties, particularly in a case
where there was no want of faith; but where it had been rather
circumstances than free will which had stood in the way of its
practice. Even supposing the will had become weak, was there
a noBler task on earth than that of turning it once more in the
right direction, and of wresting it from the world to win it all
for God ? What a high office ! And it had particular charms for
him. The hard and dusty road of bread-winning which he was
obliged to tread offered him small opportunity of satisfying his
inward craving after better things. Bread-winning was indeed
a serious thing which filled him with anxiety. He had another
two years before him to finish his studies. At the end of that
time, even if he could reckon on a government appointment, he
would still be unable to support a family in company with a wife
of Sylvia's luxurious habits. His sister Mechtilda had indeed
joyfully accepted a similar lot, and it was sufficient for her ; but
Mechtilda had been simply brought up and taught to do things
for herself and not to look for show or comfort ; whereas Sylvia,
as his wife, would have to give up all expectations of either.
But if she could only make up her mind to it what strength she
would gain from the sacrifice of herself and her comforts ! What
consideration would move her to so heroic an act of fortitude ?
Strong affection would, but might he hope for that ? Then he
would resolve to put all such thoughts out of his head ; to work
doubly hard when he got back to the capital, which would be
soon now ; and to leave Sylvia to her fate, as a hopeless divi-
sion seemed to separate their fortunes. " And what is to become
of her soul?" spoke the voice of that most sophistical reason-
er, Love. " Her soul is dearer to you than all earthly things,
and will you leave her to herself in the wilderness of the world,

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 791

just to save yourself a little trouble ? That is wretched cow-
ardice."

He had never so reasoned with himself. Everything in his
previous life had tended to concentration ; his Catholic bringing-
up, his hard work and thoughtful character, his deep piety and
small means, had saved him from many dangers and follies to
which young men, with their fresh impulsiveness to form attach-
ments, are so easily exposed. Now that Vincent experienced this
sort of attachment for the first time, his affection was strong in
proportion to' his character and feelings, and both had been well
drilled in the patient overcoming of obstacles.

He was in this mind when the autumn came, and with it his
entire recovery and consequent separation from Sylvia. He
would no longer see her every day, or hear her light footstep
coming to his door, or delight his eyes with her beauty, or feel
her watchful and tender presence about him. He was on the
eve of departure. Edgar, too, had quite recovered, and there
was no fear of his relapsing. His nervous fever had not proved
the least infectious, and the baroness came back with the two
children. But Vincent found these last days painful enough, as
he only saw Sylvia with the others, and he and Edgar were con-
stantly knocking their heads against each other.

" Life is so short, and yet I mayn't do what I like in it," said
Edgar.

" Life is so short, and I mayn't spend it as God would have
me spend it," said Vincent.

" God ? Nonsense ! No reasonable man believes in his exist-
ence," exclaimed Edgar.

" But do think what you're saying, love," said his mother, se-
cretly dismayed.

" There you are boasting again, Edgar," said Sylvia in a
scornful tone.

" There are people who only believe what suits them and
what they like," said Vincent ; " probably Baron Edgar alludes to
that kind of thinkers."

" Really, we are not mere playthings, Herr von Lehrbach,"
replied Edgar scornfully. " Youth of the present age thinks as I
do."

" Youth of your world, but not youth of your ' age/ about
which I have a right to talk as belonging to it. There are thou-
sands of men to whom Christianity and faith are not a dead let-
ter, to whom God and his revelation are no fiction. Their con-
victions are an infinite source of thought, a constant spur to their

792 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

efforts, and a firm basis of action, all of which things are want-
ing- to those who see a fiction in Eternal Truth."

" I leave you to value the advantages of your way of thinking
as you please," replied Edgar. " I put mine at a far higher rate,
as they are based upon the noble liberty of my nature, and my
liberty rebels at a dead tradition and only accepts what it under-
stands. Honor, as a spur to our efforts and a guide to our ac-
tions, is liberty's law."

" Don't you think, then, that people who look upon God and
his commandments as a fiction might easily some day do away
with honor, the more so as much so-called honor is in reality not
honor at all?"

" Honor is too deeply engraved upon man's heart to be affect-
ed by any such legislation," said Edgar.

" No feeling is so deeply engraved upon it as the conscious-
ness of God's existence ; and because man is created after his
image the soul bears an indelible mark of God about it. For all
that, our passions deaden the consciousness, and do you mean to
say the same is not to be expected of honor as the world holds
it?"

" Why, it is of daily occurrence," exclaimed Sylvia eagerly.
" Men who are thought most honorable do the meanest things
out of ambition, or weakness, or avarice, or cowardice ; and not
unfrequently the world praises them for it, being quite ready to
do the same. But its praise can't make dishonorable actions
honorable. Its praise only proves how weak honor is in com-
parison to self-seeking. Selfishness rules the world."

" Yes, the worldly world which has given up God," answered
Vincent, whilst Edgar exclaimed :

" What you say, Sylvia, is a matter of course. It is natu-
ral to us all, and it ought to be, to wish to enjoy our lives.
Everyman has the wish strongly enough, whether he be created
by God or Nature, and only self-seeking, as you say — love of self,
as I express it — can help him to gratify it. You are a lover of
ideas, Herr von Lehrbach, and as these, although not very lofty,
are still widely spread, you will find them worth considering."

" The self-seeking which looks for satisfaction doesn't trouble
itself with ideas, but follows its inclination, which an animal does,
too, in its way, with this difference : that in its case there is no
aggravation of sin or wickedness." replied Vincent.

" But it is utterly impossible to destroy in the human heart
that craving after some abiding satisfaction, Vincent," exclaimed
Sylvia.

I882.J THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 793

" That in itself is an offspring of the supernatural life. It
points to God and to our eternal destiny ; for abiding happiness
cannot be found on earth, so we must not look for it in the pos-
session of worldly goods."

" I don't like joining in such very deep conversation, but I
must put my experience and example against your view," said the
baroness all at once. " I am quite satisfied with my life. I have a
good husband, good children, good health, a nice home, and a
good position in society. Why should I not be contented with
the earth, and why should I have a craving after something su-
pernatural, Herr von Lehrbach? "

" I don't know indeed," replied Vincent, greatly embarrassed ;
and Edgar said, laughing :

" That's right, mamma. You and I understand each other.
You've found your happiness where I am looking for mine, only
we're as different in our ways as man and woman are unlike."

" But I have always believed in God, my love, and been a
good Catholic," she said.

" That is just one of our points of difference," yeplied Edgar
shortly ; and as his mother was silent, Sylvia and Vincent said no
more either, and Edgar fancied he had got the better of them all
in a most forcible way.

Every meal, or walk, or meeting gave rise to some such con-
versation. Vincent weighed his words most carefully, for it was
quite clear to him that there was nothing to be done with the
baroness or Edgar, and he doubted whether disputing would
help to convert Sylvia. But she liked to hear him always siding
with the right as the champion of a higher way of thinking.
Though in her case it might be only a way of thinking to which
she would not give her whole mind, for fear of its consequen-
ces to her conscience, she nevertheless warmed to Lehrbach's
lofty views and felt a repulsion towards Edgar's material way
of looking at things. But, with all his high-flown sentiments, Vin-
cent was a young man, without money or position, who was lost
in the crowd of bread-winners; whereas Edgar was the object of
much attention, because he had riches, which made a stir in
society. " Of course I believe in God," Sylvia said to herself
sometimes, as if to quiet her mind on the point ; " but I cannot en-
tirely accept all the things he brings about, because they are mix-
ed up with human co-operation, and this human interference it is
which I loathe and look upon as a perturbing element which
works me misery. After my happy time of freedom here I shall
have to go back to my slavery in town, and, instead of the sooth-

794 . THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

ing consciousness of being most devotedly loved, I shall again
have the humiliating feeling of being prized for my slavish ser-
vices. Shall I ever know the meaning of freedom, rest, and love ?
Are these goods too high for the earth or too high for me ? "

As Vincent looked at the sorrowful expression in her beauti-
ful eyes he asked himself with trembling hope: "Why is she
sad? Is it the parting, or that mysterious sadness which is
sometimes experienced before great strokes of fortune or on the
outset of a powerful passion? "

CHAPTER III.

THE I3TH OF OCTOBER, 1866.

IT was the last evening but one. A bright fire was burning
on the marble hearth, and some lamps cast a shaded light
through the apartment. Silk curtains were drawn across the
windows, and large baskets full of rare flowers pervaded the
room with their fragrance. Sylvia was walking noiselessly up
and down the soft carpet. The slight rustle thus caused by her
dark blue silk dress, and the ticking of the old clock in its beautiful
case, were the only audible sounds. Her thoughts were as inde-
finite and vague as her movements. Lehrbach's entrance at that
moment made her start. Then she set herself down in a comfor-
table arm-chair before the fire, and said :

" What a change ! Coming with a burning sun and going
away with a fire."

" And what a change for me, too ! " he said.

" Yes ; but it has made you well. You are going back strong
and fresh from your sick-room to your work, and in the midst
of your occupations Grlinerode will soon appear to you like a
weary dream."

" Yes, as far as physical suffering is concerned ; no, as to my
gratitude. You wrong me if you think I could ever forget your
immense kindness, not to speak of the impossibility of ever for-
getting you" he added with emotion.

" You are mistaken. People have always managed to forget
me easily enough," said Sylvia with a touch of great bitterness;
and she folded her arms one above the other, as if she meant
to keep out all the world, and looked at the play of the flames.
After a slight pause she added with suppressed feeling: " So it is.
I am a portionless orphan, and a portionless orphan doesn't
count in society, and only exists to help people to kill their time

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 795

or to do what they won't do for themselves, as the case may be.
She is a stop-gap everywhere. She has no right to expect an
independent being, will, or mode of life. She knows nothing of
parents' care or family kindness. She is fed on charity-bread,
and it is bitter food, though it may be composed of delicacies.
Believe me, I am quite accustomed to be counted for nothing in
the .midst of my splendid surroundings ; a unit is so easily for-
gotten ! "

" What makes you so sad all at once ? Ever since I have
been here you have always seemed to me perfectly cheerful,"
said Lehrbach, sitting down opposite to her.

" I was, so to speak, my own mistress, and was free to look
after others and do what I liked. I had no horrid summons to
fear such as ' Sylvia, there is a note to write ; the carriage is at
the door ' ; or t Here are twenty things to be done at once ' ; or
' Sylvia, sing to us, or dance for us.' Any one who has been
through eight long years of that rejoices over any change and is
glad of a quiet moment, especially when one desires nothing but
liberty and daily bread, as I do."

" Do you really mean that ? " asked Lehrbach, gazing at her
intently.

" Why do you doubt it ? " she asked with quick sensitive-
ness. .

" I don't doubt ; but I should like to feel perfectly sure of
it."

" You wouldn't doubt about the literal truth of what I say if
you knew as I do the indescribable misery which exists in this
house under its golden surface. I can tell you about %it only in a
few words, but sufficiently to make you see that riches and hap-
piness are two things. The eldest son was forced against his in-
clination to marry a rich wife, who inspires him with disgust, as
she suffers from an incurable and repelling disease. He bears
his misfortune, but no one thinks of happiness. The eldest
daughter married an excellent man, though not on account of his
excellence, but because he is immensely wealthy. She has ap-
preciated him so little that, in spite of his kindness and forbear-
ance, he has been twice on the point of separating from her ; for
he is a Protestant, and now things are worse than ever. That
unhappy Tieffenstein likewise married Isidora to get out of debt
and better himself pecuniarily. What Heine somewhere says
may be applied to the two, only reversed : ' She loved him be-
cause he was nice. But he did not love her, for she was not
nice.' And what a life they have before them ! The doctor told

796 THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

me to-day that Tieffenstein would be fearfully deformed, and he
could not yet say whether his mind had not suffered. You
know what Edgar is. My uncle calls him the little Sardanapalus,
and would not blame him, perhaps, if he were not such a spend-
thrift. Then there is Harry, poor child ! He is so sickly and
coddled, and has been so spoilt, that it will be difficult to make
anything of him. So here are five children, each one with his
million, as they say. Yet they have no happiness or blessing
with them, and they don't make others happy. If a person has
been through all this, and experienced the hundred intrigues
and follies which all these things produce on people who have
no energy and only seek themselves and their pleasure, you
may be sure one craves for l liberty and bread.' '

" Are you speaking seriously ? Do you really mean all you
say ? May it not be a passing fit, or over-fatigue, or a mere im-
pression? " asked Vincent anxiously.

" I am so much in earnest that a few years ago I seriously
thought of becoming a governess in England. I gave it up be-
cause Mrs. Dambleton assured me that I would be less free and
more dependent. And then it is so difficult to find a suitable
family."

Just then it seemed to her that she would gladly have taken
something she only half liked.

" I wonder whether you could help me about it ?" she said.

" No, I could not help you about this. But there is some-
thing else which I should like to offer you — that is, a peaceful
home of your own, if you could trust me and love me."

Sylvia tlrew back, then turned slowly towards him and said :
" These are serious words, but I am afraid they were prompt-
ed by compassion, and domestic happiness requires something
stronger than compassion."

" Sylvia, " he cried out, and he fixed his deep and earnest
eyes on hers, " I cannot express my feelings in words, but I have
got my whole life before me to prove you my love."

Sylvia burst into tears.

" Why should you cry ? " he asked. " Will you not accept my
love, and love me in return? "

" I am sure I could trust you with my whole heart," exclaim-
ed Sylvia sorrowfully ; " but men are faithless and the world is
false. Supposing you were to be mistaken ? "

" I don't think that I am false," he said gently ; " but actions,
not words, must prove it. I have got two years before me be-
fore I may claim you for my wife. Will you let me hope ? "

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 797

" I have lost my confidence in people/' she said, almost gloom-
ily, after a pause. " I don't mind telling you that twice I have
been deeply wounded and bitterly deceived in my hopes. Twice
I have been forgotten and twice I have forgotten. Both men
put me aside for rich wives, and I was too proud to care for peo-
ple who showed they did not care for me. This is how it is I
cannot bring myself to a joyful confidence, the less so because
we should be separated for years."

" If something in your heart does not tell you that you may
rely on me, then, Sylvia, I will consent to be silent. But don't
be unjust to me. I am not responsible for the sins of others, and,
as you have known me from a child, you ought to feel quite sure
that I am not given to saying what I don't mean."

" But you might be carried away by the warm gratitude of a
noble heart."

" Let my heart alone," he said, laughing.

" But think what you are doing ; remember that I am poor,"
she said in a supplicating tone.

" So am I, and I thank God for it, as poverty has taught me
to trust my getting on in life to him and my own efforts."

" My best years are past and gone."

" O Sylvia ! love makes no distinctions of time. What do
I care about any particular years ? "

" I am not so good, or pious, or unselfish as you are, Vin-
cent."

" Can you say this after all you have done here ? You have
been leading a life of self-denial and charity for the last three
months, and rivalling the sisters themselves. You are good,
Sylvia, and you have every means of becoming better and better.
Don't joke in so serious a matter."

" O Vincent ! you need not talk of joking when I am gasping
for a breath of freedom, happiness, and love, and have not the
courage to take it for myself."

" I will have that courage for you, my darling," he exclaimed,
almost passionately. Then he added in a calmer tone : " But now
look the matter in the face, and answer me as simply and hon-
estly as I ask you the question : May I hope ? "

" Yes, let us hope. I trust you, Vincent. I believe that you
will not betray my confidence. It is the best thing a woman can
feel towards any man." And she dried her tears.

" Sylvia ! " he exclaimed in rapture, taking her hand. She
pressed it lightly, then, rising quickly from her chair, she said :
" Keep our counsel. My relations would not have me leave

798 * THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

them — not because they care for me, but because 1 make myself
useful to them. Our marriage is not to be thought of for two
years, and much might happen during that time to separate us.
I know the ground well, so keep the matter to yourself. We
understand each other without talking about it, don't we ? Now
you must go, and I must try to recover myself before tea-time."

" And I must thank God ! " exclaimed Vincent, and, passion-
ately kissing Sylvia's hand, he left her.

She fell back on her chair, pressed her two hands to her
face, and said to herself betwixt fear and joy : " So he really
loves me ! Will this be true love? Will it make me happy, and
shall I make him happy ? Will there be an end to my dreadful
slavery, and will the quiet and liberty of my own fireside bring
me peace ? Will not the world again come between us ? " She
got up, pressed her handkerchief before her eyes, and went to
a glass to see if all traces of tears had disappeared. " I am
myself again," she thought, as she carefully examined her face ;
" but oh ! dear, it seems to me that I am very much gone off.
The freshness of spring has departed. I am twenty-six and a
half — very nearly thirty ; and at thirty youth is over. Surely
Vincent's love must be true and disinterested for him not to
think of that ! "

And it was true that he did not give it a thought. The ad-
vance of time which dismayed her rather attracted him ; for
a breath of spring had suddenly burst in upon his grave life,
bringing him a promise of happiness undreamt of, which bound
together in pleasant bondage time and eternity, heaven and
earth, and which made one of two hearts and two souls.

" Well, love, aren't you going to make the tea?" asked the
baroness, who had been comfortably seated on the sofa for some
time and given her opinion as to Tieffenstein's state. But Syl-
via was too agitated over the new turn in her own fortunes to
heed it. She found a certain relief in walking restlessly up and
down the room. Her aunt's inquiry about the tea reminded her
of her household duties, and she seated herself at the tea-table,
remarking, for the sake of saying something :

" Oh ! I beg your pardon, dear aunt. I hadn't noticed the
tea-tray."

" The weather deprived you of walk or ride to-day, love, so 1
dare say you wanted to take a little exercise. Very sensible of
you," said the baroness.

Sylvia did not answer, as just then Edgar and Vincent came
into the room. She made an effort over herself to suppress all

i882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 799

signs of any unwonted agitation, so as to be able to talk just as
usual.

" Really, it is high time to go back to town. In such weather
as this it's desperate work in the country without a houseful of
people," exclaimed Edgar.

" You are always as sociable as you are amusing," answered
Sylvia scornfully.

" I have long known that I find no favor in your fair eyes,"
said Edgar.

" Visits and society are out of the question* in a house where
for months together men are lying dangerously ill," said Sylvia.

" Who can think of pleasure in times which have brought so
much anxiety and trouble on families, and mourning and suffer-
ing on our poor Germany ? " asked Lehrbach.

" Oh ! nonsense ; we are the conquerors," exclaimed Edgar.
•" The honor and glory of the thing far exceed the little drop of
blood which has been shed."

" Every drop of blood which is shed otherwise than for the
rights of church or country against unlawful demands is a wrong
to mankind," exclaimed Vincent indignantly ; " and as to honor,
I hardly know where it is to be found."

" We will fight a duel," said Edgar coldly.

" No, we won't," answered Vincent, still more calmly. " We
have just been exposing our lives in a cause which tramples
right, truth, and common sense underfoot. I did it because I
thought I was bound by a certain kind of duty, and you — "

" Because I felt enthusiasm for what is full of glory," inter-
rupted Edgar.

" Be it so," answered Lehrbach. " Anyhow, we endangered
our lives for very serious reasons, and were very nearly losing
them. And now that we have escaped, is a crime to be our first
act ? "

'" Duelling is no crime," called out Edgar.

" When two men seek after each other's life, as they do in a
duel, there is the intention to commit murder, and consequent-
ly a crime," said Vincent. " 1 don't know what you can say for
it."

" It is a thirst for vengeance or satisfaction, Herr von Lehr-
bach."

" That's just it — a thirst which quenches itself in human blood.
But if two men fight a duel without any intention of murder it is
a mere farce, a vain display of bravery and false honor, which
.sensible people would treat with compassion and contempt. I

8oo THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. [Mar.,

find this a sufficient reason for hating duels. But if it did not
exist it would be enough for me to know that the church strict-
ly forbids them to prevent me from fighting them."

