III.

“At thy sweet will.” Then wherefore didst thou will To pass death’s portal? To the outward ear There comes no answer; but the heart can hear. Thy Son had passed it. Thou upon the hill Of scorn hadst stood beside his cross; and still Wouldst “follow the Lamb where’er he went.” Of fear Thou knewest naught. The cup’s last drop, so dear To Him, thy love must share――or miss its fill. But more. Thy other children――even we―― Must enter life through death. And couldst thou brook To watch our terrors at the dark unknown, Powerless to stay us with a sympathy Better than any tender word or look―― Bidding our steps tread firmly in thine own?

AMID IRISH SCENES.

The very thought of a journey to distant lands is invigorating. We throw off the dust of old habits, quit the routine of daily life, shut out the customary thoughts of business, and, with hearts that in some mysterious way seem suddenly to have grown younger, turn towards other worlds. Even the uncertainty which is incident to travel has a peculiar charm. The love we bear our country and friends grows warmer and assumes unwonted tenderness when we leave them, not knowing whether it will be given us to look upon them again; and as the distance widens, the bonds of affection are drawn closer. Amid strange faces we reflect how sweet it is to dwell with those who love us; a thousand thoughts of home and friends come back to us, the heart is humanized, and we resolve to become more worthy of blessings for which we have been so little grateful. Indeed, I think that the chiefest pleasure of travel is in the thought and hope of communicating to others our own impressions of all the lovely things we see.

Who would care to look on blue mountains, or ocean sunset, or green isles, if he might never speak of their beauty, never utter the deep feelings which they awaken? All strong emotion, whether of joy or sorrow, seeks to express itself. Nature is beautiful only when we associate it with God or man. No greater torment can be imagined than to think and feel, and yet to live alone for ever with that which has no thought or feeling. I remained in Ireland too short a time to be able to form well-founded opinions or to reach just conclusions concerning the present condition or the future prospects of the country. I was compelled to travel hurriedly, and therefore observed superficially; and in my haste I doubtless often failed to remark what was most worthy of attention. At least, I approached the sacred island with reverence. Whatever I might see, I knew that my feet were upon holy ground, and that I was in the midst of the most Catholic people on earth; I felt that if sympathy could give insight or reveal beauty, I should not look in vain.

And now, with the liberty and quickness of thought, passing the vast expanse of ocean, I shall place myself at Oban, on the western coast of Scotland, opposite the island of Mull; for though we are not here on Irish soil, yet this whole region is so full of Irish memories and Irish glories that we may not pass it in silence. The scenery is sombre, bleak, and wild. It is not lovely nor yet sublime, though there is about it a kind of gloomy and desolate grandeur; and, indeed, this is the general character of all scenery in the Scotch Highlands. It is rugged, harsh, and waste. It does not invite to repose. Amid these barren moors and fog-covered hills we are chilled, driven back upon ourselves. We involuntarily move on, content with a passing glance at dark glens and lochs from whose waters crags and peaks lift their heads and frown in stern defiance. The gloomy tales of murder and treachery, of war and strife, and the ruined castles which tell of battles of other days, deepen the impressions made by nature’s harsh aspect. Even in summer the air is heavy with mist and fog. A day rarely passes without rain, and in the middle of August the traveller finds himself in an atmosphere as damp, cold, and dreary as that of London in November. Before us is the dark sea of the Hebrides, from whose sullen waters a hundred naked and desert islands rise in rough and jagged outlines. As we sail through the narrow straits of this archipelago, we see nothing but barren rocks, covered with black fog. There is no grass, there are no pleasant landscapes, no cultivated fields. We hear only the moaning of the waves, the howling wind, and the hoarse cry of the sea-bird. Nothing could be less beautiful or less attractive; and yet it is in this wild sea and among these rocky islands that we find the sacred spot from which Scotland and northern England received religion and civilization. During the summer a boat leaves Oban every morning to make the tour of the island of Mull, taking Staffa and Iona in the route. The steamer stops at Staffa to permit tourists to visit the Cave of Fingal, of which so much has been written. This cave, which is about seventy feet high and forty feet in width, with a depth of two hundred and thirty feet, opens into the ocean on the southern coast of the little island of Staffa. Its front and sides are formed of innumerable columns of basaltic rock, precisely similar to those which are found in the Giant’s Causeway. They are perfectly symmetrical, and one is almost tempted to think they must have been shaped by the hand of man. But, apart from this peculiarity, the only thing which struck me as very remarkable in this celebrated cave is the mighty surge of the ocean, whose angry waves, rushing into this gloomy vault, dash against its everlasting columns, and, with wild and furious roar that reverberates along the high arch in tones of thunder, are driven back, to be followed by others, and still others. And so all day long and through the night, from year to year, this concert of the waves far from human ears chants God’s awful majesty and infinite power.

Nine miles south of Staffa lies Iona, St. Columba’s blessed isle. “We were now,” wrote Dr. Johnson one hundred years ago, “treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”

It was in 563, more than thirteen hundred years ago, that Columkille, a voluntary exile from Erin, which he loved with more than woman’s tenderness, landed upon this island. Twelve of his Irish monks had accompanied him, resolved to share his exile. Others soon followed, drawn by the fame of his sanctity, and in a little while Columkille and his apostles issued forth from Iona to carry the religion of Christ to the pagans who dwelt on the surrounding islands and on the mainland of Scotland; and from this little island the light of faith spread throughout the Caledonian regions. All the churches of Scotland looked to it as the source whence they had received God’s choicest gifts, and for two hundred years the abbots who succeeded St. Columba held spiritual dominion over the whole country. The Scottish kings chose Iona as their burial-place, in the hope of escaping the doom foretold in the prophecy:

“Seven years before that awful day When time shall be no more, A watery deluge will o’ersweep Hibernia’s mossy shore; The green-clad Isla, too, shall sink, While with the great and good Columba’s happy isle shall rear Her towers above the flood.”

In an age of ferocious manners and continual war this holy and peaceful isle, far removed from scenes of strife and blood, might well be regarded not only as the fit resting-place of the dead, but as the happiest home of the living.

Even to-day, in its loneliness and desolation, there is a calm, sweet look about it that makes one linger as loath to quit so sacred a spot. But the simple, great ones of old are gone; their bones lie buried beneath our feet.

“To each voyager Some ragged child holds up for sale a store Of wave-worn pebbles.… How sad a welcome! Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir, Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer.”

A few poor fishermen with their families dwell upon the island. They are all Protestants. After the Reformation, the Calvinistic Synod of Argyll handed over all the sacred edifices of Iona to a horde of pillagers, who plundered and destroyed them. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these ruins were given up to the ignorant inhabitants of the island, who turned the cathedral into a stable, used the church of the convent of canonesses as a quarry, and broke and threw into the sea nearly all of the three hundred and sixty crosses which formerly covered the island.

As late as 1594 the three great mausoleums of the kings were to be seen, with the following inscriptions:

Tumulus regum Scotiæ, Tumulus regum Hiberniæ, Tumulus regum Norwegiæ.

But these have also disappeared, and nothing remains but the site. Here were buried forty-eight kings of Scotland, four kings of Ireland, and eight kings of Norway; and it is even said that one of the kings of France found here a last resting-place. Macbeth closes the line of Scottish kings who were buried in Iona. His successor, Malcolm Canmore, chose the Abbey of Dunfermline as the royal cemetery. Shakspere does not fail to send Duncan’s body to Iona:

“ROSSE. Where is Duncan’s body?

MACDUFF. Carried to Colmekill, The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, And guardian of their bones.”

There are still many tombs in this cemetery, most of which are covered with slabs of blue stone upon which figures are sculptured in relief. Here a bishop or an abbot, in cope and mitre, holds the pastoral staff of authority, and by his side lies some famous chieftain in full armor. On one of these slabs the traveller may behold the effigy of Angus MacDonald, Scott’s Lord of the Isles, and the contemporary of Robert Bruce.

In the centre of the graveyard stands the ruin of a chapel which was built at the close of the eleventh century by St. Margaret of Scotland, and dedicated to St. Oran, the first Irish monk who died in Iona after the landing of St. Columba. Near by is the ancient Irish cross which is said to mark the spot where St. Columba rested on the eve of his death, when he had walked forth to take a last view of his well-beloved island. A little farther north lies the cathedral, ruined and roofless, with its square tower, which is the first object to attract the eye of the pilgrim as he approaches the sacred isle. Iona is but three miles in length and about two miles wide. Unlike the islands by which it is surrounded, it has a sandy beach, which slopes to the water’s edge, and its highest point is but little over three hundred feet above the level of the sea. The ruins all lie on the eastern shore, and are but a few paces from one another. Some little care is taken of them, now that the facilities of travel have turned the attention of travellers to this former home of learning and religion. The chapel of the nunnery is no longer used as a cow-house, nor the cathedral as a stable, as in the time of Dr. Johnson’s visit. Nevertheless, many interesting relics which he saw have since disappeared. Still, enough remains to awaken emotion in the breasts of those whom the thought of noble deeds and heroic lives can move. In treading this sacred soil, and walking among the graves of kings and princes of the church, surrounded by broken walls and crumbling arches which once sheltered saints and heroes, we are lifted by the very genius of the place into a higher world. The present vanishes. The past comes back to us, and throws its light into the dim and awful future. How mean and contemptible seem to us the rivalries and ambitions of men! This handful of earth, girt round by the sea, holds the glories of a thousand years. All their beauty is faded. They are bare and naked as these broken walls, to which not even the sheltering ivy clings. The voice of battle is hushed; the song of victory is silent; the strong are fallen; the valiant are dead, and around forgotten graves old ocean chants the funeral dirge. Monuments of death mark all human triumphs. And yet St. Columba and his grand old monks are not wholly dead. To them more than to the poet belongs the _non omnis moriar_. Their spirit lives even in us, if we are Christians and trust the larger hope. What heavenly privilege, like them, to be free, and in the desert and ocean’s waste to find the possibility of the diviner life; like them, to be strong, leaning upon God only! The very rocks they looked upon seem to have gained a human sense; in the air is the presence of unseen spirits, and the waves approach gently as in reverence for the shore pressed by their feet. To have stood, though but for a moment and almost as in a dream, amid these sacred shrines, is good for the soul. It is as if we had gone to the house of one who loved us, and found that he was dead. The world seems less beautiful, but God is nearer and heaven more real.

We have lingered too long among the ruins of Iona. Our ship puffs her sail, and we must go; but our faces are still turned towards the blessed isle; the cathedral tower rises sadly over the bleak shore, and in a little while the rough and rock-bound coast of the Ross of Mull takes the vision from our eyes. And now I am in Ireland. Landing at Belfast, I went south to Dublin; thence to Wicklow, where I took a jaunting-car and drove through the Devil’s Glen, to Glendalough, through Glenmalure and the Vale of Avoca, and back to Wicklow.

Returning to Dublin, I went southwest to the Lakes of Killarney, passing through nearly the entire extent of the island from east and west. Having made the tour of the lakes and visited Muckross Abbey and Ross Castle, I went to Cork, where I took the train for Youghal, on the Blackwater. I sailed up this beautiful river to Cappoquin, near Lismore. From this point I visited the Trappist monastery of Mt. Melleray. Again taking a jaunting-car, I drove over the Knockmeledown Mountains into Tipperary, along the lovely banks of the river Suir, into Clonmel, thence to Cashel, to Holy Cross Abbey and to Thurles. Returning to Cork, I of course visited Blarney Castle, and then, sailing down the noble sea-avenue that leads to Queenstown, went aboard the steamer which was to bring me home again.

In Rome, it has been said, none are strangers. So much of what is greatest and best in the history of the human race centres there that all men instinctively identify themselves with her life and are at home. In Ireland a Catholic, no matter whence he come, forgets that he is in a foreign land; and in proportion to the love with which he cherishes his faith is the sympathy that draws him to the people who have clung to it through more suffering and sorrow than have fallen to the lot of any other. More than other races they have loved the church; more than others they have believed that, so long as faith and hope and love are left to the heart, misery can never be supreme. The force with which they realize the unseen world leaves them unbroken amid the reverses and calamities of this life. They are to-day what they were in ages past――the least worldly and the most spiritual-minded people of Europe.

They live in the past and in the future; cling to memories and cherish dreams. The ideal is to them more than the real. Their thoughts are on religion, on liberty, honor, justice, rather than upon gold. They fear sin more than poverty or sickness. When the mother hears of the death of her son, in some distant land, her first thought is not of him, but of his soul. Did he die as a Catholic should die, confessing his sins, trusting in God, strengthened by the sacraments? When he left her weeping, her great trouble was the fear lest, in the far-off world to which he was going, he should forget the God of his fathers, the God of Ireland’s hope; and when in her dreams she saw him back again, her heart leaped for joy, not that he was rich or famous, but that the simple faith of other days was with him still.

The life that is to be is more than that which is. The coldest heart is warmed by this strong faith. In the midst of this simple and pure-hearted people, so poor and so content, so wronged and so patient, so despised and so noble, one realizes the divine power of religion. Whithersoever our little systems of thought may lead us, whatsoever mysteries of nature they may reveal, nothing that they can give us could compensate for the loss of honest faith and child-like trust in God. Whatever may be, this is the best. Better to die in a hovel, yearning for God and trusting to him, than without hope “to walk all day, like the sultan of old, in a garden of spice.” The first and deepest impression made upon me in travelling through Ireland was that it is a country consecrated by unutterable suffering. The shadow of an almost divine sorrow is still upon the land. Each spot is sacred to some sad memory. Ruined castles tell how her proudest families were driven into exile or reduced to beggary; roofless cathedrals and crumbling abbeys proclaim the long martyrdom of her bishops and priests; tenantless cottages and deserted villages speak of the multitudes turned upon the road to die, or, with weary step, to seek shelter in a foreign land. We pass through desolate miles of waste lands that might be reclaimed, through whole counties that have been turned into sheep and cattle pastures, through towns once busy, now dead; and John Mitchel’s cry of anguish, when last year, in triumphal funeral march, he went to meet the electors of Tipperary, strikes upon the ear: “My God, my God, where are my people?”

Go to the abandoned ports of Wexford, of Youghal, of Waterford, of Galway, and you will be told of ships, freighted with human souls, that sailed away and never returned. It seemed to me on those silent shores that I could still hear the wail of countless mothers, wringing their hands and weeping for the loss of children whom a cruel fate had torn from them. Was ever history so sad as Ireland’s? Great calamities have befallen other nations――they have been wasted by war and famine, trodden in the dust by invading barbarians; but their evils have had an end. In Ireland the sword has never wearied of blood. “The wild deer and wolf to a covert may flee,” but her people have had no refuge from famine and danger. Without home and country, they have stood for centuries with the storm of fate beating upon their devoted heads, and in their long night of woe some faint glimmer of hope has shone out, only suddenly to disappear, leaving the darkness blacker. True were the poet’s words of despair:

“There are marks on the fate of each clime, there are turns in the fortunes of men, But the changes of realms or the chances of time shall never restore thee again. Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe by links which the world cannot sever; With thy tyrant through storm and through calm shalt thou go, And thy sentence is――‘Banished for ever.’

Thou art doomed for the vilest to toil; thou art left for the proud to disdain; And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil shall be lavished, and lavished in vain. Thy riches with taunts shall be taken; thy valor with gibes is repaid; And of millions who see thee now sick and forsaken, not one shall stand forth in thy aid. In the nations thy place is left void; thou art lost in the list of the free. Even realms, by the plague or the earthquake destroyed, are revived; but no hope is for thee.”

I stood in Glendalough, by the lake

“Whose gloomy shore Skylark never warbles o’er.”

The sun was just sinking to rest behind St. Kevin’s Hill, covered with the purple heather-bloom. There was not a sound in the air, but all the mountains and the valley held their breath, as if the spirits of the monks of old were felt by them in this hour, in which, in the ages gone, the song of prayer and praise rose up to God from the hearts of believing men, and all the plain and the hillsides were vocal with sweet psalmody. Here, a thousand years ago and more, a city grew up, raised by the power of holiness. To St. Kevin flocked men who sought the better way, and the Irish people, eternally drawn to religion and to their priests, gathered round, and Glendalough was filled with the multitude of believers. Those were the days which St. Columba sang when in far-off Iona he remembered his own sweet land: “From the high prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my gray eye when I turn to Erin――to Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the monks sing like the birds; where the young are so gentle and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed.”

From St. Kevin to St. Lawrence O’Toole, Glendalough was the home of saints. When the Norman came, in the twelfth century, there was a bishop there. The hills were dotted with the hermitages of anchorets, and above the seven churches rose the round tower in imperishable strength. To-day there is left only the dreariness and loneliness of the desert. The hills that once were covered with rich forests of oak are bare and bleak; the cathedral is in ruins; the churches are crumbling walls and heaps of stones; the ground is strewn with fragments of sculptured crosses and broken pillars; and amid this wreck of a world are mingled in strange confusion the tombs of saints and princes and the graves of peasants. Still stands the round tower in lonely majesty, like a sentinel of heaven, to watch for ever over the graves of God’s people. What a weight of awe falls upon us amid these sacred monuments! We speak not, and scarcely breathe. An unknown power draws us back into the dread bosom of the past. The freshness of life dies out of us; we grow to the spot, and feel a kinship with stones which re-echoed the footsteps of saints, which resounded with the voice of prayer. It seems almost a sacrilege to live when the great and the good lie dead at our feet.

But why stop we here? Is not Ireland covered with ruins as reverend and as sad as these? Throughout the land they stand

“As stands a lofty mind, Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, All tenantless, save to the crannying wind, Or holding dark communion with the cloud.”

What need of history’s blood-stained page to tell the sad story of Ireland’s wrongs and Ireland’s woes? O’Connell never spoke as speak these roofless cathedrals, these broken walls and crumbling arches, these fallen columns and shattered crosses. The traveller who in Jerusalem beholds the weary and worn children of Israel sitting in helpless grief amid the scattered stones of Solomon’s Temple, need not be told how the enemies of the Holy City compassed her about; how the sword and famine and the devouring flame swallowed up the people; how her walls were broken down, her holy of holies profaned, her priests slaughtered, her streets made desolate, until not a stone was left upon a stone.

The massacres of Wexford and Drogheda; the confiscation in a single day of half the land of Ireland; the driving her people into the ports of Munster to be shipped to regions of pestilence and death; the expulsion of every Catholic from the rich fields of Ulster; the exile of the whole nation beyond the Shannon; the violated treaty of Limerick, are but episodes in this tragedy of centuries. Even the Penal Code, the most hideous and inhuman ever enacted by Christian or pagan people, tells but half the story.

That the Irish Catholic had for centuries been held in bondage by a law which violated every good and generous sentiment of the human heart, I knew. He could not vote, he could not bear witness, he could not bring suit, he could not sit on a jury, he could not go to school, he could not teach school, he could not practise law or medicine, he could not travel five miles from his home; he could own nothing which he might not be forced to give up or renounce his faith; he could not keep or use any kind of weapon, even in self-defence; his children were offered bribes to betray him; he could not hear Mass, he could not receive the sacraments; in his death-agony the priest might not be near to console him. All this I knew, and yet I had never realized the condition to which such inhuman legislation must reduce a people. That this Code, which Montesquieu said must have been contrived by devils, and which Burke declared to be the fittest instrument ever invented by man to degrade and destroy a nation, had failed to accomplish its fiendish purpose, I also knew. The Irish people, deprived of everything, and almost of the hope of ever having anything in this world, remained superior to fate. With a fidelity to religious conviction without example in the history of the world, they retained the chastity, the unbroken courage, the cheerful temper and generous love which had always distinguished them; and that in travelling among them I should find it more and more impossible to doubt of this was but what I had expected. But the generous, pure, and simple character of the people only made the impression which I received of the frightful wrongs and sufferings which have been and are still inflicted upon them the more painful.

There is not in the civilized world another country where the evils of tyranny and misrule are so manifest. One cannot help but feel that Ireland does not belong to the Irish. It is not governed in their interest; it is not made to contribute to their welfare or happiness. They are not taken into account by its rulers; their existence is considered accidental; a fact which cannot be ignored, but which it is hoped time, with famine, poverty, and petty persecution such as the age allows, will eliminate. The country belongs to a few men who have no sympathy with the mass of the people, who do not even desire to have any. They are for the most part the descendants of needy adventurers who, under Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange, obtained as a reward of their servility or brutality the confiscated lands of Ireland; or if they belong to the ancient families, they inherit their wealth from ancestors who owed it to a double apostasy from God and their country. It was these men, and not England, who enacted the Irish Penal Code. They are the traditional enemies of Ireland, sucking out her lifeblood and trampling in contempt upon her people. They have filled the land with mourning and death, with the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan; they have freighted the ships which have borne the Irish exiles to every land under heaven; they have within our own memory crowded her highways with homeless and starving multitudes; have pushed out her people to make room for sheep and cattle; in ten years have taken from her three millions of her children. My heart grew sick of asking to whom the domains through which I was passing belonged. It seemed to me that the people owned nothing, that the _paucis vivitur humanum genus_ was truer here than ever in ancient Rome. The very houses in which the Irish peasantry live tell the sad tale that in their own country they are homeless. Like the Israelites in Egypt, they must stand with loins girt and staff in hand, ready to move at a moment’s warning. If the little hut shelter them for a season, it is enough; for another year may find them where rolls the Oregon or on the bitter plains of Australia. Ask them why they build not better houses, plant not trees and flowers, to surround with freshness and beauty that family-life which to them is so pure and so sweet; they will answer you that they may not, they dare not. The slightest evidence of comfort would attract the greedy eye of the landlord; the rent would be raised, and he who should presume to give such ill-example would soon be turned adrift. The great lord wants cabins which he can knock down in a day to make room for his sheep and cattle; he wants arguments to prove that the Irish people are indolent, improvident, an inferior race, unfit for liberty. I know that there are landlords who are not heartless. The people will tell you more than you wish to hear of the goodness of Lord Nincompoop, of the charity of Lord Fiddlefaddle. The intolerable evil is that the happiness or misery of a whole people should be left to the chance of an Irish landlord not being a fool and yet having a heart. To any other people who had suffered from an aristocracy the hundredth part of what has been borne by the Irish, the very name of “lord” would carry with it the odium of unutterable infamy; among any other people the state of things which, in spite of all the progress that has been made, still exists in Ireland, would breed the most terrible and dangerous passions. For my own part, I could not look upon the castles and walled-in parks which everywhere met my view without feeling my heart fill with a bitterness which I could rarely detect in those with whom I spoke. What it was possible to do has been done to hide the land itself from the eyes of the people. Around Dublin you would think almost every house a prison, so carefully is it walled in. The poor, who must walk, are shut in by high and gloomy walls which forbid them even the consolation of looking upon the green hills and plains which surround that city. In the same way the landlords have taken possession of the finest scenery of the island. If you would see the Powerscourt waterfall, you must send your card to the castle and graciously beg permission. People who have no cards are not supposed to be able to appreciate the beauty of one of the most picturesque spots in Ireland. At the entrance to the Devil’s Glen the traveller is stopped by huge iron gates, symbolical of those which Milton has described as grating harsh thunder on their turning hinges; and when he thinks he is about to issue forth again into the upper air, suddenly other gates frown upon him to remind him of the _lasciati ogni speranza voi ch’entrate_, of Dante. Mr. Herbert has taken possession of half the Lakes of Killarney, and exacts a fixed toll from all who wish to see what ought to be as free to all as the air of heaven. If ten thousand dollars added to his annual income be a compensation for such meanness, he is no doubt content. It is on the demesne of this gentleman that lies the celebrated ruin of Muckross Abbey. It stands embosomed in trees on a green slope, overlooking the Lower Lake, and commanding one of the loveliest views to be had anywhere. The taste of “the monks of old” in selecting sites for their monasteries was certainly admirable. A church was erected on this spot at a very early date, but was consumed by fire in 1192. The abbey and church, the ruins of which are now standing, were built in 1340, by one of the MacCarthys, Princes of Desmond, for Franciscan monks, who still retained possession of them at the time of Cromwell’s invasion. A Latin inscription on the north wall of the choir asks the reader’s prayers for Brother Thadeus Holen, who had the convent repaired in the year of our Lord 1626. That such a place should have remained in the possession of the monks for more than a century after the introduction of Protestantism is of itself enough to show to what extent the Catholic monuments of Ireland had escaped the destroyer’s hand previous to the incursion of the Cromwellian vandals. The ruins of Muckross Abbey have successfully withstood the power of Time’s effacing finger. The walls, which seem to have been built to stand for ever, are as strong to-day as they were five hundred years ago; and to render the monastery habitable nothing would be required but to replace the roof.

The library, the dormitories, the kitchen, the cellars, the refectory with its great fire-place, seem to be patiently waiting the return of the brown-robed sons of St. Francis; and in the corridors the silence, so loved of religious souls, is felt like the presence of holy spirits. In the centre of the court-yard there is a noble yew-tree, planted by the monks centuries ago. Its boughs droop lovingly over the roofless walls to shelter them from the storm. In the church the dead are sleeping, and among them some of Ireland’s princes. In the centre of the choir a modern tomb covers the vault where in ancient times the MacCarthys Mor, and later the O’Donoghue Mor of the Glens, were interred. These are the opening lines of the lengthy epitaph:

“What more could Homer’s most illustrious verse Or pompous Tully’s stately prose rehearse Than what this monumental stone contains In death’s embrace, MacCarthy Mor’s remains?”

This abbey, like most of the other sacred ruins of Ireland, is now used as a Catholic cemetery. No Protestant is buried here. Mr. Herbert, however, has got possession of it, and has secured the entrance with iron gates, which open only to golden keys. The living who enter here pay this needy gentleman a shilling, the dead half a crown. Elsewhere we find the same state of things. Even the most sacred relics of Ireland are in the hands of Protestants. It is not easy to find a more interesting collection of antiquities than that of the museum of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin; but the pleasure which we experience in contemplating these evidences of the ancient civilization of the Irish people is mingled with pain when we see that even their holiest relics have been taken from them and given to those who have no sympathy with the struggles and triumphs with which these objects are associated. We have here, for instance, the “Sweet-sounding” bell of St. Patrick, together with its cover or shrine, which is a fine specimen of the art of the goldsmith as it flourished in Ireland before the Norman invasion. Here, too, is preserved the famous “Cross of Cong,” upon which is inscribed the name of the artist by whom it was made for Turlough O’Conor, father of Roderick, the last native king of Ireland. No finer piece of work in gold is to be found in any country of Western Europe. Those who examine it will be able to form an opinion of the state of the metallurgic and decorative arts in Ireland before she had been blessed by English civilization. Another object of even greater interest is a casket of bronze and silver which formerly enclosed a copy of the Gospels that belonged to St. Patrick. The leaves of this, the most ancient Irish manuscript, have become agglutinated through age, so that they now form a solid mass. Another manuscript, almost as ancient and not less famous, is a Latin version of the Psalms which belonged to St. Columba. This is the copy which is said to have led to the exile of the saint and to the founding of his monastery. This was the battle-book of the O’Donnells, who in war always bore it with them as their standard.

One cannot contemplate the exquisite workmanship and precious material of these book-shrines without being struck by the extraordinary care with which the ancient Irish preserved their manuscripts. These sacred relics bear testimony at once to their religious zeal and to their love of learning. They carry us back to the time when Ireland was the home of saints and doctors; when from every land those who were most eager to serve God and to improve themselves flocked to her shores, to receive there the warm welcome which her people have ever been ready to give to the stranger who comes among them with peaceful purpose. Those were the days of her joy and her pride; the glorious three centuries during which she held the intellectual supremacy of the world; during which her sons were the apostles of Europe, the founders of schools, and the teachers of doctors. Never did a nation give more generously of its best and highest life than Ireland in that age. These emblems of her faith and her science are in the hands of her despoiler.

The great schools of Lismore and Armagh are no more. No more in the streets of her cities are heard all the tongues of Europe, which at matin hymn and vesper song lose themselves in the unity and harmony of the one language of the church. They who were eager to teach all men were forbidden to learn. Knowledge was made impossible, and they were reproached with ignorance. But the end is not yet. In contemplating the past we must not forget the present, nor the future which also belongs to Ireland. The dark clouds which so long have wrapped her like a shroud are breaking. In the veins of her children the full tide of life is flowing, warm and strong, as in the day when Columba in his wicker-boat dared the fury of the waves, or Brian drove the Dane into the sea, or Malachi wore the collar of gold. They are old and yet young; crowned with the glories of two thousand years, they look with eyes bright with youthful hope to a future whose splendor shall make the past seem as darkness.

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.

FROM THE FRENCH.

JUNE 1, 1868.

What a beautiful Whitsuntide, _carissima_! Only a minute ago Marcella was singing to me the _Tarantella della Madonna, “Pie di Grotta.”_ Do you recollect the pretty child in rags who used to make such long trills and quavers as she tossed back her dark tresses? How far off now, dear Kate, seems our time at Naples!

Margaret sends me a _summons_ to go to her. I answer by telling her how it is that we are detained in Brittany until July. You can understand what the family journey will then be. Oh! it is so sweet and good a thing to be together that it costs much to each one of us to absent ourselves from the rest even for a day.