" What people must be who can crouch before a handful of
priests ! " said Edgar scornfully.

" We will fight," said Vincent drily.

" What ! are you going to amaze me by being false to your
principles ? "

" No," answered Vincent, laughing. " But you see that peo-
ple would be in a permanent state of duel if they required bloody
satisfaction for every view or statement contrary to their own,
or if they called out another for every disagreeable speech."

The baroness, who could not easily follow a train of thought
or a conversation, and who was very dense and confused in her
mind, took in only at this juncture what they had been talking
about, and said to her son: " I must set myself very definitely
against such folly, love. In my drawing-room, at my tea-table,
and under my own roof I mean to have the peace kept."

Sylvia had listened to them with careless attention. She
knew Edgar's bravery consisted in boasting, and she said gently
to Vincent, to put a stop to the talk : " Do you always obey the
church in every particular?"

" It is my will and desire, because she commands us in God's
name. But, as I am very far from perfect, much is wanting to
make me perfectly obedient."

" My commanding officers are the only people I obey in the
whole world," exclaimed Edgar.

"You should neither say nor do that, love," said his mother;
" obedience to parents is a very proper thing."

"Oh! very well, I have nothing to say against parents, but
that's enough. What right has the church to order me about ?
The church ! Why, who knows anything about the church ? '*

" Certainly not a man who wishes to ignore God altogether.
That is only logical," said Lehrbach.

"Logical or not," exclaimed Edgar angrily, " I am a soldier,
and as a soldier I serve the king, not the church. What has a
soldier to do with the church's commands or prohibitions, and
what do I care about them ? The king is my idol."

" You are wrong," said Vincent calmly.

" I know what I am about, Herr von Lehrbach."

" A poor erring mortal ought never to be made the idol of
another man."

" But your pope \s your idol."

1 882.] THE STORY OF A PORTIONLESS GIRL. 80 1

" Not at all. He takes the place of God in things relating to
faith, and earthly princes ought to do as much in what concerns
temporal power. This is the whole cause of their great posi-
tion, and the only reason for showing them honor and obedience.
Woe to those who don't see it ! But if you make a prince into
a supreme being, simply for lack of believing in the true God,
you will very soon weary of your idol and get to despise the ob-
ject of your worship."

" I am not wont to have ready-made opinions."

" At twenty that's prudent. But does it not seem to you that
it is also prudent to have certain fixed principles by which we
can prove our views, instead of letting ourselves be guided by
whims ? "

" You are too serious for me, Herr von Lehrbach. You must
have had a fearfully strict bringing-up. We have been com-
panions in misfortune for a while, but we can never be jolly com-
rades."

" Still, I hope that we part as friends, for it would be most
painful to me to be on an uncomfortable footing with any one in
a house where I have been loaded with kindness. Even sup-
pose our way of looking at things is fundamentally different, it
need not exclude good-will."

" I feel good-will towards every one," exclaimed Edgar.

" Yes, as long as they are not in your way," added Sylvia,
laughing.

Edgar answered in the same joking tone, which Sylvia kept
up to hide her inward emotion. When she was once more alone
in her room and secure from all disturbance she threw herself
exhausted into an arm-chair by the fireplace, put her hand to her
head, and said to herself : " Is it really true that I desire nothing
but liberty and bread — daily bread and nothing more ? Vincent
is offering me liberty and love. As his wife I shall find that
happy dependence which is love's gift and which makes a wo-
man's life ; at the same time my outward circumstances will be
just the contrary to what they now are. Without possessing a
penny of my own, I am living without any anxiety in the midst
of every comfort, or rather in the greatest luxury. As Lehr-
bach's wife I dare say I shall have household cares. But he will
support and counsel me, and love me ; and his love outweighs
numberless cares. The days when I might have hoped for any
wonderful happiness are past and gone. Every year my footing
in society becomes less pleasant. In my position a girl with no
money is perfectly certain of being an old maid. What a dread-

VOL. XXXIV. — 51

802 LENTEN REVERIE. [Mar.,

ful prospect ! No, indeed, I was quite right to choose indepen-
dence and bread ! "

She rang her bell. Bertha answered it, and, after performing
her service, began to talk with her usual loquacity : " What
fearful weather, miss ! It seems as if the storm would bring the
house down. It was just such an evening the day you came
eight years ago. How times have changed ! How quiet and
sad you were then, miss ; and now you are so pretty, and beauti-
fully dressed, and you have been about so much ! Wasn't that
1 3th of October a lucky day ? And I thought it was going to be
so unlucky because of the I3th. And now it's the I3th of Octo-
ber again."

" I wonder whether it will be lucky or unlucky ? " Sylvia said
to herself, quite dazed at her new prospects.

TO BE CONTINUED.

LENTEN REVERIE.

MOURNFUL night is dark around me,
Hush'd the world's conflicting din :

All is still and all is tranquil —
But this restless heart within !

Late and lone I press my pillow,
Watch the stars that float above,

Think of One for me who suffer'd,
Sleep nor rest for grief and love !

Cross and lance my thought portrays me,
E'en the Calv'ry bird unveils,

Bird whose fragile bill, 'tis whisper'd,
Toiling cross'd to draw the nails ! *

Dim the stars in mist are dying,

Midnight veils the world from sight ;

Calv'ry's crest is dark declining —
Master ! take my heart's good -night !

* Church legend of the cross-bill bird.

j882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 803

WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING.

YESTERDAY was America's great visiting-day, when every-
body went to wish everybody else the compliments of the season.

Did I say everybody else ? Ah ! no ; that was a mistake.
There were many left severely alone, and there were many left
desirably alone. I thought I should be amongst the latter, as I
sat in my little library promising myself a delightful, quiet day
among my books. The Fates, however, ordained otherwise. I
had just finished reading in the morning paper that concentrat-
ed hash of news from all nations known as " the latest tele-
grams." Indeed, latterly it is very much of an Irish stew spoiled
by English cooks — a most indigestible preparation, especially
for the expatriated Celt. Well, be that as it may, I was aroused
from my reveries on the subject by a repeated ringing of my
door-bell. Remembering that it was my maid-of-all-work's re-
ceiving-day for her female acquaintances, I thought I would re-
lieve her of some of the door-service that did not specially inte-
rest her.

"Is this Mr. Marrow's?" said a district-telegraph messenger,
looking quite angry for having to ring repeatedly.

" Yes, my boy."

" A letter, sir " ; and he handed me one with his time-book, in
which I gave him full credit for his delay of a minute and a half.
The letter was from my niece, who has come with her three chil-
dren to spend the winter months in the city. Let us read it*

" MY DEAREST UNCLE JOHN : Mrs. Holland has requested me to spend
the day with her, receiving her New Year's callers, and I have resolved to
let the children go see you. I hope they will not annoy you. Charley Hol-
land will accompany them, as he knows the way better than they do, and
will remain to return with them in the afternoon.

" Wishing you again, dearest uncle, a very happy New Year,
" I remain,

" Yours most affectionately,

" SALLIE HOMAN."

To be a little confidential with you, my dear reader, I must
tell you that I am what they call an old bachelor — should be a
ripe old bachelor, if years necessarily ripened : a thing fairly dis-
putable. To my mind men are pretty much like pears : some

804 WOOD-ENGRA VI NG AND EARL Y PRINTING. [Mar.,

ripen early, some are only mellowed into sweetness by the chills
of winter, while there are some again that time only dries up into
shrivelled worthlessness or turns their little sap into vinegar.
What time has done with myself it is not for me to say ; but of
one thing I thank God it has not deprived me, and that is a
capacity for thoroughly enjoying tUe society of children — real
unspoiled children.

My nephews James and Harry, now respectively sixteen and
twelve, and my little niece Annie, the sweetest of all, now in her
tenth year, are real children, full of country freshness, like the
food on which they have been reared. Nothing brings more
sunshine into my solitude than their visits. Their minds are as
strong in healthy appetite as their stomachs. It is a great plea-
sure to teach such children. A mother could not give milk to
her babe with more satisfaction than I impart to them the little I
know.

Indeed, when they draw me out I think I must fatigue them ;
but they listen to the last with a charming patience. I try to
make my little lectures as interesting as possible, experience hav-
ing taught me that knowledge, like food, should be carefully fla-
vored to improve its digestibility, as well as to render it agree-
able to the appetite. The knowledge that is received with plea-
sure is reflected on with pleasure ; and pleasurable reflection is
oft repeated, thereby fixing the facts in the mind. Of old it has
been said : " The Lord giveth food, but the demon sends the
cooks." A similar assertion may be made of knowledge and of
many of those who prepare 'it for youth. I must, however, ar-
rest my reflections.

Here come the little ones. Their long, brisk walk in the keen,
dry air makes their faces glow like roses.

No sooner have I opened the door than I am seized round
the neck and kissed by both boys at once ere they wish me the
compliments of the season ; while my Skye terrier, regardless of
little Annie's " nice things," is making violent efforts to have the
first taste of her lips.

A moment ago my poor little dwelling was as silent and
quiet as a hermit's cell ; now all is bustle and cheery noise. My
servant rushes from the kitchen to welcome little Annie and put
away her hat and coat. The terrier, Tatters, driven away from
Annie, pays his addresses to the boys, who work him up into
such a barking excitement that he must, for peace' sake, be ban-
ished to the cellar. Then, when the little one has me all to her-
self, she puts her arms affectionately round my neck and showers

1 882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 805

her sweet, innocent favors on my poor wrinkled brow. Verily,
I said to myself, old age is worth waiting for when it brings us
such friendship. If we cultivate tenderness in our hearts to our
fellow-creatures there will be always somebody to reward us
with an honest return of the sentiment.

There are two things th£t ever go home to my heart, the ex-
hibition of affection from a child and of attachment from a dog,
because I know they come from the honestest impulses. The
longer I live the sweeter they become to me, for I learn more
and more every day the hollowness of the grown-up world's
show of personal regard. Do not, however, put me down as a
sceptic to the true friendship of men. I firmly believe in it, and
value it all the more for its rarity.

While Annie still held on to my neck she whispered gently
in my ear: "Uncle John, I promised Charley Holland that I
would get you to tell us about printing and about your engrav-
ings to-day. He got a printing-press for a Christmas present,
and prints ever so nicely already."

" I will do it, my little pet, with great pleasure ; but you must
all have some cake and nice, sweet, hot lemonade first." She
gave me another kiss and went to tell Charley the success of her
petition.

After the cake and lemonade were disposed of the table in
my little library was cleared, and we all sat round it, Annie tak-
ing care to sit between me and Charley, so that she could con-
veniently receive and communicate his wishes. Charley whis-
pered something to her.

" Uncle John," said Annie, " Charley Holland would like to
know how they began printing pictures first."

" And books, too, sir, if you please," added Charley.

" Well, Charley, my boy, the printing of books began in
Europe in the first half of the fifteenth century, or more than
four hundred years ago."

" What did the boys do, uncle, for books to get their lessons
from before that time?" asked Harry.

" They had books all written or printed with the pen — what
we call manuscripts, Harry."

" That was a slow way to make books," suggested James.

" A very slow way indeed, James, and required the greatest
industry and patience on the part of the poor copyists. In the
middle ages, which Protestants call the dark ages — the thousand
years preceding the discovery or invention of printing — the
monks were the principal copyists, and but for their devoted

806 WOOD-ENGRA VING AND EARL Y PRINTING. [Mar.,

diligence in preserving and multiplying books a great many if
not all the best works of the ancients would be lost to the pre-
sent generation. By multiplying copies then they multiplied
the chances of a book coming down to future ages. When a
great many European noblemen could not write their names, as
their marks on extant documents still attest, the monks were
nearly all scholars.

" After the breaking up of the Roman Empire Europe was so
constantly disturbed by wars that men were too busy or too
excited to attend to books, except in the quietude of monastic
houses. What thoughtless Protestants love to call the lazy
monks were the men to whom the world is indebted for most of
what lifts man above the beasts, or at all events above the mer-
est savages. To them southern Europe largely owes its escape
from a return to barbarism after the fall of the Roman Empire.

"As soon as printing was invented the monks and priests
were amongst the first to avail themselves of the facilities it af-
forded for multiplying books. Presses were set up in the mon-
asteries and colleges, and the finest and most correct of the
early-printed books issued from their presses. About a century
earlier a celebrated Dutch orator and scholar, Gerard Groot,
surnarned The Great, instituted a religious order known as " The
Brothers of the Common Life," whose main employment was to
consist in transcribing the best works of the ancients, as well as
the Bible and the writings of 'the Fathers of the church. This
order was eminently successful and spread rapidly through Hol-
land and Belgium and the neighboring nations. The members
carried a pen in their caps as the special badge of their profession.
They afterwards became famous printers, and the Mirror of Con-
sciences, by Arnold of Rotterdam, the first book ever printed in
Brussels, came from their press in 1476. In the same year they
printed the works of Lactantius, a great church writer of the
fourth century, at their house called St. Michael at Rostock.

" Before the manufacture of writing-paper books were written
in Europe mostly on vellum — a preparation of calfskin, made
white and thin to receive writing and lie closely together in the
book shape or roll up into a small space.

" To make a fine, clear, correct copy of a big book was a great
labor. It took a man years to make a manuscript Bible, and
a good one cost thousands of dollars. If skilled labor was all
as well paid for then as it is now it would cost vastly more.

" Some of those great manuscript Bibles were bound in solid
covers of silver or other precious material, and chained to desks

1 882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 807

in the churches or in the halls ol monasteries, that people who
wished to consult them might do so without such treasures
being left at the mercy of thieves."

" Isn't it wonderful they didn't think of printing, Uncle John?"
said Annie. " Charley Holland can print already, and he only
got his press just before Christmas."

" Most things appear easy, my child, when we see them once
done; but you must remember that the first printer had to make
his type and make his press, while there was nothing like them
in the whole world from which to copy."

" I never thought of that," said Annie, looking a little asham-
ed of her inconsiderate remark.

" Who was the first printer ? " asked Harry. " He must have
been a smart fellow, Uncle John."

" His name was John Gutenberg, or Gansfleisch, a native of
Mentz, in Germany. He was a man of great intelligence and of
singularly inventive faculties ; somewhat like our own wizard of
Menlo Park, he was never done contriving new inventions and
improving old ones. He found that the manufacturers of play-
ing-cards had begun the stamping of the outlines of their gro-
tesque figures from wood blocks ; and these were, strictly speak-
ing, the first European wood-cuts.

" In China and India the practice of printing letters and
figures from carved wood had existed from many hundreds of
years before, and it is more than probable that Europeans took
their first ideas on that subject from blocks brought from China
by the celebrated Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, who returned
home from that country in 1295."

At this moment I was interrupted by the inattention of the
children, occasioned by a bustling movement of Harry, the pur-
pose of which they seemed to understand. He was busy remov-
ing a very extensive, miscellaneous collection of puerile property
from his trousers pocket into that of his coat. This trousers
pocket of Harry's is a veritable magazine. Out of it came a large
stock of marbles, a top, pieces of cord, a leather disc for lifting
cobble-stones — known to boys as a sucker — etc., etc., and with
them two pieces of boxwood, which he handed to me.

" Thank you, Harry," I said ; "these are just what I wanted."
They were two wood-cuts.

Harry, I understand, has a kind of interest in the Holland
printing concern, to the working stock of which he has contri-
buted the two blocks in question, costing respectively forty and
thirty cents, making a large hole in his Christmas box.

8o8 , WOOD- ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,

" Now, children," I continued, " I want you to look attentive-
ly at the cutting on the face of this piece of wood. Raised above
the general level is a flat figure representing a cat, made by cut-
ting away the wood from all around. If I touch lightly with the
carved face of this block a pad inked with a thick, oily ink like
very thick black paint, you will perceive that the ink adheres
to the prominent part only. Then if I impress a piece of paper
with the block so inked I will have the image of the cat on
paper — a jet-black cat in this case, for there are no grooves in the
block inside the outline. This kind of all-black picture is called
a silhouette. Now let us examine the other little cut. It repre-
sents a cage. Nothing could be better to illustrate our subject.
On this, you perceive, there are comparatively broad grooves
with very fine lines between. These fine lines are the bars of
the cage, that will print black ; the grooves, the spaces between
them, that will be untouched by the ink."

" Uncle John," said James, " will you please tell us how they
begin when they want to make a wood-cut? "

" At present, James, they get a piece of fine boxwood cut
across the grain, very nearly an inch thick ; for the thickness must
correspond exactly with the length of the types used by printers,
in order that the block may lie evenly with type in the printing-
press. They rub over the face of the block a whitish powder,
and then draw a picture on it with a pen or pencil. They next
take fine, sharp tools made specially for cutting grooves of differ-
ent thicknesses, and they cut away the wood between the lines
of the picture, carefully leaving these untouched. You see in
your cut of the cage a very good illustration."

" Was that how they did it, sir, in the time of Gutenberg?"
asked Charley Holland.

"No, my boy, not exactly. They used sycamore, or more
commonly pearwood, which is not at all as good as box for the
purpose ; and for cutting out they used a knife like a penknife.
But they did not attempt to produce work as fine as that on
modern wood-cuts. They cut, too, on the side of the grain, but
they produced with their coarse materials and simple tools very
artistic effects.

" Here is a print from one of the most masterly of the ancient
wood-cuts. It represents * The Last Supper/ and was engrav-
ed or cut by Albert Dlirer, of Nuremberg, Germany, the great-
est pre-eminently of the early wood-engravers — indeed, one of the
greatest artists that ever lived. It was made towards the end of
Diirer's career. He died in 1528, and this is dated 1523, as you

1 882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 809

can observe on the little tablet at the bottom of the picture bear-
ing his initials— a large A having a small D within it.

" At the table there are but eleven apostles. A chalice
stands before a vacant seat in the position occupied in other pic-
tures by Judas Iscariot. There is a great deal of expression
and character in the faces. The figures are draped in full flow-
ing robes, and are in a great measure in harmony with the dig-
nity of the subject — a circumstance only observable in Diirer's
works, like those of other Germans of the period, after he had
travelled and studied in Italy.

" The use of cross-hatching, or making the lines cross each
other, producing shades and shadows, is very sparing. In this
respect it is remarkably unlike a finished wood-cut of the pre-
sent day, in which we commonly find as much of that kind of
work as in a plate-engraving. In fact, modern wood-cutting has
lost nearly all distinctness of character, being directed more to
an imitation of the peculiarities of other kinds of art than a main-
tenance of its own."

" Is that the oldest wood-cut you have, Uncle John ? " asked
Annie.

" It is, Annie ; but I have in the American Encyclopedia of
Printing, published in 1871, a fac-simile of one about one hundred
years older. It was made by Lawrence Koster, a Dutchman of
Haarlem, and published in a block-book. You will find it at
page 66 of the Encyclopedia. It is divided into two panels. In
one the Infant Mother of God, standing on an altar, is being pre-
sented in the Temple by her parents. In the other two men are
making an offering in a heathen temple of the sun, a personifica-
tion of which deity is likewise standing on an altar. The figures
in this panel making the offering are in the Dutch costume of
the period, in which loose-legged boots coming to the knees are
a characteristic feature. The Dutch and Germans of those days
seldom went beyond their own time and country for scenes and
costumes. Under the cuts are Latin verses in black-letter."

" What kind of books, Uncle John, are block-books ? " asked
Harry.

" Well, Harry, my child, I will tell you something about
them. In the very beginning of the fifteenth century some pious
artist, seeing how playing-cards were printed, took it into his
head to do something of a similar character for the glory of
God. So he took a piece of pearwood or of sycamore, and on
the top of it engraved a picture representing some religious sub-
ject. Under this, in the manner I have just explained to you, he

8 io WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,

carved a number of raised letters on the same piece of wood, and
from it then printed a whole page at once. A few such pages,
printed at first on one side only, constituted a block-book. The
blank pages were usually pasted together, so as to make every
two printed leaves look like one manuscript leaf! The block-
books were nearly all pious books. Koster of Haarlem and
Gutenberg of Mentz both made block-books about the same
time (in the early part of the fifteenth century). But Guten-
berg did not rest satisfied with them. He divided the lettered
part of the blocks into distinct pieces, each containing a separate
letter, which he used pretty much as modern types are used.
But the wooden type was too big and clumsy, and would not
stand much use. He looked, accordingly, for something better,
devoting so much of his time and money to experiments that
he got through his whole fortune. About this time, howeverr
Gutenberg met with a man of wealth and enterprise named
John Fust, or Faust, who lent him a large sum of money, and who
ultimately became his business partner in the printing trade.
Having now the means to prosecute improvements, he cut and
cast type in metal, and, after other works, published in 1455 the
Latin translation of the Bible called the Vulgate. It was the
labor of several years and was a great success. Some time be-
fore this a young man of exquisite taste and skill as a scrivener,
named Peter Schoeffer, entered into the employment of Guten-
berg and Fust. Schoeffer's refined judgment and capacity for
detail perfected what Gutenberg's genius devised. He made
great improvements in the shape and quality of the type, ul-
timately bringing the composition of the metal to the desired
hardness for finish and endurance. He also improved the qua-
lity of printing-ink by adding oil. To Gutenberg, Fust, and
Schoeffer, therefore, may the honor of the invention of printing
be fairly accorded."

" What did they sell their Bible for, Mr. Marrow ? " asked
Charley, who has already developed something of the national
spirit of traffic.

" At first, Charley, they concealed from the people with
scrupulous care the process by which the book was produced,
and sold it as a manuscript for a great price. Fust, in whom
the mercantile or money-making disposition was strongest, took
a large number of copies to Paris, where he readily received at
first as much as eight hundred crowns apiece for them. When
he had supplied the more eager purchasers he gradually re-
duced the price, till at last he was offering them for thirty

i882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 811

crowns each. This so amazed the people that they began to
think the books were not produced by lawful human agency but
by the power of the demon. From suspicion they proceeded to
action, and, seizing Fust, they searched his lodgings, where they
found so many more of the Bibles that they became confirmed
enough in their misgivings to have him cast into prison with a
threat of treating him as a wizard. To get out of this difficulty,
it is said, Fust had to reveal the secret of his manufacture. Be
this as it may, one thing is certain : that before twenty-five years
from that day the art of printing had extended to all the princi-
pal cities of Europe."

"Uncle John," said Annie, "you said a while ago that the
verses under the very old wood-cut were in black-letter. Are
not all letters black in books ? "

" Almost all, my child ; but when we use black-letter as re-
ferring to a particular kind of type we mean those ugly Gothic-
shaped letters that look blacker than Roman type because of the
thickness of all their lines. Letters very like them are still used
to a great extent in Germany, but that country is now gradually
getting rid of them for the neater Roman forms such as we
use."

" Are there any of those old Latin Bibles of Gutenberg and
Fust yet in existence ? " asked James.

" Yes, about twenty, part printed on paper, part on vellum.
They are scattered through the great libraries and museums of
Europe. One of them would now bring at public sale a hand-
some fortune because of its rarity. Louis XVIII. of France paid
twelve thousand francs for one now in the Paris Library."

"What is the oldest wood-cut you ever heard of, uncle?"
said Harry, who I thought was beginning to wish for a wind-up
of the subject.

" The oldest wood-cut I have ever seen is without an imprint-
ed date. The very early printers did not at first put their
names or dates on their work. Though in a very old it is in a
very good style of art, and evidently the work of a man who
drew from nature. Like most of the pictures of that period, it is
on a religious subject, the Virgin and Child, represented in the
tender relations of mother and son. The Holy Child presses his
cheek lovingly against his Mother's. One hand he has round her
neck, while he holds one of his feet in the other hand, the second
foot resting against her arm. This precious print is in the Paris
Library, and could not, I dare say, be purchased for its weight
in diamonds. Until lately a cut dated 1423, and representing St»

812 , WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,

Christopher bearing the Infant Saviour on his shoulders across
the water, while a monk carrying a lamp precedes him, was
deemed the oldest European cut in existence. Recently, how-
ever, it has been superseded in that honor by a lovely little piece
of work of its kind in the Brussels Library bearing the date 1418.
It also is a Virgin and Child. So you see those old artists
paid their devotions to the Mother of God. The holy pair are.
surrounded by four saints. There is such an elegance of compo-
sition, and refinement and beauty of drawing, in this print that
many doubt the accuracy of the date. But even this is again su-
perseded in the honors of age through the investigations of Vis-
count Henri Delaborde, secretary to the French Academy of
Fine Arts, who has satisfactorily proved that two cuts recently
discovered pasted in a manuscript were printed in 1406. While it
is hardly probable that older yet will be found bearing evidences
of their date, it is equally improbable that these are the very old-
est of their kind in existence. The earliest printers rarely at-
tached dates to their pictures, and the first books were even
without title-pages."

" Had they many pictures in their books long ago, Uncle
John ? " asked Annie.

" A great deal more, in proportion to the extent of the books,
than they have now. The block-books were all picture-books.
In them the space occupied by the illustrations commonly far
exceeded that occupied by the letter-press, the latter being often
little more than the titles or the legends explaining the pictures.
The Nuremberg Chronicle, a history of the world published in 1492.
had two thousand illuminated or colored wood-cuts. The church
encouraged this profusion of pictures for the same reason that
she covered the walls of her temples with paintings and sculp-
tures, that those who could not or would not read may be in-
structed through their imagination in the history and mysteries
of religion. This encouragement of the church gave a wonder-
ful impetus to wood-engraving. The greatest painters were not
above carving pear-blocks for the press. In Germany Albert
Dlirer, who had a genius like that of Michael Angelo, devoted the
greatest pains to this kind of work. His life of the Blessed Vir-
gin in twenty pictures, his Passion of our Lord in twelve, he pub-
lished in 1511 with a new edition of his great series illustrating
the Apocalypse. These wood-cuts have done vastly more to ex-
tend and perpetuate the fame of this great man than all his other
works, his plate-engravings perhaps excepted. Very good fac-
similes of them, obtained by photo-electric processes, have been

1 882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 813

published recently, and can be purchased for a few dollars. The
sermons preached by the famous Dominican orator Savonarola
at Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century were pub-
lished with wood-cut illustrations the day after their delivery.
The blocks used were more than twenty years afterwards em-
ployed in illustrating the Art of Happy Dying. A great
many pious books so illustrated appeared in Italy in the first
half of the sixteenth century, those published at Venice being
the most beautiful. The History of St. Veronica, published at
Milan in 1518, contained exquisite illustrations.

"Even the Reformers, notwithstanding their destructive
iconoclasm, or image-breaking, availed themselves of this me-
thod of bringing their fallacies home to the people's imagina-
tions. Luther's pamphlets were decorated with wood-cuts made
by his friend Lucas Cranach. Holbein, too, the noted author of
the set of wood-cuts known as the " Dance of Death," cast his
lot with the Protestants, who destroyed many of his best
paintings, and by their warfare on all that was beautiful made it
necessary for him to fly to England to earn his bread by paint-
ing portraits.

" France produced very fine work in wood-cuts in the six-
teenth century. About its middle appeared a regular school of
art in this line, founded by Tory, the distinguished reformer of
French typography. But talking of reformers brings to my
mind one who should never be forgotten in his connection with
wood-engraving. That is Ugo da Carpi, the inventor of chiar-
oscuro, or the representation of light and shade in wood-engrav-
ings. This he did by printing his pictures not from one block
but from three. The first contained only the outlines and deeper
shades, the next the middle tints, and the last the fainter shades
that pass into the lights or white parts of the picture. He gave
in this way such admirable representations of drawings that the
greatest artists of the time, Raphael, Titian, and Parmigiano,
were glad to have their drawings reproduced in this form.
Modern wood-engravers accomplish all this by means of one
block. To prevent the fine, sharp lines cutting into the paper
when the pressure necessary for printing the thick, dark lines is
applied, they lower the face of the block in accordance with the
fineness of lines, especially at their extremities, so that the finer
they are the more lightly will they touch the paper in printing.
Otherwise the very sharp lines entering the lights would, by the
cutting of the paper, leave dots at their extremities.

" It may appear strange, but it is nevertheless the fact, that

8 14 WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,

the great popularity of wood-engraving led more than anything
else to its rapid decline in quality. So great became the demand
for wood-engraver's work that any kind of a botch got employ-
ment at it. This made most men careless in their products,
while it made people of taste look naturally for other kind of
engraving. This other kind was supplied in impressions from
plates, called copper-plate engravings. To these the artists of
merit turned their attention, so much so that early in the sev-
enteenth century wood-engraving had almost relapsed into its
original simple form, being only used in the poorest productions
of the press and by printers of linens, calicoes, and wall-papers.
In this state wood-engraving remained until comparatively re-
cent times.

" In England a man of considerable genius but very little cul-
ture, named Thomas Bewick, was amongst the very first to re-
vive it. Born in the middle of the last century, and apprenticed
at the age of fourteen to an engraver, he soon showed a capacity
to improve the existing state of the art. There are several Eng-
lish books illustrated with cuts by him, but that in which he dis-
played his greatest skill was his British Birds, the first volume of
which he produced in 1797 while in partnership with Ralph
Beilby, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the man from whom he got his
first lessons in engraving. Bewick published his ^Esop's Fables
in 1818. He introduced a feature into his cuts that greatly faci-
litated the work and added much to its beauty. It was the oc-
casionally using of white lines to represent objects against sha-
dows on dark backgrounds. From what you have seen of the
wood-cuts shown by Harry you will understand that all that was
needful for this purpose was to cut out the lines representing
such objects. Modern wood-engravers have largely availed
themselves of this idea, especially in the illustration of astronomi-
cal subjects. For instance, in representing the constellations they
have only to cut out the stars, leaving the face of the block quite
plain. When the block is inked only the plain surface will catch
the ink and print it, the parts corresponding with the depressions
coming out perfectly white. Models for drawing on a slate have
their white-lined figures prepared in a similar way."

" Why do they use wood-cuts at all, Uncle John," asked
James, "when copper-plates are so much nicer? "

" Principally, my boy, because wood-cuts can be printed very
rapidly and well upon almost any kind of printer's paper in con-
junction with the letter-press accompanying them, while engrav-
ings from plates demand, in order to be well done, considerable

1882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 815

time and skill from the printer, as well as a special kind of soft
paper, and to be printed apart from type on what is called a roll-
ing-press. A plate shows marked indications of injury by wear
.after a few hundred impressions are taken from it, whereas a
wood block will give good impressions after hundreds of thou-
sands.

" In 1832, four years after the death of Thomas Bewick, was
founded the Penny Magazine, appearing weekly with illustrations.
This gave the first great impulse to wood-engraving in -Eng-
land. Since then many illustrated weekly papers have appeared
in all parts of Europe and America, giving, in their rivalry for
pictorial pre-eminence, the greatest encouragement to engravers
on wood. Amongst these the London News and the Graphic are
not equalled by any weekly illustrated paper in the English lan-
guage that I have seen.

" The French and Germans are, however, beginning fairly to
contest the palm with England in this respect, as may be seen in
Le Journal pour Tons and Le Monde Illustre' of Paris, in Illustrirte
Zeitung of Leipzig, and the fortnightly Illustrirte Chronik der Zeit
of Stuttgart. Our Harper s Weekly is, in its best illustrations,
but a reprint of the London papers above mentioned, with, I am
sorry to say, the printing not as well done. Frank Leslie's illus-
trations are both more original and more national. The pretty
little cuts that adorn our monthlies are certainly very creditable,
but they are largely produced by processes that almost conceal
entirely the original work of the engraver, and with it much of
the vigor that naturally belongs to it.

" In illustrated publications requiring the very highest order
of mechanical skill, with time and care in their production, such
as the grand volumes illustrated by Dore, the French appear to be
unrivalled. Although the printing from a wood block, once it is
properly fixed in the press, requires little more than the work of
an ordinary mechanic, the preparation of it for the press, and the
press for it, after it has left the engraver's hands, and the setting
•of it in the press, require the nicest judgment and the greatest
care and patience in order to obtain the finest impressions it is
capable of imparting. It is in this that American printers fre-
quently fail. Either from choice or necessity they work too ra-
pidly. You cannot buy a skilful French mechanic to turn out a
slovenly job.

" We are not, however, altogether destitute of such men.
More than twenty-five years ago Mr. Joseph A. Adams, of New
York, a printer and a wood-engraver of consummate skill and

8i6 WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,.

gentlemanly ambition, took it into his head to publish an edition
of the Protestant Bible illustrated with very fine wood-cuts inter-
spersed through the text. The publishers of New York did not
believe the venture could be made a monetary success, and ac-
cordingly declined engaging in the enterprise. At last, however,
he succeeded in making arrangements with Harper & Brothers,
stipulating that the printing should be done according to his
own directions. When he had his engravings ready he threw
off his coat and set to work, with the assistance of the most
skilful printers, whom, as well as their employers, he disgusted by
the weary length of his preparations. There was used on the
press a pad called the tympan, against which the sheets of paper
were pressed when they received the impression of the pages.
In adjusting this and preparing the cuts Mr. Adams spent about
a fortnight. The Harpers would have given up in despair, were
they not bound by the special stipulation that the work should
be done according to Adams' directions. At last he began to
print. Then evervbody saw that his work was worth waiting
for. No such work had ever before issued from an American
press, and the American people attested their appreciation of it
by the purchase of fifty thousand copies of the Bible."

" There is one thing, sir," said Charley Holland, " I cannot
understand. When J was at the Centennial Exhibition I saw an
artist making a drawing at the hotel containing a great many
figures and occupying a space equal to a whole page of an illus-
trated paper. In less than three days 'twas printed in the pa-
per. How could anybody have cut out all the white lines and
all the little diamonds on a wood block in that time ? "

"Your difficulty is a very natural one, Charley. In cases
like that the block to which the drawing is transferred, instead
of being one piece only, is made up of several square pieces so
nicely joined that when they are clamped together they appear as
one piece. When the transfer is made to this the pieces are all
taken asunder again and divided amongst a number of engra-
vers. Each works at his little piece till he has cut out all the
white spaces. When all the engravers have finished the parts
they are fixed together again and the block is fit to print from.
This makes the work of some of the engravers mere brainless
drudgery, requiring little more than patience, experience, and a
steady hand.

" The opposite of this is when the artist draws on the block
with a camel's-hair brush, making no distinct lines, but leaves it to
the judgment of the engraver to express the depths of his India-

1 882.] WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. 817

ink shadings by lines at his own option. The engraver in this
case must be something of an artist.

" A German wood-engraver named Kretszchmar — perhaps
the ablest that lived thirty or forty years ago — had much of the
honorable ambition and respect for his profession that charac-
terized the great early engravers. His illustrations of Dalton's
Anatomy are true works of art. His ' Death of Gustavus Adol-
phus,' after a design by Kirchof, the largest fine wood-cut ever
executed on one block, is that in which perhaps wood-engraving
reached the climax of its excellence. He claimed for his art a
higher mission than that of the handmaid of typography, but the
world has not hearkened to his voice. Wood-engraving to-day
is devoted exclusively to the illustration of printed matter. In
the little bi-monthly paper, the Illustrirte Chronik der Zeit of
Stuttgart, I find some exquisite wood-engravings, signed A.
Kretchmar, in the style of the above. They are possibly by his
son. One can be seen in Number 25 for 1881.

" I told you that the first wood-engravers cut with a knife on
the side of the grain — a far more slow and difficult process, and
requiring far more of artistic skill, than the modern method of cut-
ting across the end of the grain with a graver ; but when execut-
ed by a first-class hand the results are superior in character and
quality. They are essentially wood-engravings that are not imi-
tations of other kinds of engraving. The Germans Unzelmann,
Kretszchmar, and Gubitz are amongst the eminent moderns who
worked in this way. I am happy to say, too, that their style is
becoming again appreciated.

" There is one man without referring to whom it would be
improper to conclude this subject. That is Dr. Alexander An-
derson, the father of wood-engraving in the United States. He
died only twelve years ago at the ripe age of ninety-five. His
first attempts at engraving were made, while he was a child, on
cent-pieces flattened out. After that he cut little images on
pieces of type-metal for the newspapers, to be printed from like
wood-cuts. It was not till he had attained his eighteenth year
that he heard of a wood block for engraving purposes. He had
been then for four years studying medicine, but, devoting all his
spare hours to his favorite occupation, he was already well
known to the publishers. Finding the greater facility with
which he could operate on wood as compared with metal, he
took to it thenceforth almost exclusively. Lansing, Morgan, and
Hall were his pupils.

" Anderson could never be induced to depart from the legiti-
VOL. xxxiv. — 52.

8i8 WOOD-ENGRAVING AND EARLY PRINTING. [Mar.,

mate style of wood-.engraving as practised by Bewick. Fine
specimens of his work may be seen in the Shakespeare's Plays
published about thirty years ago by Coolidge & Brother. When
he died in 1870 he left four hundred practisers of his art in this
country, among them J. A. Adams, who brought electrotyping
in 1841 to greater perfection than it had ever before attained,
and who first showed his countrymen how to print wood-cuts in
a really fine style. The fruit of his success in this respect can be
seen in Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution. Adams, like An-
derson, was a self-taught genius, but a fine type of the American
practical man.

" There is the bell for dinner. You will not, my children, I
am sure, be sorry to give up the subject of wood-cutting for the
practice of another kind of cutting. To Harry, at least, I think
mince-meat making would now be more agreeable." It is needless
to say there was not a, dissentient voice from my little audience.

Well, my dear reader, the young people have had their din-
ner and are gone. I am left alone again to my books, my pic-
tures, and my reflections. It is my custom, when left to myself
after talking for some time, to begin reflecting on all I said.
Those reflections are seldom calculated to inspire me with much
self-satisfaction. At the best they breed a little remorse. In
this instance I feel that I said too much while I induced the
children to say too little, and I did not question them enough to
ascertain how far they mjght have misunderstood me. I do not
mean to say, however, that children should be spoken to always
in their own phraseology. While it is absurd to talk to them in
language the general bearing of which they cannot comprehend,
it is by no means injudicious to use with them from time to
time terms the meaning of which they cannot give, but which
they may conceive from the context. If we mean that children
should ever possess a vocabulary of respectable extent we must
prudently use such a vocabulary in our general intercourse with
them. The words they read will never become their own in the
same way as the words they hear. They do not assimilate them-
selves as thoroughly to their mental system. Hence it is that
we often find learned men, full of ideas of a very accurate charac-
ter, who cannot speak extemporaneously for five minutes except
in the clumsy verbiage of pedants or in the uncouth phraseology
of boys.

a 382.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 819

AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND.

ii.