We have had High Mass and Vespers worthy of a cathedral. On leaving the chapel Anna, whose musical organization leaves nothing to desire, threw herself into my arms, exclaiming: “It must be like that in Paradise!” We all had the same impression. What worldly festivities are worth ours?

This morning a walk with René in the woods, among the thyme and early dew. Made a resolution to go out in this way every day, quietly, before a single shutter is opened. We pray and meditate. René draws me on to heights of faith and love. If you heard him when he walks out with the twins! And how they listen to him, with their large eyes fixed on his!

Would you like to have news of Isa? “She is very thin,” Margaret tells me, “but is still beautiful; she personifies the angel of charity. The good she does all around her will never be known. Make haste, then, dear, and come; it is not good of you thus to refuse yourself to our desires.”

God keep you, my dear Kate!

LA TARANTELLA DELLA MADONNA, PIE DI GROTTA.

(_Neapolitan Ballad._)

O lark that singest sweetly At the rising of the sun, Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly To where the day’s begun! Rise, rise through rosy skies To the gate of Paradise.

At that gate so fair What should be my quest? Shall I enter Paradise With the angels blest?

Thou shalt pray our Mother fair, With azure eyes and golden hair, To touch our fruits with ripening hand, And bless the harvests of our land. By her soft eyes bending down, Watching over field and town―― Eyes more fair than fairest day That from heaven hath strayed away―― Entreat her from her throne above Thus to recompense our love.

O my friends! I will do so, At the gate of Paradise: To Mary with the brow of snow I will breathe your ardent sighs.

O lark that singest sweetly At the rising of the sun, Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly To where the day’s begun! Rise, rise through rosy skies To the gate of Paradise.

While at that gate so dear Your Mother I do pray To bless your hopes alway, Friends, what will appear?

Thou shalt see our Mother there, On her throne of rubies rare; On her head the diamond crown Set thereon by Christ, her Son; Queen is she of Paradise. Mercy raineth from her eyes, Pity flows from out her hands Unto all the furthest lands. Heaven makes music round her throne, Happiness dwells there alone. Thou shalt see her shining fair, More bright than envied princes are―― Our Queen all powerful, yet all sweet, With the sun beneath her feet.

O friends! my heart would leave its place, The brightness daze my eyes. Were I to look on Mary’s face, The Queen of Paradise.

O lark that singest sweetly At the rising of the sun, Whose blithe wing bears thee fleetly To where the day’s begun! Rise, rise through rosy skies To the gate of Paradise.

And at that threshold dread Where all the angels throng, When the golden gates are open spread, What theme shall wake my song?

To our Mother shalt thou say That for her hearts burn alway; That to us her love’s more sweet Than native flowers to exiles’ feet; That her image graven deep On our hearts doth never sleep; That gazing from this earthly shore, Above its tumult and its roar, In dreams that come like blessed balm, We see her heaven’s unshaken calm.

I go, I go! Sweet friends, good-by; For you to Paradise I fly.

Dearest, the French is not equal to the naive language of the brown little Neapolitan girl.

JUNE 12, 1868.

I have been ill, my beloved sister. What trouble they have all been giving themselves on my account! Happily, it was nothing――fever, headache, and general indisposition. The doctor orders much exercise, and from to-morrow we organize a cavalcade. Adrien has had some superb horses brought here; what riding parties we shall have!

But sadness mingles with joy. Lucy’s mother is very ill. They have just set out; will they arrive too late? Oh! this journey, how full it will be of anxiety and apprehension.

A despatch.… Poor Lucy! the goodness of God has spared her that last moment, so full of cruel distress and yet of ineffable hope――she did not see her mother die! What mourning! Why is death like our shadow, pitilessly mowing down the existences which are dearer to us than our own? But to what purpose is it to ask _why_? There is more true wisdom in a _fiat_ than in curious researches. On Whitsunday, at the “drawing” of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, my lot was the _Gift of Piety_――love of God and of all that belongs to his service; and the _Fruit of Patience_――generous acceptance of the crosses God sends us. Must I own to you that this gift made me afraid? Oh! if my happiness were to be destroyed. You will be scolding me for this dreaming, and you will say to me with Mgr. Landriot: “If you would keep mind and body in a healthy condition, avoid with extreme care these states of reverie――the habit of taking aerial flights in which the heart and understanding exhaust themselves on emptiness.” Dear Kate, my dreams speak but of heaven.

Marcella, so long a captive beneath the yoke of others, regards independence as the first of terrestrial benefits; on this subject our opinions differ. The poor _Prisoner_ was quite right when he said to the swallows:

Il n’est dans cette vie Qu’un bien digne d’envie: La liberté![118]

Yes, assuredly, liberty is a great good, and therefore it is that our soul has been made free, perfectly free. And how sweet it is to feel one’s self free, and to bend generously beneath the yoke of love and sacrifice! One of our first instincts is the need of liberty, and even the word alone has in it a magic which carries the mind away with it, and at critical times becomes the rallying word of revolutions. O my God! grant that I may love only the holy freedom of thy children――that freedom which can never be taken from me. Deliver the captives――the captives of the world, and above all of sin! Deliver also Ireland!

Visits: an entire family, antique in dress and appearance, but modern in language, grace, and heart. Good Bretons!――I love them. This valiant faith, this sublime indignation, these courageous protestations for the church and her Head in a race of granite, is an incomparable spectacle. Brittany has indeed done well to preserve its customs, its manners, and its ancient faith eternally young and living. One of these ladies questioned us about Paris, whither she wishes to accompany her son, who is attacked by the fever of the times. I admire her maternal devotion. Imagine the astonishment of this _Bretonne_ in the capital of _mud and gold_!

Dear Kate, Marcella and René have some _secrets_ to tell you. Love from us all.

JUNE 16, 1868.

Our first ride has been most prosperous, dear sister. It was a nineteen――an unlucky day, declares the superstitious Marianne. What matters?――God protects us. “Who loves me follows me!” cried Adrien, and away we went, cantering after him through the thickets. Don’t suppose our expedition was for nothing but pleasure, however legitimate, but to make a wide circuit of poor. What store of benedictions we gathered on our way! A worthy _tad coz_[119] in his enthusiasm kissed the hem of Marcella’s riding-habit, saying: “It is certainly a saint who is come to us.” (Marcella already speaks Breton as if it were Italian.)

We had taken provisions with us, and did not get home until nine o’clock, tired out, but so happy! My mother followed us in the carriage. She must be interested and have a little variety at any price; the death of her friend (the mother of our sister) has greatly impressed her. “It is,” she says, “the herald to warn me of the approach of my own death.” May God spare her to us!

Yesterday, soon after day-break, the carriages were in readiness in front of the entrance for a visit to the old _divor_, as the Poles would call it: a sort of pilgrimage … to the _saint of the sea-coast_. It is so distant that we accepted an invitation to stay the night, and are come home this evening, not at all fatigued. We are to go there again, but have meanwhile obtained a kind promise. The _châtelaine of the lake_ will be here on the 2d of July. How shall I describe her to you? On our way back we were speaking of the _prestige_ of beauty, and Adrien quoted the words of an educational professor who says: “I have passionately loved both nature and study; the fine arts have also made me feel the power of their charms; but among all things under the sun I have found nothing comparable to man when he unites noble sentiments to physical beauty. He is truly the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the creation.” “I have often thought,” observed René, “that, God being infinite and sovereign Beauty, physical beauty is a reflection of the divine. Without sin man would never have been ugly or plain. We have in the soul the instinct of beauty, the love of the beautiful under every form; and although we say and know very well that human beauty passes in a day, that it is nothing, nevertheless there is no one living who has not some time in his life experienced the unique and irresistible charm which is shed around her by a creature who to high qualities of mind and heart joins the attraction of beauty and regularity of countenance.” And my mother: “The saints have a kind of beauty which I prefer to every other; it is like a transfiguration. This miserable mortal envelope which covers the soul becomes in some sort transparent, so that one can see the peace, the calm and serenity, of this interior in which God dwells by his grace and love. The sight of a saint is a foretaste of Paradise. Oh! how beautiful must the angels be. Why cannot our mortal eyes behold those who are here, near to us?” “As Lamartine says,” added Marcella:

“Tout mortel a le sien; cet ange protecteur, Cet invisible ami veille autour de son cœur; L’inspire, le conduit, le relève s’il tombe, Le reçoit au berceau, l’accompagne à la tombe, Et portant dans les cieux, son âme entre ses mains, La présente en tremblant au Maître des humains.”[120]

Dear Kate, do you not love these pious natures amongst whom God has placed me? “Great souls, great souls,” exclaimed a bishop――“I seek them, but I find them not; I call them, and none answer!” Yet some there are in France, and especially in Brittany.

In the midst of the refinement of luxury and effeminacy of the times in which we live, everything dwindles and diminishes; people act in the midst of narrow and despicable interests; the life of the heart is daily deteriorating, and “soon we shall know no longer how to love with that generous love which thinks not of self, but whose self-devotion places its happiness in the felicity of others.” How happy a thing, then, is it to take refuge near to God, and within a circle where he is loved!

I spoke of you to the _saint of the sands_. Let us love each other, dear Kate.

JUNE 22, 1868.

Fénelon said: “Education, by a capable mother, is worth more than that which is to be had at the best of convents.” This often comes into my mind when I see Berthe cultivating with so much care the two choice plants whose fragrance mounts so sweetly up to God. The surname of _duchesse_ is abandoned for ever. At Mass, on the 1st of January, Thérèse made the resolution to acquire humility; and she has attained it. How many charming actions the angels must have seen with joy! Her countenance, naturally haughty and self-asserting, has gained an expression of sweetness and gentleness. She is delightful; and what efforts it has cost her! Her mother has seconded, helped, and sustained her. Raoul, the greater part of whose time is absorbed in his literary labors, has not transferred to any one his own share in the education of his daughters. Kate, since my marriage I have regretted more deeply than ever that I never knew my father. I did not know before from what strength of affection we had been severed. Thank God! so long as my mother lived her heart was enough for us. Kind, saintly mother! how I bless her memory. The twins no longer wear anything but white. It reminds me of the early Christians’ preparation for baptism. Their thoughtfulness is my admiration. They count the days with a holy eagerness; they ask us for the hymns of Expectation. We are making a retreat with them, and all our friends of Brittany will fill the chapel on the 2d of July. This is a memorable date in the family――the birthday of Raoul, Berthe, and the twins. What a coincidence!――the wedding-day of the former, and the anniversary of our mother’s First Communion. Marcella is singing:

“O jour trois fois heureux! O jour trois fois béni! Viens remplir tous nos cœurs d’un bonheur infini!”[121]

Anna has this year shared in the life of the twins; she is only eleven years old. Her mother hesitated, but M. le Curé has just given his decision, and the delicate child embraced me with transports. She also will be at the holy table; she also, clothed in white. “Entreat Mme. Kate to pray for me.” Sweet little dove!

_Evening._――Do you know what I have just heard? The good little hearts! Unknown to every one, even to the vigilant Berthe, the twins and Anna rise every night to pray; and, besides this, they regularly deprive themselves of their _goûter_[122] for the benefit of a poor child who is also preparing herself for her First Communion. This child has on her arm a horrible wound, and our little saints kiss it on their knees. Do you not think you are reading the _Acta Sanctorum_?

Of the three, Picciola is still the most fervent. I am suspected of

## partiality with regard to her. Oh! if you saw her kneeling in the

chapel, when a ray of sunshine plays upon her fair locks, you would say she was an angel. Dearest Kate, the great day draws near! I say nothing about our processions, our lovely _reposoirs_, the babies scattering roses――I should write until to-morrow. Pray with me.

JUNE 26, 1868.

Dearest, I feel tired after my walk on the sands, and would fain rest myself with you, and talk to you again of the twins and of Anna, whose joy makes me fear for her, so fragile is her pretty frame. Marcella has given me a holiday from my Greek; she and Berthe no more quit their darlings. And I, who have no maternal rights over these almost celestial souls, leave them a little to their mutual happiness, and isolate myself the more with René. Our subjects of conversation are always grave――God, heaven, eternity. We had visitors on the 24th; beautiful fires of St. John in the evening. O son of Elizabeth and Zacharias, voice of one crying in the desert, the greatest among the children of men! give me of your humility, your love of penitence and sacrifice.

Isa sends me a few lines, all enkindled with the love of God. Sarah, returned from Spain, is much amused at certain _hidalgos_, and quotes me the words of Shakspere: “Were it only for their noses, one would take them for the counsellors of Pepin or Clothair, so high do they carry them and so imposing is their mark.”

I have not told you of our _fête_ on the 19th for the twenty-second anniversary of the elevation of the holy and venerated Pius IX to the pontificate. What will arise out of all the trials of the Papacy? Solomon, after tasting every kind of enjoyment and happiness, exclaimed: “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity.” It is deeply sad hitherto, but consolation will come at last; it is like a ray from heaven. “All is vanity, except to love God and serve him.” Let us love, then, let us serve, God, who is so full of love. Everything is there! Isa writes to me: “When shall we say, _Quotidie morior_?” Alas! I have not arrived at this perfection.

My good René has published, in an English periodical, a remarkable article, about which I want to have your opinion. We are convinced here that no means ought to be neglected that may serve the cause of God, and that every Catholic’s sphere of action is wider than he thinks. Oh! how right you are, dear Kate. “All our actions ought to preach the Gospel.”

Was present at a funeral yesterday evening――a young girl of fifteen. I thought of the beautiful verses by Brizeux on the death of Louise. What a picture!――the poor and lowly funeral train amid the magnificence of Nature, who gave to the youthful dead that which was not afforded her by men. I seem still to behold the scene. The place, also, is suitable. I am in presence of God’s fair creation; a thousand birds are singing around me. Oh! these nests, these poor little nests, _chef-d’œuvres_ of love. They showed me lately a goldfinch’s nest suspended as if by miracle at the extremity of a branch at an immense height.

Ce nid, ce doux mystère, C’est l’amour d’une mère, Enfants, n’y touchez pas![123]

Children have an innate inclination for destruction. There are very few who think of the mother of the nestlings when they take possession of the nests; and the poet has reason to say to them:

Ne pouvant rien créer, il ne faut rien détruire, Enfants, n’y touchez pas![124]

May the angel of mercy spread his wing over the cradles and the nests, and may he protect you also, my beloved, and all of us with you!

JUNE 30, 1868.

The retreat and the singing take up all my time, dear Kate, but I want to tell you that Lucy has come back to us, pale and weak, and recommends herself to your prayers. Gaston was asking for me down there. There is something so sad in this deep mourning; but Lucy looks above this earth. Edouard’s voice was wanting to our choir; it will be complete after to-morrow. Three poor children, clothed by your Georgina, will accompany our chosen ones.

The SAINT OF THE SEA-COAST arrives to-morrow. She will be lodged near to me. I wish she could be there always! Why cannot one gather together in one same place those whom one loves?

Kate dearest, René and all _Brittany_ are for you.

JULY 2, 1868.

_Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine!_

O Kate! what a day. And the vigil――the pious tears, the pardons, the benedictions, the _watching of the arms_ in the chapel――how sweet it was! This morning Berthe asked me _to be the mother_ of Madeleine. The sweet child was clad in her virginal robes in my room. She was touched, but not afraid. When ready to go down, she asked my blessing. Oh! it is I rather who would have wished for hers. Then the Mass, the hymns, the exhortations; then, as in a dream, these fair apparitions prostrate before the altar, and God within our souls. What happiness for one day to contain!

The saintly _châtelaine_ was there, absorbed in God. The day has gone by like a flash of lightning. It is now eleven o’clock, and I say with you the _Te Deum_. One of our neighbors was telling me this evening of a lady whose little daughter, pious as an angel, shed tears, the evening of her First Communion, for regret that the day was at an end. This circumstance inspired the happy mother to write a charming poem, which ended something as follows:

Peu de jours dans la vie offrent assez de charmes Pour qu’on pleure le soir en les voyant finir![125]

Marcella wept in the chapel. Happy mother; beloved children; blessed house; incomparable day!

_The saint_ is really a saint. Hear this: “Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament visits me every morning; I know not how it is that I do not die of love. God has allowed me everywhere to meet with souls who understand mine, and who have loved me!”

Good-night, my sister.

I whispered to _my daughter_:

My own sweet child, O soul all pure and fair! Pray, pray with me where holy feet have trod, And let thy sinless pleading on the air Mount like a perfume upwards to thy God!

For the poor mother who her son doth weep A last farewell in tears that rain like blood, Let thy prayer, angel, mount the starry steep―― Mount like a perfume upwards to thy God!

For the poor orphan, who in dire distress Alone by fireless hearth hath famished stood, Oh! let thy prayer, with sister’s tenderness, Like a sweet perfume mount towards thy God!

For the poor sinner who from God would flee, Who dies and turns him from the saving Rood, Oh! let thy prayer rise upward pleadingly―― Like a sweet perfume mount towards thy God!

For all the weary souls who weep and wail To the sweet Virgin raise thy voice aloud; Let thy clear tones for those who die and fail Like saving perfume rise towards thy God!

I used to say this at Venice to the pretty little Rutti, the little American girl; do you remember her? Oh! how well she used to pray, this little dove from the New World. Dear, I should like to cross the ocean to have a nearer view of that unknown land which attracts me so much, with its freedom, its immense spaces, its splendid vegetation, and its beautiful sun! But, nevertheless, it is not Ireland, my country, and the land of memories!

God keep you!

JULY 6, 1868.

Dear Kate, in two days we start for my dear green Erin, to the great joy of Marcella, who is an enthusiast about O’Connell. Margaret feels a _thrill_, she tells me, at the sound of a carriage. It is high time to make acquaintance with the handsome baby. René has left me to accompany _the saint_, whom I would fain have taken with us. She smiled sadly in answer to my proposal: “The aged tree that grows in lonely places cannot thus be rooted up.”

The _Annales Orléanaises_ speak of nothing but deaths: the Abbé Debeauvais, Curé of St. Thomas d’Aquin, has just died at Mgr. Dupanloup’s; Madame de Bannand; the Abbé Rocher, almoner of the prisons, etc., etc. Prince Michael of Servia has been assassinated: it is almost ancient history. I must see to my packages; so good-by for the present, until we are with _la belle Anglaise_.

JULY 19, 1868.

It is from England, and from Margaret’s magnificent residence, that I now think of you, dear Kate. A quick passage, splendid weather, everybody well and strong, including baby Gaston. Lord William was waiting for us on the pier; we were soon in the carriage, and next day in the arms of Margaret, who cannot _fête_ us enough. The children have already become used to English ways, to this people of many footmen, to this pomp and splendor, and to the beauties of the _Isle of Saints_. Margaret is in the full bloom of her happiness; her child is superb, and resembles her.

Dear, dear Kate, how much I enjoy being here! What emotion I felt on setting foot on this soil, Breton also, but different from the other! I wept much, and feel ready to weep again. What is wanting to me? You, you, and the best beloved of mothers! But you are both of you with God――my mother in the heaven of heavens, and you in the heaven upon earth! _Laus Deo_, nevertheless, and for ever.

Marcella understood the inward grief I felt, and delicately offered me her friendly consolations. We shall soon see Isa. I shall undertake the _pilgrimage of friendship_ with René, in which all the family will join us: Mme. de T―――― has so arranged it, you can imagine with what thought. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Margaret’s splendid hospitality. Her mother-in-law pleases me. These few lines are only to say good-day.

JULY 24, 1868.

Adrien has brought here the numbers of the magazine containing the articles on “Notre Dame de Lourdes,” by Henri Lasserre. We want to persuade our dear English friends to make this pilgrimage with us in November.

We have just come from London. How many things to see and to show!

This morning, our dear convent of ――――. I was very happy and delighted; I love so much to meet friends again, and especially these convent meetings――there is something so heavenly about them. Under these black veils it seems as if nothing changes. When a child I used to wonder because nuns did not seem to me to grow older.

Ici viennent mourir les derniers bruits du monde: Nautonniers sans rivage, abordez, c’est le port.[126]

This life of union with God, and devotion to souls, has within it something divine. We know not how great is the calm and serenity resulting from the lofty choice of these hearts. To belong to God in the religious life is heaven begun. Doubtless there, as elsewhere, there are sufferings, trials, and crosses; the separation from all those most dear to one, the crushing of nature, the complete and absolute separation from everything which can charm in this world, to give one’s self exclusively to God, in prayer and love, is a beautiful thing, but no one, I think, can say that it is free from pain. Assuredly the exchange of terrestrial affections for those which are imperishable cannot be regarded as a loss, and yet what tears there are in this last farewell of the religious, who while living consents to die to all her affections!

Dear Kate, we spoke of you. How they love us in this peaceful place of refuge!

Oui, c’est un de ces lieux, où notre cœur sent vivre Quelque chose des cieux qui flotte et qui l’enivre; Un de ces lieux qu’enfant j’aimais et je rêvais, Dont la beauté sereine, inépuisable, intime, Verse à l’âme un oubli sérieux et sublime De tout ce que la terre et l’homme ont de mauvais![127]

16th.――Prayed much for France. “Since this morning,” my mother said to me, “I have continually before my eyes the scaffold and the pale and noble countenance of Marie Antoinette.” Poor saintly queen! what a life and what a martyr’s death. After the first days of enchantment which followed her arrival in France, what a long succession of troubles! This Dauphine of fifteen years old was so exquisitely beautiful that the Maréchal de Brissac could say to her, in his chivalrous language: “Madame, you have there before your eyes two hundred thousand men enamored of your person”; and a few years later the people cried, “Death to the Austrian!” Never had woman such a destiny. The Greeks could not imagine a great soul in a body that had no beauty, nor beauty of person without a noble soul. Marie Antoinette would have been their idol, their goddess. O holy martyrs of the Temple! pray for France.

The magazine contains a story still more interesting than _Fabiola_, if that is possible: _Virginia; or, Rome under Nero_.

19th.――Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, this man of miracles, this humble and great saint, whose memory will live as long as the world, who founded admirable works, who created the Sister of Charity――this marvel, whom even the impious admire, whom the poor and needy, the aged, the infirm, the wounded, call “sister”; whom one finds tending abandoned children; at the asylum, the hospital, on the field of battle, and in the prison. O charity!

Letter from Sister Louise, who is, it seems to me, drawing near to her Eternity. She tells me that labor has worn out her strength, that she cannot write any more, and sends me two very beautiful little pictures, which have a sacredness in my eyes as the gift of a dying person. Is Heaven so soon about to claim this sweet cloister-flower?

Kate, darling, you see that I cannot lose my favorite habit of confiding to you my thoughts. Oh! why are you not here, admiring Margaret, resplendent with youth, freshness, and joy? She is going to write to you, to ask news of Zoë, etc.

God keep you, my beloved sister!

JULY 29, 1868.

Have I said anything to you about Margaret’s park? of her conservatory, worthy of Italy, and where Marcella would like always to remain? of her birds? of all the fairy-land which she knows so well how to make us enjoy? Lucy’s mourning prevents our hosts from issuing many invitations; but how much I prefer our home-party as it is!

Long excursions among the mountains. Many projects for next year. Margaret desires that a friendly compact should be agreed to, which would be a continual interchange of visits: Brittany, England, Ireland, Orleans, and Hyères would by turns receive our Penates. O dreams of youth, O balmy days, which never will return! stay with us long.

Yesterday Lord B――――, who had heard of my arrival, hastened to come and see us. “What! so soon grown up, Miss Georgina?” he exclaimed, to the exceeding amusement of Alix.

To-morrow we start for Ireland, for my own home, where everything is in readiness for our arrival. What a sorrowful happiness! Gertrude lets me look through her manuscript books; the following lines which I found there you will read with as much admiration as myself:

“This morning Hélène asked to speak with me, and this day and hour I shall ever remember. The beloved child of my soul, of my thoughts, and of my heart desires to become a daughter of St. Teresa; she wishes to go, and speedily. I shall, then, see her no more but at long intervals and behind a threatening grating; another mother will give her her love, other hands than mine will guide her towards God. But she will be thine, O Lord! and, while yet young, I have felt too much the sorrows of this world not to be happy at seeing thee give to her the better part. Her avowals, her innocent confidence, her purity of soul and intention――all these appeared to me so peaceful that I also experienced an ineffable sense of inward peace. Go, then, since God calls thee, sweet angel of this home, in which thou wilt leave so great a void――go; father and mother will not refuse thee to God, and our prayers and blessings will follow thee!”

After these heavenly thoughts, dear Kate, I leave you.

AUGUST 6, 1868.

I have received your letter, dear sister, joy of my soul, and to-day must not pass away without my writing to you. _O deliciosa!_ I behold Ireland again, my country, my universe, the first place in my heart, where I have loved my mother and you. O these memories!――the past and present uniting their happiness, their harmonies, and their sweetness.

The house is the same as ever――a bit of heaven fallen upon the earth! Prayed on our dear tombs. The rose-trees flourish which you planted there. The good Reginald does everything as well as possible, as he always does. But oh! to live here without you, to see your room――a reliquary which no one enters without me, and where I have put together whatever belonged to you. Dear, dear Kate, you say well that God has given me other sisters――sisters loving and beloved, but who cannot replace my Kate.

All the village came out to meet us. There were no songs――there were tears: the Irish understand one another. Poor martyr-country! I am seized with a longing desire to stay here to console these poor people. Our dogs were wild with delight, like that of Ulysses. Dear friend and sister, do not be uneasy; that which surmounts all else in my heart is peace, and peace founded on hope, as on a foundation of gold. God will deliver Ireland! He will give us back our forests and our hills, and we shall no more return to the condition of the proscribed. Do you remember the last book we read together, in the great drawing-room on the venerated spot where we used to see our mother? This book is still on a side-table, marked at the last page. It is Rosa Ferrucci, the charming Italian, who so loved Milton. Nothing is changed; the wide meadows, the splendid landscape, the sunsets behind the _giants of the park_, the gold-dust gleaming through the foliage, the decline of day which we used so to admire together――I have seen it again in its fantastic magnificence――all is there, even to the smallest tufts of ivy: but the absent and the dead!

“And they also are present,” René assures me. “They wish you to be courageous and truly Christian. Death does not separate souls.”

A fraternal letter from Karl. “My heart feels all the impressions of yours in Ireland. I pray God that he may shed happiness upon your path, and I join in all your memories.”

Isa, Lizzy, Mme. D――――, and all our friends must come in turn, and all together. Isa is with me, pale as a marble Madonna, with a heavenly expression in her eyes. Her mother almost adores her, and clings to her in order to live. Mme. D―――― fainted away on seeing me. Lizzy has recovered her gayety and petulance, and would fain enliven Isa. Where have I read some words of a Breton who, in speaking of a young girl called to the religious life, says, “Her heart is like a desert”? Such is Isa, athirst for God, in love with the ideal, a soul wounded with the thorny briers of life.

Margaret takes in several French newspapers. We are reading in the _Ouvrier, Les Faucheurs de la Mort_――the “Mowers of Death”――a historical drama of unhappy Poland. It is heartrending. Poland and Ireland, the two martyrs, understand each other. Will not God raise them up a liberator?

Darling Kate, what benedictions are showered upon you in return for your liberalities! What touching questions are put to me! O these good people! how I love them.

For the _first time_ I am mistress of the house. René calms my scruples, and tells me that he is proud of me. O the evening prayers in our own tongue! Yesterday I thought I saw you in your old place, and nearly cried out.

Send me your good angel, O best-beloved of sisters! Send him to me in the land of O’Connell――

“First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea.”

Dear Kate, I am going to enclose in my letter some beautiful lines by Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess who delights me so much. This poetry is almost _Irish_ to my heart:

LE RETOUR.