ON the confines of the ancient duchy of Burgundy, about
fifteen miles west of Autun, rises Mt. Beuvray, gloomy and
threatening of aspect — the most venerable, the most redoubtable
spot in all Celtic Gaul. It is a mountain that excites the interest
of the historian, the antiquary, and the pilgrim. Here Druidism,
paganism, and Christianity have by turns reigned. From all
time it has been regarded with veneration, whether under Celt,
or Roman, or the consecration of the true religion. Its summit
is a broad plateau about three thousand feet above the level of
the sea, where remains of feudal times stand on vestiges of old
Roman domination, and the ruins of Christian sanctuaries on
cliffs sacred to the Druids. This mountain-top, sometimes veiled
by mists, but for the most part visible on all sides at a great dis-
tance, was considered by the ancients well adapted for a reli-
gious centre or the abode of the gods seated in the majesty of
power. The Druids, we know, regarded mountains and high
places as sanctuaries elevated by nature to the Supreme Being.
They loved the sombre forests, and in their religious shades held
their schools and offered their horrid sacrifices. Caesar tells us
they derived presages from the murmur of rural fountains, the
noise of the winds through the trees, and the various changes in
the elements ; and no place could be more favorable in which to
learn the secrets of nature than this mountain-top, where, to
quote the words of Carlyle, " you fancy you hear the old dumb
rocks speaking to you of all things they have been thinking of
since the world began, in their wild, savage utterances." At
that remote period the sternness, the wildness of all nature here
must indeed have been of a character to impress the religious
mind and exalt the imagination. And everything was to be
found here necessary for the rites of the Druids. The steep sides
of the mountain were covered with dense forests of oak, their
favorite symbol of the Divinity, from the murmur of whose
leaves they divined the future, whose branches they wove into
crowns for their festivals, and on which grew the sacred mistle-
toe gathered with mystic ceremonies. And two limpid streams
welled out of the heart of the rock and flowed down the moun-

820 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.,

tain-sides, falling in successive cascades from one ridge to an-
other till they reached the valley. At certain seasons of the
year people came here in crowds to take part in the religious
rites or attend the tribunals ; and here, in times of war, women,
children, and old men took refuge behind the formidable en-
trenchments that encircled the mountain and still excite wonder,
known as the Fosses du Beuvray. One ancient tradition asserts
that Bibracte, the ancient capital of the ./Eduans, instead of be-
ing at Autun was on the summit of Mt. Beuvray, and the
peasants still point out the places where stood the great gates
which, when swung on their hinges, could be heard twenty
leagues through the country around. One legend says Bibracte
was founded by Samothes, the grandson of Japheth, whose wife,
China, built the Castrum, now known as Chateau Chinon, the
ruins of which may be seen on the top of a sharp peak overlook-
ing the river Yonne.

After the Roman conquest the persecuted Druids abandoned
the mountain and took refuge in the depths of more remote for-
ests, and on the site of their ancient abode the conquerors es-
tablished the largest camp in Gaul, with military roads for car-
rying up supplies for man and beast, which were stored in a hor-
rcum at a place still known as the Pare des Chevaux. Here
Maia, the goddess of youth, was honored, and Mercury, her son,
and Venus herself, who loved mountains and the seclusion of
groves as well as the foaming waves of the caressing sea. On
the first Wednesday in May a review of the Roman legions took
place here, to which came crowds from all parts of Gaul. On
this occasion a great number of traders flocked hither, which led
to the noted fairs of the middle ages, known under the name of
the lite or laite du Beuvray, held on the first Wednesday of May,
as in Roman times. And the old reviews gave place to jousts
and tournaments, to which came on their steeds a throng of
knights in full armor under the leadership of the neighboring
baron of La Roche-Milay.

Pagan rites and festivals were still celebrated on this moun-
tain when St. Martin came here in the fourth century, and, by
the power of prayer alone, overthrew the altars of the false gods.
He came from Augustodunum, now called Autun, where he had
demolished a famous temple of Mars, and cut down an old Drui-
dical oak beneath the walls where afterwards was built the cele-
brated abbey that bore his name. Pursued by ,the infuriated
pagans, he descended the western side of Mt. Beuvray and
crossed with one bound of his mule the wide, deep ravine of

i882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 821

Malvaux (Mala Vallis), and landed on a cliff of the further side,
still known as the Roche du. Pas-de-1'Ane, where the footprints
of his mule are still pointed out. Then he took the Roman road
towards the Aquae Nisinei, now called St. Honore"-les-Bains — a
watering-place at that time frequented by the Romans — and went
to destroy a temple of Diana in the forest, at a place still called
Dienne. Further off, at the west, near Montigny-sur-Canne, is a
cliff called the Pierre de St. Martin, where the footprints of the
saint's mule are to be seen, and people go to invoke him against
intermittent fevers, so common in this region. Tradition has
carefully preserved the recollection of all the places where he
stopped, most of which have become places of pilgrimage. He
is regarded as one of the apostles of Morvand, and everywhere
are remains of abbeys, priories, churches, and oratories bearing
his name, as well as several villages, like those of St. Martin du
Puy at the west, and Dommartin (Domnis Martinuni) in a valley
near Chateau Chinon encircled by mountains, on one of which
are the ruins of the ancient castle of Dommartin.

A chapel to St. Martin was built on the summit of Mt. Beu-
vray which was held in great veneration in the middle ages. On
the two festivals of the saint there was an immense concourse
here, and even a small hamlet gathered beneath its walls. It was
,served by monks from the abbey of St. Symphorian at Autun.
Many of the villages around the foot of the mountain paid tithes to
the chapel of Monsieur St. Martin en rhaut du BeuVray. Among
old bequests to this chapel is mentioned that of two livres from the
"wife of Jean de Chastellux in 1235. One of the Druidical foun-
tains took the name of St. Martin, and the other that of St. Peter,
which they bear to this day.

At the north end of the plateau the great barons of La Roche-
Milay in the fourteenth century built a convent for the Corde-
liers, who called their house the monastery of Bibracte — Monaste-
rium Bibractense. This house was burned down by the Hugue-
nots in 1570 and its girdle of entrenchments destroyed. The
spot where their mill stood is still known as the Ecluse du Mou-
lin. The Chapel of St. Martin was perhaps ruined at the same
time, and for a long while only a wooden cross stood among the
crumbling walls where the people still came to pray and drink at
St. Martin's Well, throwing in, perhaps from an old habit of
Celtic times, sticks of hazel-wood and a piece or two of money.
When the French Society of Archaeology met at Nevers in 1851
the members voted to erect a stone cross on Mt. Beuvray in
place of the wooden one, which had been overthrown by the

822 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.r

winas and tempests. On its pedestal is sculptured St. Martin
dividing his cloak with the beggar, and beneath is the inscrip
tion : " To St. Martin, the apostle of Gaul, in memory of his com-
ing to Mt. Beuvray in the year 376." This mountain is now sel-
dom visited, except by some lover of the past. The Celtic monu-
ments are For the most part gone. There are a few vestiges only
of the Roman camp. The old roads are nearly obliterated. The
fairs have died out. And where the knights jousted and had
their feats at arms you now hear only the cries of herdsmen, the
lowing of cattle, and the bleating of sheep.

The country around Mt. Beuvray still bears the impress of
feudal times. Everywhere on the bristling cliffs are old towers
and manor-houses, more or less remarkable, that belonged to the
ancient lords. From the base of the mountain to the river Arroux
is a succession of ridges, picturesque and interesting, which lower
in height as they approach the river. On one rocky height called
the Roches de Glaine are the ruins of the old castle of that name,
once the seat of an important barony, surrounded by the Bois de
Glaine, in which are to be seen the remains of an old chapel
where people still go to pray and drink at the fountain of St.
Blaise. Another chateau, not far off, belongs to the barons of
Montmorillon, whose oldest son has always borne the name of
Saladin since the time of the Crusades, when, it is asserted, a lord
of that house was taken prisoner by the great leader of the Sara-
cens, and liberated only on condition of giving that name to the
heir of the barony to the latest generation.

The mountaineers have great devotion to St. Hubert, whom
they invoke against the rage of wild beasts. At St. Leger-sous-
Beuvray a confraternity of his name was established in the mid-
dle ages, to which all the people around belonged. It had filia-
tions in all the parishes of Morvand as far as Saulieu and Avallon,
which did not suspend their prescribed exercises even during the
Revolution. And St. Hubert's day was kept as if of obligation.

East of Mt. Beuvray are the remains of the once formidable
castle of Le Jeu, in a forest of the same name, derived from Ju-
piter, who once had a temple here in the midst of a sacred grove.
South of Le Jeu is the village of La Cornelle on the side of a
cone-like mount, where, on the top, is the ruined chapel of St..
Claire, once a place of pilgrimage.

On a hill encircled by mountains north of Mt. Beuvray is the
village of St. Prix, with an old church that used to be served by
the monks of St. Martin of Autun, who were obliged to come
here to administer the sacraments on all the " solemn and mys-

i882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 823

terious feasts " of the year, including the five " Grandes Notre-
Dames " and the festival of " Monsieur St. Prix," who was an an-
cient bishop of Clermont. Near by is the Bois FAbbesse, that
used to belong to the nuns of St. Andoche at Autun. Out of
this wood flows the Canche into a narrow ravine, where it goes
pouring over huge rocks, forming a beautiful cascade called the
Sault de la Canche. In the deep, wooded valley where the
Canche is joined by the Verriere is the hamlet of La Celle, so
named from the hermitage built here in the seventh century by
St. Merri, or Mederic, fourth abbot of St. Martin's at Autun, who
belonged to one of the most distinguished families of that city.
Desiring a more profound solitude, he came to this secluded val-
ley, then a wild spot with nothing to break the silence but the
noise of the torrent and the cries of the wild beast's. Here among
the rocks and precipices he built a cell, in which he spent
a year before his retreat was discovered. It was afterwards
converted into an oratory that acquired celebrity and drew set-
tlers around it. A church now stands on the spot. You are
still shown the cliff where he went to pray, and the spring from
which he drank, now called the Fontaine de St. Merri, that flows
out of the side of the mountain north of the church. It is good
to visit the places that bear witness to the piety and austerities of
the saints. An ancient family of the vicinity took the name of La
Celle.

The Canche is only one of the numerous torrents that, after
watering the narrow valleys enclosed among the mountains of
this wild, picturesque region, empty into the Arroux. Another
is the Vesvre, on the banks of which stands the chateau of
Monthelon, with a village of the same name on the opposite
shore. This name is variously written. The family is usually
called Montholon. From remote times it has distinguished itself
in its devotion to the country, and shown its attachment to the
church by giving several of its members to its service. In recent
times it was a Count de Montholon who took part in the battles
of Austerlitz, Wagram, etc., and followed Napoleon to St. Hel-
ena, faithfully serving him to the last, and was made one of the
executors of his will.

But Monthelon is more interesting to us as the place where,
during several years of her widowhood, resided Jeanne Fran-
goise Fr6miot, Baroness de Chantal, whom the church has placed
in the calendar of its saints. Her husband was Christopher II.,
gentleman of the king's chamber, lord of Rabutin and Chantal —
the latter a barony a little to the northeast of Monthelon, where

$24 AMOAG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.,

there is still a hamlet of that name — and seigneur of Bourbilly,
an estate a little north of Morvand, near Semur, given him by
his uncle, Celse du Rabutin, on condition that the oldest son in
the male line should always bear the name of Celse. Madame de
Chantal passed her married life at the chateau of Bourbilly, but
after her husband's death she came with her children to live at
Monthelon, in accordance with the wish of her father-in-law,
Baron Guy de Chantal. Here she spent seven years and a half.
Baron Guy reminds one of Don Rodrigo in Manzoni's Promessi
Sposi, or some of the old border chieftains of Scotland. While a
young man he retired to his chateau of Monthelon with a band
of armed retainers, and made himself a terror in the country by
authorizing, or at least conniving at, a series of outrages and
robberies on the neighboring estates by his banditti, and bore off
himself the wife of the Sire de Vautheau. He was, however, a
dauntless soldier, and the king gave him command of thirty
lances in 1589, and wrote him to aid the royal cause in Burgundy
with all the additional forces he could muster. We can easily
imagine what a life with this rough old baron must have been to
a lady of high principles like his holy daughter-in-law, and we are
told she had much to suffer from him. But she won his esteem
and affection to such a degree that when she left him to enter
upon the religious life at Annecy he, as well as all the poor of
the neighborhood, to whom she had been devoted, uttered lamen-
table cries. While here she used to walk to Autun (about four
miles) to attend the stations of Advent and Lent. St. Francis de
Sales visited her at Monthelon, and here made known to her his
intention of founding the order of the Visitation. And in the
parish church he united in marriage his brother, Bernard de
Sales, Baron of Thorens, to Edmee, the oldest daughter of St.
Jane de Chantal, and the following Sunday he preached there in
presence of the bride's uncle, Andre Fremiot, Archbishop of
Bourgues. This church was founded in the year 920 in honor
of St. Eptade, abbot of Cervon, whom some authors consider a
native of Monthelon. In it are several tombs of the old lords.
As you enter the choir you see in the pavement a large stone
with a ring, like a trap-door, which opens into the sepulchre of
Baron Guy, and close by, turning on hinges, are reverently pre-
served two panels of the pulpit in which St. Francis de Sales
preached on the above-mentioned occasion. This church has
also a relic of St. Jane de Chantal, whom the people still speak
of as Notre Bonne Dame.

Baron Guy died about the year 1610. He seems in his last

i882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 825

days to have become sensible of the needs of his soul, and left
orders that on the day of his death twenty priests should recite
the Psalter in his behalf and take part the next day in the funeral
procession, besides celebrating, each of them, a Mass for the
repose of his soul. He ordered a like number to assemble for a
similar service at the end of forty days and on the anniversary of
his death, and bequeathed fifty livres to the church of Monthe-
lon, as many to the Capuchins of Autun, and fifty measures of
rye to the Cordeliers, on condition that the clergy of all these
houses should attend his obsequies.

St. Jane de Chantal's son, who bore the name of Celse en-
joined by his great-uncle, was killed by the English at the isle of
Re, where he commanded a squadron of gentlemen volunteers.
His daughter was Mme. de Sevign<§, so famous for her letters.
She inherited the baronies of Chantal and Bourbilly, of which
she often makes mention. The chateau of Montheion fell to St.
Jane's second daughter, Frances, whose daughter Gabrielle mar-
ried her kinsman, the famous Roger de Rabutin, Count de
Bussy, who was noted as a satirist in the time of Louis XIV.
and considered one of les plus beaux esprits of the time. He was
lord of the ancient barony of Chazeu, a castle with four large
towers, a little to the south, on the right bank of the Arroux.
He entered the army when a mere boy, serving in his father's
regiment. As a soldier he displayed great boldness and energy,
and would have attained to the highest grades in the service
had it not been for his irresistible turn for satire, which drew
upon him a swarm of enemies at the court and for a time lodged
him in the Bastile. He married, as we have said, St. Jane de
Chantal's granddaughter. One of his daughters became a nun,
and the other first married the Marquis de Coligny, and after-
wards M. de La Riviere, who belonged to a family of Nivernais
that could trace its ancestry back to the middle of the twelfth
century by a regular succession of lords, some of whom were
knights, generals, governors of provinces, royal chamberlains,
etc. This second marriage was a very dramatic affair. It
was arranged unbeknown to her father and celebrated at her
castle of Fort de Lanty, a stronghold on the side of a mountain
in the very south of Morvand overlooking the fertile valleys of
Bazois. At that time its battlemented towers were surrounded
by walls and a deep moat filled from a neighboring lake, but it is
now in ruins half buried among tall bushes. When Roger de
Rabutin heard of his daughter's marriage he was so enraged
that he galloped off to the castle of Lanty and carried her to

826 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.,.

Paris, where, with a dagger at her throat, he forced her to de-
clare she had only acted under compulsion in consenting thereto.
The affair was carried to court by her husband and created much
excitement, the friends of the two parties taking active sides
therein. The marriage, however, was finally declared valid.
Mme. de La Riviere is said to have composed the epitaph on her
father's tomb in the church of Notre Dame at Autun, where he
was buried in 1693.

The chateau of Monthelon went out of the family some time
last century, but was purchased in 1861 by the Marquis de Mon-
tholon-S6monville, a descendant of the old lords, who at once
began the restoration of his ancestral seat according to its an-
cient plan.

South of Mt. Beuvray is the feudal castle of La Roche-Mi-
lay, perched on the very top of a granite cliff nearly four hun-
dred feet high, along the foot of which flow the silvery wa-
ters of the Seglise, a small stream that comes pouring down
into the deep valley from the sides of Mt. Beuvray. High up as
the castle stands, it is overlooked on all sides by wooded moun-
tains, steep, wild, and forbidding, one of which, Mt. Touleurs,
is crowned with the ruins of an old fortress. The barony of La
Roche-Milay was one of the most powerful in the province.
Its ancient lords could bring three thousand men into the field.
They took part in the Crusades and all the wars of the country.
They had the right of coining money and of administering
justice for ten leagues around. They held over thirty seignio-
ries, and their domains included seven parishes, besides certain
rights over twenty-four others. They had nineteen ponds or
basins capable of holding eleven thousand fish, and owned thir-
teen forests, including the woods on Mt. Beuvra/, where the
bonnes gens acntour le pays also had the right of procuring fuel.
They founded five monasteries and were benefactors to many
other religious houses. In 1706 the castle of La Roche-Milay
was sold to Marshal de Villars, specially famous for his victory
at Denain, where in 1712 he defeated the allied forces under
Prince Eugene and took Lord Albemarle prisoner — a victory
referred to by Voltaire :

" Regardez dans Denian 1'audacieux Villars
Disputable tonnerre a 1'aigle des Caesars "

— lines which are graven on the obelisk erected in the battle-field.
Marshal Villars unfortunately had less eye for the picturesque

1 88 2.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 827

than for strategy, and in repairing the castle of La Roche- Milay
he destroyed all the ancient towers but one, which now stands
isolated from the other buildings. South of this castle is the vil-
lage of Milay, pleasantly situated on a height, with a church in
honor of St. Maurice, built on the site of a pagan temple with
, curious subterranean passages beneath. In 1096 it was given by
Pope Urban II. to the convent of Marcigny-sur-Loire, where
only the daughters of noble houses could be received, and those
to the number of ninety-nine ; Our Lady being considered the
hundredth — nostra Centesima, as they called her.

Below Milay, in the valley of the Halene, is the ancient seign-
iory of Mazilles, with one of its old towers still standing. In
the fifth century this place belonged to Eleutherius, a Roman
patrician, whose wife bore the name of Eusebia. They were the
parents of St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, who was born here in
the year 496. It is said that on his native domains no dog, or
hawk, or falcon can carry off any prey whatever without being
overtaken by sudden death. In his boyhood St. Germain used
to attend divine service every day at the monastery of St. Andre
de Luzy, which was three-quarters of a mile distant, and some-
times even the nocturnal offices. The people still point out the
place, south of the village, where he had to cross the Halene.
St. Andre, one of the most ancient monasteries in Morvand, was
built on the ruins of an old Druidical college. In the tenth cen-
tury it became a dependency of the abbey of Cluny. A portion
of the wall of the old church frequented by St. Germain is still
standing. It is pleasant to visit so time-honored a spot and
wander along the smiling valley by which he came and went,
looking off at the west upon the heights of Appennelle, and at
the east towards the higher mountains of D6ne, among which
once stood the castle of Luzy, one of whose lords, Pierre de
Luzy, took the cross at V6zelay in 1 146, and, with his brothers
and his wife Luce, went to the Holy Land.