Oui, je te reconnais, domaine de mon père, Vieux château, champs fleuris, murs tapissés de lierre, Où de mes jeunes ans s’abrita le bonheur; Votre image a partout suivi le voyageur.… Vous souvient-il aussi des quatre têtes blondes Qui si joyeusement formaient de folles rondes? De nos rires bruyants, de nos éclats de voix, Nous faisions retentir les échos des grands bois, Sans craindre d’offenser leur majesté sereine, Et plus insouciants que l’oiseau de la plaine. Mais, ainsi qu’un parfum goutte à goutte épanché, Le bonheur s’est tari dans mon sein desséché. De ces bois, chaque été rajeunit la couronne, La mienne est pour toujours flétrie au vent d’automne; Au murmure des vents dans leurs rameaux touffus, Au concert gracieux de leurs nids suspendus. Au doux bruit du ruisseau qui borda leur enceinte, Aujourd’hui je n’ai rien à mêler qu’une plainte: Je ne ris plus.…

Puis sous le marronnier voici le banc de pierre Où, pour nous voir de loin, s’asseyait notre mère. Oh! comme elle était belle et comme nous l’aimions! Oh! comme son regard avait de chauds rayons! J’étais le plus petit: souvent lorsque mes frères Gravissaient en courant les coteaux de bruyères, Bien las, traînant des fleurs et des branches de houx, Je revenais poser mon front sur ses genoux. Alors en doux accents vibrait sa voix chérie, Et dans mon sein d’enfant tombait la rêverie. Et maintenant traînant mes pas irrésolus, Parmi les chers débris de mes bonheurs perdus, Et les pieds tout meurtris des cailloux de la route, Je me retourne encor, je m’arrête et j’écoute: Je n’entends plus.…

Et ce vieux monument, c’est toi, ma pauvre église, A l’ombre d’un sapin cachant ta pierre grise. J’ai salué de loin le sommet de ta croix Qui scintille au soleil et domine les bois. Ici, je m’en souviens, j’eus de bien belles heures, Qui me faisaient rêver des celestes demeures; Je contemplais, ravi, les séraphins ailés, Les gothiques vitraux, les lustres éloignés. J’entendais à la fois la prière du prêtre, Et les petits oiseaux jasant à la fenêtre, Les cantiques de l’orgue et des enfants de chœur, Et l’ineffable voix qui parlait dans mon cœur.… Oh! que Dieu soit béni! que les mains de l’enfance Au pied de son autel, sainte arche d’alliance, Des fleurs de nos sentiers répandent le trésor! Qu’on brûle devant lui l’encens des urnes d’or! Que tout vive et tressaille et chante en sa présence! Le bonheur en fuyant m’a laissé l’espérance: Je prie encor.…[128]

_Translation of the foregoing._

Yes, domain of my father, well I know thee again―― Old _château_, flowery fields, walls tapestried with ivy, Which sheltered the happiness of my youthful years; Everywhere your image has followed the wanderer.… Also, remember ye the four flaxen headed children Who danced so joyously their merry rounds? Our noisy laughter and our cries and shouts Made the wide woods re-echo; nor did we fear Thus to offend their majesty serene. More careless we than wild birds of the plain; But like a perfume poured out drop by drop, So happiness is dried up in my breast. Each summer, of these woods renews the crown, The autumn winds for ay have withered mine. With the breeze murmuring in their tangled boughs, With the sweet warblings from their hanging nests, With the soft ripple of their engirdling stream, Now can I mingle nothing but a moan: I laugh no more.

See the stone bench beneath the chestnut shade, Where mother sat, and watched us from afar. How beautiful she was, and how we loved her! And what warm rays beamed on us from her eyes! I was the youngest; often, when my brothers Climbed up and ran upon the heathy banks, I, wearily dragging my flowers and holly boughs, Would go and lean my head against her knees, And hear the gentle accents of her voice, While on my childish heart a reverie fell. Now I return again, I stop and listen; But hear no more.…

And this old building――it is thou, poor church, Hiding thy gray stones ‘neath the pine-tree’s shade. The summit of thy cross I hailed from far, In sunshine gleaming, rising o’er the wood. Here, I remember, happy hours I spent, Which made me dream of heavenly abodes; I gazed, admiring, at the cherubim, The Gothic windows, candelabra high. I heard, together with the prayer of the priest, The little birds about the windows chirping, The organ, and the children of the choir, And the ineffable voice within my heart.… Blessed be God! Ever may childhood’s hands, Before his altar, the sacred Ark of the Covenant, Scatter the treasure of our way-side flowers! May incense burn in golden urns before him! May all things live, sing, gladden in his Presence! Happiness, fleeing, still has left me hope: And still I pray.…

I have wept over every line, dear sister; but as for me, I laugh still, alas! Oh! what a treasure of memories hoarded within my soul of those fair years which your love made so sweet.

Would you like to have one of my relics, dearest?

SOUVENIR D’ENFANCE.

C’était dans un bois, à l’ombre des chênes Et de nos sept ans, fières toutes trois, N’ayant pas encor ni chagrin ni peines, Nous remplissions l’air du bruit de nos voix.

Nous chantions toujours, cherchant l’églantine, La fraise sauvage et le joyeux nid, Jouant follement sur la mousse fine, Et dans ces ébats la nuit nous surprit.

Tremblantes de peur, dans la forêt sombre, Et pleurant tout bas, craignant de mourir, Quand autour de nous s’épaississait l’ombre, Nous ne songions plus à nous réjouir.

Dieu! quelle terreur! Tout faisait silence. Sur le vert gazon tombait par instants Un rameau jauni, pour nous chute immense! Ah! quelle épouvante et quels grands tourments!

Mais un cri lointain, le cri de nos mères, Un appel du cœur parvint jusqu’à nous; Nous vîmes là-bas briller des lumières. Oh! que ce moment pour toutes fut doux!

Quels tendres baisers, quels aimés sourires Calmèrent soudain nos folles terreurs! Après les sanglots nous eûmes les rires, Et de nos récits tremblèrent nos sœurs.

Seigneur, que toujours, à l’heure d’alarmes, Quand gronde l’orage, un ange gardien, Une mère tendre arrête nos larmes, Et pour nous guider nous donne la main![129]

What memories, dear sister! I had lost my way with Lizzy and Isa. My mother was living then! How pale and trembling she was when I fell into her arms! And you――you, my Kate!

AUGUST 12, 1868.

You have comforted me, dear sister. This place pleases me: everybody likes it. Saw yesterday Karl’s family, as well as that of Ellen; the day before yesterday, the W――――’s. Fanny is going to marry a German with a great name, a fervent Catholic, in love with England, where he intends to remain.

Our evenings are delightful. I had promised Margaret not to read _Père Lacordaire_, by the Père Chocarne, without her. It is admirably fine. The introduction is the definition of the priest such as is given by the great orator of Notre Dame himself: “Strong as the diamond, tenderer than a mother.” There are a thousand things in this book which make my heart beat: “O paternal home! where, from our earliest years, we breathed in with the light the love of all holy things, in vain we grow old: we return to you with a heart ever young; and were it not Eternity which calls us, in separating us far from you, we should be inconsolable at seeing your shadow daily lengthen and your sun grow pale!” “There are wants for which this earth is sterile.” What a spring there is of faith and love in words like these: “Riches are neither gold nor silver, nor ships which bring back from the ends of the earth all precious things, nor steam, nor railways, nor all that the genius of men can extract from the bosom of nature; one thing alone is riches――that is love. From God to man, from earth to heaven, love alone unites and fills all things. It is their beginning, their middle, and their end. He who loves knows; he who loves lives; he who loves sacrifices himself; he who loves is content; and one drop of love, put in the balance with the universe, would carry it away as the tempest would carry away a straw.” The Père Lacordaire speaks admirably of cloisters: “August palaces have been built, and magnificent tombs raised on the earth; dwelling-places well-nigh divine have been made for God: but the wisdom and the heart of man have never gone further than in the creation of the monastery.” The first disciple and brother of Père Lacordaire, the saintly young Hippolyte Réquédat (whose soul was so pure that when, at twenty years of age, he threw himself at the feet of a priest, owning that he had never, since his First Communion, been to confession, having nothing of which to accuse himself, unless that he wished much evil to all the enemies of France) used every day to say to the Blessed Virgin: “Obtain for me the grace to ascertain my vocation――to learn the way in which I could do the greatest possible amount of good, lead back the greatest number of souls to the church, and be most chaste, humble, charitable, active, and patient.”

He died of consumption at the age of twenty-two, and his death made a deep wound in the heart of the Père Lacordaire. “Réquédat was a soul as impassioned in its self-devotion as others are in selfishness. To love was his life, but to love to give rather than to receive; to give himself always, and to the greatest number possible――this was his dream, his longing, his martyrdom. Devoted to an ardent pursuit of that which is good, tyrannized over by this noble love, he had not time to see any evil.” A friend of his was Piel, an eminent architect, who joined him to become also a son of St. Dominic――“A lofty soul, an heroic heart, incapable of a divided affection, and from the first moment aspiring after the highest perfection, admirably formed to be a great orator as well as a saint, of whom his friends used to say that his language reminded them of the style of Pascal.” With the Père Lacordaire was also Hernsheim, a converted Jew, a frank, intelligent, and profound mind, from whence issued from time to time thoughts which had a peculiar charm about them, mingled with a sweet and penetrating unction. The Père Besson, an artist like Piel, and the _Fra Angelico_ of France, was also of the number; and, lastly, the Père Jandel, now general of the order. Mme. Swetchine was like the good genius of Père Lacordaire: “Who does not know this, now?” asks the Père Chocarne. “Who has not read the life and works of this woman, whom death has crowned with a glory all the more pure and radiant because she had so carefully concealed it during her life? Who does not know this Russian with a heart so French, this convert to the Catholic faith, so gentle towards beliefs and opinions differing from hers, the masculine understanding in the woman’s heart, the spirit of Joseph de Maistre in the soul of Fénelon, the charity, so delicate and tender, of this woman who said of herself: ‘I would no more be made known to the children of men but by these words: She who believes; she who prays; she who loves’!”

This is beautiful. Can you picture to yourself the impression made upon us while Adrien is reading this aloud? Every one is breathless; the twins and Anna, their eyes wide open, their hands joined, seem to _devour_ this eloquence. The soul of the orator of Notre Dame has passed into that of his son in Jesus Christ. All is magnificent, and makes one deeply regret that the grand figure which appeared among us with the double aureole of sanctity and genius so soon disappeared from the world. A great and wonderful history is this, too little really known! Have we not heard the most absurd fables told in reference to Père Lacordaire?

I want your prayers, dear Kate, for a grand project: we wish to bring Isa’s mother to agree to live with her sister. Lizzy would be the daughter of the two, and the Lord’s dear chosen one would go to “the place of repose which she has chosen.” It will be difficult to manage, but I have a presentiment of victory.

Good-by, dear Kate, for the present.

AUGUST 20, 1868.

O Temps! suspends ton vol, et vous, Heures propices, Suspendez votre cours; Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices Des plus beaux de nos jours.[130]

We have been singing this while floating on the lake. Picciola proposes to take up her abode for a year at Aunt Georgina’s. I have installed her as dame and mistress of my little school. What joy!

Isa’s mother is beginning to understand. I have been getting so many prayers for this! She yesterday said, after having listened very calmly to what I had to say: “Dear Georgina, I feel that God inspires you; but only think how I have been broken down, and what need I have of Isa!” Poor mother! O these vocations!――a terrible secret which rends so many souls. “Let the dead bury their dead!” I need all my faith in the Gospel to admit that these words were said by our merciful Saviour. St. Bernard, the _saint of Mary_, the _honey of Mary_, will succeed in gaining this material heart, which hesitates before the greatness of the sacrifice.

We have finished our splendid reading. This evening we shall take _Klopstock_. We all find that nothing equals this intellectual pleasure of interchanging our impressions while reading together. We separate at eleven. I am taking some views, being desirous of transporting my part of Ireland into France.

Margaret has written to Mistress Annah to offer her the post of governess to the charming baby. We expect her answer to-day. The baptism took place on the 15th. It was splendid.

Have seen Sarah, whose son has been ill――always amiable, with a tinge of melancholy, caught, no doubt, by the side of the cradle.

My _duties_ are so multiplied that I should be quite unequal to them without René. What a pleasure it is to do for others what they have done for me!

Send me always your good angel, my best beloved.

AUGUST 26, 1868.

What a _fête_ for my mother, the evening of the 24th! All the echoes resounded with it. In two days hence we are to go to Fanny’s marriage, which takes place in Dublin. Great preparations; but Anna is unwell, and this spoils our joy. Marcella has suffered so much that she trembles at the least shock. Lucy will remain here with our Italians; we cannot return for a week. But the great piece of news I have to tell you is this: Isa enters the convent of ―――― on the 8th of October. I have obtained this exchange. Carmel alarmed the poor mother too much; and, besides, the health of our friend is too much shaken to be able to support the austerities of St. Teresa. The two families of the D―――― will go with us to Dublin, and we shall accompany Isa. What a _Te Deum_ we ought to sing! The timid child had never owned to her mother the ardor which consumed her; the death of George――the nephew so passionately loved, sole heir of so noble a name, and betrothed to Isa from childhood――appeared to Mme. D―――― the death of everything, and she lived “_extinguished_.” Oh! how I rejoice at this success. Margaret and Isa, both once so sad, and now with their hearts in an eternal spring!

Let us bless God together, dear Kate! Do you recollect Mgr. Dupanloup’s words: “One breathes, in this land of Ireland, I know not what perfume of virtue which one finds not elsewhere.”

AUGUST 31, 1868.

René is writing to you. We know that Anna is well, and we are enjoying the _worldlinesses_ of Dublin. Fanny was touching under her veil. Your dear name, my beloved Kate, was mentioned, I know not how often. O kind Ireland! If I had to tell you all the graceful things that were said to me, I should fill my paper. How pleasant it is to be loved! Fanny did not weep on seeing me; she and her mother are unequalled in their serenity; consolation has been sent them from on high. A _vision_ is spoken of. I did not like to ask any questions, but it is certain that something extraordinary has occurred.

O dear Kate! how fair is life. I was saying so yesterday to René while we were looking at the stars; for the night was splendid. Do you know what he answered? “Heaven is fairer; earth is but its echo, its far-off image, its imperfect sketch; and it is death which opens heaven to us.” Words like these from the lips of René make me shudder. Oh! to die with him would be sweet, but not to live without him. Père Lacordaire said: “Death is man’s fairest moment. He finds assembled there all the virtues he has practised, all the strength and peace he has been storing up, all the memories, the cherished images and sweet regrets of life, together with the fair prospect of the sight of God. If we had a lively faith, we should be very strong to meet death.”

Fanny starts to-morrow for France, Switzerland, and Germany――a long journey; we remain at present, so as in some measure to fill up the void a little. Why are you not here to witness our reunion? Oh! how strong is the love of one’s country. I am _inebriated_ with my native air; we sing our old ballads; we turn over with Adrien the history of the past. Ask of our good God that this may last a long time, dear Kate! _Erin mavourneen! Erin go bragh!_

SEPTEMBER 6, 1868.

Mistress Annah is come, dear sister. I wept with all my heart on embracing her. Dear old mistress Annah! how wrinkled and thin she has become; always upright and stiff as an Englishwoman, and her memory enriched with Italian stories which will charm baby’s childhood. Margaret has chosen for the beautiful innocent the name of _Emmanuel_――a blessed name, which well bespeaks the happiness of our friend. Lord William made royal largesses to the poor in the name of the new-born heir. Twelve orphans will be provided for at the expense of _Emmanuel_. Mistress Annah is longing to see and hear you. Margaret promises her this happiness for next spring. You may be sure that no fatigue will be imposed on the dear old lady. The pension given her by Lord William made her independent; but our _belle Anglaise_ feared the isolation of old age for her devoted heart, and it will be a happiness to both to watch the growth of baby. A messenger has just arrived. _Te Deum_, dear Kate!――a little daughter is born to Lizzy. Everybody is delighted; they have sent for us; I am going with René.

7th _September_.――In an hour the baptism, so that Isa may be present; then she says farewell to her family, and we take her away. The angel fallen from heaven is to be called Isa. Marcella, Adrien, and Gertrude have joined us. Joy and grief meet at this moment. You will be astonished at the sudden departure of our Isa; but Lizzy wishes it thus, hoping that the poor mother will let herself be interested by the festivities and the visitors.

The last number of the magazine has caused me a sensation. In it is an account of the beautiful scene on the Pincio, in October, 1864, “at the hour when the sun, sinking towards the sea of Ostia, lights with a golden gleam the cross which surmounts the dome of St. Peter.” Do you remember, dear Kate, the Pope appearing in the midst of the crowd, which bent before him with so much reverence, and the long shouts of _Viva Pio Nono_ which saluted his departure? O Rome, Rome, my other country, the eternal country of those who believe, hope, and love――Rome of St. Peter and of Pius IX.――I salute thy image and thy memory!

Dear sister, Lizzy requests your prayers. She is well, radiant, and full of gratitude to God. Her good husband is in transports, and the little one so pretty under her gauzy curtains. She has not cried yet, so we think she will resemble Isa, her godmother. Do you not like this prognostic?

Let us both pray, dear Kate! Adrien has again read us the two _fair contemporary pages_ about Ireland――Mgr. Dupanloup at St. Roch, and Mgr. Mermillod at St. Clotilde. O these words!――“The first powers of our time, the two most illustrious and rich, are a Prince despoiled and a people in rags――Pius IX., who extends to you his royal hand, and Ireland, who asks you for bread!”

[118] There is in this life but one possession worthy of envy――Liberty.

[119] Good or worthy father (old).

[120] Each mortal has his own; this protecting angel, This invisible friend, keeps watch around his heart; Inspires and guides, uplifts him if he fall, Receives him at the cradle, stays by him to the tomb, And, bearing up to heaven his soul within his arms, Presents it, trembling, to the Lord of all.

[121] O thrice happy, thrice blessed day! come to fill all our hearts with infinite happiness.

[122] A slight refreshment taken by French children between the morning and evening meal.

[123] This nest, this soft mystery, is a mother’s love. Children, touch it not!

[124] Being unable to create anything, you must destroy nothing. Children, touch it not!

[125] Few are the days in life which offer charms enough To make us weep when evening brings their close.

[126] Hither the world’s last echoes come to die: Land, shipwrecked mariners; the port is here.

[127] “Yes, ’tis one of those abodes where our heart feels itself enlivened by something of heaven which floats around it――one of those abodes which as a child I loved and of which I used to dream, whose beauty, serene, inexhaustible, penetrating, sheds upon the soul a serious and sublime forgetfulness of all that is evil on earth or in man.”

[128] Marie Jenna, _Elévations Poétiques et Religieuses_.

[129] MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD.

’Twas in a wood, in the shadow of the oaks, We children three, all proud of our seven years, Unknowing yet of trouble or of care, With our resounding voices filled the air.

Singing we wandered seeking the eglantine, Wild strawberries, and nests of singing birds, Gambolling wildly on the fine, soft moss, Till night o’ertook us in our careless play.

Trembling with fear, within the forest dark We wept in silence, fearing we should die; And when around us thicker shadows fell, Never, we thought, should we see joy again.

Heavens! what terror. Everything was still. On the green, mossy turf at times there fell A withered branch, to us a fall immense; For oh! what fear and torment were we in.

But hark! a distant cry, our mother’s call, And loving voices reached our listening ears, While through the wood we saw the gleam of lights―― Oh! to us all what sweet relief and joy.

What tender kisses, and what welcome smiles, Now quickly tranquillized our foolish fears! After our sobs, we laughed for very joy, E’en while our sisters trembled at our tale.

Lord, grant that ever, in our anxious hours And stormy days, an angel guardian, A tender mother’s hand, may dry our tears, And guide our steps along the path of life.

[130] O Time! suspend thy flight, and ye, propitious Hours, Suspend your course; Suffer us to enjoy the swift delights Of these our fairest days.

APHASIA IN RELATION TO LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT.

The relation of language to thought as a theme of discussion has busied the pens of philosophical writers from very early times, and the later aspects of the controversy do not promise a speedy agreement of views. Whatever new light, therefore, recent discoveries in science may shed on this much-vexed question ought to be welcomed as helping to increase of knowledge concerning a matter which cannot escape the serious consideration of the teachers of philology. At present Messrs. Max Müller and Whitney most strongly incline to opposite views; and before coming to the subject of aphasia as affecting the question, it may be well to take a cursory view of the field of controversy.

The old or scholastic belief is that language was in the first instance divinely communicated, and this opinion its upholders strove to maintain by a variety of reasons. Authority and tradition were chief among these, though they did not by any means neglect philological and ethnological considerations. In France the Vicomte de Bonald undertook the support of this view on the same line as that now held by Max Müller――viz., that it is impossible to have a purely intellectual conception without a corresponding word or series of words to represent it; whence, according to him, it follows that the word must have accompanied the thought, and, man being unable to originate the one without the other, both must have been originally communicated. Max Müller says: “As a matter of fact, we never meet with articulate sounds, except as wedded to determinate ideas: nor do we ever, I believe, meet with determinate ideas, except as bodied forth in articulate sounds.” He strongly insists on the correctness of this view, and argues it at length. Professor Whitney takes direct issue with him, and maintains that there is the widest separation between language and thought. According to him, language can be said to be of divine origin only in so far as man was created with the capacity for its formation just as he was created capable of making clothes for himself, and of wearing them. Such being the state of the question, we will proceed to consider that abnormal condition of the nervous system which has been denominated aphasia, and afterwards indicate our opinion as to which view the facts established by it go to sustain.

Aphasia, defined by Dr. Hammond as a diseased condition of the brain, was not understood till quite recently. It is an affection of that organ by which the idea of language or of its expression is impaired. It is not mere paralysis of the vocal chords, nor of the muscles of articulation, nor the result of hysteria――which conditions are denominated aphonia, or voicelessness――but depends on a lesion or injury wrought in that portion of the brain which presides over the memory of words and their co-ordination in speech. The loss of the memory of words is styled amnesic aphasia, the other ataxic aphasia――two Greek derivatives which explain very clearly the two separate conditions. A single typical case will exhibit the usual manner of the approach of this trouble, its development and termination. An English banker, a resident of Paris, recently went out in his carriage well as usual, and on his return, as he was stepping to the sidewalk, fell heavily forward, but did not lose consciousness. His whole right side was paralyzed, and, on attempting to speak, he could not articulate a word; he barely succeeded in uttering a few unintelligible sounds. During twelve days the paralysis continued, but after that gradually subsided, till in the course of a few months he was able to move about. Strange to say, however, the power of speech did not return, and for eight months he could no more than articulate a few words incoherently. Nothing in the case of this gentleman openly indicated an impairment of the intellect; for he could neither read nor write in consequence of his paralyzed condition. There was undoubted loss of the memory of words, since his vocabulary was limited to two or three; and there was likewise ataxic aphasia, since his words were jumbled unmeaningly together. The recorded cases of this disease are very numerous, many of them differing in their individual features, but all exhibiting a greater or less degree of both forms mentioned. The case just cited will suffice to enable the reader to understand the interest felt by psychologists and physiologists alike to ascertain whether, by the discovery of a uniform and constantly-recurring lesion in a certain portion of the brain, the seat of language in that organ might be determined. Dr. Gall, with the view of completing his system of phrenology, referred speech-function to that part of the brain lying on the supra-orbital plate behind the eye. Spurzheim, Combe, and others of the phrenological school held the same view. But this was a mere conjecture on their part, and it was not till minute anatomy had already localized several other important functions that a fair promise was held out that the brain-organ of speech might be likewise located. Experiments without number were made by Bouillaud, Cruveilhier, Velpeau, Andral, Broca, and Dax in France; Hughlings, Jackson, Sanders, Moxon, Ogle, Bateman, and Bastian in England; Von Benedict and Braunwart in Germany; Flint, Wilbur, Seguin, Fisher, and Hammond in America――all tending to confirm the localization of the function, though not agreeing as to the exact spot. The mode of procedure usually consisted in making a post-mortem examination of those who during life had suffered from aphasia; and though it was an extremely difficult matter to bring all the cases under a uniform standard, enough was discovered to assign the function in question to the left anterior lobe of the brain. We do not pretend to regard the question as settled; for no less authorities than Hammond in our own country, and Prof. Ferrier in England, seem to consider both hemispheres of the brain as equally concerned. Still, it is significant that out of 545 cases examined by different authorities, 514 favor the left anterior lobe of the brain, while but 31 are opposed to such a conclusion. Assuming, then, as amply demonstrated that some portion of the anterior convolutions of the brain is the seat of the faculty of speech, the question arises, Can that part of the brain which is concerned in the process of ideation continue to perform its functions――_i.e._, originate true ideas of which the mind is conscious――without the memory of the words which usually represent those ideas or the power to co-ordinate them? It is evident that, no matter how the question may be met, we possess in the discoveries to which aphasia has led a most important contribution to the controversy concerning the relation of language to thought; for if it can be shown that the mental faculties are unimpaired during the existence of the aphasic condition, the conclusion would go to favor Prof. Whitney’s view that thought is independent of speech; whereas if it can be shown that during the same condition the mental powers are very much debilitated or frequently suspended, we find an unexpected support given to Max Müller’s opinion that without language there can be no thought. We would state in advance that the portion of the cerebral substance which is concerned in the production of thought――or, as neurologists have it, is the centre of ideation――entirely differs from that which is the reputed seat of the faculty of speech; so that the question may read: Does the centre of ideation continue to operate while the speech-centres are in a diseased condition? Aphasic individuals usually retain all the appearances of intelligence: their eyes are full of expression; their manner of dealing with surrounding objects is quite the same as if they were in possession of all their faculties; when asked to point out material objects, they unhesitatingly do so――in a word, to the extent that objects are their own language their intellect remains unimpaired. But they exhibit a remarkable deficiency in the power of co-ordination, since this is a pure relation not symbolized by anything material. Material objects possess in their outlines and sensible qualities enough to discriminate and individualize them; and hence, through perception, they reach the centres of ideation, and are as readily understood by the aphasic as though their names were fully known. This is made manifest in their writing when, as occurs only in a few cases, the aphasic retain the power of using the pen. Thus we read in Trousseau of the case of an aphasic named Henri Guénier, who could not write the word “yes,” though capable of uttering it in an automatic way without seeming in the least to understand its meaning. Yet he could write his own name, though nothing else, evidently for the reason that the τὸ ἐγώ was the object of most frequent recurrence to his mind, and that which consequently he could most readily apprehend through its sensible characteristics, and could thereby connect with his own name; whereas “yes,” as the symbol of affirmation, found no counterpart in the sensible order. The same author relates the case of a man who, so far as he could make himself intelligible, boasted of retaining his intellective and memorative powers unimpaired, and yet, on being put to the test, he could not construct the shortest sentence coherently. When a spoon was held before him, and he was asked what it was, he gave no answer; when asked if it was a fork he made a sign of denial, but when asked if it were a spoon he at once replied in the affirmative. It must be remembered that in all these cases the power of utterance, so far as it is a muscular process, remained unimpaired, but there was true amnesic aphasia――_i.e._, the recollection of the words was lost.

There are some cases of partial aphasia which possess an interest quite peculiar, since its victims frequently regain the entire power of speech, and are able to relate the results of their experience. A celebrated professor in France spent a vacation-day reading Lamartine’s literary conversations, when towards evening he was attacked with partial aphasia. Fearing lest he was threatened with paralysis, he moved his arms and walked up and down the room, in doing which he experienced no difficulty; but when he resumed his reading, he found it scarcely possible to understand a sentence. The individual words were intelligible enough, but he could not follow out the sequence of the thoughts. Of course during the attack he could not utter a word, though able partially to comprehend what was said to him, as he afterwards declared. Here indeed is a most instructive instance of impaired intellect, occurring as it did in a man whose brain was usually in a very active state, and whose mind was highly cultivated. Does it not strongly confirm the belief that, even while the organic instrument of thought was unimpaired, its functions were temporarily suspended?

Another case is that of a man of good literary attainments, who pretended that he could still understand what he read, but who could not discover the mistake when the book was presented to him reversed. There can be no doubt, then, that aphasia unerringly points to a most intimate dependence between language and thought, and that, as Max Müller says, without language there can be no thought.

But why is it that in regard to objects possessing sensible qualities aphasic individuals exhibit no impairment of intellectual power? We will answer, Because with regard to such objects these are their own language, and the functions of the perceptive and ideational centres are as active in their regard as though the faculty of speech were intact. A tree is known by its branches and leaves to the deaf mute as well as it is by its name to those possessing all their faculties. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates an object of thought is its language. For, after all, is not language conventional and arbitrary, the outer symbol of a subjective phenomenon? The symbol may be of any sort whatsoever, but the thought cannot be known without a symbol of some sort. Now, the qualities of sensible objects, in so far as they serve to circumscribe the objects and to discriminate them from all others, become their language. This is rendered more evident when we reflect that Locke’s theory, according to which sensible objects are but an aggregate of sensible qualities, is generally rejected, and the opinion admitted that under these qualities there resides a true substance impervious to the senses and known to us only as inference from the former. Therefore the sensible qualities are the symbol of the substance identified with it; of course in so far these are but the substance modified in such or such a manner. This is why aphasics find no trouble in forming ideas of material things, though they may forget their names. But why is aphasia ataxic――that is, incapable of co-ordinating words? Because co-ordination expresses the relation between the objects co-ordinated, and relation is not represented, and cannot be represented, by anything in the sensible order. They belong to the purely intellectual order, and the only symbol that existed by which they were known being lost, there remains no longer any means of circumscribing and differentiating them. Paul and Peter may be well known to the aphasic――Paul as such, and Peter as such――because the sensible qualities of both render them recognizable; and not only that, but the different qualities pertaining to both enable him clearly to distinguish the one from the other. But if he is told that Peter is taller than Paul, he understands nothing. And why? Because the proposition implies the relation of comparison, in which there is nothing sensible. Indeed, he perceives Peter to be tall and Paul to be diminutive, but he does not perform the intellectual process called judgment, which is interpreted in the proposition, Peter is taller than Paul. In like manner, when there is question of purely intellectual conceptions which can be symbolized by nothing sensible except names, the aphasic are incapable of reaching them. Virtue, power, and malice are meaningless sounds in their ears, and equally unintelligible is what these words represent. The reason is because the symbols by which these ideas were conveyed to the mind are lost, and there is nothing left by which virtue can be known or discriminated from power and malice. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates a thought is its language, and this can be done only by a symbol. Now, if we consult our own consciousness, we will find that it is impossible for us to conceive of what is purely intellectual――_i.e._, possessing no sensible traits――if we lose sight of the word which represents it. Affirmation and negation are of this sort, and it is entirely impossible to disconnect the idea of either from some word or series of words. The idea, indeed, is not the spoken word, but is painted by it as it were on the canvas of the mind, and hence was called by Aristotle the word of the mind. All this is attested in the case of aphasics. The language-mechanism of the brain is disarranged; there is forgetfulness of words, accompanied by inability to arrange them in proper order so as to be remembered; the ideational centre remains intact, but is inoperative with regard to such thoughts as have their sole symbol in words.