The village of Luzy, which is in the valley, is said to have
been a place resorted to by the youth of ancient Bibracte for
music, dancing, and games. It is certain there was a Roman
villa here, which was naturally succeeded by a feudal castle.
The church of St. Pierre is very ancient, with a narrow choir of
the Romanesque style. Among the inscriptions on the wall is
the following : " Here lies M. Hierosme *de La Vern6e, the most
ancient patrician of Luzy, who, for the honor he bore to St.
Anne, founded in perpetuity a rent of fifteen livres to this church,
enjoining on the incumbent to say every Tuesday evening the

828 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.,

Quirielle * of St. Anne, with a Libera, at his tomb, and a High
Mass with vigil every year on the festival of St. Hi6rosme." f

On the southwestern border of Morvand is Isenay on a
height overlooking the rich valley of the Aron. According to
some, the name of this village is derived from an ancient temple
of Isis, who at one period was greatly honored in Gaul. In
this region Roman remains are found at every step. Isenay, in
fact, was a fortified post for the defence of the valley, and in the
middle ages there was a walled and moated castle here, of which
there are still traces. Guy, one of its lords, by his will of 1390
desired to be buried in the church of Isenay, his funeral to be
attended by sixty priests. A hundred pounds of wax were to
furnish the lights — among them twelve torches borne by twelve
poor men, to whom as many ells of cloth were to be given.
The other lights were to stand around his bier in the chapelle
funebre, where his arms had to be emblazoned here and there on
the hangings. At the Offertory a groom was to conduct one
of his steeds to the altar, bearing his armor. The day of his
death alms were to be distributed among the poor in general,
and he founded three Masses a week for his soul — one on Sun-
day in honor of the Virgin, another on Wednesday in honor of
the Holy Ghost, and that of the dead on Friday. And the bell
of his house at Tremblay, at the west of Isenay, was given to the
church, in order to summon the people to the offices. Guy's
widow, at her death, founded four annual Masses at the Quatre
Temps (Rogation week), and thirty on the anniversary of her
death. At her funeral six poor men were to bear torches, to
whom should be given two ells of cloth and a pair of shoes. For
thirty days after her death a Mass of requiem was to be sung>
with an oblation of bread, wine, and candles, and she gave the
church a perpetual annuity of twenty sous.

At the confluence of two streams that form the Anizy, a
branch of the Aron, is the small town of Moulins-Engilbert, over-
looked by the ivy-covered ruins of a castle on the top of a sharp
granite cliff where the old counts of Nevers often resided and
gave splendid feasts, to which came all the nobles of the province,
one of which took place at the marriage of Louis I. of Flanders
with Jeanne, Countess of Rethel. Louis XL himself was a guest
here in 1475. Sebastienne Chevalier, a widow of this town,
founded a Grand Mass at the parish church every Friday, an-
nounced by the ringing of the bell, after which the celebrant
was to read the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ as devoutly as

* The Kyrielle, or litany. t St. Jerome.

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS GF MORVAND. 829

possible on his knees. She founded, moreover, a vesper service
on Saturdays, after which he was to say the Libera and De pro*
fundis at her tomb ; and, to make the vergers " more inclined to
execute her wishes," she left them an annuity of one livre.

North of Moulins-Engilbert is the village of St. Pereuse on a
plateau twelve hundred feet above the level of the sea, with a
magnificent view over the valleys of Bazois. Its name is derived
from a holy priest of the fifth century to whom this part of the
Montagnes Noires owes its conversion to Christianity. He fell
a victim to his zeal, and, as was often the case, his tomb became
so popular as to lead to the erection of a chapel with a monastery
adjoining. At the west are the mouldering towers of the sires,
of St. Pereuse, and at the south is the chateau of Besne with
battlemented walls and forbidding subterranean chambers.

A short distance east of St. Pereuse is the hamlet of St. Hi-
laire, almost hidden among the elms of the valley. St. Mammert
is in great repute here, and the Sunday after his festival (May 11)
there is an immense assemblage. In a great drought or excessive
rains the people bear his statue in procession to the fountain of
L'Huis Chamart, where they plunge it thrice in the water. There
is a similar custom at the fountain of St. Gervais — whom the
people call St. Zevras — near Moulins-Engilbert. Northeast of the
hamlet, in a gorge, is the chateau of Argoulais, belonging to the
family of Chabannes, allied with several royal families of Europe.
Henry IV. 's great-grandmother, Antoinette de Chabannes, mar-
ried Charles de Bourbon. Louis XV. in 1/69, and Louis XVIII.
in 1819, confirmed the right of its lords to be styled " Cousins du
Roi"

Further at the east, in the depths of a picturesque valley wa-
tered by the Yonne, is Corancy (Curtis Audi) — a name derived
from the ancient Roman who had a villa here. In the midst of
the neighboring forest is the antique chapel of Notre Dame de
Faubouloin on a cliff rising from the banks of a stream, with a
sacred spring near by. In times of public calamity the neigh-
boring parishes come here in procession. And on Easter Mon-
day and the Nativity of Our Lady the cure of Corancy, attend-
ed by a crowd, says Mass in the chapel, after which the young
people have dances and other sports in the open air, affording
a most animated, picturesque scene. The day ends with a
feast spread fronde super viridi, as the laird of Monkbarns would
say.

Overlooking the valley of Corancy is the Capella de Bosco,
or the chapel of Montbois, dedicated to St. Roch, on the top of

830 , AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.,

a conical hill, where processions are made on the day of that
saint.

West of Corancy, on the left bank of the Yonne, is the cha-
teau of Chassy, with a popular chapel near by that commemo-
rates St. Bernard's stopping here in 1 146. According to tradi-
tion he came near being devoured by wolves in crossing the
mountains of Morvand. This valley formed part of the patri-
mony of Vare*, or Vidrade, whom the church ranks in the number
of the Blessed. At the death of Corbon, his father, he fell heir
to eighteen estates, which he renounced in order to become a
monk at Flavigny. Among them was the ancient town of Cor-
bigny, in the pleasant valley of the Anguison on the western
boundary of Morvand. A little to the north is the priory of St.
Leonard on a hill, built by St. Egile, abbot of Flavigny, in the
ninth century. He peopled it with twelve monks in honor of the
twelve apostles, and set up holy relics in the chapel, among
others a notable part of St. Leonard's remains and the skull of
St. Veterien, which gave a reputation to the church. This an-
cient house is now occupied by the brothers of the Christian
Doctrine. Among the vineyards at the east is the much-fre-
quented chapel of Notre Dame de Sare, and not far off is the
holy fountain of St. Agatha.

A few miles east of Corbigny is Cervon on a plateau, with
the vaporous mountains of Morvand on one side and the beau-
tiful valley of the Yonne on the other. Here is an old church of
the twelfth century, whose tall spire is visible through all the
country around. The village owes its origin to an abbey found-
ed in the sixth century by a saintly priest named Eptade, called
by the people St. Eptas, who took refuge here to escape the
honors of the episcopate. It was then a dense forest, in the
midst of which he built a cell, where he lived in absolute solitude
till one disciple after another set up an additional habitation
which grew into a ccenobium. Not far off, just above the ham-
let of Montlife, is a huge block of granite in the form of a sar-
, cophagus, partly sunk in the ground, generally called the Belle
Pierre, which the people believe to be the tomb of a saintly
maiden of the house of Tressolles, the ruins of whose castle are
to be found overgrown by trees a little to the west. A venera-
ble oak overhanging the Belle Pierre is kept hung with crosses
and garlands of flowers. Not far off are vestiges of a rural cha-
pel to which processions used to be made, especially on Monday
of Holy Week. A short distance from Cervon is the small vil-
lage of Vauclaix, picturesquely seated on the side of a mountain

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 831

that rises at the junction of three valleys, crowned by an old
church of the eleventh century, built by the monks of Corbigny,
with two great lindens in front. One of the ancient lords of
Vauclaix left to this church of his affection the annual gift of
fourteen measures of barley and eighty-four of oats for the
perpetual celebration of Mass on Saturdays in honor of Our
Lady.

Further north is Lormes in a wild gorge overhung with
woods, through which rushes a torrent in a series of cascades on
its way to join the Auxois in a valley at the west. Lormes an-
ciently formed part of the domains of the Bienheureux Var6.
This village owes its origin to a fortress built on the site of a
villa near the old Roman road, along which a great number of
ancient remains have been found — fragments of mosaics and mar-
ble columns, coins and medals of the time of Trajan, Aurelian,
Titus, etc. Hugues III., one of the old barons of Lormes, mar-
ried Helvis de Montbard, a niece of St. Bernard. Old chroni-
cles speak of him as a man of uncommon mind and energy, as
well as of extreme piety. It was he who, in 1235, built the
Chartreuse of Val St. George and munificently endowed it
for the welfare of his soul and the benefit of his kinsmen,
living or dead, leaving to his descendants 'the obligation of de-
fending its rights. His act of foundation says : " Since God,
the good and merciful, who by his grace has clothed me with
power in this world and given me a large part of its substance,
has inspired me, though a sinner, by virtue of his Holy Spirit,
with the desire of procuring him spiritual sons, and myself adopted
ones, by building in my domains a temple for his worship and a
.suitable house for their lodging, and providing all that is neces-
sary for their subsistence, may I one day, by the mercy of the
divine Redeemer, be received with them into the heavenly tem-
ple, to dwell eternally in the tabernacle of the saints."

In this act is the following curious prohibition : " Let no wo-
man, unless on the day of the dedication of the church, approach
the doors and enclosure of these buildings or the granges of the
brethren. If any, by some necessity, pass by, let them not stop,
nor in the forest adjoining, but keep on their way rapidly." The
valley at that time was covered by a forest which was cleared
by the monks. They had a vast and magnificent establishment,
which was burned down by the Calvinists of the sixteenth cen-
tury, leaving only an outbuilding or two, which were afterwards
repaired as a shelter for the scattered brethren. Here still lived
fifteen monks when the Revolution broke out, five centuries and

832 AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. [Mar.f

a half after the foundation of the monastery. A mere fragment
of this house is still to be seen.

Rising above Lormes at the west is Mount St. Alban, which
affords a fine view over the Vaux d'Yonne et Montenoison, with
meadows and cornfields extending indefinitely to the east,
bordered by woodecl hills and mountains of everlasting granite.
On the top of the mount is a church, somewhat difficult of
access, where in the sixteenth century was founded the confra-
ternity of the " Corps de Dieu," so many of which rose at that
period to make reparation for the profanation, of the Holy
Eucharist by the Huguenots. Every year on Easter Tuesday
the members followed the Host in procession as it was borne
through the town to the parish church, where it was solemnly
exposed the remainder of the day. Southwest of Lormes is the
rural chapel of St. Roch at the entrance of the woods, where
herdsmen and shepherds go to invoke their favorite saint.

On the Yonne above Corbigny is Tavenault, a mere hamlet
with a ruined manor-house. On the opposite bank of the river
is the ancient fortalice of Epiry, which was purchased by Mar-
shal Vauban. In 1801 the Emperor Napoleon had a marble tab-
let affixed to the walls, bearing the inscription : " This was the
residence of Vauban. Here he planned the labors that have
rendered him immortal. Grateful France has deposited the
heart of this great man near the remains of Turenne beneath
the dome of the Invalides." Napoleon himself had Vauban's
heart carried to Paris from the church of St. Hilaire at Bazoche,
a village eight miles north of Lormes at the bottom of a pleasant
valley. Vauban built the choir of that church, and beneath one
of the side chapels still reposes his wife, Jeanne d'Osnay, a wo-
man of fervent piety.

Some distance at the west, on the right bank of the Yonne, is
Mhere, agreeably situated on the southern slope of a hill. This
village owes its origin to an oratory built here in* the ninth cen-
tury by the monks of Corbignv for the benefit of the lay bro-
thers who, in going to and coming from the priory with their
herds, stopped here to refresh themselves. In a neighboring
abyss, called La Gaussade, it is pretended the parish bells were
precipitated in some civil disturbance and can still be heard
ringing the hours of office on Sundays. At the east is a chain
of mountains, the highest peak of which is at the northern ex-
tremity, called Le Banquet — a name derived from the festivals
that used to be held there by the surrounding villages. The
summit, which the people call " Le Bout de 1'Haut," is a mass

1 882.] AMONG THE HILLS OF MORVAND. 833

of granite entirely destitute of verdure, where terrible winds
prevail. This is the highest point in Morvand, and commands
a magnificent view fifteen leagues around, embracing villages
and chateaux without number. In this remote, desolate spot
stands the chapel of Notre Dame du Morvand, erected in 1857
by the chief proprietor of the vicinity — a chapel as severe as
the granite mountain out of which it is built, and therefore in
harmony with nature around. A more picturesque site could
not have been chosen. Its founder was M. Dupin, a senator and
member of the French Academy, who resided at the chateau of
Raffigny, the graceful turrets of which may be seen on the side
of a hill at the northeast. In front of this chateau is a beautiful
terrace overlooking the charming valley of the Anguison bound-
ed by mountains, among which Le Banquet is pre-eminent. At
one end of the terrace, half hidden among the trees, is the
chapel of St. Barbe, where the parishioners stop in the pro-
cessions of the Fe'te-Dieu, the Assumption, and Rogation week.
M. Dupin was in the habit of walking up and down this terrace
at the decline of day with his wife (who had been lady of honor
to Queen Marie Amelie), watching the sunlight as it faded away
from the hamlets in the valley while still gilding the tops of the
mountains. They often wished there was a cross on the bald
summit of the Montagne du Banquet, or a chapel of the Blessed
Virgin, to inspire sentiments of piety in all the country around.
After Mme. Dupin's death her husband put this idea into exe-
cution by building a chapel at the highest point in the pure Ro-
manesque style of the eleventh century, with nave, choir, and
porch, lighted by stained windows. Near by is a living spring,
beside which is a chalet for the chaplain, and lower down, on a
shelf of the mountain, is a house for the sacristan. M. Dupin
himself applied to Pope Pius IX. to complete the work by grant-
ing indulgences to all who should visit this chapel devoutly.
Pilgrimages are already made here, and the mountain-tops often
echo the glad voices of the throng who, toiling up, chant the;
Angelic Greeting as they come in sight of Our Lady's Chapel.

The whole of Morvand is studded with similar monuments- of
religious and antiquarian interest to those already given, and the
romantic aspect of the country around renders them additionally
attractive. The general features of the entire region, as well as^
the similarity of its name, recalls the Morven of the north, w.hichi
Macpherson makes Ossian characterize as "wooded Morven,"
" streamy Morven," " Morven of many ridges," and the Morven
of mists and aged oaks. The whole of Morvand, in fact, with its

VOL. xxxiv. — 53

834 , IRELAND — 1882. [Mar.,

rocks and streams and mountain tarns, its sacred springs and old
chapels with their tombs of knights and crusaders, its ruined
monasteries, its castles and frowning donjons on countless peaks
and crags, and at every step traces of the ancient saints who led
such wondrous lives and imparted not only sanctity but a poetic
interest to the places where they dwelt, reminds one of Scot-
land, and it only needs, in order to acquire equal fascination, a
minstrel like the great magician of the north, whose

' Legendary song could tell
Of ancient deeds so long forgot;
Of feuds whose memory was not ;
Of forests now laid waste and bare ;
Of towers which harbor now the hare ;
Of manners long since changed and gone ;
Of chiefs who under their gray stone
So long have slept that fickle Fame
Has blotted from her rolls their name."

IRELAND— 1882.

WITH never clash of arms or roll of drum,
O sons of Ireland ! now her hour is come.

What foul, corroded cup is left to drain ?
What bitter dregs are yet her lips to stain ?

What arrow still unspent, with poisoned dart
To tear in twain that stricken mother's heart ?

But one — the direst, deepest shame of all :
That in this hour supreme ye faint or fall !

The world is watching ; shall the nations see
The fairest queen on earth unchained and free ?

Or will ye sit unheeding, supine, dumb,
O men of Ireland ! now her time is come?

Shall the bright waves that lave her weary feet
Laugh as they climb her buoyant steps to greet ?

Or, sobbing, sobbing still from shore to shore,
Weep where she crouches, fettered, evermore ?

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 835

A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM.

IN the January number of the Bibliotheca Sacra, published at
Andover, Massachusetts, there appeared in the leading place an
article which is well worthy of notice. It is a remarkable one
both for the admissions which it makes and for the advice which
it gives, because such admissions and such advice from Protes-
tant pens are so rare ; though it is perhaps in one sense equally
remarkable, if not more so, that such admissions and such advice
are so rare, since they would seem to be naturally suggested by
that common sense which, as its name implies, is supposed to be-
long to the majority at least of mankind.

What are these admissions, and what is this advice? The
admissions are that here and there certain dogmas which are at-
tributed to the Catholic Church by the mass of Protestants are
falsely so attributed ; and the advice is that those who sincerely
wish to attack the evil which is believed to exist in the church
by all her opponents should first by careful study and examina-
tion find out what she really teaches, that they may know what
the evil in her really is, and not waste their energies in knocking
down a man of straw while the actual mystery of iniquity re-
mains erect.

There is one very strong reason for pursuing this course on
which the author (the Rev. Charles C. Starbuck, of Claridon,
Ohio) does not dwell. That is one which would be suggested
by the commandment which instructs us, as a matter of justice
and charity to our neighbor rather than of advantage to our-
selves, not to bear false witness against him. But we do not mean
to say that this reason would have no weight with him. No,
it would be very unjust on our part to suppose that ; but he does
not bring it out very clearly, because his principal point is to
show the folly and inexpediency, in a polemical point of view, of
what may be called the ordinary Protestant course of taking
everything which is said against Rome for granted ; and there-
fore he entitles his article not " Unjust "or " Uncharitable" but
" Unintelligent Treatment of Romanism."

Now, we say that this article is simply based on common
sense. For it only requires common sense to admit, even with-
out investigation, that some at least of the charges made by a
large mass of excited controversialists against their opponents

836 A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

must be ill-founded ; and, again, only common sense is required to
show that in the long run more effect is produced by attacking
what one's opponent really does maintain than by denouncing
what he is only falsely imagined to hold. That is to say, more
effect is produced when one has the truth on one's own side, as
of course a sincere Protestant must believe to be the case with
himself.

Mr. Starbuck's article is, then, a sensible one, and we rejoice
in it on that account ; for common sense is always refreshing and
enjoyable for its own sake. But we also are cheered by it be-
cause we know that his expectation that the evil and corruption
of Rome will be properly understood and intelligently attacked
by following this sensible course will, if he only proceeds him-
self and persuades his friends to follow him far enough on that
course, be disappointed. If Protestants will only address them-
selves in earnest to the task of finding out what the church real-
ly teaches, we know that the same common sense which inspires
them to the task will have its perfect work : it will show them
that the Catholic system of doctrine is the only common-sense
form of Christianity ; that it is the only Christian system conso-
nant with reason and with history ; that, instead of corrupting
morality, it strengthens it ; that, instead of overthrowing reason, it
is of all alone in thorough accord with it ; that, instead of strain-
ing faith to the breaking-point, it is the only one in which faith
becomes thoroughly reasonable.

Of course he is still very far from even suspecting that this
is the case. And he still fails in many ways to see the church
as it is. To begin with, early in his article he shows that he is
under the influence of a misconception of the position of Catjio-
lics which is one of the most widely diffused of all those prevail-
ing among Protestants about the church. It is that intelligent
" Romanists," as he would probably call us all now — though he
seems to think that there has been some difference between a
Romanist and a Roman Catholic — are in a terrible state of men-
tal conflict, coming from the effort to reconcile faith with reason,
and are only kept in the church by a habit of submission to au-
thority, and by a fear of the consequences, temporal or spiritual,
of breaking away from it ; and that, therefore, there is continually
a " strain " on the church, becoming greater and greater as time
goes on and intelligence expands and spreads among the people,
which will at some time, perhaps not distant, result in its dis-
ruption.

That there have been " strains " on the church coming from a

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 837

revolt of some of her members against her doctrine no one will
deny ; there were such at the times of all heresies— as, for example,
those of Arius and of Luther. But they have come rather from
an absence of authoritative decisions about the faith than from
any fulness of teaching on the part of the church regarding it.
Every new definition of doctrine, as it placed in a clearer light
the beautiful harmony and thorough reasonableness of the Ca-
tholic system, so it diminished instead of increasing the tendency
to heresy among those remaining in the fold of the church.
And now that system has been so fully formulated that danger-
ous differences of opinion among well-instructed Catholics have
become, we may say, almost impossible. There is less danger
of grave theological error in the church, or of any propensity to
it, now than at any previous time, for very much the same rea-
son as there is less danger of scientific error and absurdity now
with regard to any really well-formed science than existed before
that science had been perfected, except the danger which comes
in both cases, and which always may come, from a want of know-
ledge of theology or of science. Heresy, by the explanations
and formulations of the faith which it has rendered necessary,
has destroyed its own foundations. So the idea of " St. Peter's
church heaving silently, in struggle and in pain, etc.," over the
definition of Papal Infallibility is a mere figment of the imagina-
tion. If the mountain had really been in labor it would have
brought forth much more than the " Old Catholic " mouse.

No, the danger of partial separations from the church does
not now come from differences of opinion among theologians,
but, as we have just said, from a want of acquaintance among her
less-instructed members with what she really does teach. The
conversions which Protestantism or infidelity now makes in
our ranks are almost entirely among those who have either not
had the inclination or the opportunity to study their religion
thoroughly ; who have not found out what the church really
does hold and teach, but have got their information about it to
a great extent by associating with non-Catholics and imbibing
their prejudices and misconceptions. If the education of Catho-
lics were as thoroughly Catholic as the church desires and labors
to make it, there would be as little danger of intellectual perver-
sions among them as there is of modern students of astronomy
embracing the Ptolemaic system ; and the reason, as we have said,
is the same in one case as in the other.

Of course there is always another cause of apostasy— namely,
the rebellion of sinful human nature against the special obliga-

838 A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

tions as well as the general moral restraints imposed by the
church ; but every one knows this, and it is not of the revolt of
passion, but of a supposed struggle of reason, that Mr. Starbuck
speaks.

But we must pass from this point, on which perhaps too
much time has been spent. We have spoken of it in order to
show that our good friend, though no doubt laying down an
excellent plan of operations for others, makes himself the very
mistake which he urges them to avoid. He does not, as we
have seen, proceed a single page before he shows that he him-
self is an " unintelligent " treater of " Romanism," unless he pre-
fers to be called by a harder name.

We come, however, immediately, as we go on with his ar-
ticle, upon a more remarkable instance of the " unintelligent "
adherence to old delusions and prejudices which he blames so
much in others. Proceeding from the assumed victory of the
" Romanist " over the moderate or " Roman Catholic " party in
the late council, which victory he supposes to have subjected
the church to the terrible " strain " of which we have been
speaking, he says : " We may therefore, for the present, and pro-
bably for as long as the Roman Catholic Church subsists un-
broken, regard Roman Catholicism as for all working purposes
absorbed in Romanism — in that system which, as Mr. Gladstone
says, places the Christian religion in the breast of one man, the
Bishop of Rome, making him such a lord of bodies and souls as
the world has never dreamed of before."

Now, by the Roman system, or " Romanism," as he calls it,
must be meant the dogma of Papal Infallibility ; for that was the
only thing which the council defined about which any serious
difference of opinion was even imagined to exist in the church.
And to say that this makes the pope such a lord, even of souls,
as the world has never dreamed of before is evidently to say
that it puts him in a place higher and more commanding than
that in which the common consent of Christians has placed the
apostles. Now, this of itself is a sufficiently " unintelligent "
statement ; but what must be our surprise when we read a few
pages farther on in Mr. Starbuck's article, at a point where he
had probably forgotten for the moment what he had written be-
fore, a strong condemnation of this very error regarding infalli-
bility which would make the pope superior to the apostolic col-
lege ! He says, and quite truly, that it is " begotten of the reck-
lessness of controversy " ; and after treating of it at some length
he says of us that, " instead of claiming more than we are accus-

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 839

tomed to attribute to Peter and his fellows, they claim immeasur-
ably less."

Now, this is a strange thing to come across, accustomed as
we are to strange things in the writings and from the mouths of
our opponents. Certainly Protestants, however ignorant they
may be, seldom proceed in such an " unintelligent " way as to
formally but unconsciously not only retract but condemn their
own words almost as soon as they have been uttered.

This whole thing, however, strange as it is, is but an instance,
though indeed an extraordinary one, of the way in which con-
troversy is carried on by Protestants against us, and of the very
spirit which Mr. Starbuck professes to criticise and reprove.
Here is a man of considerable learning, who evidently knows
the truth, and yet in spite of that is caused for the moment, by a
bitter feeling of opposition against the teaching authority of the
church (which is the real stumbling-block for all heretics), not
only to ignore but even, as it would seem, to forget it. When we
see such a phenomenon as this our wonder somewhat lessens that
others -not so well informed should follow the similar though
somewhat less " unintelligent " course of neglecting to inform
themselves before venturing on controversial statements.

We need hardly speak of the even more flagrant absurdity of
making the pope " such a lord of bodies as the world has never
dreamed of before." He surely cannot mean that the possession
of the Papal States, which we certainly claim as the right of the
pope, would make him the greatest earthly monarch that the
world has ever dreamed of ; for, if we are not mistaken, there are
several monarchs even now who actually rule a larger territory.
What, then, does he mean ? It is hard to say, unless he fancies
that the pope claims, and that we claim for him, the right to dis-
pose of the lives, persons, and property of Christians (and per-
haps even of others), wherever they may be found, in vindication
of the laws which he may make for them ; for that is the power
of " a lord of bodies," if there is any meaning in the term. And
this seems to be his meaning, for he says elsewhere that " the
ultramontanes claim for the Papacy a control of life and limb
over all the baptized." Now, how far this is from being the
claim or attempted practice of the popes, outside of their own
temporal dominions, the most superficial acquaintance with
canon law or history will abundantly show. Of course so far
as the pope is a lord of souls in their external acts, so far he is
of bodies, in a mediate sense ; but that is scarcely worth saying.

Let us now take up another instance of Mr. Starbuck's dis-

840 , A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. ' [Mar.,

regard of his own rules. Having inadvertently signed his own
condemnation in the passage to which we have referred ac-
knowledging the true meaning of Papal Infallibility, the old
spirit of prejudice and unreason takes possession of him and
blinds him again. Immediately after the words "they claim im-
measurably less," which we have quoted above, he breaks out
as follows :

" To what this process of deifying the pope, which is now in
full career, will ultimately lead is another question." The only
shadow of reason, as he has himself just acknowledged, for say-
ing that we are engaged in a process of deifying the pope is sim-
ply that we claim for him a position as a teacher of divine truth
which, though high indeed, is still, as in his last breath he has
admitted, far below that which even Protestants give to the
apostles. If he would use the knowledge of history which he
seems really to have, he would also of course have to admit that
the words " full career " are simply destitute of foundation and
absolutely absurd, inasmuch as what the council defined as to the
pope's infallibility is no sudden advance, but merely the formula-
tion of what has been practically held from the first centuries of
Christianity, if historical documents are to have any weight ; and
that the real question at the council was not whether it was true,
nor even whether it was de fide, but merely whether it was, in
present circumstances, expedient to define it. But this, as a
lesser injustice, we may afford to pass by. If he had said " this
process of increasing the power and prerogatives of the pope
which is now rapidly going on," his words might be considered
such as may regularly be expected from Protestants. But here,
under the guise of fairness, he slips in the worst venom of big-
otry. He says substantially :

" It is true that so far there is nothing really extraordinary in what Ca-
tholics claim for the pope ; but their disregard of reason is so great that
there is no length to which their progressive system of corrupting Chris-
tianity may not carry them. They have not made the pope equal to Al-
mighty God as yet ; but there is no reason why they should not yet do
so. They may not be actual idolaters in all cases in which some people
think them so, or indeed at all as yet ; but idolatry may some day well
become part of their system."

For he thus continues :

" If it " (this process) " goes on it may well end in making him a Chris-
tian grand lama, an alleged incarnation of the Holy Ghost. Already it was
mentioned by the late pope as a pious opinion that all the popes are des

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 841

dines predestinees — elect souls. This may in the end involve that Alexander
VI. was conceived without taint of original sin."

We are not aware whether the opinion of which he speaks
was mentioned as a pious one by the late pope or not, having
never happened to see or hear of it. It is, however, evident that
it might have been held as such, and it is quite probable that it
was generally so held, in the first centuries, when all the popes
died in the odor of sanctity, and when most of them were mar-
tyrs. And it is plain that it might be so held now ; but that a
pope himself should hold it is, as Mr. Starbuck himself, by a
strange fatality, immediately acknowledges, no more indication
of its ever being defined than that any other theologian of equal
learning and ability should do so. He says, a few lines below :
" The ultramontanes themselves do not deny that the Bishop of
Rome is a sinful, fallible man, as liable in sermons or treatises
or public addresses to fall unadvisably " (unadvisedly we presume
it should be) " into error, or even heresy, as other divines of
equal parts and learning." There would then be, on his own
confession, no reason whatever even to say that " this may in the
end involve " even the definition of this pious opinion as an
article of faith ; but to say that it may in the end involve that
even the worst popes have been conceived without original sin
is not only a groundless and foolish statement, but it is also
calculated (and, as it would seem, intentionally) to mislead
readers into the idea that an elect soul is, in our opinion, an
innocent soul ; that we consider real repentance to be impos-
sible; that if we believe that one has been saved we are so
destitute of the gift of reason as to think that he never did any-
thing to temporarily forfeit his salvation. It is, in fact, an as-
cribing to us of the Protestant incredible error that whatever
the elect may do is not imputed to them after their regeneration,
with the slight addition of making us hold that regeneration
occurs simultaneously with generation instead of at the baptis-
mal font.

Of course, as we have said, that one has led a good life is an
argument, and a strong one, to make us believe that he has been
ultimately saved ; but to hint that a belief that we may have
that one has ultimately been saved will ever make us believe
that his life has always been pleasing to God, is not only to
groundlessly charge us with making additions to our faith, but
of making them in a direction inconsistent no less with our
theology than with our common sense.

842 t A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

There is one more specimen of a spirit and conduct identical
with that which he condemns which we cannot pass by. He
is quoting from a Protestant book in which he finds numerous
mistakes about our doctrine. We had not heard of this book
before, but it seems to be an uncommonly foolish one, judging by
the extracts which he gives from it.

But he says that " on page 257 there is a sound remark."
What is this " sound remark"? Simply this: that " it is quite
unnecessary that the children of the church should have either
hearts or brains." " This," says our intelligent, and unpreju-
diced opponent, " is what the perpetuation of priestly rule
so far beyond the time when it was needed is fast coming to."
It will be seen that in this " sound remark " the quintessence, as
we may say, of all calumnies against the church is contained.
For it plainly means that she does not want hearts or brains in
the mass of her people — that is, that she maintains a system and
policy of obscurantism, enforced by what Mr. Starbuck, adopt-
ing the common slang of controversy, calls " priestly rule "; that
our plan is merely to cram a set of doctrines down the throats of
our people without any appeal to their reason or to their love,
but depending only on a spirit of blind submission induced in
them by superstitious fear.

Now, some people, no doubt, believe this ; probably the au-
thor of the stupid book which contains this remark is of their
number. But here is a man who professes to rise above vulgar
prejudices, who nevertheless endorses this statement, foolish as
well as false ; who ignores what all well-informed Protestants
are fully aware of — namely, that the Catholic Church always la-
bors to develop both the hearts and the brains of her children ;
that she insists on their understanding their faith as far as pos-
sible, knowing that the better they understand it the more they
will cling to it and love it.

Indeed, it is precisely because well-informed Protestants
know this last point well that they protest, as Mr. Starbuck
himself does, not only against our religion, but also against our
having schools in which our children can be taught that religion
thoroughly, and in which it will take that hold on their hearts
and minds that (however they may account for the fact) experi-
ence teaches them it will if it only has the chance.

But enough. Let us turn from the unpleasant task of expos-
ing the painful shortcomings of this our new apologist. They
are not, after all, so much an indication of any special malice in
him as a sign of the depth and the bitterness of that spirit of ha-

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 843

tred and suspicion against the true Bride of Christ which he has
inherite'd from the tradition of three centuries. We need not be
surprised that, though he imagines that he has shaken it off, it
now and then returns upon him and takes possession of him, un-
awares as it would seem, again.

We have not been able to let his more gross and flagrant
errors and inconsistencies pass unnoticed ; but neither must we
neglect to make a just acknowledgment of the advance which
he has made beyond the usual Protestant standpoint, and of the
true testimony which he gives of us in the midst of a wilderness
of falsehood. We will briefly enumerate the principal errors with
regard to us and our faith of which he treats, that it may be evi-
dent how unusual, how almost unprecedented a thing, we may
say, it is to find among those so widely separated from us such
enlightenment as he displays ; and will also quote his own words',
though in some cases they have already been partly given above.

First, he shows that in calling Our Blessed Lady " Mother of
God " we are guilty of no idolatry or absurdit}', but simply fol-
low the decision of the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius,
which " orthodox " Protestants themselves approve. A simple
and easy discovery this to make, it is true — simple and easy in
itself, but not so easy in the mental conditions in which most
Protestants pass their lives, as experience plainly shows. He
says :

" In nothing does popular Protestant controversy betray its ignorance
of the re4ation of Rome to Christian doctrine more than in its vehement
outcry against giving to Mary the title of ' Mother of God.' To object to
the popular use of this as tending to idolatry is all very well. It is also
well to object to the populaj; use of ' person/ as applied to the distinctions
in the Godhead, as tending to tritheism. The popular use of technical
terms of theology anyhow is a fruitful source of mischievous misapprehen-
sion. But these controversialists, who run before they are sent, and dispute
even in Rome itself, attack not merely the term, but the doctrine which it
is meant to express — namely, that Mary is the mother of Christ, and not a
part of him, and that Christ is God. In other words, they do their best to
give the Romans to understand that they have among them not orthodox
Christians but Nestorian heretics. Now, historical Protestantism rests dis-
tinctly upon the foundation, or at least accepts ungrudgingly the doctrinal
decisions, of the first six general councils. Here, as I have heard Dr.
Charles Hodge declare from the pulpit, is a basis of possible reunion
among Christians of all three great divisions of Christendom. So that
these foolish blunderers, sometimes in grave disputations and sometimes in
facetious ribaldry, imagine themselves to be very smart against Romish
idolatry, when in reality they are attacking the historical foundations of the

844 , A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

creed of Christendom — are as much at war with Wittenberg and Geneva,
with Westminster and Princeton, as they are with Rome."

Secondly, he explodes in the following passage the usual ridi-
culous idea that we have banished what Protestants call the sec-
ond commandment from our Decalogue, in order to indulge, and
encourage our people to indulge, in the idolatry which it for-
bids:

"One of the most inveterate calumnies against the Roman Catholic
priesthood— one which I have about as little expectation of being able to
dislodge from the mind of the average Protestant as of being able to move
the chair of Idris — is worthy of tracing from its birth, the mingled offspring
of ignorance and spite. Let us suppose, then, a Protestant of such sort as
is nourished by the writings of Mrs. Julia McNair Wright happening to
take up one of the shorter Roman Catholic catechisms. He turns it over
with the heedlessness of disdain, and comes upon the Ten Commandments.
Glancing through them, he discovers to his mingled horror and delight that
these crafty priests have actually concealed their idolatry from the people
by omitting the second commandment, and have made up the number by
dividing the tenth. Here is a discovery indeed, which is forthwith trumpet-
ed from Dan to Beersheba. If he who shall take away any word of God
shall have his part taken away out of the Book of Life, what shall be the
doom of those who mutilate the Decalogue itself?

"A reflective Protestant might ask by what chance it is that the Roman
Catholic priesthood alone should have varied from the law by which priest-
hoods in general, however unfaithful to the spirit of their religion, arc
always to the last degree intent on preserving every letter of its records,
and the farther they deviate from the letter again are the more solicitous
to prove that this neglect is only in seeming, not in fact. He might sug-
gust that if even among Protestants, who are more unmanageable, preach-
ers have found it so easy to explain away texts of Scripture to their admir-
ing disciples as effectually to curb the temptation to suppress them, much
more might this be true of Roman Catholic priests, indoctrinating so docile
and submissive a laity. But what can he say when the mutilated catechism
is thrust under his very nose ? Pondering the matter in his perplexity, he
chances to stumble upon a German or Scandinavian Lutheran catechism,
and is astonished to find the same omission there. He shows it to the zeal-
ous Protestants aforesaid. At first they look blank. But presently they be-
think themselves that they have heard something to the effect that Luther-
ans are not scrupulous to exclude images from their churches, and, though
no mgrtal man has ever heard of th^ir paying them reverence, they con-
clude that the Lutheran clergy have fallen into the temptation too, as I have
seen openly alleged by a German Calvinist. But our reflecting Protestant,
finding it hard enough on well-known principles of evidence to believe that
Rome herself is in this condemnation, finds it utterly incredible that Wit-
tenberg, Copenhagen, and Upsala have conspired with her in suppressing
that word of God which they have always been so zealous to make known,
or that they are trying to keep out of the catechism what old and young
well know to be in the Bible.

i882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 845

" Turning the matter over, he next examines the larger catechisms, both
Lutheran and Catholic, and there he finds the second commandment in
full, but reading as part of the first, while the division of the tenth into
two is still maintained. He carries back this fact in triumph to his friends,
as proof conclusive that the strange arrangement has not been adopted to
hide something, since here there is nothing hidden. He calls attention to
the fact that the shorter catechisms, both Catholic and Lutheran, give only
the opening sentences of the longer commandments, and that therefore
this arrangement involves of necessity the omission of what to us is the
second, but here is reckoned as the latter part of the first, commandment.
No answer can be given him but a feeble insinuation that it is very con-
venient to have two sorts of catechisms. Too indignant with this contemp-
tible subterfuge to reply, he pursues his investigations, and at last discov-
ers that this reckoning of the first two commandments as one, and of the
tenth as two, leading to the apparent omission of the second in the lesser
manuals, and in them only, originated many centuries ago among the Jew-
ish Masorites, and therefore at the farthest possible remove from any fa-
voring of idolatry. Filled with delight that he is able to clear poor, defiled
Rome of one scandalous imputation at least, he hastens back to his breth-
ren with the good news. But no ; the dear delight of wielding this trench-
ant weapon is not to be wrested from them. The very fact that it is a foul
imputation upon the clergy of more than half Christendom is enough to at-
test its truth. The refutation of it, though as clear as day, is scornfully scru-
tinized and laid aside. We are describing no imaginary course of proceed-
ing. Rome, we will suppose, has devils peculiar to herself, but the devil
that rejoices in iniquity, and rejoices not in the truth, is evidently no bigot.
He can be Catholic or Protestant at a moment's notice."

Thirdly, he treats of Papal Infallibility in a way which shows
that he understands and is willing1 to acknowledge what we
mean by it ; and he sharply rebukes those who persist in care-
lessly 'misinterpreting it, though, as has been seen, he himself
elsewhere puts himself under his own condemnation. He shows
that infallibility is not to be confounded with impeccability ; that
it regards faith and morals, not discipline ; and that it attaches
to the pope's utterances, not on every occasion, but only when
he speaks as the successor of St. Peter, ex cathedrd. His words
are as follows :

" The doctrine of Papal Infallibility does not give so large a scope to
the spirit of slander, but it gives the most ample room to every species and
variety of ignorant blundering. Take one at random, from a prominent
New York journal in no way inclined to behave unhandsomely. Pius IX.
never gave a dispensation at Rome for a mixed marriage till a year or two
before he died. That he gave one then was a good deal resented by the
stricter ultramontanes of the Eternal City. ' But what can they do ? ' says
the journal in question. ' He is infallible.' This is -a typical specimen of
Protestant unreflectingness as to what is really meant by the doctrine of
Papal Infallibility. It will therefore repay dissection as well as another.