It is true that some aphasic individuals retain for a time certain impressions which belong to the purely intellectual order; but this can be accounted for only by supposing that the brain centres of ideation are endowed with certain registering powers capable of retaining impressions for a short while after their active operation is suspended. But when the disease is of long continuance those impressions gradually fade, and the patient is reduced to the condition of an untaught deaf mute. He has lost the formulæ of thought, and therefore cannot think. Trousseau says: “A great thinker, as well as a great mathematician, cannot devote himself to transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision.” But where the sole “material accessory,” as Trousseau calls it, is absent, how can a person think? We use the word in a higher sense; for children incapable of speech, and animals, exercise a certain amount of thought in respect to surrounding objects; but thinking, in the sense of reasoning, abstracting, and comparing, outlies their capacity, just as it does that of aphasic individuals. “Without language,” says Schelling, “it is impossible to conceive philosophical, nay, even any human, consciousness; and hence the foundations of language could not have been laid consciously. Nevertheless, the more we analyze language, the more clearly we see that it surpasses in depth the most conscious workings of the mind.” And Hegel says: “It is in names that we think.” This exactly explains what occurs in the case of aphasics. The principles of science, the sequence of ideas, the links of an argument, are not understood by them; for they are, as children and animals, capable merely of receiving the impressions which material objects make on their sensory organs. It is true that a few aphasics have been known to be expert chess-players; and though this is as hard to account for as the apparent feats of reasoning accomplished by animals of the lower order, still we would no more rank expertness at such a game among the higher attributes of reason than we would the sagacity of a dog or of an elephant.

This point is well touched upon by Trousseau, who says: “I believe that the same thing obtains in metaphysics as in geometry. In the latter case a man may vaguely conceive space and infinity without any precision or measure; but if he wishes to think of the properties of space, and more particularly of the special properties of the figures which bound space――as, say, conic sections――it is impossible that his mind does not immediately see the curves proper to a parabola, a hyperbola, and an ellipse. In metaphysics, on the other hand, I believe that a man cannot think of the special properties of beauty, justice, and truth, for instance, without immediately giving a material form, as it were, to his thoughts, by using concrete examples, and without associating words together――words which represent concrete ideas, and which then stand in the same relation to

## particular metaphysical ideas as figures do to determinate geometric

ideas.”

The same may be said of universal ideas. These are, subjectively viewed, mere concepts of the mind; objectively they have a foundation in the object. Now, that object is present to the aphasic, and he recognizes it by its sensible properties; but when there is question of viewing one or two properties as possessed in common by a number of objects, he finds himself unequal to the task. In a word, he cannot generalize, and this is one of the highest acts of reason.

We would insist upon the distinction between words representing purely material objects and those which interpret to us supersensible thoughts; for not a few physiologists have fallen into error by not observing this distinction. Thus Prof. Ferrier, of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, says: “In aphasia, consequent as it usually is on disease of the left hemisphere, the memory of words is not lost, nor is the person incapable of appreciating the meaning of words uttered in his hearing.” From this it is evident that the learned professor neglected to note the distinction alluded to; and because an aphasic did not fail to appreciate the meaning of certain words representing material things, therefore he concluded in a general way that he did not fail to appreciate the meaning of words. Indeed, we have nowhere noted the distinction, and it is curious that, in all the cases recorded of the clinical history of this disease, physicians have invariably propounded to their patients as test-words such words as fork, spoon, pen, boots, and all such as pertain to the material order of things. Prof. Whitney certainly did not take note of these facts when he asserted the entire independence between language and thought. He regards man as capable of conceiving new thoughts apart from all representative symbols, and then finding for them a vocal expression. This, as we have seen, is in direct antagonism with the data of aphasia. The chief flaw in Prof. Whitney’s reasoning is that he starts from false premises when he limits language to mere spoken or articulate sounds. He seems to ignore the question when he says: “In all our investigations of language we find nothing which should lead us to surmise that an intellectual apprehension could ever, by an internal process, become transmuted into an articulated sound or complex of sounds.” The implied premise in this sentence is erroneous, since it is entirely possible that it be associated with some other symbol, borrowed from a material source, which is its language, its expression, and makes it something entirely distinct from the intellectual apprehension. Indeed, here lies the secret of metaphorical language, and of its extensive use among those tribes of men whose philosophical vocabulary is limited.

LIGHT AND SHADOW.

In golden pomp at morn and eve The purple mountains rise, With banners bright of waving green Gay flaunting to the skies; But upward toiling, panting, slow, Patient the fleetest step must go.

A winding pathway through the vale Entices weary feet; The shining waters sing of peace, The morning breeze is sweet; But nook or covert there is none To shelter from the noonday sun.

The fainting trav’ller turns aside To seek the woodland shade―― Beyond the thicket, stretching cool, Invites the mossy glade―― But thorny is the tangled way, And devious paths his steps betray.

The fleeciest cloud that graceful floats In summer skies of light, Within a veil of tender mist Conceals the tempest’s might; And winds that stir with softest breath Are freighted with the seeds of death.

The loveliest blossom that unfolds Its beauty to the day Must yield its treasured fragrance up, Then droop and fade away; And greenwood birds that sweetest sing Are soonest gone on flitting wing.

The undertone of earth’s delights In sorrow’s pensive sigh Is mingled with the echoing breeze Ere joy’s glad accents die―― Of all the strains that saddest float Are requiems blent with triumph’s note.

CHICAGO, October 14.

JEAN INGELOW’S POEMS.[131]

Jean Ingelow is now over fifty years of age. For some time past she has devoted herself chiefly to graceful prose, in which her pure and playful imagination seems to have found sufficient vent. She can never be removed from the company of the poets, however, notwithstanding her apparent purpose of withdrawal, so far as we may surmise a possible design by her neglect of versification.

That she has demonstrated her possession of genuine poetic feeling cannot be denied. The volume before us is sufficient proof of this. Whenever she has permitted herself to be simple, lucid, and natural, her verses’ not only please――they charm. She is one of the minor poets sincerely beloved――not in so great a degree as Adelaide Procter, or Christina Rossetti, because she is not equally successful in expressing the universal sentiments of the heart, and because she wanders from the unambitious poetry of natural feeling into the tricky and artificial, whither the multitude will not voluntarily follow. She is not always in one mood, as Adelaide Procter is; and her joy, when sincere, and not fictitious and artful, is sometimes exceedingly attractive and――what is its truest test――becomes infectious, pervading the reader’s mind and carrying the emotions away into its own atmosphere.

We never smile at Adelaide Procter’s joy. Her smiles are sadder than her tears. She smiles like a dying saint, whose pallid features proclaim that the effort is inspired by something higher and more mysterious than the pleasure of the world. It is as Shakspere says: “Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, as if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit, that could be moved to smile at anything.”

Jean Ingelow possesses enough perception of real humor to throw, here and there, winsome flashes of merriment over very sombre pictures, especially in _genre_ scenes like that depicted in “The Supper at the Mill.” Indeed, it may be safe to say that if she unloosed the flimsy chains of artificiality in which she has bound her muse, that very affected maid would prove frolicsome and mischievous; but her mistress prefers a decorousness of behavior which, by this time, must have dulled her own sense of the ludicrous, while supplying additional keenness in that direction to her critics, and furnishing new and irresistible models for hilarious parody, as we shall see.

It is impossible to read through a volume of her poems without coming to this conclusion: that she has a poetic stock-in-trade. Let us make an inventory of it. First, there are the birds; secondly, certain flowers and grasses; thirdly, a set of stereotypes composed of peculiar comminglings of sea, sky, ships, and stars. This poetic stock is, as it were, all duly classified and labelled, and the whole is arranged with scientific calculation as to drafts, at intervals, upon the several departments. Matthew Arnold,[132] modestly defending his own attempts toward translating Homer into English hexameter, hopes to make it clear that he at least follows “a right method,” and that, if he fail, it is “from weakness of execution, not from original vice of design.” Jean Ingelow is guilty, we think, of “original vice of design.” “Weakness of execution” is infallibly certain to follow. In selecting her poetic stock――which is, in itself, vice of design――she deepens the folly by being persistently fantastical. It is not enough to choose birds, grasses, and particular flowers――these are an integral part of all descriptive poetry; but, in order to make them her especial poetic stock, she calls them by a curious and grotesque nomenclature, whose terms were undoubtedly devised with an ultimate view toward picturesque artificial composition. Her birds are not the sweet-syllabled singers of classic song; she eschews the nightingale and lark for jackdaws, wagtails, grouse, coot, rail, cushat, and mews. Her grasses and flowers are less grotesque and better adapted to sentimentalism in style: marigolds, foxglove, heather, daffodils――very fond is she of daffodils――orchis, bluebells, golden-broom, vetches, anemone, clover――her muse is very often in clover――ling, marybuds, cowslips, and cuckoo-pint. The bee appears with industrious frequency; his colors and his business are alike serviceable in a kind of composition both picturesque and fantastic, He is as full of available verbal suggestion as of honey. The ships are invariably bowing to each other, to the land, or to the port. The figure is a good one, and true, but its recurrence soon renders it tiresome and exposes the dryness of the poet’s fancy. And after all Shakspere has been beforehand with her. In the _Merchant of Venice_ Antonio is told that his mind is tossing on the ocean, where his argosies with portly sail, like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,

“Do overpeer the petty traffickers, _That curt’sy to them_, do them reverence, As they fly by them with their woven wings.”

The sea――which has supplied all the poets, from Homer down, with noble and beautiful images, lofty, grand, awful, terrible, or simply lovely,――the sea to Jean Ingelow is as a sleek servant who comes in to fill up a gap in the discourse or provide a necessary digression in the narrative. “A Sea Song” contains nothing of the sea except “salt sea foam” repeated. Her sea, stars, sun, and moon are all domestic. They perform no higher functions than the pipes of parsley or “the green ribbon” that “pranks the down.” Her sun either “stoops” or is “level”; her moon “droops”; the sea is usually “level,” and when disturbed, never awakens any sense of the sublime. Nothing more than her apparent imbecility in poetic treatment of the sea is wanting to dispose of the hope that Jean Ingelow can ever become a better poet than she appeared to be in her first volume.

Mrs. Browning, in one of her earlier efforts, “The Seraphim,” makes Ador and Zerah speak of “the glass sea-shore.” But we do not remember noting a recurrence of the expression throughout her tens of thousands of lines. Mrs. Browning seems to have been conscious that she was unequal to an adequate depicting of marine grandeur, and she rarely attempts it, except in an instant’s lofty sweep remindful of Homer――as if she caught a single breath of his inspiration, and pressed it into her verse. She had more imagination than Jean Ingelow; Jean has the readier fancy. Mrs. Browning’s conceptions of the awe and beauty of the sea were far above her power of description, whose efforts are often turgid and swell into bombast; so she does not attempt, except in modest discretion, to write of the sea at all. Miss Ingelow, on the contrary, discovers the ocean only at her feet, or through the limited vision of a pretty opera-glass. Thus it becomes a mere commonplace in her stanzas; she is frivolous where Mrs. Browning would have been turgid had she not been cautious.

The sea, indeed, has wrecked most of the poets who did not hug the shore. Only the few greatest of the number have been able, like Jason, to tempt its unknown breadth, and fewer still return from Colchis without a Medea to torment them. The sea will always be the final touchstone of poetic genius. Of recent poets, Tennyson has been most ambitious and most successful; but his best ocean views may be seen from along the shores of the _Æneid_. The little ’scapes which are strictly his own are artificial and under-done; his pigment is only the residuum of lapis-lazuli――ultramarine ashes.

Jean Ingelow’s “vice of design” is very sadly shown, too, in her vocabulary. She wanders about in dusty, unused dictionaries, searching out odd, obsolete, obscure, and ambiguous words. Because a term is confessedly obsolete is no sound reason why it should not be revived; but there is no justification for inserting it in a text where it must play the unbecoming part of a conspicuous intruder who can make no satisfactory excuse for his presence in uncongenial company. Where the silenced lexicons do not afford the desired material, she is not loath to make new combinations, and we are harassed by “bewrayed,” “amerce,” “ancientry,” “thrid,” “scorpe,” “eygre,” “chine,” “brattling,” etc. The best illustration of the artificiality and affectation of her style is found in one of her most pleasing and most popular poems, and it would be deservedly much more popular were these blemishes of etymology and simperings of rhetoric removed. We quote stanzas enough of “Divided” to exhibit her individuality both of thought and diction:

“An empty sky, a world of heather, Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom; We two among them, wading together, Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

* * * * *

“Flusheth the rise with her purple favor, Groweth the cleft with her golden ring, ’Twixt the two brown butterflies waver, Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.

* * * * *

“Hey the green ribbon! We kneeled beside it, We parted the grasses, dewy and sheen; Drop over drop there filtered and slided A tiny bright beck that trickled between.

“Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us, Light was our talk as of faëry bells,―― Faëry wedding bells faintly rung to us Down in their fortunate parallels.”

The “beck” grows into a widening stream and divides them.

“A shady freshness, chafers whirring, A little piping of leaf-hid birds; A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.

* * * * *

“Stately prows are rising and bowing (Shouts of mariners winnow the air), And level sands for banks endowing The tiny green ribbon that shows so fair.”

In the last two verses Miss Ingelow, unconsciously forgetting her previous straining after literal effects, writes these true thoughts, which are the most finely poetical in the entire poem:

“And yet I know past all doubting, truly―― A knowledge greater than grief can dim, I know, as he loved, he will love me duly, Yea better, e’en better than I loved him.

“And as I walk by the vast, calm river, The awful river so dread to see. I say, ‘Thy breadth and thy depth for ever Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.’”

Only artificial poems can be well parodied, and the parody holds the mirror up to the artifices, so that even the author must make confession. The cleverest burlesques which have reached the public of late, reproducing in an exaggerated form the faults of the modern affected school of poetry, are those of C. S. Calverley.[133] The merit of his rhymed farces――which is precisely what he makes of his models――is nowhere more happily illustrated than in the following, which needs no introduction. It is entitled “Lovers, and a Reflection”:

“In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; Meaning, however, is no great matter), Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;

“Through God’s own heather we wonned together, I and my Willie (O love, my love!); I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, And flitterbats wavered alow, above;

“Boats were curtsying, rising, bowing (Boats in that climate are so polite), And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!

“Through the rare red heather we danced together (O love, my Willie!), and smelt for flowers; I must mention again it was gorgeous weather―― Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:――

“By rises that flushed with their purple favors, Thro’ becks that brattled o’er grasses sheen, We walked or waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars we were both so green.

“We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie―― In fortunate parallels! Butterflies, Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes;

* * * * *

“And Willie ’gan sing (O, his notes were fluty; Wafts fluttered them out to the white winged sea)―― Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty, Rhymes (better to put it) of ‘ancientry’;

* * * * *

“Oh! if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together this genial weather, And carted, or carried, on wafts away, Nor ever again trotted out――ay me! How much fewer volumes of verse there’d be!”

Miss Ingelow’s most pretentious poem, next to “Divided,” is the “Letter L.” It has all her characteristic faults, intensified by a curious jog-trot metre:

“We sat on grassy slopes that meet With sudden dip the level strand; The trees hung overhead――our feet Were on the sand.

* * * * *

“And let alighting jackdaws fleet Adown it open-winged, and pass Till they could touch with outstretched feet The warmèd grass.”

And so on. Calverley has a little versification entitled “Changed.” Mark how ingeniously adroit he is in getting the jog-trot:

“I know not why my soul is racked Why I ne’er smile as was my wont; I only know that, as a fact, I don’t.

“I used to roam o’er glen and glade, Buoyant and blithe as other folk: And not unfrequently I made A joke.

* * * * *

“I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low; ’Tis that I can’t remember how They go.”

Calverley’s exhilarating volume, by the way, is not all parody; many of its numbers are original expressions of as pure fun, capitally expressed, as mirth ever conceived or art wove into verse.

Jean Ingelow is not altogether artificial. Occasionally she writes a terse truth:

“One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock Shall move the seat of God”;

or falls into a simple, unaffected strain:

“Far better in its place the lowliest bird Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song, Than that a seraph strayed should take the word And sing His glory wrong.”

Hers is that oft-quoted couplet:

“Is there never a chink in the world above Where they listen for words from below?”

“The Carpenter,” relating the touching story of his wife’s death to “The Scholar,” says with happy directness:

“’Tis sometimes natural to be glad; And no man can be always sad, Unless he wills to have it so.”

“The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire” is widely popularized by lyceum readers, who find its energy well fitted for semi-dramatic recitation; and certain divisions of the “Songs of Seven,” notably “Love” and “Giving in Marriage,” possess lyrical richness.

The thought of Jean Ingelow’s poems is always clean-of-heart; she eschews――generally――psychological tendencies, and, although far from lucid, her longer flights of speculation are merely curious, obscure, and fanciful rather than vicious or misleading. Indeed, according to her measure of grace, she is abjectly devout, worshipping with Eastern blindness a Deity of whose attributes she conceives only one――Love; and, in the humble resignation of a sightless child, she casts herself into the arms of her notion of what that Love is, and rests there, content to seek no knowledge outside herself. But even within these sacred limits her disposition to artificiality in expression unconsciously enters, to mar, with incongruous ornament, the limpid thought:

“For, O my God! thy creatures are so frail, Thy bountiful creation is so fair, That, drawn before us, like the Temple veil, It hides the Holy Place from thought and care, Giving man’s eyes instead its sweeping fold. Rich as with cherub wings and apples wrought of gold.

“Purple and blue and scarlet――shimmering bells And rare pomegranates on its broidered rim, Glorious with chain and fretwork that the smell Of incense shakes to music dreamy and dim, Till on a day comes loss, that God makes gain, And death and darkness rend the veil in twain.”

Literal criticism of Jean Ingelow is, however, abashed and almost silenced by the essence of her verse, which, in its chastity and beauty, is above the touch of cavil. She is one of our few contemporaneous poets who can look upon the face of her own work without a blush. Apparently past the zenith of her productive talent, she may look gratefully back upon her modest and constant rise, and say:

“Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast.”

She need not avert her gaze from any line, and plead that the public forgets it was hers and a woman’s. Wanting the genius of poetry, her inspiration has been only that of intense poetic feeling wrought out by the canons of verse; but, although only one of many in this respect, the work itself is far above the average of its class.

“Many fervent souls Strike rhyme on rhyme who would strike steel on steel, If steel had offered, in a restless heat Of doing something. Many tender souls Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread, As children cowslips――the more pains they take, The work more withers … … Alas! near all the birds Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.”

While the popular magazines and the newspapers are daily lowering the standard of taste, and degrading and corrupting the sources of literary enjoyment as well as of personal honor and actual virtue, the regret is irresistible that a pleasing versifier like Jean Ingelow should not contribute more to a total of general reading into which what is known as “popular poetry” so largely enters.

[131] _Jean Ingelow’s Poems._ Boston: Roberts Brothers.

[132] _Essays in Criticism_, p. 334.

[133] _Fly-Leaves._ By C. S. C.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

TERRA INCOGNITA; OR, THE CONVENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. By John Nicholas Murphy. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

An unknown land indeed is this that Mr. Murphy traverses――unknown, it is to be feared, not only to his “Protestant fellow-subjects of Great Britain and Ireland, for whose information it has been written” and to whom it is dedicated by the author, but also to too many of his Catholic fellow subjects, as well as to Catholics generally. The book is, in brief, a history of the growth and spread of the religious Orders in Great Britain and Ireland, the greater portion of it being devoted to their work and increase since a removal of the penal statutes enabled them to return in safety to the United Kingdom. The interest of the narrative is simply absorbing. The work accomplished by the Orders in face of a multitude of difficulties and dangers seems little short of the miraculous. They crept back singly or in little groups from France and Belgium, whence the first French Revolution drove them out. Thither they had flown for refuge when the greater revolution of the sixteenth century banished them and their faith from what had been a land of saints. Units gathered units, brothers brothers, sisters sisters, Congregations other Congregations, Orders affiliated Orders, and within less than a century we behold the consecrated yet desecrated soil of England and Ireland dotted with religious houses, asylums, schools, colleges, where the old faith is taught and practised. Those who are in search of the heroic, the sensational, the pathetic, the marvellous, should read this book. Their appetite will be satisfied with a healthy food. It is the old story over and over again of what can be accomplished by those who are really inflamed with a love of God and their neighbor. No one can rise from the story of St. Vincent de Paul or Nano Nagle without a moistening of the eye and a better feeling in his heart.

Mr. Murphy’s book was published some years ago, and the extracts from secular and Protestant journals in Great Britain and Ireland show how truly he met a popular want at a time when men like Mr. Newdegate were bent on satisfying their own morbid curiosity and insane hatred of Catholicity by forcing themselves on the peaceful communities of Catholic ladies. If we have any Newdegates among us, they would do well to take up Mr. Murphy’s volume, and see for themselves how these “dark and cloistered women” spend their lives. The present volume is a new and improved edition. As the author tells us in the preface, “The statistics of convents have been largely amplified and brought down to the present day. Several chapters have been re-written, and eleven new chapters have been introduced.”

THE CATHOLIC’S LATIN INSTRUCTOR IN THE PRINCIPAL CHURCH OFFICES AND DEVOTIONS. For the use of choirs, convents, and mission schools, and for self-teaching. By the Rev. E. Caswall, of the Oratory. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Father Caswall has done the Catholic laity a great service by this _Instructor_. As he truly observes in his preface, “A knowledge of Latin is not needed for Catholic worship.… Nevertheless, to those whose education admits of it an acquaintance with those portions of the Latin Liturgy which are in most frequent public use must ever be a legitimate and worthy object of interest.” Accordingly, he has put himself to the very considerable trouble of preparing a manual, which, although an experiment, will be found, we have no doubt, all that is needed for enabling the laity of either sex, who have an English education, to make themselves familiar with the language of the church’s liturgy. It deals with grammar as little as possible, he says, yet there will be found in Part II. more grammar than his words may lead us to suppose. Moreover, there are ample directions given, at every turn, for the right use of the book.

The work is primarily designed, as the title-page indicates, for choirs and mission-schools. With regard to choirs, it is superfluous to observe how much better and more pleasing to God is an intelligent than a non-intelligent singing of the Latin. With regard to schools, especially those where elementary instruction in secular Latin is given, “Catholics will enjoy,” says our author, “in the _living_ character of the language as used in the church offices, a great and singular advantage.” And further, “What better _food for the mind_ can we offer to our children,” he asks, “than the simple translation from Latin into English――after a method easy alike to girls or boys――of what they constantly hear and often join in singing in church?” Then, as to the adult laity, there is “a large class of persons who, while provided with missals and prayer-books abounding in Latin text and side-by-side translations, yet, from want of a very little practical insight, fail to derive from these manuals the advantage intended. Others there are, devout persons of either sex, who might greatly profit by the occasional use of Latin prayers, but are restrained (and ladies especially) by an idea that in order to this they must first have a complete knowledge of Latin. Such a bugbear――for it is little else――will, let us hope, quickly yield to a steady practice of the present exercises.”

The work consists of two Parts: “Part I. containing Benediction, the choir portions of Mass, the Serving at Mass, and various Latin prayers in ordinary use; Part II. comprising additional portions of the Mass, Requiem Mass, Litany of the Saints, Vespers, Compline, and other offices and devotions, with a short Grammar and Vocabulary.”

The only stricture we have to make regards the pronunciation of _A_. The author says: “_A_, when fully sounded, is to be pronounced as _a_ in _far_. Examples: Pater, _Par_ter; laudamus, laud_ar_mus; ora, or_ar_.” This is a very strange mistake. Had he heard, as we have, “Glori_ar_ _r_in in excelsis,” “Benedict_ar_ _r_es,” “super omni_ar_ _r_est,” etc., he would never have directed that “_a_ should be pronounced as _a_ in _far_.” We are aware that the English _r_ is fainter than the Irish or American. Still, should not _h_ be substituted for _r_ in the above? P_ah_ter, laud_ah_mus, or_ah_ are the exact sounds.

With this very small exception, then, we can only speak of Father Caswall’s manual with unqualified praise, and hope it may obtain the wide circulation it deserves.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. By Bishop Ullathorne. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

“These discourses,” says their distinguished author in his preface, “are called ecclesiastical because they were either addressed to ecclesiastics or treat on ecclesiastical subjects. They form a volume embracing certain points of pastoral theology――a subject on which we have very little that is Catholic in our language, if we except the excellent little book by Canon Oakeley.” They will therefore be specially valuable to our clergy, while, at the same time, the bishop “trusts there is much in them which may offer solid instruction to thoughtful Catholic laymen.” One of the most important, and the one to which we particularly invite the attention of our readers, both clerical and lay, is that on mixed marriages, “delivered on occasion of the Fourth Diocesan Synod of Birmingham.” Bishop Ullathorne is not afraid to speak plainly on this subject. Indeed, his language is startling but leaves no room for question of its truth. He speaks, too, from an extensive experience of the evils resulting from mixed marriages. Here is a passage (the italics are our own), p. 89:

“It would be as unjust as ungenerous not to admit that there _are_ Protestants who loyally keep the promises they have made in marriage with Catholics, and who truly respect the faith and religious exercises of their Catholic spouse, and fulfil their pledges respecting the education of their children. _But_ prudence looks to _what generally happens_, and not to the exceptional cases. And wisdom never runs any serious risks in matters of the soul. _The individuals, and even the families, that have fallen from the church through mixed marriages, amount to numbers incredible to those who have not examined the question thoroughly_; and the number of Catholics bound at this moment in mixed marriages, who live in a hard and bitter conflict for the exercise of their religion, for that of their children, and in certain cases for the soundness of their moral life, could they, with all the facts, be known, would deter any thoughtful Catholic from contracting a mixed marriage.”

The bishop has extended this discourse in order to give the early discipline of the church on the matter. He further makes his argument impregnable by citations from popes and councils. Moreover, he concludes the instruction “with an admirable passage from the synodal address published by the hierarchy of Australia”; and the condition of Catholics in Australia, as regards the ordinary excuses for mixed marriages, bears striking resemblance, be it remembered, to their position here.

EVERY-DAY TOPICS: A Book of Briefs. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876.

To one person at least, and to one only, this volume of _Topics_ is likely to be of lasting interest. That person is the author. The _Topics_ are short articles on a variety of subjects which have appeared from month to month in Scribner’s magazine. They are of about the average length of an ordinary newspaper article, and of about equal depth. They lack the newspaper liveliness, however, and the English is in great part of that slipshod style that is mistaken by so many nowadays for an evidence of careless strength. “Familiarly didactic” is the character that Dr. Holland in his preface seems to claim for this and others of his books, and the very phrase stamps the man. The book is tiresome, prosy, and fussy. Any one of the articles is too long for its purpose; what, then, must a volume of them be?

Dr. Holland is apparently a Christian or nothing. He is for ever prating about “the church” and attacking “the world.” It is to be feared that his Christianity is of a very vague character. His zeal is unfortunately without knowledge. He is constantly making grave mistakes with the most solemn confidence in his own infallibility, and thunders away on every kind of subject with a “trenchant ignorance” that would be amusing did it not touch such grave matters. Dr. Holland may have the best intentions in the world, but he would do well to weigh his words a little before undertaking to champion “the church.” What particular “church” is he for ever defending? The Christian Church, he would doubtless reply. But which is the Christian Church? This is a question that Dr. Holland is quite capable of undertaking to decide in a future “Topic,” and he would do not only his own readers but the world at large infinite service by making this matter clear once for all.

We are quite justified in putting this question to Dr. Holland; for everybody knows what a Catholic means when he speaks of “the church.” But in Dr. Holland’s “church” it is doubtful whether Catholics are allowed a place. At least, we should judge so from the manner in which he treats of them whenever their name occurs in the _Topics_.

LINKED LIVES. By Lady Gertrude Douglas. New York: Benziger Brothers. 1876.

The English Catholic journals greeted this story with such an unusual flourish of trumpets that we were led to expect something extraordinary in the way of novel-writing. It is extraordinary in no sense. It is not even extraordinarily bad. It is eminently dull, altogether commonplace, and only saved from utter insipidity by here and there an indication of real power.

Of course it relies for its main interest on the good old English Catholic story-theme――conversion. To relieve the monotony of this subject, probably, the author sprinkled the narrative with dashes of what is meant for sensation. She takes us to the dens of thieves, to the reformatory, the prison, the court of justice. Such scenes may be rendered exciting――by a Dickens or a Victor Hugo. We are very happy to see that Lady Gertrude Douglas is not at all at home among them. All this portion of the book reads pretty much like an ordinary police report, and all the desire in the world on the reader’s part cannot invest Katie McKay or any of her companions with even a touch of the interest that Dickens threw around Nancy Sykes. Such themes should not be touched at all unless they can be made elevating. It takes a very experienced, strong, yet tender hand to bare the ulcers and foul sores of society. The process is a most delicate one. If well done, it excites pity, remorse, sorrow, indignation, that such things can be among Christian peoples; if ill done, it is revolting and only excites disgust.