846 • A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

" In the first place, infallibility respects doctrine alone, and the granting
of dispensations is purely a matter of discipline. It has, therefore, nothing
to do with the pope's infallibility.

" Secondly, respecting certain acts of discipline, the Vatican Council
demands as a Christian duty implicit and prompt obedience to the pope.
But it does not require such an inward consent and approbation as is ex-
acted for his ex-cathedrd doctrinal decisions.

"Thirdly, the council demands this implicit obedience only for those
acts of the pope which respect the government of the universal church.
Consequently, all his acts which are less than oecumenical stand, doctrinally
at least, on a level with those of other prelates of the same degree. Thus,
if he acted as Latin patriarch, although his acts would include the most of
the church, yet he could not claim implicit obedience under the decree of
the council. Nor could he claim it acting merely as primate of Italy ; nor
yet, again, acting as archbishop of the suburbican province. But the grant-
ing of a dispensation for a mixed marriage is not even a metropolitan act.
In giving it he acts simply as the local diocesan of Rome ; and his people,
in accepting it as valid, are no more bound to relish it than the people of
Strassburg or Brooklyn would be bound to relish a dispensation granted by
their particular bishop. The latter receives this power from Rome for five
years at a time, but within this term his authority to grant such dispensa-
tions within his diocese is as ample as the pope's authority to grant them
in his. And in this case it would be as reasonable to chide the Catholics
of Louisville or Richmond for a want of respect to their infallible bishop
as to chide the people of Rome for a want of respect towards theirs. Al-
though the latter is the source of authority to the other two, yet, the au-
thority once granted, the three bishops, as respects all diocesan acts, are
precisely on a level. The authority of the pope to act as ordinary in other
dioceses than his own remaining latent, is as if it were not.

" Here, then, is a Protestant blunder respecting infallibility of the nth
power. Let us define the unknown quantity : First, the confusion between
doctrine and discipline ; secondly, the neglect to note the distinction be-
tween oecumenical and patriarchal authority ; thirdly, the neglect of the
distinction between patriarch and primate ; fourthly, the neglect of the
distinction between primate and metropolitan ; fifthly, the neglect of the
distinction between metropolitan and diocesan ; it appears, then, that
error" = errors. . . .

" Another error respecting infallibility is less excusable, because be-
gotten of the recklessness of controversy and savoring of the feeling that
any stone will do to throw at a dog — or a papist. The Catholics are taunt-
ingly asked if they place th.e pope above Peter, and are reminded of Peter's
denial of his Lord or of his tergiversation at Antioch as proof that he was
not infallible, and therefore that his alleged successor is not. Now, that
people in general should confound infallibility, or freedom from doctrinal
error, with impeccability, or freedom from personal sin or inconsistency, is
nothing very strange. The two are more closely connected than our cur-
rent theology admits. But that a stanchly orthodox Presbyterian divine
like the late Dr. Nevins, of Baltimore, who firmly believed the apostles to
be as free from doctrinal error as Christ himself, should throw up to the
Roman Catholics that Peter submits to rebuke without a word of his own

1 882.] A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 847

infallibility, and afterwards impliedly acknowledges his fallibility by com-
mending to general attention the very epistle in which his inconsistency
is exposed, as if this candor involved the acknowledgment of error in doc-
trine, is a melancholy instance, in a good man, of the headlong short-sight-
edness of religious hatred. Concede to the Roman Catholics for their chief
pontiff as much of doctrinal infallibility as all our pulpits claim for Peter,
and they will be well content, inasmuch as they actually ask for very much
less. In common with the Protestants they ascribe to Peter and his col-
leagues doctrinal infallibility as a perpetual and personal gift, whereas to
Peter's supposed successor they ascribe it only as an official gift, of inter-
pretation, not of revelation, and dependent for its validity upon a multitude
of stringent and minute conditions. Instead, therefore, of claiming more
than we are accustomed to attribute to Peter and his fellows they claim
immeasurably less."

His admission that the pope, speaking as a private doctor,
may, according to our theology, err, we have quoted above in a
still more distinct form.

Fourthly, he exonerates us from the charge of indifference to
veracity, and (though not so plainly or fully as might be desired)
from holding the odious principle that the end justifies the
means. He says, in the course of his notice of the Protestant
book of which we have spoken :

" On page 26 we read : '" No faith with a Protestant "is a cardinal point
with papists. A lie told to a Protestant is no lie ; the end justifies the
means used to attain the end ; the lie rises to a virtue if told to aid the
Romish Church/

" Now, if the author had said that Rome values charity so much above
truth, that she strains the power of belief so fearfully by the requirements
of her creed, and that she so overweeningly exaggerates her spiritual pre-
rogatives as immensely to weaken the sense of veracity in Roman Catholic
countries, she would have told the truth. But, not content with this, she
attributes to Roman Catholics in a Protestant country, and in their ordi-
nary intercourse with Protestants, a settled falsity such as Rome, in all
the intensity of her first struggles with the Reformation, could never be
brought to sanction doctrinally, however much she may have shown it in
act, or however wildly some of her doctors may have talked. The present
writer, having spent a great part of his early life with Roman Catholic
teachers, governesses, servants, and friends, and in the near neighborhood
of Jesuit priests and of nuns of the Visitation, is able to give emphatic tes-
timony for himself and his family that it would be impossible to exact of
any company of Protestants a more scrupulously steady abstinence from
all attempts at proselytism, or a more perfect observance of the law of
veracity in usual intercourse, than was true of these. That there are great
multitudes of Roman Catholics capable of fastening upon their religious
opponents so foul a character as to think themselves absolved from all
obligations of charity or truthfulness towards them may very well be true.
But to impute to all Roman Catholics such a character, as something in-

848 A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

volved in their very religion, would be a foul slander if it regarded only the'
Jesuits ; while applied to the body at large, especially as existing in Pro-
testant countries, it is as monstrous a calumny as it would be if Roman
Catholics should insist that Mrs. Julia McNair Wright's productions are a
typical exhibition of the Protestant sense of justice and care for truth."

Fifthly, he maintains, substantially, our right to sanction ec-
clesiastical discipline by spiritual penalties, even though these
penalties may, by means of the faith common to those who suf-
fer them and to other Catholics, involve certain temporal conse-
quences. The passage is too long for insertion here.

He also, in the course of his examination of the blundering
book of which we have already spoken, notices and condemns a
number of other vulgar Protestant errors which are common
enough certainly, but hardly prominent enough to make it neces-
sary to speak of them here. They are, however, eminently worth
noticing in a magazine like the one in which his article is written,
which is more likely than this to have readers more or less im-
bued with them.

A Catholic must rise from the perusal of Mr. Starbuck's arti-
cle with somewhat mingled feelings, as is evident from what has
been said. One, of course, is of pleasure to find such rare, such
almost unheard-of admissions of the truth by a Protestant contro-
versialist ; such a desire, as it would seem, to conduct the cam-
paign against us on honorable and common-sense principles ;
such a consciousness that though of course there must be —
Protestantism being taken for granted — plenty of stones which
it is lawful and expedient to throw at papists, it is not every
one which will do, to use his own expression.

But one's sense of pleasure is diminished by the evidence
leaking out here and there (as even in the extracts we have
made) that there is a good deal of the old leaven — we do not like
to say of malice and hypocrisy, and we believe it is actually
neither of these, but of something which at least resembles them,
in this exceptional opponent of ours. At least it may be said that
there is here and there an apparent ignorance, for the moment
at least (as we have shown), of what he elsewhere gives proof of
knowing ; and momentary ignorance of this kind, though excusa-
ble in a speaker in the heat of discussion, is hardly so much so in
one who has time to re-read and carefully ponder his words.

And there is also a feeling of disappointment that, while he
was about it, he did not say a few words about some other vulgar
errors, fully as absurd and, one would think, as well known by
him to be errors as those which he does nail to the wall. It is

T882.J A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. 849

true that he does not profess to give an exhaustive catalogue of
all the Protestant mistakes and misrepresentations about Catho-
lic faith and practice ; and, indeed, it would be hard to do that.
Still, there are some so common and so important that to say
nothing about them seems almost the same as to endorse and
confirm them.

For instance, while justly condemning the attacks made on
the term " Mother of God," why did he not, instead of saying
what is, by the way, untrue, that its popular use tends to idolatry,
rather take occasion to say that Catholics in point of fact are not
idolaters ; that, though they indeed give honor, for God's sake,
to those persons and things most nearly related to him and to his
service, they by no means give to any creature that honor and
worship which is due to himself alone ? Another occasion to
say this presented itself when he shows that the Roman clergy
have not expunged the commandment forbidding the idola-
trous worship of images from the Decalogue. He might then
have acknowledged that it is false to say that the people prac-
tise such worship, as well as to say that the clergy enjoin it ;
but no, he passes on, giving the impression (as, indeed, we have
remarked that he elsewhere directly says) that the Catholic sys-
tem tends to idolatry, and even that there is a considerable
amount of it forming a practical part of the devotion of many at
least of our laity.

Again, why not take some notice of the prevailing Protestant
belief, immensely injurious to us, that indulgences are a permis-
sion to commit sin, and that these permissions are sold for a
consideration, greater or less, according to the gravity of the.
sin ? For many really believe that the Reformation had its;
origin in an outburst of righteous indignation against the
abominable practice of selling permissions to sin. Why not say,,
as he easily might have said, that an indulgence is only the-*
substitution of one good work for another, to satisfy for the
temporal punishment of past sins, already thoroughly repented-;
of, forgiven through repentance, and now supremely detested:
and avoided ?

Why not also expose the ridiculous idea, kindred to the last
mentioned, that the forgiveness of sin is sold in the confessional '•;:
that neither contrition nor amendment are required, but only
confession and the payment of a certain sum in cash to the ab-
solving priest? This imagination, absurd and unfounded' as it.
is, is really believed to be a fact by many with whom- one word'
from a man in Mr. Starbuck's position would have more, weight
VOL. xxxiv. — 54

850 A SINGULAR PHASE OF PROTESTANTISM. [Mar.,

than the most emphatic denunciation of it by an oecumenical
council.

If he had, by a more extensive and thorough illustration of
his subject, cleared away more completely the rubbish of slander
and misunderstanding which malice, bigotry, and indifference have
heaped on the field of controversy, he would not only have been
more perfectly just and charitable to us, but he would also have
better prepared the way for intelligent appreciation of the real
differences between Catholics and Protestants and for profitable
argument upon them. There are many points on which, no
doubt, however clearly and truly our position is explained and
our system developed, there will still be for a time insuperable
objections in the minds of many of those separated from us. •
There are many, for example, who will consider it a corruption
of the Gospel for us to hold that faith is not an enthusiastic con-
fidence that Christ has assured our own personal salvation, but
that it is a belief of and a submission to the voice of God coming
to us through competent authority ; who will regard us as listen-
ing to man's word rather than God's when we believe that it is
by the teaching of the apostles and their successors that Christ
has been pleased that we should be instructed, rather than by
trusting exclusively to the perusal of a book written by holy
men in various ages, but not definitely compiled or held as the
word of God, in all parts, till long after the apostolic age ; who
will look on our whole sacramental system as false and per-
nicious, preferring to believe that God always gives his grace
directly to the soul according to his good pleasure, having in no
case attached definite exterior conditions to its reception ; and
so on. These points may suffice as specimens of our real diver-
gences ; it would take a work like Moehler's Symbolism to
thoroughly explain them.

Yes, there are many matters on which we really differ ; but
what a comfort it would be if our discussion could be reduced to
these ; if, instead of having to deny innumerable false notions and
prejudices held by Protestants with whom we have occasion to
speak, and being seldom fully believed in so denying them, we
could have a man of their own number who, having thoroughly
freed himself and them from these false notions and prejudices,
would enable us to come directly to the real points at issue !

Mr. Starbuck's article is the beginning of this work, which he,
or some one similar in position, information, and intelligence to
him, ought to undertake. But it cannot be done satisfactorily
in a magazine article, however good that article might be. His

1 882.] NE VV PUBLICA TIONS. 85 1

article is pretty good — we wish we could say very good — as far
as it goes ; but it could not go far enough. Let us hope that at
some not distant day a manual will appear entitled " Full and
Correct Instructions on the real Departures of the Catholic
Church from the true Doctrine of Christ, showing all the many
points in which her position is misunderstood. Written as
an aid to intelligent controversy, by a Protestant clergyman."
But we should not mind so much the title if the book were really
all that such a title would imply.

In the meantime, however, we make our acknowledgments
for the unexpected and unusual favor which we have received,
on the principle, of course, that " half (or even a quarter) of a
loaf is better than no bread."

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

AN INSTRUCTION ON MIXED MARRIAGES. By the Right Rev. William Ber-
nard Ullathorne, O.S.B., Bishop of Birmingham. New York, Cincin-
nati, and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers. 1881.

In this episcopal Instruction given to his clergy assembled in synod,
the venerable and learned Bishop of Birmingham sets forth fully and im-
pressively, with ample citations of authorities, the doctrine and law of the
church concerning mixed marriages. He proves that they have been for-
bidden from the earliest period of the separation of men into two classes,
the members of the true church and those who are not in that holy com-
munion. Specifically, this is proved to have been always the law of the
Catholic Church. Although, by his supreme authority, the pope can and
does grant, through his delegates the bishops, dispensations from this
law, the bishop shows that he requires that these dispensations should be
given for grave reasons, and that the motive for relaxing in certain cases
the strict law of the church is that greater evils which would follow from
withholding the dispensation universally may be avoided. The bishop
insists, nevertheless, that in a majority of cases, even when such marriages
are contracted with a legal dispensation, they turn out badly, and that their
frequency is something lamentable, dangerous, productive of great evils,
the loss of many members by the church, a multitude of sins, and the
damage or ruin of faith and religion in many souls and families. Of course
his practical inference is that great exertion ought to be made to prevent
as much as possible Catholic young people from marrying out of the
church. There is really only one efficacious means of carrying out this
advice, which is only a repetition of the admonitions which have been
frequently given by the Holy See.

In granting dispensations bishops and their chancellors are practi-

852 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.^

cally dependent on the parish priests, who alone can examine into the rea-
sons which exist for asking the dispensation and seeing that the prescribed
conditions are complied with. Priests, on their part, are morally unable to
oppose an efficacious hindrance to the wishes of those who apply to them
for dispensation, except in rare cases, either in or out of the confessional.
There is generally no choice, except between assent to the request or permit-
ting the party to go on and incur the guilt of mortal sin, with other evils fol-
lowing in its train, by marrying without dispensation in defiance of the law of
the church. With all the lenity and laxity of the actual practice in admin-
istering the law which is at present tolerated, instances are only too com-
mon of its open and flagrant violation, even to the extent of incurring
excommunication. The effect of tightening the reins of discipline, without
first effecting a great improvement in the dispositions of that great num-
ber of Catholics whose ideas and sentiments on the sanctity of the sacra-
ment of marriage are very loose, could only be grievously detrimental.
Therefore there is but one way to lessen and remedy the evil, which is to
effect this improvement by moral and religious means, and to infuse by in-
struction and persuasion a more Catholic spirit into those parents and
young people whose sentiments are less Catholic than they ought to be.
When, by the awakening of conscience and the heightening of the sense of
reverence and loyalty toward the authority of the church, mixed marriages
come to be generally reprobated and shunned by the Catholic people,
prelates and parish priests can more safely and efficaciously use their power
over individuals by refusing to grant dispensations unless they are fully
satisfied with the reasons which induce the petitioners to ask for them.

An extensive circulation of Bishop Ullathorne's Instruction among both
the clergy and laity, its careful reading and consideration by parents, and
by those of our young people who are reasonable enough to consult some-
thing higher than the ethics of romantic literature, will be one means of
awakening attention to the vital importance of the matter in question.

There are other matters also equally important, in respect to which it is
needful that both parents and young people should be instructed. With a
great number it is not perversity but a lack of instruction and knowledge
which causes them to think and act with so much levity and imprudence,
and exposes them to so many dangers and miseries. There is an atmos-
phere of false ideas and unwholesome sentiments diffused everywhere,
which is unconsciously inhaled by our young people and poisons their
moral blood. The medicine by which they are cured is often very bitter.
The preventive is in a better intellectual aliment and moral regimen.
Those who are qualified to do so will do great good if they will write that
which young people will read, and which will give them reasonable and
Christian ideas respecting marriage.

IRELAND OF To-DAY. The Causes and Aims of Irish Agitation. By M. F.
Sullivan. With an introduction by Thomas Power O'Connor, M.P.
Philadelphia : J. M. Stoddart & Co. 1881.

The story of that infamy of modern times, the English government of
Ireland, has been so often told that it is difficult to say anything new on
the subject. Yet the volume before us will be found a handy book of ref-
erence, and it is written with as little show of anger or resentment as pas-

1 882 ] NE w PUBLICA noNs. 853

sible. But there is one chapter which, though by no means exhaustive, de-
serves especial attention. Under the heading, "A lettered Nation reduced
by Force and Law to Illiteracy," Mrs. Sullivan, in unexaggerated language,
relates how.England perpetrated one of its cruellest wrongs on the Irish
people, destroying by a course of legislation, as well as by arbitrary brute
force, the institutions of learning, great or small, that had survived the
constant wars for independence, forbidding Catholics to teach school, and
then, by a refinement of malice, punishing all who, having the means,
should send their children abroad to acquire the education forbidden at
home. It is fair to call this one of the very cruellest of wrongs, for it
aimed to turn a proud and intellectual people into a nation of stupid boors.
Under the carefully studied system the Irish people were made the most
illiterate in the civilized world, perhaps. This people, who, at a period when
they were free to work out their own destiny, were the light that shone
amid the general darkness of Europe, were gradually brought down to be
the amusement of Cockney scribblers and caricaturists, and of their weak
and cowardly imitators in this country. The loss of nationality, the loss of
their ancient language with its wealth of song, legend, and history, the loss
of their land, and the loss of their worldly goods and prosperity generally,
were hard indeed to bear, but the most galling hurt to a sensitive race like
the Irish has, after all, been the deprivation of a chance to use and develop
the intellect with which God has so fully endowed it. What has added
bitterness, too, to this wrong has been the easy insolence with which Irish-
men and Irishwomen who have risen to any eminence are quietly set down
as " English " by the very authors or abettors of the wrong.

Americans who draw their information from English or pro-English
sources are sometimes inclined to believe that the Catholic Emancipation
Act of 1829 and the so-called Liberal statesmen of contemporary England
have changed all this ; that now, on the score of education at least, Ireland
has no longer good ground of complaint. Mrs. Sullivan says, with perfect
truth : " There is to-day a Catholic university in Ireland, founded by volun-
tary contributions, but the English government does not permit it to con-
fer degrees. At the same time the University of Dublin is essentially
Protestant; the astounding fact stands forth that in the last quarter of the
nineteenth centur}^ a Catholic cannot obtain a university degree in a coun-
try of which four-fifths of the taxpayers who sustain the schools are Ca-
tholics ! "

THE LIFE OF THE REV. MARY JOHN BAPTIST MUARD, FOUNDER OF THE
MISSIONARY PRIESTS OF THE CONVENT OF ST. EDMUND. By the Rt.
Rev. Dom Isidore Robot, O.S.B. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pus-
tet & Co. 1881.

This is an interesting and instructive biography of Rev. Father Muard.
It shows how deeply some souls have been stirred in view of the evils which
for some time past have threatened Catholic France. Not only was Father
Muard keenly pained at the sight of the calamities which he saw impend-
ing over his country, but, moved by the grace of God, he set himself to work
in providing the means of averting them.