Great pains have been bestowed on the delineation of the character of Mabel Forrester, and not without success. Indeed, she and her brother Guy, who is killed off too early, are almost the only interesting persons in the volume. By the way, what a lugubrious story it is! Everybody is constantly down at the mouth. Poor Guy is killed at a yacht-race, which he has just won. Katie McKay throws herself into the sea with her babe, which has been chloroformed (!) by Katie’s sister; and we could almost wish that Katie had been left in the sea. She is dragged out, however, to receive two years’ imprisonment. The rascal whom she married dies in prison. Her sister dies in her bed, but with a strong intimation that she is likely to be consigned to the lower regions. There are several other deaths of minor consequence; and finally, after being induced to accompany Mabel on a voyage to Australia, to assist at her wedding with her elderly lover, Hugh Fortescue――who, of course, is in the last stage of consumption at the time――the vessel takes fire and Mabel perishes. Equally of course, Hugh, as soon as he receives the news, dies also, “aged fifty-three,” as the tombstone erected to his memory in Australia informs us. Surely, after all this, we may say with Macbeth that we have “supped full of horrors,” and, like him also, we feel none the better for them.

A great fault with the book, too, is that the fate of every one is foreshadowed early in the story, and the recurrence of such remarks as “But we must not anticipate,” “But of that anon,” is peculiarly exasperating when the whole murder is out in the very sentence that occasions such a remark. The convert-making is far too labored, and there is too much of it.

We should not have been at the unpleasing pains to write of this book as we have done, did we not see signs in it of a really good Catholic story-writer, who is likely to be spoiled for any future work worthy of the name by the injudicious praise which has been lavished on this, which we take to be her first book. The lady can describe natural scenery well, can touch a tender chord with true pathos, can display strength at times. She only needs more interest of plot, and to avoid scenes and characters of which she knows little or nothing. All the plot in the present volume consists of the slowly-dragged-out conversion of Mabel to Catholicity――which religion clashes with the creed of the elderly and by no means pleasant parson to whom she is affianced――and the consequent breaking off of the match. Finally he also is converted, and the _dénoûment_ is as given above. To tag five hundred and twenty-five pages of a story on a plot of such very slender device is rather overweighting it. The French scenes are the best in the book, and even they are needlessly marred by what the author doubtless considers a beauty――the supposed literal translation of the French characters’ speech into English, which is a barbarism.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC for the United States, for the Year of Our Lord 1877. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

The season would scarcely be itself without this admirable little annual. It is always bright, instructive, and amusing, and the number for the present year shows no falling off in these qualities. The first portion of the _Almanac_ contains the usual calendars, astronomical and ecclesiastical, with the information respecting Catholic feasts and fasts necessary for the coming year. Among the biographical sketches, that of Dr. Brownson claims the first place. It is illustrated by an admirably-executed portrait. There are excellent portraits also of Bishop Verot, Archbishop Connolly of Halifax, N. S., Very Rev. Dr. Moriarty, O.S.A., Rev. Francis Piquet, Pius VII., Vittoria Colonna, all accompanied by brief but interesting sketches. There are, as usual, pictures of old Catholic landmarks in this country, Ireland, and other lands, with pleasing descriptions. Among these, that of St. Joseph’s Church, in Philadelphia, is especially interesting. In addition to the complete and very valuable list of the popes, which was published for the first time last year, and is wisely retained in the present number, there is a complete catalogue of the kings of Ireland, from the Firbholg conquest down to the landing of Henry II. of England. To this is appended some valuable historical remarks. Indeed, there is not a page of this _Almanac_ that can be called dull, and its cheapness happily places it within easy reach of every reader. We only wish that such cheapness and real excellence could be oftener combined in Catholic books.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR THOMAS MORE. By Agnes M. Stewart, authoress of _Margaret Roper_, etc. 8vo, pp. 365. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

The lot of Sir Thomas More was cast in troublous times. He lived amid storms that wrecked many a noble life, and yet no man ever bore throughout a serener soul or a happier and gayer disposition. His character is a study of the most healthful sort; for it exhibits the rare picture of a man who deemed the sacrifice of power, wealth, place, friends, and life itself, to principle and conscience, too ordinary a duty to excite surprise. On whatever side we view the man, the hero comes to light. He lived in an atmosphere of his own creation, and whoever came within its influence left it a better and wiser mortal. He was, in the best sense of the word, a Christian philosopher and statesman. He would jest with Erasmus in antique phrase as though he had but returned from the portico, while a hair-shirt nettled his skin and his soul communed in frequent ejaculation with its Creator.

As a letter-writer he will ever hold a foremost rank because of his sense, humor, wit, and grace of expression. Even the careless construction of some of his letters possesses a charm; for there you see the man disclosing himself without reserve――careful, indeed, that the picture be a true one, but indifferent as to the setting. What could be more delightful than his letters to his children while these were under the care of a tutor at home and he was engrossed by the weighty concerns of office? He flies to the pen as a refuge from distracting thoughts, and pours out his soul to his little ones with a sweet _abandon_; he is sportive and grave by turns and veils deep philosophy and wise counsels beneath the garb of a fresh and mirthful phraseology. He evidently believed with Horace:

“Quamquam ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat?”

“And how can you want matter of writing to me, who am delighted to hear either of your studies or your play, whom you may then exceedingly please when, having nothing to write of, you write as largely as you can of that nothing, than which nothing is more easy for you to do, especially being women, and therefore prattlers by nature, amongst whom a great story riseth out of nothing.” He then advises them to be careless in nothing, but to bestow conscientious pains on all their performances. The homelife of Sir Thomas affords us the best glimpse of the true character of this great man, and lends a new and sad significance to the scene which occurred between his heart-broken daughter and himself, as he tottered, haggard and emaciated, to the block. He loved his home as the pupil of his eye, and sighed for it when duty called him away. With even such a shrew as his second wife he contrived to make his a model household, where refinement, piety, and cheerfulness ever reigned. Smart retort and repartee, brilliant things and witty sayings, were the salt which lent savor to many a pious reflection and devout allusion while the family shared their daily meals. Thus did Sir Thomas, by being a devout Catholic and a lover of learning, convert a possible home of bickering and discontent into one which nurtured peace, contentment, happiness, and hope.

Unless we pause to study Sir Thomas More in his home at Chelsea, we will fail to discern the peerless knight, the virtuous man, the lover of religion, the sententious philosopher (all which he was), amid the grime and lustful air of Henry’s court,

“Where the individual withers, and the world is more and more.”

Next to Sir Thomas as father, friend, and husband, the reader loves to view him in his exalted capacity of chancellor. From him indeed, the title has acquired its synonymous meaning with unblemished integrity and purity immaculate; for throughout his whole political career he never recognized friend or foe as such; he treated all alike with unswerving impartiality. And in pursuing this course he obtained the reward which he especially desired: the testimony of a good conscience. He felt that, though “there are innumerable hopes to innumerable men, he is happy who is happy day by day”; and this is just the sort of happiness which is born of a good conscience. His decisions bore the mark of his sterling sense and unyielding will, and though many exceptions had been taken to his renderings by those whose interests he countered, not a single reversal could be obtained, while others degraded their high offices and stooped to pander to the lustful instincts of the king. More studied to grace the chancellor’s gown by the practice of every virtue pertaining to the dignity of his position, and shone forth more brilliantly by contrast with the pliant tools of Henry.

“Velut inter ignes Luna minores.”

The speech which he delivered on the occasion of his investiture will ever remain a model of dignity and modesty. While deprecating the praise bestowed on him by the Duke of Norfolk, he failed not to express his just appreciation of the high and important trust to which he had been called, and this in language so fitting and graceful that his admirers likened him to Cicero.

Miss Stewart, who but a short time ago gave to the world a charming novelette with the title of the _Chancellor and his Daughter_, addressed herself to the task of compiling these memoirs with laudable enthusiasm, such, indeed, as no one acquainted with the subject could fail to experience. Here is a hero-worship of the right sort, growing out of the virtues and learning of her idol, and so far not to be reckoned with Macaulay’s stupid admiration of William III. or Carlyle’s still more fatuous veneration for Frederick of Prussia. She has earned a new title to the esteem in which she is held in England. The book contains an admirable autotype fac-simile of the celebrated picture of the meeting between the chancellor and his daughter.

THE SCIENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. By Father Francis Neumayr, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is a poor translation of an excellent little book on ascetical theology. Francis Neumayr was born in Munich in 1697. Early in life he entered the Society of Jesus, and, having finished his studies, taught theology with great success during a number of years. He was then sent to fill the pulpit of the Cathedral of Augsburg, and during the ten years in which he held this position acquired an extraordinary reputation as an orator. He did not, however, confine himself to preaching, but wrote on various subjects relating to the religious controversies of his age. His writings were very popular in Germany, and some of them made their way throughout Catholic Europe. _The Science of the Spiritual Life_, which is one of his most widely-known works, is a compendium of what has been called the “science of the saints.” It is written with good judgment and a thorough knowledge of the subject, in a style which is concise without being obscure. There is nothing in it which the simplest cannot readily understand, and yet there is everything that the most learned could desire.

MISSALE ROMANUM ex Decreto Sacros. Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII. et Urbani VIII. auctoritate recognitum. Editio Ratisbonensis X. hujus forma altera missis novissimis aucta. Cum textu et cantu a Sacrorum Rituum Congregatione adprobato. 1876. Ratisbonæ, Neo Eboraci, et Cincinnatii: Sumptibus, chartis, et typis Frederici Pustet, S. Sedis Apost. et Sacr. Rituum Congreg. typographi.

This beautiful and finely-printed Missal fully sustains the reputation that Mr. Pustet has already gained for his liturgical books. The paper on which it is printed is of the finest quality, and the type by far the best we have yet seen. Special praise is due to the printing of the notation in the prefaces and other musical portions of the work, which is singularly distinct and clear. The Missal is adorned with many fine and artistic pictures, and all the introits are embellished with finely executed initial letters. The proof-sheets have all been read by the Sacred Congregation and approved.

MARGARET ROPER; OR, THE CHANCELLOR AND HIS DAUGHTER. By Agnes Stewart, Authoress of _Florence O’Neill_, _The Foster-Sisters_, etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

This little book will amply repay perusal. The heroine, Margaret Roper, the favorite daughter of Sir Thomas More, was the model of a noble Christian woman, worthy in every way of her gifted and heroic father. Sir Thomas More was, in the truest and broadest sense of the words, a grand character, a peerless Christian knight without fear and without reproach, true to his honest convictions, to his friends, true to the faith for which he died with the calm heroism of the early martyrs. His murder――to borrow the language of one of his biographers――was one of the blackest crimes ever perpetrated in England under the form of law. Time has only increased the admiration which his grand virtues extorted from his bitterest enemies, and the most bigoted Protestants venerate his name more than that of Cranmer or Cromwell, the unprincipled tools of the heartless tyrant, Henry VIII., who deluged England with innocent blood. His letters to his daughter, skilfully interwoven into the narrative, form a very interesting feature of the volume before us. The character of the greatest of English chancellors is sketched by the authoress with historical fidelity, and the picture of his celebrated daughter is drawn with equal devotion to historic truth.

A PREPARATION FOR DEATH. Done out of French. Chicago: W. F. Squire. 1876.

This is an excellent little book, quite cheap, and well adapted for the sick room. It was originally “done out of French” by a writer in Dublin and has been reprinted in this country by the present publisher. It consists of short prayers, exhortations, and reflections on the Passion of Our Lord. The _imprimatur_ of Bishop Foley is attached.

Another work, though larger, which is peculiarly adapted for spiritual reading during the month of the Holy Souls is the _Life of St. Catherine of Genoa_, published by the Catholic Publication Society. This is not only a beautiful and interesting life of one of those great women who adorn the history of the Church in all ages, but contains in addition St. Catherine’s treatise on Purgatory, which together with her spiritual dialogues, as is said in the introduction, “St. Francis of Sales, that great master in spiritual life, was accustomed to read twice a year.” And “Frederick Schlegel, who was the first to translate St. Catherine’s dialogues into German, regarded them as seldom, if ever, equalled in beauty of style; and such has been the effect of the example of Christian perfection in our saint, that even the American Tract Society could not resist its attraction, and published a short sketch of her life among its tracts, with the title of her name by marriage, Catherine Adorno.” The words of the saints are always golden. One can never repeat them too often or ponder on them too long.

SONGS IN THE NIGHT, AND OTHER POEMS. By the author of _Christian Schools and Scholars_. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

Songs with a meaning are these, and full of sweet melody. The singer evidently feels. The feelings are deep, the thought deep also, and steeped in the purest well of religion. The versification is as varied as it is happy; and, indeed, for both thought and expression throughout this small volume we have nothing but praise. The title owes its meaning to the fact that “several of the poems were originally suggested by passages in the _Spiritual Canticles_ of St. John of the Cross, whose use of the word _night_, in a mystic sense, is too well known to need explanation.” The opening poem, “The Fountain of the Night; or, the Canticle of the Soul rejoicing to know God by Faith,” gives a good idea of the tone and excellence of the volume:

There is a Fount whence endless waters flow; There zephyrs play and fairest flowerets blow. Full well that crystal Fountain do I know, Though of the night.

I know the verdant hills that gird it round; Its source I know not, for no thought can sound The Spring whence all things first their being found In the dark night.

I know no earthly beauty to compare With that mysterious Fount, so calm and fair; All things in heaven and earth are pictured there, Though of the night.

The tide wells forth in many a flowing river, Yet is the Fountain-head exhausted never; Onward it flows, for ever and for ever, On through the night.

No cloud obscures, no passing shadows rest Upon that Fountain’s clear, unruffled breast, Itself the very source of light confessed, Though of the night.

Forth from this spring a sparkling Torrent flows; Who shall the secret of its birth disclose? And yet I know the source from whence it rose, Though of the night.

I see from both a mighty River run, Yet dare not say when first its course begun; For Fountain, Torrent, River――all are one, Though of the night.

I know that all are ours――all hidden lie In form of Bread, hid from the curious eye To give us life. O love! O mystery Of deepest night!

And the Life seeks all living things to fill, To quench our thirst with water from the rill, To feed, to guide us, though in darkness still, As of the night.

And ever of that Fount I long to drink, And ever of that living Bread I think, And linger by that flowing River’s brink Through the long night.

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS FOR OUR DEAR LITTLE ONES. By Miss Rosa Mulholland. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pustet.

This beautiful book will be welcomed by the little ones, for whom it is intended, because, from the cover all the way through, it is bright and attractive, and each picture is a pleasant surprise. All the characters of the holy tale are made life-like and familiar, and the children may feel themselves at home with the white-winged angels, the eager shepherds, the stately Magi, and those nearer and dearer ones who attended the Blessed Infant’s earliest years.

By parents this book should be welcomed, because anything that illustrates home-lessons and makes them charming is a valuable friend in the household, and because it provides an acceptable gift which will bring home to children’s hearts the true meaning of the holiday season. The verses are appropriate and not too difficult for the little ones to enjoy.

LECTURES ON SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. By Father John Cornoldi, S.J.

## Part I. Logic. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

Quite a number of persons have recently undertaken the laudable but difficult task of preparing elementary works on philosophy. Cornoldi’s Lectures or Lessons in Philosophy are to be speedily published entire, in an English translation, making two small volumes of from 300 to 350 pages each. A large part of the work is devoted to Rational Physics. The Logic, just now issued, contains the simplest and most necessary part of pure and applied logic in a _brochure_ of less than one hundred pages. It seems to be made as simple and intelligible to beginners as the nature of the subject permits. It is a defect, however, in the translation, that Latin terms are sometimes used without the least necessity, and Latin quotations are left untranslated. We hope this defect will be supplied in a second edition.

AN ESSAY CONTRIBUTING TO A PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE. By B. A. M. Second revised edition. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1876.

The first edition of this solid and genial essay was noticed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We are happy to see that its merit has received a general recognition which must be gratifying to the author. It is a book which grows upon one the more carefully it is perused, and we have now an even higher esteem of its originality, sound learning, discriminating judgment and taste than we had when we first commended it as a work of genuine and rare excellence.

THE VOICE OF JESUS SUFFERING, TO THE MIND AND HEART OF CHRISTIANS, ETC. By a Passionist Missionary Priest. New York: P. O’Shea, 37 Barclay Street.

Another excellent book on our Lord’s Passion; but it differs from the generality of such works in making our Lord himself relate the history of his sufferings first, and then helping the auditor to “Practical Reflections.” This is an admirable plan, in that it enables the reader to bring the divine Object of his thoughts so much more really before his imagination. This, together with the character of the “Practical Reflections,” will be found, we are sure, to make meditation easy to those who have hitherto given it up as requiring too great an effort. And if the pious author shall have done no more than succeed in thus facilitating devotion to the Passion, he will not have labored in vain.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. (To the end of the Lord’s Prayer.) By Henry James Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

This is the third division of Father Coleridge’s treatise on the Public Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are glad to learn that the reception of the preceding volume on the Beatitudes has “encouraged him to attempt a somewhat fuller treatment of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount than he had originally thought of.” Those who have read the volume on the Beatitudes need no insurance from us that they will find in this new work an abundance of beautiful lessons, and

## particularly some we much need at the present time. The nine chapters

on the Lord’s Prayer (chapters xv.-xxiii.) will furnish the devout with many helps to meditation on the clauses of this summary of prayer.

THE LIFE OF THE VERY REVEREND MOTHER MADELEINE LOUISE SOPHIE BARAT, FOUNDRESS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. By M. l’Abbé Baunard. Translated by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Roehampton: 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The original French edition of this admirable work has already been noticed at length in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The English edition is brought out in two handsome volumes, and the distinguished name of the translator furnishes every guarantee for a faithful and excellent rendering of the original. So great has been the demand for the work that a large order was exhausted almost immediately on its arrival in this country.

THE DEVOTION OF THE HOLY ROSARY. By Michael Müller, C.S.S.R. New York: Benziger Brothers.

Father Müller is a tireless writer. His works are for the most part addressed to those who are too often forgotten by Catholic writers――the ordinary classes. He who provides the people with books of devotion which they will _read_, and not put on the shelf, does a great and good work. Under a modest appearance Father Müller’s books conceal much learning and knowledge, the fruit evidently of very extensive reading, while the whole is pervaded with a spirit of piety and zeal. The present volume is devoted to an explanation of that most popular of devotions――the rosary. Those who care to satisfy themselves as to what the rosary is, what it is intended for, what it has done in the service of the church and for the salvation of souls, will find in this volume much to interest and instruct them, as well as to increase their fervor. The concluding chapter treats of the “Devotion of the Scapular.”

SHORT SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARY’S COLLEGE, OSCOTT. Collected and edited by the President. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

These sermons will be found very serviceable to our clergy, who are often sorely pressed for time to prepare their discourses. One instruction such as these is better than ten ordinary sermons of twice or thrice its length. Lay persons also will benefit greatly by making their spiritual reading from this volume. The subjects are wisely selected. There are twenty-seven in all, with two funeral sermons in an appendix.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIV., No. 142.――JANUARY, 1877.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.[134]

A national literature is the most perfect expression of the best thoughts and highest sentiments of the people of which it is born, and of whose life it is the truest record. No other Englishman may have ever written or thought like Shakspere, but he wrote and thought from the fulness of a mind and heart that drew their inspiration from the life of the English people. He may be great nature’s best interpreter, but she was revealed to him through English eyes, and spoke in English accents. The power to take up into one’s own mind the thoughts of a whole people; to give a voice to the impressions made upon them by nature, religion, and society; to interpret to them their doubts, longings, and aspirations; to awaken the chords of deep and hidden sympathy which but await the touch of inspiration――is genius. Every great author is the type of a generation, the interpreter of an age, the delineator of a phase of national life. Between the character of a people, therefore, and its literature there is an intimate relation; and one great cause of the feebleness of American literature is doubtless the lack of conscious nationality in the American people. We have not yet outgrown the provincialism of our origin, nor assimilated the heterogeneous elements which from many sources have come to swell the current of our life. The growth of a national literature has been hindered also, by our necessary intellectual dependence on England. For, though it was a great privilege to possess from the start a rich and highly-developed language, with this boon we received bonds which no revolution could break. When the British colonies of North America were founded, Shakspere and Bacon had written, Milton was born, and the English language had received a form which nor power nor time could change; and before our ancestors had leisure or opportunity to turn from the rude labors of life in the wilderness to more intellectual pursuits, it had taken on the polish and precision of the age of Queen Anne. Henceforward, to know English, it was necessary to study its classics; and in them Americans found the imprint of a mental type which had ceased to be their own. And being themselves as yet without strongly-marked or well-defined national features of character, they became fatally mere imitators of works which could not be read without admiration, or studied without exciting in those who had thoughts to express the strong desire of imitation. Their excellence served to intimidate those who, while admiring, could not hope to rival their ease and elegance; and thus, in losing something of native vigor and freshness, our best writers have generally acquired only an artificial polish and a foreign grace.

It must be remembered, too, that more than any other people we have been and are practical and utilitarian; and this is more specially true of the New Englanders, whose mental activity has been greater than that of any other Americans. We have loved knowledge as the means of power and wealth, and not as an element of refinement and culture. If evidence of this were needed, it would suffice to point to our school system, which is based upon the notion that the sole aim of education should be to fit man for the practical business of life. As the result, knowledge has been widely diffused, but the love of excellence has been diminished. Education, when considered as merely a help to common and immediate ends, neither strengthens nor refines the higher qualities of mind. If we may rely upon our own experience in college, we should say that the prevailing sentiment with young Americans is that it is waste of time to study anything which cannot be put to practical use either in commercial or professional life; and this in spite of the efforts very generally made by the professors to inspire more exalted ideas. We have known the wretched sophism that it is useless to read logic, because in the world men do not reason in syllogisms, to pass current in a class of graduates. This low and utilitarian view of education does not affect alone our notions of the value of literature, in the stricter sense of the word, but exerts also a hurtful influence upon the study of science. For science, like literature, to be successfully cultivated, in its higher developments at least, must be sought for its own sake, without thought of those ulterior objects to which certainly it may be made to conduce. The love of knowledge for itself, the conviction that knowledge is its own end, is rarely found among us, and we therefore have but little enthusiasm for literary excellence or philosophic truth. The noblest thoughts spring from the heart, and he who seeks to know from a calculating spirit will for ever remain a stranger to the higher and serener realms of mind.

Another cause by which the growth of American literature has been unfavorably affected may be found in the unlimited resources of the country, offering to all opportunities of wealth or fame. The demand for ability of every kind is so great that talent is not permitted to mature. The young man who possesses readiness of wit and a sprightly fancy, if he does not enter one of the learned professions or engage in commerce, almost fatally drifts into a newspaper office, than which a place more unfavorable to intellectual pursuits or to true culture of mind cannot easily be imagined. If a book is the better the farther the author keeps away all thought of the reader, under what disadvantages does not he write whose duty it is made to think only of the reader! To be forced day by day to write upon subjects of which he knows little; to give opinions without having time to weigh arguments or to consider facts; to interpret passing events in the interests of party or in accordance with popular prejudice; to exaggerate the virtues of friends and the vices of opponents; to court applause by adapting style to the capacity and taste of the crowd; and to do all this hurriedly and in a rush, is to be an editor. When we reflect that it is to work of this kind that a very considerable part of the literary ability of the country is devoted, it is manifest that the result must be not only to withdraw useful laborers from nobler intellectual pursuits, but to lower and pervert the standard of taste. They who accustom their minds to dwell upon the picture of human life as presented in a daily newspaper, in which what is atrocious, vulgar, or startling receives greatest prominence, will hardly cultivate or retain an appreciation of elevated thoughts or the graces of composition.

As the public is content with crude and hasty writing, the crowd, who are capable of such performance, rush in, eager to carry off the prize of voluminousness, if not of excellence; and, in consequence, we surpass all other nations in the number of worthless books which we print. In fact, the great national defect is haste, and therefore a want of thoroughness in our work.

But we have no thought of entering into an extended examination of the causes to which the feebleness of American literature is to be attributed. The very general recognition of the fact that it is feeble, even when not marred by grosser faults, is probably the most assuring evidence that in the future we may hope for something better.

Our weakness, however it may be accounted for, is most perceptible in the highest realms of thought――philosophy and poetry. To the former our contributions are valueless. No original thinker has appeared among us; no one who has even aspired to anything higher than the office of a commentator. This, indeed, can hardly be matter for surprise, since we may be naturally supposed to inherit from the English their deficiency in power of abstract thought and metaphysical intuition. But in poetry they excel all other nations, whether ancient or modern; and as they have transmitted to us their mental defects, we might not unreasonably hope to be endowed with their peculiar gifts of mind. Deprived of the philosophic brow, we might hope for some compensation, at least, in the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling. But even in this we seem not to have been highly favored. Nothing could well be more wretched than American verse-making during the colonial era. We doubt whether a single line of all that was written from the landing of the Pilgrims down to the war of Independence is worth preserving. Pope, when he wrote his _Dunciad_, found but one American worthy even of being damned to so unenviable an immortality.

Freneau, who was the most popular and the most gifted poet of the Revolution, is as completely unknown to this generation as though he had never written; and, indeed, he wrote nothing which, without great loss to the world, may not be forgotten. And to this class, whom nor gods nor columns permit to live, belong nearly all who in America have courted the Muse. In our entire poetical literature there are not more than half a dozen names which deserve even passing notice, and the greatest of these cannot be placed higher than among the third-rate poets of England.

Without adopting the crude theory of Macaulay that as civilization advances poetry necessarily declines, we shall be at no loss for reasons to account for this absence of the highest poetic gifts. Neither the character of the early settlers in this country, nor their religious faith, nor their social and political conditions of life, were of the kind from which inspiration to high thinking and flights of fancy might naturally be expected to spring. The Puritans were hard, unsympathetic, with no appreciation of beauty. In their eyes art of every kind was at best useless, even when not tending to give a dangerous softness and false polish to manners. Their religious faith intensified this feeling, and caused them to turn with aversion from what had been so long and so intimately associated, as almost to be identified, with Catholic worship. Their sour looks, their nasal twang, their affected simplicity, their contempt of literature, and their dislike of the most innocent amusements, would hardly lead the Muse, even if invited, to smile on them. Habits of thought and feeling not unlike theirs had, it is true, in Milton, been found to be not incompatible with the highest gifts of imagination and expression. But Milton had not the Puritan contempt of letters. He was, on the contrary, a man of extensive reading and great culture; and his proud and lofty spirit was not too high to stoop to flattery as servile and as elegant as ever a tyrant received. His lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in _Il Penseroso_ prove that he had a keen perception of the beauty and grandeur of Catholic worship. He was, in fact, in many respects more a Cavalier than a Roundhead. He had, besides, in the burning passions of his age, the bitter strife of party and sect, in the scorn and contempt of the nobles for the low-born――which in the civil wars had been trodden beneath the iron heel of war, only to rise with the monarchy in more offensive form――that which fired him to the adventurous song “that with no middle flight intends to soar,” and made him deify rebellion in Satan, who, rather than be subject, would not be at all.

In the primitive and simple social organization of the American colonies there was nothing to fire the soul or kindle the indignation that makes poets. And even nature presented herself to our ancestors rather as a shrew to be conquered than as a mistress to be wooed with harmonious numbers and sweet sounds of melody. If to this we add, what few will deny, that the equality of conditions in our society, however desirable from a political or philanthropic point of view, is to the poetic eye but a flat and weary plain, without any of the inspiration of high mountains and long-withdrawing vales, of thundering cataracts that lose themselves in streams that peacefully glide all unconscious of the roar and turmoil of waters of which they are born, we will find nothing strange in the practical and unimaginative character of the American people. We know of no better example of the tameness of the American Muse than Whittier. He is one of our most voluminous writers of verse, and various causes, most of which are doubtless extrinsic to the literary merit of his compositions, have obtained for him very general recognition. He lacks, indeed, the culture of Longfellow, his wide acquaintance with books and the world, and his careful study of the literatures of the European nations. He lacks also his large sympathies and catholic thought, his elevation of sentiment and power of finished and polished expression.

But if Whittier’s garb is plain, his features hard, and his voice harsh, his poetry, both in subject and in style, seems native here and to spring from the soil. He has himself not inaptly described his verse in the lines which he has prefixed to the Centennial edition of his complete poetical works:

“The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor’s hurried time Or Duty’s rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

“Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace Or softer shades of Nature’s face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.”

Whittier is, however, far from being a representative American or American poet. He is a Quaker. The broad-brimmed hat, the neat and simple dress, the sober gait, the slow and careful phrase with thee and thou, could not more truly denote him than his verse. Now, whatever idea we may form to ourselves of the typical American, or whether we think such a being exists at all, no one would ever imagine him to be a Quaker.