Evidently the time has come when Catholic Frenchmen, if they would
not see the gift of divine faith disappear from their fair country, should bestir

854 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

themselves. A Gambetta is its prime minister. and a Bert is at the head of
its bureau of instruction ! The accession of these enemies of the faith to
power reminds us of an anecdote related of one of the Fathers of the De-
sert. When at prayers he inquired of God how it was permitted that an
emperor who was a bitter persecutor was allowed to be elected to that of-
fice. And the reply was heard : " I could find none worse." If such men
in power do not cause Catholic Frenchmen to sink all their political and
other differences, and unite for the sake of defending the supreme interests
of religion, then there is little or no hope of awakening them to their real
dangers. These irreligious men will not hesitate to cut down to the quick
and beyond, and if there be no life left, or not sufficient among Catholics
of this generation in France to defend their faith and recover lost ground,
then calamity will be added to calamity and ruin will be heaped upon rum
by the reckless experiments of these superficial politicians.

Father Muard's life shows us the other side of the character of the
French people — its deep religiousness, its thorough earnestness and sincere
piety. It shows how powerfully these traits exert themselves when under
the influence of divine grace, even in our day, so given to frivolity, so world-
ly and pleasure-seeking.

But things in France are not past redress, and there is faith enough, if
awakened from its apathy and united, to renew the pristine vigor and re-
clothe the eldest daughter of the church with new garments of beauty and
splendor.

Those readers who take an interest in the characteristics of religious
orders, and their adaptation to the needs of the age in which they are born,
will find much that is instructive and edifying in this volume. The reading
of such lives is stimulating to a higher and nobler life, and, in times like
ours, will be read and pondered over everywhere by all Catholics who are
not indifferent to the progress of religion.

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE FIRST MASS IN CONNECTICUT (June,
1781), Sunday, June 26, 1881, in St. Peter's Church, Hartford. Hart-
ford. 1881.

This celebration was closely connected with the Yorktown Centennial.
Several regiments of our French auxiliaries marched through Hartford on
their way to Virginia, and one of them was accompanied by a chaplain,
M. 1'Abbe Robin, whose interesting letters were translated into English
and published in Boston in T784. This priest celebrated Mass on the
Feast of St. John Baptist in the French camp, as an old French resident
who was present related to Father Fitton many years ago. The site of
the camp is in St. Peter's parish. The centennial of this Mass was cele-
brated in St. Peter's Church, which is a handsome Gothic edifice built of
brown stone, under the direction of the able and zealous rector, Father
Tierney, with great splendor, the bishop of the diocese officiating pontifi-
cally, two bishops and a great number of priests being present, and the
church crowded. Father O'Gorman, of St. Paul's Church, New York,
preached an appropriate and eloquent discourse, with which the gentle-
men of the city government, who were present by invitation, expressed
themselves as much pleased, and which gave genefal satisfaction to all its
auditors.

1 882.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 855

In the evening Bishop Conroy celebrated pontifical vespers, and the
venerable, aged priest, Father Fitton, of Boston, who was ordained in 1827
and for several years had the sole pastoral charge of all the Catholics in
Connecticut, gave a very entertaining and instructive historical discourse
on the early years of Catholicity in Hartford. This excellent and apostolic
priest soon after finished his laborious and fruitful ministry of fifty-four
years, having departed this life, full of years and merits, at East Boston, a
few weeks after the celebration at Hartford.

The pamphlet which the Hon. Thomas McManus has issued contains an
account of the ceremonies of this most successful and interesting celebra-
tion of the first Catholic centenary of Hartford, together with the two dis-
courses, and some carefully prepared and valuable historical sketches of
the events commemorated and of the rise and growth of the diocese. Every
Catholic of the diocese of Hartford ought to read this pamphlet, and pre-
serve it, with special care ; and in fact all Catholics throughout the coun-
try, and all Americans who take an interest in early reminiscences connect-
ed with our civil history as well as with ecclesiastical affairs, will find it
quite unique and worthy of perusal. We take occasion, also, to call atten-
tion to M. Robin's letters, which we believe have been republished since
their first issue, as among the most curious documents extant respecting
our Revolutionary war and the state of things in New England at that
time.

PICTURESQUE IRELAND. Edited by John Savage, LL.D. Parts 7, 8, and 9.
New York : Thomas Kelly. 1881.

This work, which is coming out in numbers, might be fuller in some of
its historical and philological details. And there is no good reason for
holding to that ridiculous spelling of Gaelic proper names which came in-
to vogue during the last century — a time when the misfortunes of the beau-
tiful isle were at their height, and when the language and customs of the
Irish were looked upon by " polite " writers, Irish (shame it is to have to
say it !) as well as English, as curious relics of barbarism. Of course in
geographical and other proper names now in use it would be pedantic and
confusing to follow any but the common orthography, corrupt as that or-
thography is. The etymology of the name Gal way, as given at page 183, is
incorrect, as a slight knowledge of Gaelic ought to show. There are a few
slips in proof-reading, too. For instance, page 178, Eogan Mor (for Eoghan
[Owen] Mor) ; and page 188, " Mr. Eugene Curry" for Mr. Eugene O'Curry.
Nevertheless, as far as these numbers have reached, editor and publisher
have combined to give an exceedingly handsome and valuable itinerary of
Ireland. The paper, type, ink, and Illustrations are excellent.

THE LIFE OF THE ANGELIC DOCTOR, ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, OF THE ORDER
OF FRIARS PREACHERS. By a Father of the same Order. New York :
D. & J. Sadlier&Co. 1881.

The lives of the saints is the application of the truths of the Gospel of
Christ to practice. Hence the reading of their biographies is an antidote
against doubt, scepticism, and infidelity, the prevailing intellectual epidemics
of our times. Moreover, a taste for such reading is a proof against the spirit
of worldliness. Notwithstanding St. Thomas' commanding intellect, there

856 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

was one thing he could not understand. "I cannot understand," he said,
" how any one who knows that he is in mortal sin can laugh and be merry."
This life of St. Thomas is short, popular, and interesting. One cannot
read too many and too much on the lives of the saints.

CATHEDRA PETRI : The Titles and Prerogatives of St. Peter, and of his
See and Successors, as described by the Early Fathers, Ecclesiastical
Writers, and Councils of the Church. By Charles F. B. Allnatt. Lon-
don : Burns & Gates ; Dublin: Gill & Sons. 1879.

WHICH is THE TRUE CHURCH ? or, A Few Plain Reasons for joining the
Roman Catholic Communion. By the same author. Edinburgh : Print-
ed at the Ballantyne Press. 1881.

These are two excellent, and, in themselves, convincing works, the ob-
jects of which are evident from their titles. They display much reading
and research, and are also remarkable for clearness of method and arrange-
ment. We must, however, confess to a kind of feeling of disheartenment
when such books are brought to our notice, coming from the thought that
so few of those for whom they are intended will ever read them. Time and
again has Catholic truth been plainly demonstrated and the claims of the
church set in the clearest light ; but the mass of the Protestant world ab-
solutely ignores all these expositions as completely as if they had never
been made, and goes on repeating its patchwork of falsehood, absurdity,
and stale objections to the truth as confidently as before. Of course this
is not all wilful blindness by any means ; many would be convinced, if it
ever occurred to them to examine. But that is the difficulty : Protestants,
as a rule, will not read Catholic books. Here and there, however, there
are a few really in earnest, and with eyes opened by the grace of God, who
will be materially helped by such works as these before us ; and for them,
however few, it is worth while that they should be written. They are also
serviceable to Catholic disputants as rich storehouses of argument and
condensed history from which to draw materials for the controversies in
which they may be engaged.

THE ART OF THINKING WELL. By the Rev. James Balmes. Translated
from the Spanish by the Rev. William McDonald, D.D. Preceded by
a Life of the Author. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1882.

We are so accustomed to regard Balmes as an author of the first half of
this century that it rather takes us by surprise when we have it brought
distinctly to memory that he was born in the same year with Leo XIII.
and the venerable Cardinal of New York. He was one of those prodigies,
who in early youth attain a growth and -achieve a fame ordinarily reached at
a later period. He was born in 1810 ; in 1848 his career was finished. One
work of his, Protestantism and Catholicity Compared, which he finished at the
age of thirty-one, has placed his name permanently on the rolls of fame,
and has a lasting value. His philosophical writings have the stamp of ge-
nius upon them, and his minor works are all excellent, yet there is nothing
in all these which would give him that place among the authors of this cen-
tury which he has acquired by his Protestantism. The most important of
all these— viz., the Fundamental Philosophy— rather shows what he was na-
turally capable of achieving in philosophy than what he did accomplish.

1 8 8 2 . ] NE iv PUB Lie A TIONS. 857

Dr. McDonald's Life of Balmes is more complete than any other biogra-
phical sketch we have seen, and is extremely interesting. The treatise on The
Art of Thinking Well, which he has translated, sparkles with all the charac-
teristic brilliancy of Balmes' style. It is very attractive reading, and brimful
of practical wisdom. An intelligent young man can hardly have a plea-
santer or more useful companion, or a better guide to the right use of his
mind in the most important affairs of life.

MADELEINE DE S. POL. By Theodore Howard Galton. London : Burns &
Gates. 1881. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

A story of rural England about the beginning of this century. The
heroine is a beautiful French girl of good connections who is forced from
her own country by the disorders accompanying the Revolution. She is
wooed and won by a man betonging to the old Catholic gentry. Inciden-
tally many touches are given that illustrate the social condition of Catho-
lics in the remoter parts of England at a time when the anti-Catholic penal
laws had been somewhat relaxed in their coarser features. In spite of a
studied and rather tiresome accuracy of detail which occasionally suggests
an English " county-history," the story is interesting, particularly to Eng-
lish readers.

IRISH FAITH IN AMERICA. Recollections of a Missionary. Translated
from the French by Miss Ella McMahon. New York, Cincinnati, and
St. Louis : Benziger Bros.

A French priest's enthusiastic tribute to the religious zeal and devotion
of the Irish race. The translation is good.

MANX GAELIC. A paper read by W. S. Kerruish, Esq., at the Thirteenth
Annual Session of the American Philological Association, held at Cleve-
land, Ohio, July, 1881.

A curious illustration of the neglect which ill-fortune brings is seen in
the ignorance, among English-speaking people especially, of everything
bearing on the Gaelic language, traditions, or literature. So complete,
indeed, is this ignorance that even educated Englishmen, and Americans of
English origin, have but the vaguest ideas of what the Gaelic language is
and by whom it is spoken. To many Gaelic suggests a Highland Scot only,
in his kilt and fillibeg, while the fact that it is the native tongue of Keltic
Ireland, and the only language intelligible to thousands of Irishmen as well
as Scotchmen, comes to them as a startling revelation. Mr. Kerruish, in the
pamphlet before us, touches on this supercilious ignorance : " In Bryant's
translation of Homer he admits the inequality of English to German in the
perfect retention of sense and rhythm of the great original, and extols the
translation of Voss as marvellous in its fidelity, even to the perfect preser-
vation of the caesural pause. Had he been familiar with Archbishop Mac-
Hale's translation of Homer into Gaelic (Irish) he would have had, it is be-
lieved, an illustration in which was preserved perfectly not only the sense
and the caesural pause, but the accompanying sound, even to the crash
of arms and the voices of the many-sounding sea." Nevertheless, owing
greatly to the labors of German and other Continental scholars, and to the
revival generally of education in Ireland, there seems to be an awakening
of the children of the Gael to the need of prolonging the life of the old Ian-

858 ' NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

guage — a language that ages ago prevailed throughout Gaul, Upper Italy,
and the Iberian Peninsula, but that now finds its last refuge in Ireland and
the fastnesses of Scotland and the adjacent islands.

The Irish dialect retains the ancient alphabet and orthography, and is,
therefore, best suited to the needs of the philologist. The Scots in the last
century, for semi-political reasons it is asserted, discarded the old alphabet,
and by the adoption of an arbitrary orthography contributed greatly to the
corruption of their dialect. In 1762, according to Mr. Kerruish, a Bible so-
ciety followed a similar arbitrary course with the dialect of the Isle of Man,
so that Manx too, as printed, has merely a caricature resemblance to the
old language.

Mr. Kerruish says that he was urged some years ago by Prof. Huxley to
prepare an article on the Manx Gaelic. His short but well-arranged paper
deserves the attention of all who have any interest in Keltic studies.

THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF CATHOLIC POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO THE
PRESENT DAY (1350-1881). Edited by Eliot Ryder. Notre Dame, In-
diana: Joseph A. Lyons. The University of Notre Dame. 1881.

To include in one volume specimens of all the Catholics who have writ-
ten worthy poetry in English, within the last five hundred years could not
be attempted, but the editor of the Household Library must have had some
such ambition if we are to judge both by his title-page and his preface. At
all events, he has brought together selections from the most of those poets
who have achieved fame, and have at the same time been known to the
world as Catholics. With contemporary poets the task must, of course,
have been difficult. In a volume such as this it is not eas)^ to avoid the
suspicion of favoritism in the selection of poems whose authors are alive
and able, if need be, to wield their pens in deadly prose for or against a
book, according as their merit — or their vanity — has been acknowledged or
ignored. In spite, then, of several serious omissions, and in spite of a few
pieces of mere drivel having found their way into its pages, the volume will
be found convenient. It is handsomely bound, and as a specimen of book-
making would have been in every way a credit to the publisher had a
better quality of ink and presswork been used.

ORIGINAL, SHORT, AND PRACTICAL SERMONS FOR EVERY SUNDAY OF THE
ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR. Three Sermons for every Sunday. By F. X.
Weninger, S.J., Doctor of Theology. Cincinnati : C. J. H. Lowen. 1881.

These sermons certainly are a valuable addition to the existing stock of
literature of this class ; for while they are real and elaborated discourses,
and not mere skeletons to be filled up with considerable trouble only, they
are at the same time short, and written in a style which any one can make
his own. They are also eminently suggestive, both in style and in matter,
and can be read with much profit by those who do not intend to follow
them very closely in preaching.

The only fault of consequence in them seems to us to be their short-
ness. No doubt an error on this side is much less than on the other; but
while these are hardly short enough for Low Mass, they must be delivered
very slowly to occupy the twenty-five minutes which the author claims.
It will probably be found very hard to take more than three minutes in

1 882.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 859

reading any page aloud with the utmost deliberation ; and they average
five pages in length — at least we have found it so.

They appear to be only the first instalment of a complete collection
which is to be published.

SAFEGUARDS OF DIVINE FAITH. A Series of Eight Essays. Part i. Es-
says No. i., ii., iii., iv. By the Rev. Henry Formby. London : Burns &
Gates. 1881. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

The object of these essays is to show that Christ is a Divine Legislator
as well as Teacher of mankind, and that obedience to his law and doctrine
is obligatory and necessary to human welfare.

In this first part Mr. Formby has a good deal to say which is very true
and timely on the importance to Catholics of reading the Scriptures more
than they are generally wont to do. A careful and satisfactory revision
of our Douai Version with the sanction of competent authority would pro-
mote this general reading of the Scriptures among the laity, and is assured-
ly most desirable. We have been looking into the genuine and original
English Version of Douai and Rheims of late, and have been much im-
pressed by its extraordinary excellence. Our ordinary reformed editions
have to a great extent defaced instead of improving the austere, Doric
grandeur of this old monument of the learning and piety of English Ca-
tholics. Doubtless it has defects in rendering, clumsy passages, and an
abundance of archaisms and obsolete forms which absolutely require a re-
vision. But this work would not be so very difficult, as may easily be
seen by looking at the Scripture lessons in the Marquess of Bute's Eng-
lish Breviary.

Mr. Formby considers also the institution of the week with its Sab-
bath, setting forth the proofs of its being coeval with the creation, and its
great utility. The topics of the second part as announced on the cover of
the first part are of even greater interest, though not, probably, of greater
practical importance.

PROTESTANTISM AND THE CHURCH. By the Rt. Rev. Mgr. Preston, V.G.,
LL.D. New York : Robert Coddington. 1882.

The barbarian Theodoric put to death the Roman philosopher Boethius
by pressing a cord into his forehead until his eyes started out, and then
finishing him by beating with clubs. Trie so-called Reformers attempted
to destroy the Catholic Church in the same way. History sets forth Theo-
doric and Boethius as they really were : the first as the real criminal, the
latter as a man venerable for his exalted wisdom and virtue. History,
even as written by Protestants, is setting forth the Reformers and the
church in a similar parallel. And as were the men who pretended to re-
form Christianity, so is their work. Mgr. Preston, in a series of works
made up from several courses of lectures given in the church of which he is
rector, has gone over a great part of the whole ground of controversy be-
tween Catholicity and Protestantism. In this, his latest volume he has
gathered together and applied the pitiless exposures, and the unmerciful
censures, more severe than any which have been pronounced by Catholic
writers, with which Englishmen bred up in hereditary English prejudices
have held up to the view of the world in its real character the devastating
work of tyrants and faithless priests miscalled the Reformation.

860 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar., 1882

Besides showing that this revolution of the sixteenth century was a
violent and destructive war for the destruction of the church, Mgr. Preston
also proves, by quotations from the standards of the Protestant sects, that
they theoretically deny and formally subvert the church as an institution
of Christ, and make a war of words upon the true church of Christ as
ruthless as the war of external force waged by tyrants.

Protestantism essentially destructive of the church is his thesis. In
carrying this through by an argumentative and documentary process of
reasoning, Mgr. Preston thoroughly demolishes that system of compromise
and mediation which proposes to reconcile and unite Catholicity with Pro-
testantism and the more ancient schism of the Greeks of the Lower Em-
pire, by tying together the living tree and all its dissevered and dead
branches.

The two lectures on the Protestant Reformation and on Anglicanism
are the second and third of the series. The first and fourth, which begin
and close the course, are devoted to an exposition of the origin, constitu-
tion, and real nature of the church, as founded by Christ and perpetually
existing. The array of documentary evidence proving the fact of the in-
stitution of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ and its unchanging con-
tinuity, and the doctrinal exposition showing its nature and properties,
are very judiciously and completely made. The citations from the Fathers
are well selected, copious, and arranged with excellent method. The argu-
ment as a whole, while it is tersely compacted, consecutive, and logical, is
also sufficiently clothed with rhetoric to be smooth and shapely in form,
and has a sufficiently popular manner and style to be easily intelligible and
readable. In our opinion this book may be classed among the best of the
kind in English Catholic literature. In the treatment of its one main
topic we do not know of any book which is superior to it, perhaps we can
say equal to it, for the use of the generality of intelligent readers.

MR. T. W. ALLIES has in preparation a fourth volume of his Formation
of Christendom, which will treat of the relation of the Spiritual to the Civil
Power in the State previous to the coming of Christ, and then of the same
relation during the first three Christian centuries, down to the time of the
Council of Nice. The volume will contain 400 or 500 pages, and will be
published at \QS. to subscribers. Subscriptions may be sent to Mr. T. W.
Allies, 82 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London.

SONGS FOR FREEDOM, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Rev. M. J. MacHale. Dublin : M. II.
Gill & Son. 1881.

THE PEOPLE'S MANUAL. THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS. By the Rt. Rev. Herbert
Vaughan, Bishop of Salford. St. Louis : P. Fox. 1881.

ST. CASIMIR'S HYMN TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. From the Latin, by the Rev. Geo. A. Wat-
son. St. Louis, Mo. : C. B. Woodward & Co., Printers. 1881.

THE LAND CATECHISM. Is Rent just ? What political economy teaches regarding it. By Wil-
liam Brown. Montreal : Printed by John Lovell £ Son. iSSi.

A SURE WAY TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE: a book of instructions for those betrothed and for the
married. From the German of the Rev. Conrad Sickinger, by the Rev. Edward Ign. Tay-
lor, of St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, Wilmington, Del. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis :
Benziger Bros. 1881.

AP The Catholic world

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