The American is eager; the Quaker is subdued. The American is loud, with a tendency to boastfulness and exaggeration; the Quaker is quiet and his language sober. He shuns the conflict and the battle, does not over-estimate his strength; while the American would fight the world, catch the Leviathan, swim the ocean, or do anything most impossible. The Quaker is cautious, the American reckless. The American is aggressive, the Quaker is timid. But it is needless to continue the contrast. A great poet is held by no bonds. His eye glances from earth to heaven――the infinite is his home; and that Whittier should be only a Quaker poet is of itself sufficient evidence that he is not a great poet. But in saying this we affirm only what is universally recognized. He is, indeed, wholly devoid of the creative faculty to which all true poetry owes its life; and yet this alone could have lifted most of the subjects which he has treated out of the dulness and weariness of the commonplace. To transform the real, to invest that which is low or mean or trivial with honor and beauty, is the triumph of the poet’s art, the test of his inspiration. His words, like the light of heaven, clothe the world in a splendor not its own, or, like the morning rays falling on the statue of Memnon, strike from dead and sluggish matter sounds of celestial harmony.

“To him the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Whittier certainly has no fear of trivial and commonplace subjects, but in his treatment of them he rarely, if ever, rises above the level of the verse-maker.

It was the opinion of Keats that a long poem is the test of invention; and if we accept this as a canon of criticism, we shall want no other evidence of Whittier’s poverty of imagination. All his pieces are short, though few readers, we suppose, have ever wished them longer. He cannot give sprightliness or variety to his verse, which like a sluggish stream creeps languidly along. There is no freshness about him, none of the breeziness of nature, none of its joyousness, exuberance, and exultant strength. In his youth, even, he had all the stiffness and slowness of age with its want of graceful motion. His narrations are interrupted and halting, interspersed with commonplace reflections and wearisome details; and when we have jogged along with him to the end, we are less pleased than fatigued. He never with strong arm bears us on over flood and fell, through hair-breadth escapes, gently at times letting us down amidst smiling homes and pleasant scenes, and again, with more rapid flight, hurrying us on breathless to the goal.

Some of his descriptive pieces have been admired, but to us they seem artificial and mechanical. They are the pictures of a view-hunter. They lack life, warmth, and coloring――the individuality that comes of an informing soul. He remains external to nature, and with careful survey and deliberate purpose sketches this and that trait, till he has his landscape with sloping hills and meadows green, with flower and shrub and tree and everything that one could wish, except that indefinable something which would make the scene stand out from all the earth, familiar as the countenance of a friend or as a spot known from childhood. He has too much the air of a man who says: Come, let us make a description. In fact, he has taken the trouble to tell us that he has considered the story of Mogg Megone only as a framework for sketches of the scenery of New England and of its early inhabitants. His own confession proves his art mechanical. He gets a frame, stretches the canvas, and deliberately proceeds to copy. The true poet fuses man and nature into a union so intimate that both seem part of each. He dreams not of framework and sketches, but of the unity and harmony of life. Where the common eye sees but parts, his sees the living whole. He does not copy, but transforms and re-creates. Before his enraptured gaze the immeasurable heavens break open to their highest, and every height comes out and jutting peak. From him not the humblest flower or blade of grass is hidden; and whatever he beholds becomes the minister of his thought, the slave of his will; passing through his mind receives its coloring, and rises from his page as though some eternal law of harmony had fitted it to this and no other purpose.

Whittier is even feebler in his attempts to portray character than in his description of scenery. To Ruth Bonython he gives “the sunny eye and sunset hair.” “Sunny eye” is poor enough; but who will tell us what “sunset hair” is like? Is it purple or gold or yellow or red? She is “tall and erect,” has a “dark-brown cheek,” “a pure white brow,” “a neck and bosom as white as ever the foam-wreaths that rise on the leaping river”;

“And her eye has a glance more sternly wild Than even that of a forest child.”

And she talks in the following style:

“A humbled thing of shame and guilt, Outcast and spurned and lone, Wrapt in the shadows of my crime, With withering heart and burning brain, And tears that fell like fiery rain, _I passed a fearful time_.”

The artifice by which Ruth quiets the suspicion of Mogg Megone, roused by the sight of her tearful eye and heaving bosom, is as remarkable for shrewdness as for poetic beauty:

“Is the sachem angry――angry with Ruth Because she cries with an ache in her tooth Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry And look about with a woman’s eye?”

The same weak and unskilful hand is visible in the characters of Mogg Megone, John Bonython, and Father Rasle, the Jesuit missionary. The descriptive portions of Mogg Megone are disfigured by mere rhetoric and what critics call “nonsense-verses.” As Mogg Megone and John Bonython are stealing through the wood, they hear a sound:

“Hark! is that the angry howl Of the wolf the hills among, Or the hooting of the owl On his leafy cradle swung?”

The only reason for hesitating between the wolfs howl and the hooting of the owl was the poet’s want of a rhyme. But it is needless to load our page with these nonsense-verses, since Hudibras claims them to be a poet’s privilege:

“But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other’s sake; For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think that’s sufficient at one time.”

Whittier’s Quaker faith inspired him early in life with an abhorrence of slavery, and drew him to the abolitionists, by whom, in 1836, he was appointed secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. It was about this time that he began to publish his anti-slavery rhymes, which he afterwards collected in a volume entitled, _Voices of Freedom_. These verses are not remarkable for thought or expression. They have the dull, monotonous ring of all Whittier’s rhymes, and are hardly more poetic than a political harangue. They are partisan in tone and manner; breathe rather hatred of the “haughty Southron” than love of the negro; and are without polish or elegance. Read to political meetings during the excitement of the anti-slavery agitation, they were probably as effective as ordinary stump-speeches. Worthless as they are as poetry, they brought Whittier to public notice. He became the laureate of the abolitionist party, and with its growth grew his fame. The circumstances which made _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ the most popular novel of the day made him a popular poet. His verses found readers who cared but little for inspired thought or expression, but who were delighted with political rhymes that painted the Southern slave-owner as the most heartless and brutal of men, who “in the vile South Sodom” feasted day by day upon the sight of human suffering inflicted by his own hand. Pieces like that which begins with the words,

“A Christian! Going, gone! Who bids for God’s own image?”

were at least good campaign documents in the times of anti-slavery agitation.

“A Christian up for sale; Wet with her blood your whips, o’ertask her frame, Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame: Her patience shall not fail.”

This is very commonplace and vulgar, we grant, but it has the merit of not being above the intellectual level of an ordinary political meeting.

And then, in the metre of Scott’s “Bride of Netherby,” we have the “Hunters of Men”:

“Have ye heard of our hunting o’er mountain and glen, Through canebrake and forest, the hunting of men? Hark! the cheer and the halloo, the crack of the whip, And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip. All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match―― Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.”

All we maintain is that this is not poetry, fair sample though it be of Whittier’s _Voices of Freedom_.

Slavery undoubtedly is hateful, and to denounce it cannot but be right. A preacher, however, need not be a poet, even though he should declaim in rhymes; nor is hate of the slave-owner love of the slave, much less love of liberty. We fail to catch in these _Voices_ the swelling sound of freedom. They are rather the echoes of the fierce words of bitter partisan strife. The lips of him who uttered them had not been touched by the burning coal snatched from the altar of liberty, however his heart may have rankled at the thought of Southern cruelty.

Whittier’s rhymes of the war are the natural sequel of his anti-slavery verses. The laureate of abolitionism could but sing, Quaker though he was, the bloody, fratricidal strife which he had helped to kindle. At first, indeed, he seemed to hesitate and to doubt whether it was well to light

“The fires of hell to weld anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain.”

Safe on freedom’s vantage-ground, he inclined rather to be the sad and helpless spectator of a suicide.

“Why take we up the accursed thing again? Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion’s rag With its vile reptile-blazon.”

But soon he came to recognize that God may speak “in battle’s stormy voice, and his praise be in the wrath of man.”

Whittier’s war rhymes are not so numerous as his _Voices of Freedom_, nor are they in any way remarkable as poetical compositions. The lines on Barbara Frietchie derive their interest from the incident narrated, and not from any beauty of thought or language with which it has been clothed. They are popular because old Barbara Frietchie waving the flag of the Union above Stonewall Jackson’s army as it passed, with measured tread, through the streets of Frederick, is a striking and dramatic figure. There could be no more convincing proof of the barrenness of Whittier’s imagination than the poor use which he has made of so poetical an episode.

“In her attic window the staff she set To show that one heart was loyal yet.”

And yet of all his poems this is probably the best known and the most popular.

The _Voices of Freedom_ and the _Songs in War Time_ both belong to the class of occasional poetry which more than any other kind is apt to confer a short-lived fame upon authors whose chief merit consists in being fortunate. He who sings the conqueror’s praise will never lack admirers.

We are sorry to perceive, in so amiable a man as Whittier is generally supposed to be, the many evidences which this edition of his complete poetical works affords of intense and bitter anti-Catholic prejudice. If he were content with manifesting, even with damnable iteration, his Quaker horror of creeds, we could excuse the simple mind that is capable of holding that men may believe without giving to their faith form and sensible expression; though the mental habit from which alone such a theory could proceed is the very opposite of the poetical. The Catholic Church, which is the groundwork and firm support of all Christian dogmas, cannot be understood by those who fail to perceive that without doctrinal religion the whole moral order would be meaningless. But Whittier’s prejudice carries him far beyond mere protest against Catholic teaching. He cannot approach any subject or person connected with the church without being thrown into mental convulsions. Let us take, for example, the character of Father Rasle, the martyr, in “Mogg Megone,” one of his earliest and longest poems. This noble and heroic missionary is represented as a heartless and senseless zealot, who “by cross and vow” had pledged Mogg Megone

“To lift the hatchet of his sire, And round his own, the church’s, foe To light the avenging fire.”

When Ruth Bonython, half mad with fear and grief, comes to confess to Father Rasle that, seeing the scalp of her lover hanging to Mogg Megone’s belt, she had killed him in his drunken sleep, the Jesuit starts back――

“His long, thin frame as ague shakes, And loathing hate is in his eye”――

not from horror of the crime, but because in the death of Megone he recognizes the extinction of his long-cherished hopes of revenge.

“Ah! weary priest!… Thoughts are thine which have no part With the meek and pure of heart.… Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong Sweep thy heated brain along―― Fading hopes for whose success It were sin to breathe a prayer; Schemes which Heaven may never bless; Tears which darken to despair.”

His heart is as stone to the pitiful appeal of the contrite and broken-hearted girl. “Off!” he exclaims――

“‘Off, woman of sin! Nay, touch not me With those fingers of blood; begone!’ With a gesture of horror he spurns the form That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm.”

And in the death-scene of the martyr, as painted by Whittier, the coward and the villain, with forces equally matched, strive for the mastery.

The ode “To Pius IX.” will furnish us with another example of religious hate driving its victim to the very verge of raving madness. “Hider at Gaeta,” he exclaims――

“Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance! Coward and cruel, come!

“Creep now from Naple’s bloody skirt; Thy mummer’s part was acted well, While Rome, with steel and fire begirt, Before thy crusade fell.

* * * * *

“But hateful as that tyrant old, The mocking witness of his crime, In thee shall loathing eyes behold The Nero of our time!

“Stand where Rome’s blood was freest shed, Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call Its curses on the patriot dead, Its blessings on the Gaul;

“Or sit upon thy throne of lies, A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared, Whom even its worshippers despise―― Unhonored, unrevered!”

It is some consolation to know that Whittier himself, in reading over these ravings, has been forced to acknowledge their unworthiness by a lame attempt at apology. “He is no enemy of Catholics,” he informs us in a note to this effusion; “but the severity of his language finds its ample apology in the reluctant confession of one of the most eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and devoted Father Ventura.” What is this but making calumny an ally of outrage?

In the “Dream of Pio Nono” he introduces St. Peter, who upbraids the venerable Pontiff in the following style:

“Hearest thou the angels sing Above this open hell? _Thou_ God’s high-priest! Thou the vicegerent of the Prince of Peace! Thou the successor of his chosen ones! I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee, In the dear Master’s name, and for the love Of his true church, proclaim thee Antichrist.”

In a poem on “Italy” Whittier hears the groans of nations across the sea.

“Their blood and bones Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones And sucked by priestly cannibals.”

“Rejoice, O Garibaldi!” he exclaims,

“Though thy sword Failed at Rome’s gates, and blood seemed vainly poured Where in Christ’s name the crownèd infidel Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell.

* * * * *

God’s providence is not blind, but, full of eyes, It searches all the refuges of lies; And in his time and way the accursed things Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age Shall perish.”

We crave the reader’s indulgence for this disfigurement of our page, and wish with all our heart it had been possible to fill it with more worthy matter.

Longfellow, breathing the same air as Whittier, the disciple of a faith commonly supposed to be less mild and sweetly loving than a Quaker’s, has found the tenderest thoughts, the noblest images, and the highest forms of character in the church which our poet cannot even think of without raving.

But possibly we should be wrong to complain that the mystic beauty which has in all ages appealed with irresistible power of fascination to the highest and most richly-gifted natures should fail to impress one all of whose thoughts are cast in a straitened and unyielding mould. Whittier has not the far-glancing eye of the poet to which all beauty appeals like the light itself. The partisan habit of an inveterate abolitionist has stiffened and hardened a disposition which was never plastic. It was so long his official duty to write anti-slavery campaign verses that, in treating subjects which should inspire higher thoughts, he is still held captive to the lash of the slave-driver, hears the clanking of chains and the groans of the fettered; and these sights and sounds drive him into mere rant and rhetoric.

We willingly bear testimony to the moral tone and purity which pervade Whittier’s verse. There is nothing to offend the most delicate ear; nothing to bring a blush to a virgin’s cheek. He lacks the power to portray passion, and was not tempted into doubtful paths. He delights in pictures of home, with its innocent joys and quiet happiness; sings of friendship and the endearing ties that bind the parent to the child; or, if he attunes his harp to love, he does it in numbers so sadly sweet that we only remember that the fickle god has wreathed his bowers with cypress boughs and made his best interpreter a sigh.

What could be more harmless than the little scene between Maud Muller and the judge――though Heaven only knows what the judge, and above all the American judge, can have done that he should be condemned to play the _rôle_ of a lover. Possibly it may have been the judicious nature of the love that induced the poet to think such a _deus ex machinâ_ not out of place. At all events, nothing could be more inoffensive.

“She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up And filled for him her small tin cup. ‘Thanks!’ said the judge; ‘a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed.’”

And how refreshing it is to find a judge making love by talking

“Of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and humming bees”!

We are less edified, however, when, in after-years, we find him a married man, sipping the golden wine but longing for the wayside well and the barefoot maiden:

“And the proud man sighed, with secret pain: ‘Ah! that I were free again!’”

In reading Whittier we seldom come upon a thought so perfectly expressed that it can never after occur to us except in the words in which he has clothed it. It is a poet’s privilege thus to marry thoughts to words in a union so divine that no man may put them asunder; and where this high power is wanting the _mens divinior_ is not found. For our own part, we hardly recall a line of Whittier that we should care to remember. Nothing that he has written has been more frequently quoted than the couplet:

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen. The saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”

To our thinking, this is meaningless. “It might have been” is neither sad nor joyful, except as it is made so by that with which it is associated. He who is drowned may thus have escaped hanging――“It might have been.” The judge might have been Maud’s husband; but she might have thought of sadder things than that she was not his wife.

“Snow-Bound,” a winter idyl, is, in the opinion of several critics, Whittier’s best performance. A more hackneyed theme he would probably have found it difficult to choose; nor has he the magic charm that makes the old seem as new. It is the unmistakable snow-storm with which our school-readers made us familiar in childhood. The sun rises “cheerless” over “hills of gray”; sinks from sight before it sets; “the ocean roars on his wintry shore”; night comes on, made hoary “with the whirl-dance of the blinding storm,” and ere bedtime

“The white drift piled the window-frame”;

and then, of course, we have the horse and cow and cock, each in turn contemplating the beautiful snow. Even the silly ram

“Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot.”

The boys, with mittened hands, and caps drawn down over ears, sally forth to cut a pathway at their sire’s command. And when the second night is ushered in, we are quite prepared for the blazing fire of oaken logs, whose roaring draught makes the great throat of the chimney laugh; while on the clean hearth the apples sputter, the mug of cider simmers, the house-dog sleeps, and the cat meditates. The group of faces gathered round are plain and honest, just such as good, simple country folk are wont to wear, but feebly drawn. In the fitful firelight their features are dim. The father talks of rides on Memphremagog’s wooded side; of trapper’s hut and Indian camp. The mother turns her wheel or knits her stocking, and tells how the Indian came down at midnight on Cocheco town. The uncle, “innocent of books,” unravels the mysteries of moons and tides. The maiden aunt, very sweet and very unselfish, recalls her memories of

“The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails.”

It would be unkind to leave the village schoolmaster out in the biting air, and he is therefore brought in to make us wonder how one small head could contain all he knew.

In the very thought of home there is an exhaustless well-spring of poetic feeling. The word itself is all alive with the spirit of sweet poesy which gives charm to the humblest verse; and it would be strange indeed if, in an idyl like “Snow-Bound,” there should not be found passages of real beauty, touches of nature that make the whole world kin. The subject is one that readily lends itself to the lowly mood and unpretending style. Fine thoughts and ambitious words would but distract us. Each one is thinking of his own dear home, and he but asks the poet not to break the spell that has made him a child again; not to darken the dewy dawn of memory, that throws the light of heaven around a world that seemed as dead, but now lives.

“O Time and Change!――with hair as gray As was my sire’s that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of life and love, to still live on! Ah! brother, only I and thou Are left of all that circle now―― The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will, The voices of that hearth are still; Look where we may, the wide earth o’er, Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn; We sit beneath their orchard trees; We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn; We turn the pages that they read, Their written words we linger o’er. But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor! Yet love will dream, and faith will trust (Since He who knows our need is just), That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas! for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees; Who hopeless lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play; Who hath not learned in hours of faith The truth to flesh and sense unknown―― That Life is ever Lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own!”

This is true poetry, sad and sweet as a mother’s voice when she lulls her sick babe to rest, knowing that, if he sleep, he shall live.

In Whittier’s verse we often catch the unmistakable accent of genuine feeling, and his best lyrics are so artless and simple that they almost disarm criticism. In many ways his influence has doubtless been good; and the critic, whose eye is naturally drawn to what is less worthy, finds it easy to carp at faults which he has not the ability to commit.

[134] _The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier._ Boston: Osgood & Co. 1876.

MONSIEUR GOMBARD’S MISTAKE.

M. Gombard was a short, stout, pompous man, with a flat nose, and sharp gray eyes that did their very best to look fierce through a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles. They succeeded in this attempt with very young culprits and with the female prisoners who appeared before M. Gombard in his official capacity of mayor of the town of Loisel; they succeeded in a lesser degree with functionaries, such as clerks and policemen, who were to a certain extent under the official eye of the mayor; but with the general, independent public the attempt at ferocity was a failure. M. Gombard passed for being a good man, a man with high principles, an unflinching sense of duty, and a genuine respect for law, but also a man whose heart was as dry as a last year’s nut. He was fifty years of age, and it had never been said, even as a joke, that M. Gombard had had a “sentiment”; it had never entered into the imagination of anybody who knew him to suggest that he might have a sentiment, or even that he might marry some day. He was looked upon by his fellow-townsmen as a trusty, intelligent machine――a machine that never got out of order, that was always ready when wanted, that would be seriously missed if it were removed. He settled their differences and saved them many a costly lawsuit; for M. Gombard had studied the law, and understood its practical application better than any lawyer in Loisel; he made marriages, and drew out wills, and dispensed advice to young and old with the wisdom of Solomon and the stoical impartiality of Brutus. Everybody trusted him; they knew that if their case was a good case, he would decide it in their favor; if it was a bad case, he would give it against them: no man could buy him, no man could frighten him. Antoine Grimoire, the biggest bully in all the country round――even Antoine Grimoire shook in his shoes when one day a suit in which he was defendant was sent up before M. Gombard. M. Gombard gave judgment against him; and this was more than the united magistrates in Loisel would have dared do, for Antoine would have “licked them” within an inch of their lives, if they had tried it; but he never said _boo_ when M. Gombard pronounced the plaintiff an injured man, and ordered the defendant to pay him one hundred and fifty-three francs, ten sous, and three centimes damages. Everybody in the place held their breath when this sentence went forth. They fully expected Antoine to fly at the audacious judge, and break every bone in his body on the spot; but Antoine coolly nodded, and said civilly, “_C’est bon, Monsieur le Maire_,” and walked off. People made sure he was bent on some terrible vengeance, and that he would never pay a sou of the damages; but he deceived them by paying. This incident added fresh lustre to the prestige of M. Gombard, whose word henceforth was counted as good as, and better than, law, since even Antoine Grimoire gave in to it, which was more than he had ever been known to do to the law.

M. Gombard had some pressing business on hand just now; for he had left Loisel before daybreak in a post-chaise, and never once pulled up, except when the wheels came off and went spinning right and left into the ditch on either side, and sent him bumping on over the snow in the disabled vehicle, till at last the horses stopped and M. Gombard got out, jumped on to the back of the leader, and rode on into Cabicol. There he is now, his wig awry and pulled very low over his forehead, but otherwise looking none the worse for his adventurous ride, as he walks up and down the best room in the _Jacques Bonhomme_, the principal inn of Cabicol.

“You said I could have a post-chaise?” said M. Gombard to the waiter, who fussed about, on hospitable cares intent.

“I did, monsieur.”

“And it is in good condition, you say?”

“Excellent, monsieur. It would take you from Cabicol to Paris without starting a nail.”

“Good,” observed M. Gombard, sitting down and casting a glance that was unmistakably ferocious on the savory omelet. “I can count on a stout pair of horses?” he continued, helping himself with the haste of a ravenous man.

“Horses?” repeated the waiter blandly. “Monsieur said nothing about horses.”

M. Gombard dropped his knife and fork with a clatter, and looked round at the man.

“What use can the chaise be to me without horses?” he said. “Does it go by steam, or do you expect me to carry it on my head?”

“Assuredly not, monsieur; that would be of the last impossibility,” replied the waiter demurely.

“The aborigines of Cabicol are idiots, apparently,” observed M. Gombard, still looking straight at the man, but with a broad, speculative stare, as if he had been a curious stone or an unknown variety of dog.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the waiter, with ready assent. If a traveller had declared the aborigines of Cabicol to be buffaloes, he would have assented just as readily; he did not care a dry pea for the aborigines, whoever they might be; he did not know them even by sight, so why should he stand up for them? Besides, every traveller represented a tip, and he was not a man to quarrel with his bread and butter.

“What’s to be done?” said M. Gombard. “I must have horses; where am I to get them?”

“I doubt that there is a horse in the town to-day which can be placed at monsieur’s disposal. This is the grand market day at Luxort, and everybody is gone there, and to-morrow the beasts will be too tired to start for a fresh journey; but on Friday I dare say monsieur could find a pair, if he does not mind waiting till then.”

“There is nothing at the present moment I should mind much more, nothing that could be more disagreeable to me,” said M. Gombard.

“We would do our best to make monsieur’s delay agreeable,” said the waiter; “the beds of the _Jacques Bonhomme_ are celebrated; the food is excellent and the cooking of the best; the landlord cuts himself into little pieces for his guests.”

“Good heavens!” ejaculated M. Gombard.

“It is a figure of speech, monsieur, a figure of rhetoric,” explained the waiter, who began to heap up blocks of wood on the hearth, as if he were preparing a funeral pyre for his unwilling guest.

“Tell the landlord I want to speak to him,” said M. Gombard.

Before he had finished his meal the landlord knocked at the door. M. Gombard said “Come in,” and the landlord entered. He was a solemn, melancholy-looking man, who spoke in a sepulchral voice, and seemed continually struggling to withhold his tears. He loved his inn, but the weight of responsibility it laid upon him was more than he could bear with a smiling countenance. Every traveller who slept beneath his roof was, for the time being, an object of the tenderest interest to him; it was no exaggeration to say, with the rhetorical waiter, that he cut himself into little pieces for each one of them. He made out imaginary histories of them, which he related afterwards for the entertainment of their successors. He was guided as to the facts of each subject by the peculiar make and fashion of their physiognomies; but he drew his inspiration chiefly from their noses: if the traveller wore his beard long and his nose turned up, he was set down as a philosopher travelling in the pursuit of knowledge; if he wore his beard cropped and his nose hooked, he was a banker whose financial genius and fabulous wealth were a source of terror to the money-markets of Europe; if he carried his nose flat against his face and wore a wig and spectacles, he was a desperate criminal with a huge price on his head, and the police scouring the country in pursuit of him; but he was safe beneath the roof of the _Jacques Bonhomme_, for his host would have sworn with the patriot bard: “I know not, I care not, if guilt’s in that heart; I but know that I’ll hide thee, whatever thou art!” All the pearls of Golconda, all the gold of California, would not have bribed him into delivering up a man who enjoyed his hospitality. Many and thrilling were the tales he had to tell of these sinister guests, their hair-breadth escapes, and the silent but, to him, distinctly manifest rage of their baffled pursuers. This life of secret care and harrowing emotions had done its work on the landlord; you saw at a glance that his was a heavily-laden spirit, and that pale “melancholy had marked him for her own.” He bowed low, and in a voice of deep feeling inquired how he could serve M. Gombard.

“By getting me a pair of good post-horses,” replied his guest. “It is of the utmost importance that I reach X―――― before five o’clock to-morrow afternoon, and your people say I have no chance of finding horses until Friday.”

The landlord stifled a sigh and replied: “That is only too true, monsieur.”

M. Gombard pushed away his plate, rose, walked up and down the room, and then stood at the window and looked out. It was a bleak look out; everything was covered with snow. Snow lay deep on the ground, on the trees, on the lamp-post, on the chimneys and the house-tops; and the sky looked as if it were still full of snow.

Just opposite there was a strange, grand old house that arrested M. Gombard’s attention; it was a gabled edifice with turrets at either end, and high pointed, mullioned windows filled with diamond-paned lattices. The roof slanted rapidly from the chimneys to the windows, and looked as if the north wind that had howled over it for centuries had blown it a little to one side and battered it a good deal; for you could see by the undulations of the snow that it was full of dints and ruts. Close under the projecting eaves in the centre of the house there was a stone shield, on which a family coat of arms was engraved; but the ivy, which grew thick over the wall, draped the escutcheon, and, with the snow, made it impossible to read the story it set forth. There was a balcony right under it, from the floor of which an old man was now engaged sweeping the snow; on either side were set huge stone vases, in which some hardy plants grew, defying all weathers, apparently. When the old man had cleared away the snow, he brought out some pots of wintry-looking flowers, and placed them on the ledge of the balcony. M. Gombard had been watching the performance, and taking in the scene with his eyes while his thoughts were busy about these post-horses that were not to be had in the town of Cabicol. He turned round suddenly, and said in his abrupt, magisterial way: “Curious old house. Whose is it?”

“It belongs now to Mlle. Aimée Bobert,” replied the landlord; and the question seemed to affect him painfully.

“Whom did it belong to formerly?” inquired M. Gombard.

“To the brave and illustrious family of De Valbranchart. The Revolution ruined them, and the mansion was bought by a retired manufacturer, the grandfather of Mlle. Aimée, who is now the sole heiress of all his wealth.”

“Strange vicissitudes in the game of life!” muttered M. Gombard; he turned again to survey the old house, that looked as if it had been transplanted from some forest or lovely fell-side to this commonplace little town. As he looked, the window on the balcony opened, and the slight figure of a woman appeared, holding a flower-pot in her hand. He could not see her face, which was concealed by a shawl thrown lightly over her head; but her movements had the grace and suppleness of youth. M. Gombard mechanically adjusted his spectacles, the better to inspect this new object in the picture; the same moment a gentleman, hurrying down the street, came up, and lifted his hat in a stately salutation as he passed before the balcony. M. Gombard could not see whether the greeting was returned, or how; for when he glanced again towards the latticed window, it had closed on the retreating figure of the lady. The old church clock was chiming the hour of noon. “The ancient house has its modern romance, I perceive,” observed M. Gombard superciliously; and as if this discovery must strip it at once of all interest in the eyes of a sensible man, he turned his back upon the old house, and proceeded to catechise the landlord concerning post-horses. There was clearly no chance of his procuring any that day, and a very doubtful chance of his procuring any the next. There was no help for it: he must spend at least one night at the _Jacques Bonhomme_. He was not a man to waste his energies in useless lamentation or invective. One exclamation of impatience escaped him, but he stifled it half way, snapped his fingers, and muttered in almost a cheerful tone, “_Tantpis!_” The landlord stood regarding him with a gaze of compassion mingled with a sort of cowed admiration. There was a strange fascination about these criminals, murderers or forgers, flying for dear life; the concentrated energy, the reckless daring, the heroic self-control, the calm self-possession they evinced in the face of danger and impending death, were wonderful. If these grand faculties had been ruled by principle, and devoted to lawful pursuits and worthy aims, what might they not have accomplished! The landlord saw the stigma of crime distinctly branded upon the countenance of this man, though the low, bad brow was almost entirely concealed at one side by the wig; and yet he could not but admire, nay, to a certain extent, sympathize, with him. M. Gombard noticed his singular air of dejection, his immovable attitude――standing there as if he were rooted to the spot when there was no longer any ostensible reason for his remaining in the room. He bent a glance of inquiry upon him, which said as plainly as words: “You have evidently something to say; so say it.”

“Monsieur,” said the landlord in a thick undertone, “I have been trusted with many secrets, and I have never been known to betray one. I ask you for no confidence; but, if you can trust me so far, answer me one question: Is it a matter of life and death that you go――that you reach your destination by a given time?”

M. Gombard hesitated for a moment, perplexed by the tone and manner of his host; then he replied, deliberately, as if weighing the value of each word: “I will not say ‘life and death,’ but as urgent as if it were life and death.”

“Ha! That is enough. I understand,” said the landlord. His voice was husky; he shook from head to foot. “Now tell me this: will you――will the situation be saved, if you can leave this to-morrow?”

“To-morrow?… Let me see,” said M. Gombard; and thrusting both hands into his pockets, he bent his head upon his breast with the air of a man making a calculation. After a prolonged silence he looked up, and continued reflectively: “If I can leave this to-morrow at four o’clock, with a good pair of horses, I shall be at X―――― by ten; and starting afresh at, say, five next morning, I shall be――”

“Saved!” broke in the landlord.

“I shall be saved, as you say,” repeated M. Gombard.

“Monsieur, if the thing is possible it shall be done!” protested the landlord. This coolness, this superhuman calm, at such a crisis, were magnificent; this felon, whoever he was, was a glorious man.

“Very peculiar person our host seems,” was the hero’s reflection, when the door closed behind that excited and highly sensitive individual. M. Gombard then drew a chair towards the fire, pulled a newspaper from his pocket, and poked his feet as far out on the hearth as he could without putting them right into the blaze.

When he had squeezed the newspaper dry, he threw it aside, and bethought to himself that he might as well go for a walk, and reconnoitre this extremely unprogressive town, where a traveller might wait two days and two nights for a pair of post-horses. He pulled on his big furred coat and sallied forth. The snow was deep, but the night’s sharp frost had hardened it, so that it was dry and crisp to walk on. There was little in the aspect of Cabicol that promised entertainment; it was called a town, but it was more like a village with a disproportionately fine church, and some large houses that looked out of place in the midst of the shabby ones all round though the largest was insignificant beside the imposing old pile opposite the inn. They looked quaint and picturesque enough, however, in their snow dress, glistening in the beams of the pale winter sun that shone out feebly from the milky-looking sky. The church was the first place to which M. Gombard bent his steps, not with any pious intentions, but because it was the only place that seemed to be open to a visitor, and was, moreover, a stately, Gothic edifice that would have done honor to a thriving, well-populated town. The front door was closed. M. Gombard was turning away with some disappointment, when an old woman who was frying chestnuts in the angle of the projecting buttress, with an umbrella tied to the back of her chair as a protest rather than a protection against the north wind that was blowing over the deserted market-place, called out to him that the side door was open, and pointed to the other side of the church. When the visitor entered it, he was struck by the solemnity and vastness of the place. It was quite empty. At least he thought so; for his eye, piercing the sombre perspective, saw no living person there. In the south aisle the rich stained glass threw delicate shadows of purple and gold and crimson on the pavement, on the stern mediæval statues, on the slim, groined pillars; but the other aisle was so dark that it was like night until your eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. M. Gombard walked slowly through the darkened aisle, peering up at the massive carving of the capitals, and into the quaint devices of the basements, and wondering what could have brought this majestic, cathedral-like church into so incongruous a frame as Cabicol. Suddenly he descried coming towards him from the farthest end of the aisle, like a dimly visible form emerging from total darkness, the figure of a man. He supposed at first it was a priest, and he thought he would ask him for some information about the church; but, as the figure drew near, he saw he had been mistaken, and presently he recognized the tall, erect bearing and hurried step of the lover of Mlle. Bobert. There was no reason why M. Gombard should not have accosted him just as readily as if he had been the priest he had taken him for, but something checked him at the first moment; and when the young man had passed, he was loath to call him back. He had not the kind of face M. Gombard expected; there was none of the levity or mawkishness that almost invariably characterized the countenances of men who were in love; neither was there any trace of coxcombry or conceit in his dress and general appearance; he had a fine head, well shaped, and with a breadth of forehead that announced brains; his face was thoughtful and intelligent. M. Gombard was sorry for the poor fellow, who was evidently not otherwise a fool. The sound of the lover’s footfall died away, and the great door closed behind him with a boom like low thunder. M. Gombard continued his walk round the church undisturbed. He came to the Lady Chapel behind the high altar, and stood at the entrance, filled with a new admiration and surprise. The chapel was as dimly lighted as the rest of the building; but from a deep, mullioned window there came a flood of amber light that fell full upon a kneeling figure, illuminating it with an effulgence to which the word heavenly might fitly be applied. M. Gombard’s first thought was that this new wonder was part of the whole; that it was not a real, living female form he beheld, but some beautiful creation of painter and sculptor, placed here to symbolize faith and worship in their loveliest aspect. But this was merely the first unreasoning impression of delight and wonder. He had not gazed more than a second on the kneeling figure when he saw that it was neither a statue nor an apparition, but a living, breathing woman. The worshipper was absorbed in her devotions, and seemed unconscious of the proximity of any spectator; so M. Gombard was free to contemplate her at his ease. It was the first time in his life that he ever stood deliberately to contemplate a woman, simply as a beautiful object; but there was something in this one totally different from all the women, beautiful or otherwise, that he had ever seen. It may have been the circumstances, the place and hour, the obscurity of all around, except for that yellow shaft of light that shot straight down upon the lovely devotee, investing her with a sort of celestial glory; but whatever it was, the spectacle stirred the fibres of his heart as they had never been stirred before. Who was this lovely creature, and why was she here in the deserted church, alone and at an hour when there was neither chant nor ceremony to call her thither? M. Gombard’s habit of mind and his semi-legal and magisterial functions led him to suspect and discover plots and sinister motives in most human actions that were at all out of the usual course; but it never for an instant occurred to seek any such here. This fair girl――she looked in the full bloom of youth――could only be engaged on some errand of duty, of mercy, or of love. Love! Strange to say, the word, as it rose to his lips, did not call up the scornful, or even the pitying, smile which at best never failed to accompany the thought of this greatest of human follies in the mayor’s mind. He repeated mentally, “Love,” as he looked at her, and something very like a sigh rose and was not peremptorily stifled in his breast. While he stood there gazing, a deeper gloom fell upon the place, the yellow shaft was suddenly withdrawn, the golden light went out, and the vision melted into brown shadow. M. Gombard started; high up, on all sides, there was a noise like pebbles rattling against the windows. The lady started too, and, crossing herself, as at a signal that cut short her devotions, rose and hurried from the chapel. She took no notice of the man standing under the archway, but passed on, with a quick, light step, down the north aisle. M. Gombard turned and walked after her. He had no idea of pursuing her; he merely yielded to an impulse that anticipated thought and will.

On emerging into the daylight of the porch he saw that the rain was falling heavily, mixed with hail-stones as big as peas. The lady surveyed the scene without in blank dismay, while M. Gombard stealthily surveyed her. She struck him as more wonderful, more vision-like, now even than when she had burst upon him with her golden halo amidst the darkness; her soft brown eyes full of light, her silken brown curls, her scarlet lips parted in inarticulate despair, the small head thrown slightly back, and raised in scared interrogation to the dull gray tank above――M. Gombard saw all these charms distinctly now, and his dry, legal soul was strangely moved. Should he speak to her? What could he say? Offer her his umbrella, perhaps? That was a safe offer to make, and a legitimate opportunity; he blessed his stars that he had brought his umbrella.

“Madame――mademoiselle――pardon me――I shall be very happy――that is, I should esteem myself fortunate if I could――be of any service to you in this emergency――”

“Thank you; I am much obliged to you, monsieur,” replied the young lady; she saw he meant to be polite, but she did not see what help he intended.

“If you would allow me to call a cab for you?” continued M. Gombard timidly.

“Oh! thank you.” She broke into a little, childlike laugh that was perfectly delicious. “We have no cabs at Cabicol!”

The young merriment was so contagious that M. Gombard laughed too.

“Of course not! How stupid of me to have thought there could be! But how are you to get home in this rain, mademoiselle? Will you accept my umbrella? It is large; it will protect you in some degree.”

“Oh! you are too good, monsieur,” replied his companion, turning the brown eyes, darting with light, full upon him; “but I think we had better have a little patience and wait until the rain stops. It can’t last long like this; and if I ventured out in such a deluge, I think I should be drowned.”

There was nothing very original, or poetical, or preternaturally wise in this remark, but coming from those poppy lips, in that young, silvery voice, it sounded like the inspiration of genius to M. Gombard. He replied that she was right, that he was an idiot; in fact, had not his age and his business-like, dry, matter-of-fact appearance offered a guarantee for his sobriety and an excuse for his attempt at facetiousness, M. Gombard’s jubilant manner and ecstatic air would have led the young lady to fear he was slightly deranged or slightly inebriated. But ugly, elderly gentlemen who wear wigs are a kind of privileged persons to young ladies; they may say anything, almost, under cover of these potent credentials.

“This is a fine old church,” observed M. Gombard presently.

“Yes; we are proud of it at Cabicol. Strangers always admire it,” replied his companion.

“They are right; it is one of the best specimens of the Gothic of the Renaissance I remember to have seen,” said M. Gombard; “this portico reminds one of the cathedral of B――――. Have you ever seen it, mademoiselle?”

“No; I have never travelled farther from Cabicol than Luxort.”

“Indeed! How I envy you!” exclaimed the mayor heartily. He was a new man; he was fired with enthusiasm for beauty of every description, in art, in nature, everywhere.

“It is you, rather, who are to be envied for having seen far places and beautiful things!” returned the young girl naïvely. “I wish I could see them too.”

“And why should you not?” demanded M. Gombard; he would have given half his fortune to have been able to say there and then: “Come, and I will show you these strange places, and beautiful things!”

“I am alone,” replied his companion in a low tone; the merry brightness faded from her face, the sweet eyes filled with tears.

M. Gombard could have fallen at her feet, and cried, “Forgive me! I did not mean to give you pain.” But he did not do so; he did better: he bowed gravely and murmured, almost under his breath: “_Pauvre enfant!_” He had never pitied any human being as he pitied this beautiful orphan; but then he was a man, as we know, who passed for having no heart. His young companion looked up at him through her tears, and her eyes said, “_Merci!_” It was like the glance of a dumb animal, so large, so pathetic, so trustful. The rain still fell in torrents, lashing the ground like whip-cords; but the hailstones had ceased. The two persons under the portico stood in solemn silence, watching the steady downpour. Presently, as when, by a sudden jerk of the string, the force of a shower-bath is slackened, it grew lighter; the sun made a slit in the tank, and gleamed down in a silver line through the lessening drops. The young girl went to the edge of the steps, and looked up, reconnoitring the sky.

“It is raining heavily still,” said M. Gombard; “but if you are in a hurry, and must go, pray take my umbrella!”

“But then you will get wet,” she replied, laughing with the childlike freedom that had marked her manner at first.

“That is of small consequence! It will do me good,” protested M. Gombard. “I entreat you, mademoiselle, accept my umbrella!”

It was hard to say “no,” and it was selfish to say “yes.” She hesitated. M. Gombard opened the umbrella, capacious as a young tent, and held it towards her. The young lady advanced and took it; but the thick handle and the weight of the outspread canopy were too much for her tiny hand and little round wrist. It swayed to and fro as she grasped it. M. Gombard caught hold of it again.

“Let me hold it for you,” he said. “Which way are you going?”

“Across the market-place to that house with the veranda,” she replied; “but perhaps that is not your way, monsieur?”

It was not his way; but if it had been ten times more out of it, M. Gombard would have gone with delight.

“Do me the honor to take my arm, mademoiselle,” he said, without answering her inquiry. It was done in the kindest way――just as if she had been the daughter of an old friend. The young girl gathered her pretty cashmere dress well in one hand, and slipped the other into the arm of her protector. They crossed the market-place quickly, and were soon at the door of the house she had pointed out.

“Thank you! I am so much obliged to you, monsieur!”

“Mademoiselle, I am too happy――”

She smiled at him with her laughing brown eyes, and he turned away, a changed man, elated, bewildered, walking upon air. He walked on in the rain, his feet sinking ankle-deep in parts where the snow was thick and had been melted into slush by the heavy shower. He did not think now whether there was anything to visit to pass the rest of the day; his one idea was to find out the name of this beautiful creature, then to see her again, offer her his hand and fortune, if her position were not too far above his own, and be the happiest of men for the rest of his life. He was fifty years of age; but what of that? His heart was twenty; he had not worn it out in butterfly passions, “fancies, light as air,” and ephemeral as summer gnats. This was his first love, and few men half his age had that virgin gift to place in the bridal _corbeille_. Then how respected he was by his fellow-citizens! M. Gombard saw them already paying homage to his young wife; saw all the magnates congratulating him, and the fine ladies calling on Madame Gombard. When he reached the _Jacques Bonhomme_ he was in the seventh heaven. The landlord saw him from the window of the bar, and hurried out to meet him with a countenance blanched with terror.

“Good heavens, monsieur! you have ventured out into the town. You have been abroad all this time! What mad imprudence!” he whispered.

“Eh! Imprudence? Not the least, my good sir,” replied the mayor, descending with a painful jump from his celestial altitude; “my boots are snow-proof, and behold my umbrella!” He swung it round, shut it up with a click, and held it proudly at arm’s length, while the wet streamed down its seams as from a spout.

“Marvellous man!” muttered the landlord, staring at him aghast. “But hasten in now, I entreat you. You ordered dinner at three; it will be served to you in your room.”

“Just as it pleases you,” returned M. Gombard complacently. “I don’t mind where I get it, provided it be good.”

“Monsieur, for heaven’s sake be prudent!” said the landlord; he took the umbrella from him, and hung it outside the door to drip.

“I wish to have a word with you presently, mine host,” M. Gombard called out from the top of the stairs.

“I am at your orders, monsieur,” said the host. This reckless behavior in a man flying for his life was beyond belief. “It is madness, but it is sublime!” thought the landlord. The table was ready laid when M. Gombard entered his room; the dinner was ready too, as was evident from the smell of fry and cabbage that filled the place; he went to the window and threw it open. As he did so the mysterious lover appeared at the corner of the street――that is, of the gabled house――and, as before, lifted his hat and bowed reverently as he passed under the balcony. Was his lady-love there to see it? M. Gombard glanced quickly to the latticed window; it did not open, but he distinctly saw a female figure standing behind it, and retreating suddenly, as if unwilling to be observed. The little pantomime, which he had looked on so contemptuously a few hours ago, was now full of a new interest to him. He wondered what the lady was like; whether she looked with full kindness on this pensive, intellectual-looking adorer, and admitted him occasionally to her presence, or whether she starved him on these distant glimpses. What was he doing in the church just now, with that long scroll in his hand? He had not been praying out of it, certainly. “I must interrogate mine host,” thought M. Gombard, stirred to unwonted curiosity about these lovers. Great was his surprise at that very moment to behold the said host cross the street, pass the open gateway of the gabled house, ring at the narrow, arched door and presently disappear within it. What could the landlord of the _Jacques Bonhomme_ have to do with the wealthy mistress of that house?

“Monsieur is served!” said the waiter, in a tone which announced that he had said it before.

M. Gombard started, shut the window, and sat down to his dinner. When he had finished it, he went and opened the window again, and, lo and behold! there was the landlord coming back from the mystifying visit. This time M. Gombard saw most distinctly the figure of a woman looking out from the latticed window, and drawing back instantly when he appeared.

There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” said M. Gombard.

The landlord looked very much excited.

“I have done my best for you, monsieur,” he began in an agitated manner; “I have left nothing undone, and all I have been able to obtain is that you shall have a good pair of post-horses to-morrow at one o’clock.”

“Capital! Excellent! Then I am――” He stopped short.

“_Saved!_” muttered the landlord exultingly.

“Yes, yes, my friend, saved,” repeated M. Gombard with an air of cool indifference which was nothing short of heroic; “but I am just thinking whether, as I have not been able to start this afternoon, I am not losing my time in starting at all. It might be wiser to―― But, no; I had better go. You say the horses are good?”

“The best in Cabicol.”

“And I can count upon them?”

“I have the word of a noble woman for that.”

“Ha! a woman! Who may she be?”

“The mistress of that house――Mlle. Bobert.”

The landlord pronounced these words with an emphasis that might have been dispensed with, as far as regarded the effect of the announcement on M. Gombard.

“Mlle. Bobert!” he repeated in amazement.

“Yes, monsieur. She is young, but she has the mind of a man and the heart of a mother. When every other resource had been tried in vain, I went to her; I told her――enough to excite her sympathy, her desire to help you; she promised me you should have the horses to-morrow at one o’clock.”

“You confound me!” said M. Gombard.

“Have no fear, monsieur; Mlle. Bobert is a woman, but――she is to be trusted. The horses will be here at one o’clock.”

“Well, well,” said M. Gombard, “I must not be ungrateful either to you or Mlle. Bobert; it is most kind of you to take so much trouble in my behalf, landlord, and most kind of her to furnish me with the horses. You say she is young; is she pretty?” (Gracious heavens! If the citizens of Loisel had heard this stony-hearted mayor putting such questions!)

“No, monsieur, she is not pretty,” replied the landlord; “she is beautiful.”

“_Diable!_” exclaimed M. Gombard facetiously.

“Beautiful as an _angel_,” remarked the landlord, with an accent that seemed to rebuke his guest’s exclamation.

“You appear to have a _spécialité_ for beautiful persons in Cabicol,” said M. Gombard, pouncing on his opportunity; “I met one in the church just now, taking shelter from the rain――the most remarkably beautiful person I ever saw in my life. Who can she be? She lives in the house to the right of the market-place.”

“Excuse me, monsieur, she does not,” said the landlord sadly.

“No? How do you know? Did you see me――did you see her in the church?”

“No, monsieur, I did not,” answered the landlord.

M. Gombard was mystified again. What a droll fellow mine host was altogether!

“You evidently know something about her,” he resumed; “can you tell me her name and where she lives?”

“Her name is Mlle. Bobert; she lives yonder.” He stretched out his arm, and held a finger pointed toward the old house. The effect on M. Gombard was electric. He started as if the landlord’s finger had pulled the trigger of a pistol; he grew pale; he could not utter a word. The landlord pitied him sincerely.

“When I told her who it was I wanted the horses for,” he continued, “she asked me to describe you. I did so, and she recognized you at once as the person to whom she had spoken in the church. She said immediately it would be a great pleasure to her to do you this service, you had been so very courteous to her.”

“Pray convey my best thanks to Mlle. Bobert,” said M. Gombard, making a strong effort to control his emotions; “I am profoundly sensible of her goodness.”

The landlord cast one deeply tragic look upon his unfortunate guest, bowed and withdrew. As he turned away, he bethought to himself how, as the wisest men had been fooled by lovely woman, it was not to be wondered at that the bravest should be made cowards by her; here was a man who could carry a bold heart and a smiling face into the very teeth of danger, but no sooner did he find that a woman had got hold of even a suspicion of his secret than his courage deserted him, and he was incapable of keeping up even a semblance of bravery. Unhappy man! But he was safe; he had nothing to fear from Mlle. Bobert.

And so it was the great heiress whom he had seen and surrendered his impregnable heart to, without even a feint at resistance! M. Gombard understood all now; the joyous expression of her lovely face, her unconstrained manner to him, her presence in the deserted church――it was all explained: her lover had been there, praying with her, and she had lingered on praying for him. Happy, happy man! Miserable Gombard! He spent the evening drearily over his lonely fire. How lonely it seemed since he had lost the dream that had beautified it, filling the future with sweet visions of fireside joys, of bright companionship by the winter blaze! He went to bed, nevertheless, and slept soundly. The wound was not so deep as he imagined, this middle-aged man, who had no memories of young love, with its kindling hopes and passionate despairs, by which to measure his present suffering. He was very miserable, sincerely unhappy, but, all the same, he slept his seven hours without awaking. When at last he did awake, and bethought him of his sorrow, he took it up where he had left it the night before, and moaned and pitied himself with all his heart. He was to start at one o’clock, but he must make an effort to see Mlle. Bobert again before leaving Cabicol for ever. He ordered his breakfast, ate heartily, and then sallied forth in the direction of the church. He knew of no other place where he was at all likely to meet her; he had not seen her leave the house, but she might have done so while he was breakfasting. As well try to time the coming in and out of the sunbeams as the ways and movements of this fairy _châtelaine_. She would sit by her latticed window immovable for an hour, then disappear, then return, flitting to and fro like a shadow. M. Gombard watched his opportunity, when the landlord was busy in the crowded bar, to slip out of the house. He felt as if he were performing some guilty action in stealing away on such a foolish errand; how men would laugh at him if they knew, if they could see the revolution that had taken place in him within the last four-and-twenty hours! He tried to laugh at himself, but it was more than his philosophy could accomplish. The great doors of the church were open to-day. They were open every morning up to noon; the good folks of Cabicol went in and out to their devotions, from daybreak until then, not in crowds, but in groups of twos and threes, trickling in and out at leisure. The grand old church looked less gloomy than yesterday; the sunlight poured in, illuminating the nave fully, and scattering the oppressive darkness of the lofty aisles; but to M. Gombard the sunshine brought no brightness. He stood at the entrance of the nave, and looked up the long vista and on every side, but no trace of the luminary he sought was visible. The few worshippers who knelt at the various shrines disappeared one by one, going forth to the day’s labor, its troubles and its interests, till the church was nearly empty. M. Gombard turned into the north aisle, and sauntered slowly on. Presently he saw a tall figure advancing, as yesterday, with the same quick step, from out the same side chapel. It was his hated rival! Here he was again, with the same scroll of paper in his hand; he rolled it up carefully, and put it in his pocket as he walked on, calm, pensive, unconcerned, as if nobody had been by, nobody scowling fiercely upon him as he passed. It was evidently a plan agreed upon between these lovers that they should come and say their prayers together at a given hour every day. M. Gombard was now certain that Mlle. Bobert was in the Lady Chapel; he quickened his step in that direction. Great was his surprise to find it almost filled with people. The first Mass was at six, the second at ten; the second was just finished. People were rising to come away; soon there were only a few, more fervent than the rest, who lingered on at their devotions. M. Gombard looked eagerly all round. There was a group of several persons going out together. Descrying Mlle. Bobert amongst them, he turned and followed quickly, taking the south aisle so as to reach the portico before her, and have a chance of saluting, perhaps speaking to, her; for might he not, ought he not, lawfully seize this opportunity of thanking her? He stationed himself in the open door-way, standing so that she could not pass without seeing him. The common herd passed out. M. Gombard turned as a light step drew close. He bowed low. “Mademoiselle, I have many thanks to offer you,” he said in a subdued voice, as became the solemn neighborhood. “You have done a great kindness to a perfect stranger. I shall never see you again; but if ever, by chance, by some unspeakable good fortune, it were――in my power, if I could do anything to serve you, I should count it a great hap … I should be only too happy!”

Poor man! How confused he was! He could hardly get the words out. It was pitiable to see his emotion. Mlle. Bobert’s gentle heart was touched.

“Don’t think of it!” she answered kindly, but with a nervous, timid manner that he was not too absorbed to notice and to wonder at, remembering her unrestrained frankness of yesterday. “It is I who am glad. I wish I had known it sooner, before the market-day. I should have done my best; but I hope it is not too late, that you will esca――that you will get where you want in good time.”

“It is of little consequence, mademoiselle. I care not whether I get there late or early now,” replied M. Gombard.

“Don’t say that! Pray don’t!” said the young girl with great feeling. “I should be so sorry! Good-by, monsieur, good-by.”

She hurried away. Did his eyes deceive him, or were there tears in hers? She was strangely agitated; her voice trembled; there was a choking sound in it when she said that “Good-by, monsieur, good-by!” Did she read his secret on his face, in his manner, his tone, and was she sorry for him? It was not improbable. He hoped it was so. It was something to have her pity, since she could give him nothing more. He watched the slight figure drifting out of sight; the step was less elastic than yesterday; she was depressed, unnerved. What a treasure that odious man had conquered in this tender, loving heart!

The post-chaise was at the door punctually at one. M. Gombard was ready waiting for it when the landlord knocked at his door. The traveller’s air of deep dejection struck a new pang at his feeling heart.

“Monsieur, I trust sincerely you may not be too late,” he said in the quick undertone of strong emotion, as he closed the door of the chaise and leaned forward confidentially.

“Late or not, I shall always remember your kindness, landlord; it signifies little whether I am late or not,” replied the parting guest.

“Don’t say that, monsieur, don’t, I entreat you!” said the landlord, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. “It would grieve me to the very soul! I swear to you it would! Will you do me one favor?――just to prove that you trust me and believe that I have done my best to forward your es――your wishes: will you send me word by the postilion if you arrive in time?”

“Really, landlord, your interest in my welfare is beyond my comprehension,” said M. Gombard; he had had enough of this effusive sympathy, and at the moment it irritated him.

“Don’t say so, sir! But I understand――you don’t know me; you are afraid to trust me. Well, I will not persist; but if you consent to send me back one word, I shall be the happier for it. And Mlle. Bobert――think of her!”

“Mlle. Bobert! Do you suppose she cares to hear of me again? To know what becomes of me?” asked M. Gombard breathlessly.

“Care, monsieur? She will know no peace until she hears from you; she will reproach herself, as if it had been her fault. You little know what a sensitive heart hers is.”

The postilion gave a preliminary flourish of his whip. Crack! crack! it went with a noise that roused all the population of the _Jacques Bonhomme_, the inmates of the house, of the back yard and the front; boys, dogs, pigs, ducks, turkeys, geese――all came hurrying to the fore, barking, grumbling, cackling, screaming, and pushing, terrified lest they should be late for the fun.

“I will send you word,” said M. Gombard, pressing mine host’s hand with an impulse of gratitude and joy too strong for pride. “Adieu! _Merci!_”

Crack! crack! and away went the post-chaise amidst such a noise and confusion of men and animals as is not to be described. As the horses dashed down the street, M. Gombard beheld the man with the scroll turn the corner. Curiosity was too much for dignity; he looked back: the hat was raised, and the happy rival passed on.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

WHAT IS DR. NEVIN’S POSITION?

The leading article[135] in the _Mercersburg Review_ for October last is from the celebrated pen of J. Williamson Nevin, D.D. Dr. Nevin is a member of the German Reformed Church, and at one period he was president of Marshall College, the leader of a school of theologians, and editor of the _Mercersburg Review_, to which magazine he is now the ablest contributor. During his editorship he wrote several remarkable articles for its pages, especially those on St. Cyprian, which attracted considerable attention.

Dr. Nevin’s writings are characterized by an earnest religious spirit, a freedom from bigotry, and they always aim at conveying some important Christian verity; which, although he scarcely can be said to know it, finds its true home only in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Hence Catholics can but take an interest in whatever Dr. Nevin writes, and we intend to lay before our readers, with some remarks of our own, the purport of his present article, entitled “The Spiritual World.”

In this article Dr. Nevin tries to show and prove that the work of salvation includes not only the resistance to inordinate passions, but above all a struggle against, and a conquest over, the world of evil spirits. This is his thesis. He says:

“Flesh and blood, self, the world, and the things of the world around us here in the body, are indeed part of the hostile force we are called to encounter in our way to heaven; they are not the whole of this force, however, nor are they the main part of it, by any means. That belongs always to a more inward and far deeper realm of being, where the powers of the spiritual world are found to go immeasurably beyond all the powers of nature, and to be, at the same time, in truth, the continual source and spring of all that is in these last, whether for good or for evil. The Christian conflict thus, even where it regards things simply of the present life, looks through what is thus mundane, constantly to things which are unseen and eternal; and in this way it becomes in very fact throughout a wrestling, not with flesh and blood, but with the universal powers of evil brought to bear upon us from the other world.”

This he proceeds to prove by the vows of baptism:

“So much we are taught in the form of our Christian baptism itself, by which we are engaged to ‘renounce the devil with all his ways and works, the world with its vain pomp and glory, and the flesh with all its sinful desires.’ In one view these may be regarded as separate enemies; but we know, at the same time, that they form together but one and the same grand power of evil, no one part of which can be effectually withstood asunder from the diabolical life that animates and actuates the whole. To wrestle with the world or with the flesh really, is to wrestle at the same time really with the full power of hell. If the struggle reach not to this, it may issue in stoic morality or respectable prudence, but it can never come to true self-mastery or victory over the world in the Christian sense. The field for any such conquest lies wholly beyond the realm of mere flesh and blood. The conquest, if gained at all, must be won from the hosts of hell, and then, of course, by the aid only of corresponding heavenly hosts and heavenly armor; which is, in truth, just what our baptism means.”

He calls in philosophy to confirm his thesis, thus:

“The conception of any such comprehension of our life here in the general spiritual order of the universe can be no better than foolishness, we know, for the reigning materialistic thinking of the present time. But it is, in truth, the only rational view of the world’s existence. Philosophy, no less than religion, postulates the idea that the entire creation of God is one thought, in the power of which all things are held together as a single system from alpha to omega, from origin to end; and all modern science is serving continually more and more to confirm this view by showing that all things everywhere look to all things, and that everything everywhere is and can be what it is only through its relations to other things universally. So it is in the world of nature; so it is in the spiritual world; and so it must be also in the union of these two worlds one with the other. It is to be considered a settled maxim now, a mere truism indeed for all true thinkers, that there is no such thing as insulated existence anywhere――such an _inconnexum_ must at once perish, sink into nonentity. It is no weakness of mind, therefore, to think of the spiritual world as a vast nexus of affection and thought (like the waves of the sea, endlessly various and yet multitudinously one), viewed either as heaven or as hell. Without doing so, indeed, no man can believe really in any such world at all. It will be for him simply an abstraction, a notion, a phantom. And so, again, it is no weakness of mind, in acknowledging the existence of the spiritual world (thus concretely apprehended), to think of our present human life, even here in the body, as holding in real contact and communication organic inward correlation, we may say, with the universal life of that world (angelic and diabolic), in such sort that our entire destiny for weal or woe shall be found to hang upon it, as it is made to do in the teaching of God’s Word here under consideration. It is no weakness of mind, we say, to think of the subject before us in this way. The weakness lies altogether on the other side, with those who refuse the thought of any such organic connection between the life of men here in the body and the life of spirits in the other world.”

These views, so strongly put forth by Dr. Nevin, we hardly need remark, are familiar to all Catholics, agree with the doctrines of all Catholic spiritual authors, especially the mystics, who have written professedly on this subject, and their truth is abundantly illustrated on almost every page of the lives of the saints. The Catholic mystical authors, many of whom were saints, have gone over the entire ground of our relations with the supernatural world, and, both by their learning and personal experience, have conveyed, in their writings on this subject, important knowledge, laid down wise regulations, and given in detail safe, wholesome, practical directions. They seem to breathe in the same atmosphere as that in which the Holy Scriptures were written, and in passing from the reading of the Holy Scriptures to the lives of the saints there is no feeling of any break. They lived in the habitual and conscious presence, and in some cases in sight, of the inhabitants of the supernatural world; and so familiar was their intercourse with the angelical side, and at times so dreadful were the combats to which they were delivered on the diabolical side, that their lives, for this very reason, become a stumbling-block to worldly Catholics and to Protestants generally. In the lives of her saints the Catholic Church proves that she is not only the teacher of Christianity, but also the inheritor and channel of its life and spirit. How far Dr. Nevin himself would agree with this intense realism of the church in connection with the supernatural world, as seen in the lives of her saints, we have no special means of knowing; but if we may judge from the spirit and drift of the article under consideration, he goes much farther in this direction than is usual for Protestants. Be his opinion what it may, their lives form a concrete evidence of the truth of his thesis. It is the sense of nearness of the spiritual world, and its bearing on the Christian life, pervading as it does the public worship, the private devotions, and the general tone of Catholics, that characterizes them from those who went out from the fold of the Catholic Church in the religious revolution of three centuries ago. This whole field has become to Protestants, in the process of time, a _terra incognita_; and if Dr. Nevin can bring them again to its knowledge, and in “constant, living union” with it, he will have done a most extraordinary work.

Efforts of this kind and of a similar nature have not been wanting in one way or another, and are not now wanting, among Protestants. There are those who show a decided interest in the works of the spiritual writers of the Catholic Church. Strange to say――and yet it is not strange; for in this they follow the law of _similia similibus_――they are particularly fond of those authors whose writings are not altogether sound or whose doctrines are tainted with exaggerations. Thus Dr. Upham will write the life of Madame Guyon; another will translate _The Maxims of the Saints_, by Fénelon; and to another class there is a peculiar charm in the history of the Jansenistic movement of Port Royal; others, again, moved by the same instinct, will not hesitate to acknowledge with Dr. Mahan that “such individuals as Thomas à Kempis, Catherine Adorno [he means St. Catherine of Genoa], and many others were not only Christians, but believers who had a knowledge of all the mysteries of the higher life, and who, through all coming time, will shine as stars of the first magnitude in the firmament of the Church. In their inward experiences, holy walk, and ‘power with God and with men,’ they had few, if any, superiors in any preceding era of church history. ‘The unction of the Spirit’ was as manifest in them as in the apostles and primitive believers”;[136] while many of this class in the Episcopal Church translate from foreign languages into English the works of Catholic ascetic writers, and books of devotion, for the use of pious members of their persuasion. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould will give you in English, in many volumes, the complete lives of the saints. They even go so far, both in England and the United States, as to found religious orders of both sexes as schools for the better attainment of Christian perfection, and venture to take the name of a Catholic saint as their patron.

It is evident that, among a class of souls upon whom the church can be said to exert no direct influence, there is a movement towards seeking nearer relations with the unseen spiritual world, accompanied with a desire for closer union with God. It finds expression among all Protestant denominations. With the Methodists and Presbyterians it is known by the name of “perfectionism,” or “the higher life,” or “the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” It is also manifested by the efforts made now and again for union among all the Protestant sects. It is the same craving of this mystical instinct for satisfaction that lies at the root of spiritism, which has spread so rapidly and extensively outside of the Catholic Church, not only among sceptics and unbelievers, but even among all classes of Protestants, and entered largely into their pulpits.

The former movement assumes a religious aspect; but lacking the scientific knowledge of spiritual life, and the practical discipline necessary to its true development and perfection, it gradually dies out or runs into every kind of vagary and exaggeration. Recently, after having made not a little commotion among different denominations in England and Germany, it came, in the person of its American apostle, Mr. Pearsall Smith, to a sudden and disgraceful collapse. “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.” The latter movement――spiritism――leads directly to the entire emancipation of the flesh, resulting in free-lovism, and sometimes ending in possession and diabolism. Spiritism is Satan’s master-stroke, in which he obtains from his adepts the denial of his own existence. These are some of the bitter fruits of the separation from Catholic unity: those who took this step under the pretence of seeking a higher spiritual life are afflicted with spiritual languor and death; and they who were led by a boasted independence of Christ have fallen into the snares of Satan and become his dupes and abject slaves. Behold the revenge of neglected Catholic truth; for only in Catholic unity every truth is held in its true relation with all other truths, shines in its full splendor, and produces its wholesome and precious fruits!

Suppose for a moment that Dr. Nevin should succeed in the task which he has undertaken, and by his efforts raise those around him, and the whole Protestant world, to a sense of their relation to the supernatural world. What then? Why, he has only brought souls to a state which many Protestants have reached before; and when they sought for the light, aid, and sympathy which these new conditions required, in those around them, they found none.

By quickening their spiritual sensibilities you have opened the door to wilder fancies, more dangerous illusions, and thereby exposed the salvation of their souls to greater perils. For, as St. Gregory tells us: “_Ars artium est regimen animarum_”――the art of arts is the guidance of souls; and where is this art, this science, this discipline, to be found? Not in Protestantism. What then? Why, either these souls have to renounce their holiest convictions, their newly-awakened spiritual life, and sink into their former insensibility; or go where they can find true guidance, certain peace, and spiritual progress――enter into the bosom of the holy Catholic Church, where alone the cravings of that spiritual hunger can be appeased which nowhere else upon earth found food, and the soul can at last breathe freely.

But there is another point involved in Dr. Nevin’s article; and however so much, as Catholics, we may sympathize with his endeavors to awaken Protestants to their relations with the supernatural world, this point in question will come up, and we cannot help putting it: What is Dr. Nevin’s criterion of revealed truth? The rule of interpretation of the written Word? Dr. Nevin has one; for neither he nor any one else can move a single step without employing and applying, implicitly or explicitly, a rule of faith. He criticises, judges, condemns others, but on what ground? Does his own position, at bottom, differ from that of those whom he condemns? He lacks neither the ability nor the learning to make a consistent statement on this point. Truth is consistent. God is not the author of confusion.

Where does Dr. Nevin find or put the rule of faith? If it be placed in simple human reason, then we have as the result, in religion, pure rationalism. If it be placed in human reason illuminated by grace, then we have illuminism. If it be placed in both of these, with the written Word――that is, the Bible as interpreted by each individual with the assistance of divine grace――then we have the common rule of faith of all Protestants, so fruitful in breeding sects and schisms, and inevitably tending to the entire negation of Christianity.

This last appears to be Dr. Nevin’s rule of faith; for what else does he mean when in the beginning of his article, its second sentence, he makes the following surprising statement: “Christianity is a theory of salvation”? Did God descend from heaven and become man upon earth, live, suffer, and die, and for what? “A theory”! Is this the whole issue and reality of Christianity――“a theory,” a speculation? Did Christ rise from the dead and ascend to the Father, and, with him, send forth upon earth the Holy Ghost, to create “a theory,” a speculation, or an abstraction? “Christianity a theory”! We fear that one who would deliberately make that assertion has never had the true conception of what is meant by the reality of Christianity. What would be said of a man who in treating of the sun should say: The sun is a theory, or a speculation, or an exposition of the abstract principles of light? If the sun be a theory, it would be quickly asked, what becomes, in the meanwhile, of the reality of the sun? This way of dealing with Christianity, while professing to explain it, allows its reality altogether to escape. Notwithstanding Dr. Nevin’s condemnation of “the abstract spiritualistic thinking of the age,” and of those who would make Christianity “a fond sentiment simply of their own fancy,” he falls, in his definition of Christianity, into the very same error which in others he emphatically condemns.

That this is so is evident; for while he says, “Christianity is a theory,” he adds in the same sentence, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” Now, the separation, even in idea, between the church and Christianity, is the fountain, source, and origin of all the illusions and errors uttered or written, since the beginning, concerning the Christian religion. The attempt to get at and set up a Christianity independently of the Christian Church is the very essence and nature of all heresies. The church and Christianity are distinguishable, but not separable; and in assuming their separability, as a primary position, lies all the confusion of ideas and misapprehensions of Christianity in the author of the article under present consideration. This point needs further explanation, as it is all-important, and forms, indeed, the very root of the matter. “Christianity is a theory,” says Dr. Nevin, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” But what does Dr. Nevin mean by “divine revelation”? Here are his own words in explanation:

“When the question arises, How are we to be made in this way partakers of the living Christ, so that our religion shall be in very deed――not a name only, not a doctrinal or ritualistic fetich merely, nor a fond sentiment simply of our own fancy?” “All turns in this case on our standing in the divine order as it reaches us from the Father through the Son. That meets us in the written Word of God, which, in the way we have before seen, is nothing less in its interior life than the presence of the Lord of life and glory himself in the world.”

Again:

“We cannot now follow out the subject with any sort of adequate discussion. We will simply say, therefore, that what our Lord says here of his words or commandments is just what the Scriptures everywhere attribute to themselves in the same respect and view. They claim to be spirit and life, to have in them supernatural and heavenly power, to be able to make men wise unto everlasting life, to be the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever――not the memory or report simply of such word spoken in time past, but the always present energy of it reaching through the ages. The Scriptures――God’s law, testimonies, commandments, statutes, judgments, his word in form of history, ritual, psalmody, and prophecy――are all this through what they are as the ‘testimony of Jesus’; and therefore it is that they are, in truth, what the ark of God’s covenant represented of old, the conjunction of heaven and earth, and in this way a real place of meeting or convention between men and God. To know this, to own it, to acknowledge inwardly the presence of Christ in his Word, as the same Jehovah from whom the law came on Mount Sinai; and then to fear the Lord as thus revealed in his Word, to bow before his authority, and to walk in his ways; or, in shorter phrase, to ‘fear God and keep his commandments,’ because they _are his_ commandments, and not for any lower reason――this is the whole duty of man, and of itself the bringing of man into union with God; the full verification of which is reached at last only in and by the Word made glorious through the glorification of the Lord himself; as when, in the passage before us he makes the keeping of his commandments the one simple condition of all that is comprehended in the idea of the mystical union between himself and his people.”

According, then, to Dr. Nevin, “the divine order of our being” made “partakers of the living Christ is in the Word of God.”

To make what is plain unmistakable, he adds:

“What we have to do, then, especially in the war we are called to wage with the powers of hell, is to see that this conjunction with Christ be in us really and truly, through a proper continual use of the Word of God for this purpose.”

There is here and there throughout this article a haziness of language which smacks of Swedenborgianism, and makes it difficult to seize its precise meaning; but we submit that Dr. Nevin――and he will probably accept the statement, as our only aim is to get at his real meaning――proceeds on the supposition that Christianity is a theory, and becomes real as each individual, illumined by divine light, discovers and appropriates it in reading the written Word――the Bible. This is the common ground of Protestantism; and Dr. Nevin holds no other than the rule of faith of all Protestants. The following passage places this beyond doubt or cavil:

“It was the life of the risen Lord himself, shining into the written Word, and through this into the mind of the disciples, which, by inward correspondence, served to open their understanding to the proper knowledge of both. And as it was then, so it is still. We learn what the written Word is only by light from the incarnate Word; but then, again, we learn what the light of the incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the written Word――a circle, it is true, which alone, however, brings us to the true ground of the Christian faith.”

We need scarcely tell our readers that this pretended rule of faith is no rule of faith at all. It breaks down on any reasonable test which you may apply to it. It will not stand the trial of the written Word itself, nor of history, nor of common sense, nor of good and sound logic. This has been too often demonstrated to require here long argumentation. Therefore, when a man ventures to speak for Christianity, and professes to define and explain what is Christianity, the question rises up at once, and naturally: What does this man know, in fact, about Christianity? Did he live in the time of Christ? Did he ever speak to Christ, or see him? Was he a witness to his miracles? Why, no! He can bear testimony to none of these events. If he was not a contemporary of Christ, what, then, does he know about him? Where has he obtained his knowledge to set up for a teacher of Christianity? On what grounds does he presume to speak for Christianity? Does he come commissioned by those whom Christ authorized to teach in his name? Why, no; they repudiate him in the character of a teacher of Christ. Does he prove by direct miraculous power from God to speak in his name? Why, no! Then he has no commission, indirect or direct; then he is unauthorized, a self-sent and a self-appointed teacher!

But he fancies he has a light to speak for Christianity on the authority of certain historical documents which contain an account of Christ and his doctrines. But how about these documents? What authority verified and stamped them with its approval as genuine, and rejected others, which professed to be genuine, as spurious? Why, the very authority which verified these documents, and on which he has to rely for their genuineness and divine inspiration, is the very authority which altogether denies his presumed right of teaching Christianity! The authority which authenticated them rejects as spurious his claim to be the interpreter of their true meaning. How does he get over this difficulty? He does not get over it. He simply ignores it.

But do these documents profess to give a full and complete account of Christianity? By no means. He assumes this too. What! assumes the vital point of his own rule, which is in dispute? He does. Strange that those who were inspired to write these so important documents should not have written their great object plainly on their face; and stranger still, if they did, that this should have remained a secret many centuries before its discovery!

Then this was not the way the primitive Christians learned Christianity? Not at all. There were millions of Christians who spilt their blood for Christianity, and millions more who had died in the faith, before these documents were verified and put in the shape which we now have them and call the Bible. This pretended rule, then, unchristianizes the early Christians? It does; and does more――it unchristianizes the great bulk of Christians since; for the mass of Christians could not obtain Bibles before the invention of printing, and could not read them if they had them. Even to-day, if this be the rule, how about the children, the blind, and those who cannot read――not a small number? How are they to become Christians?

But as the Bible is an inspired book, to get at its true meaning requires the same divine Spirit which inspired it? Of course it does. But do they that follow this rule assume that each one for himself has this divine Spirit? Nothing else. But are they sure of this? Sure of it?――they say so. But are they sure that each one has the divine Spirit to interpret rightly the divinely-inspired, written Word? Each one thinks so. Thinks so! But do they not know it? Do they not know it? Why, let me explain: “You see we learn what the written Word is only by light from the incarnate Word.” But how do you get the light from the incarnate Word? Why, “we learn what the light of the incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the written Word.” That is, you suppose that the Bible, read with proper dispositions, conveys to your soul divine grace? Just so. That is, you put the Bible in the place of the sacraments; but that is not the question now. The question, the point, now at issue is: How do you know that that light which shines into you through the written Word is not “a fond sentiment simply of your own fancy,” is not a delusion, instead of “the light of the incarnate Word”? “Oh! I see what you are aiming at. A book divinely inspired requires for its interpreter the divine Spirit to get at its divine meaning. Now, if those who assume to possess this Spirit contradict each other point-blank in their interpretation of its meaning, then this is equivalent to charging the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, with error; and such a charge is blasphemy! But this is pushing things too far.”

Perhaps so; nevertheless, those who follow this rule of faith do differ in their interpretation of Holy Scripture, and differ as far as heaven is from earth. There is no end to their differences. Almost every day breeds a new sect. They not only differ from each other, but each one differs from himself; and why? Because none are certain that they have the inspired Word of God, except on a basis which undermines their position; and none are certain that the light by which they interpret the written Word of God is the unerring Spirit of truth. Hence all who hold this rule gradually decline into uncertitude, doubt, scepticism, and total unbelief.

But how do the followers of this rule of faith interpret those passages of Holy Scriptures which speak so plainly of the church?――for instance, where Christ promises to “build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”; “He that heareth not the church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican”; “The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth”; “Christ died for the church”; “The church is ever subject to Christ”; and others of like import. They either pass them by as of no account, or deal with them as an artist does with a piece of clay or wax――they mould them to suit their fancy. Truly, this rule of faith reduces the divine reality of Christianity to the efforts of one’s own thought――“a theory.”

Dr. Nevin may struggle against the inevitable results of this rule, as he does in several places in the present article, but he stands on the same inclined plane as those whom he condemns, and, in spite of his earnest counter-efforts, he is descending visibly with them into the same abyss. For the effort to get at the reality of Christianity, and to escape the recognition of the divine authority of the church, through the personal interpretation of the written Word, is a vain, absurd, and fatal expedient. “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber” (John x. 1).

As the attempt to separate the church and Christianity from each other empties Christianity of all its contents and destroys its reality, so, reversely, the conception of the transcendent union and inseparability of the church and Christianity leads to the recognition of the living, constant, divine reality of Christianity. For the Christian Church was called into being by God, the Holy Ghost, the Creator Spirit; and as this primary creative act still subsists in her in all its original vigor, she is, at every moment of her life, equally real, living, divine. Just as the created universe exists by the continuation of the creative act which called it into existence at the beginning, so the Catholic Church exists by the continuation of the supernatural creative act which called her into existence on the day of Pentecost. Once the church, always the church.

The church and the Bible are, in their divine origin, one; they co-operate together for the same end, and are in their nature inseparable. But the written Word is relative or subsidiary to the church, having for its aim to enlighten, to strengthen, and to perfect the faithful in that supernatural life of the Spirit in which they were begotten in the layer of regeneration, in the bosom of the holy church. The purpose of the written Word is, therefore, to effect a more perfect realization of the church, and to accelerate her true progress in the redemption and sanctification of the world. Hence the written Word presupposes the existence of the church, is within and in the keeping of the church, and depends on her divine authority for its authentication and true interpretation. The church is primary, and not enclosed in the written Word; but the end of the written Word is enclosed in that of the church.

Were not a word of divine revelation written, the church would have none the less existed in all her divine reality, and she would have none the less accomplished her divine mission upon earth. For God, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is her life, power, guide, and protector. God the Son was incarnate in the man Christ Jesus; so God the Holy Spirit was incorporate in the holy Catholic Church.

Undoubtedly the apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write all that they wrote; but their Gospels and their Epistles always presuppose the church as existing. To appeal, therefore, from the church to the written Word of the New Testament, if nothing else, is to be guilty of an anachronism.

Even as to the Old Testament, before the Incarnation as well as after the Incarnation, the reality of the church consisted in that supernatural communion between God and man which existed at the moment of his creation. The church, therefore, existed, at least in potentiality, in the garden of Paradise, and was historically primary in the order of supernatural communications.

Wherein does Dr. Nevin differ from the Ebionites, the Nicolaites, the Gnostics, the common Protestants, down to Joe Smith, Père Hyacinthe, and Bishop Reinkens? Perceptibly, at bottom, there is no difference. Dr. Nevin appears to have never asked himself seriously the most searching of all questions, to wit: What, in the last analysis, is the basis, standard, or rule by which I judge what is and what is not Christianity? He ventures to treat of the gravest questions and most momentous mysteries touching the kingdom of God, on which the saints would not have ventured a personal opinion; and on what grounds? But it may be said in his excuse, and with truth, that this self-sufficient attitude is due to the very position of defiance to the divine authority of the church in which all those who have gone out, or are born out, of her fold are necessarily involved.

To sum up: Either we must suppose that God has left the task to every individual to direct the human race to the great end for which he created it――and thus the individual occupies the place of Almighty God, and turns the crank of the universe to suit his own fancy, or the schemes and theories of the cogitations of his little brain――or believe in “a divine order,” in being made constant partakers of the living Christ “in a concrete form.” In this case, our first duty is to find this real concrete body, become a member and partaker of its divine life, and, in conquering the obstacles in the way of our salvation, co-operate in its divine work for the whole world.

But the history of these last three centuries shows conclusively that there is no standing-place between the Catholic Church and Protestantism; and it has made it equally clear that Protestantism has no standing ground of its own, and therefore no man can be a Christian, and defend with perfect consistency his position, out of the Catholic Church.

[135] “The Spiritual World,” by J. W. Nevin, D.D., the _Mercersburg Review_, October, 1876.

[136] _The Baptism of the Holy Ghost_, by Rev. Asa Mahan, D.D., p. 81.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.

## CHAPTER VIII.

AN ARRIVAL.

If Mr. Vane and the Signora felt any difficulty in meeting each other the next morning, it was soon over. _Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte_, and that one step brought them into the familiar path again, almost as though they had never left it. Almost, but not quite; for the entire unconsciousness of Mr. Vane’s manner impressed the lady strongly. It did not give her a new idea of him, but it emphasized the impressions she had for some time been receiving. She had never believed him to be so careless and indifferent as he often appeared to be, but it had grown upon her, little by little, that under that calm, and even _nonchalant_, exterior was hidden an immense self-control and watchfulness; that he could ignore things when he chose so perfectly that it was difficult to believe he had not forgotten them; and that, instead of being one of the most unobserving of men, he was, in reality, aware of everything that went on about him, seeing much which escaped ordinary lookers-on.

Such a disposition in a person in whose honesty we have not entire confidence is disconcerting, and increases our distrust of them; but it excites in us a greater interest when we know them to be honest and friendly. If they have had sorrows, we look at them with a tenderer sympathy, searching for signs of a suffering which they will not express; if they have revealed a peculiar affection for us, we feel either sweetly protected or painfully haunted by an attention which seldom betrays itself, and which will not be evaded.

The Signora could not have said clearly whether she was pleased or displeased. Mr. Vane had mistaken the nature of her sympathy, she thought, and, believing her to be attached to him, had spoken from gratitude; and though the conviction hurt her pride, she could not feel any resentment for a mistake kindly made on his part, and promptly corrected on hers. The only wise course was to put the matter completely out of her mind, as he seemed to have done, and to secure and enjoy the friendship she had no fear of his withdrawing.

Isabel was greatly exercised in her mind that morning on the subject of insects.

“I made up my mind in the middle of the night what I should do if I ever built a house in Italy,” she said. “I should have every stick and stone on the place carried away, a deep trench dug all around the land, and a high wall built all around the trench. Then I should have the whole surface of the ground covered with combustible material, and a fire kindled over it. When that had burned a day or two, I should have cellars, wells, drains, everything that had to be excavated, made thoroughly, and the garden-plot well turned over. Then I should have a second conflagration, covering everything. Next would come the house-building. For that every stone should be washed and fumigated before it was brought in at the gate, and all the earth and gravel should be baked in a furnace, and every tree and shrub, and cart and donkey and workman, should be washed seven times; and finally, when the house should be finished as to the stone-work and plaster, I would have it drenched inside and out with spirits of wine, and set fire to. By taking those precautions I believe that one might have a place free of fleas. What do you think, Signora?”

“My dear, I think you would have had your labor for your pains,” was the reply. “These little creatures would hop over your walls, come in snugly hidden in your furniture, ride grandly in on the horses and in the coaches of your visitors, and even enter triumphantly on your own person. They are invincible. One must have patience.”

“I would continue to burn the place over, furniture and all, till I had routed them,” the young woman declared. “I believe it could be done. I would have patience, but it should be the patience of continual resistance, not of submission. I would not give up though I should reduce the place to ashes.”

Mr. Vane asked his daughter if she ever heard of such a process as biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; and then he told her a very pathetic story of a man and a flea: “Once there was a man who was greatly tormented by a flea which he could never catch. In vain he searched his garments and the house. The insect hopped from place to place, but always returned as soon as the search was over. At length, in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders, flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely to shore again.”

“The moral is――” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter interrupted him.

“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could never bite him again.”

This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green, silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural behavior could have been――all these kept their eyes and minds alert.

In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little children were playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed, came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.

The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path. “You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.

The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious sweetness, as she made the reply of St. Clara: “She is not blind who sees God!”

She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass. Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she lifted her face to it and smiled again.

The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures, and presently, climbing with some difficulty the steps of one of the altars, seated itself and began softly to stroke the cheeks of a marble cherub that supported the altar-table.

If a company of baby angels had come in, they would not have made less noise nor done less harm; perhaps, would not have done more good.

“How peaceful it is!” Mr. Vane exclaimed as they went out into the air again. “How heavenly peaceful!”

They saw only women and children on their way down through the town. Some of the men had gone off in the night to Rome, carrying wine in those carts of theirs, with the awning slung like a galley-sail over the driver’s seat, and the cluster of bells atop, each tinkling in a different tone, and the little white dog keeping watch over the barrels while the man dozed. Others had gone at day-dawn to work in the Campagna, and might be seen from the town moving, as small as spiders, among the vines or in the gardens.

Just below the great piazza, at the entrance of the town, beside the dip of the road into the hollow between _Monte Compatri_ and _Monte San Sylvestro_, a long, tiled roof was visible supported on arches. They leaned over the parapet supporting the road, and watched for a little while the lively scene below. All the space beneath this roof was an immense tank of water, or fountain, as it was called, divided into square compartments. Around these stood forty or fifty women washing. They soaped and dipped their clothes in the constantly-changing water, and beat them on the wide stone border of the fountain, working leisurely, and chatting with each other. The white handkerchiefs on their heads, and, now and then, a bit of bright drapery on their shoulders, shone out of the shadow made by the roof and the piers supporting it, and the rich green of that sheltered nook between the hills. It was, in fact, the town wash-tub, and this was the town wash-day. In this place the women washed the year round, in the open air, and with cold water, spreading their clothes out to dry on the grass and bushes.

The travellers went up _Monte San Sylvestro_, gathering flowers as they went. The path was rough and wild, winding to and fro among the bushes as it climbed, and hidden, from time to time, by tall trees. Half way up they met a man with a herd of goats rushing and tumbling down the steep way. A little farther on, at a turn of the road, was a large shrine holding a crucifix. The place seemed to be an absolute solitude, but the withered flowers drooping from the wire screen, and the sod, worn to dust, at the foot of the step, showed that faith and love had passed that way, and stopped in passing. Near this shrine was a protruding ledge, from under which the gravel had dropped away or been dug away, leaving a sort of cave. The place needed only a gray-bearded old man clad in rags, and bending over an open book, an hour-glass before him, and perhaps a lion lying at his feet. Or one might have placed there the Magdalen, with her long hair trailing in the sand, and her woful eyes looking off into the distant east, as she gazed across the blue ocean from her cave on the coast of France. There was still faith enough in this region to have honored and protected such a penitent.

The three women gathered some green to go with their flowers, cleared away all the withered stems and leaves, and wrote in pink and white and blue around the edge of the screen. When they had done all that they could well reach, Mr. Vane finished for them by writing last, over the head of the crucifix, the word that in reality came first. Then they went on, leaving the symbol of all that Heaven could do for earth encircled by the expression of all that earth can do for Heaven――“_Credo, Spero, Amo, Ringrazio, Pento_.” They wrote these words in flowers, Bianca weaving a verdant Hope at the right hand, Isabel a white Thanksgiving at the left, and the Signora placing a rose-red Love and Penitence under the feet. Over the head Mr. Vane had set in blue the word of Faith.

The summit of the mountain was crowned with the convent and church of St. Sylvester; but the buildings extended quite to the edge of the platform on the eastern side, and the fine view was from the gardens on the west side, and, of course, inaccessible to ladies. They could only obtain glimpses over the tops of trees that climbed from below, and through the trunks of trees that pressed close to the corners of the stone barriers. No person was visible but a monk in a brown robe and a broad-brimmed hat, who lingered near a moment, as if to give them an opportunity to speak to him if they wished, then entered a long court leading to the convent door, and disappeared under the portico.

A perfect silence reigned. They heard nothing but their own steps on the grassy pavement. The town of _Monte Compatri_, seen through the trees on the other height, looked more like a gray rock than a city. Not a sign of life was visible from it. The glimpses they caught of the Campagna had seemed fragments of a vast green solitude where grass had long overgrown the traces of men. No smallest cloud gave life or motion to the steady blue overhead; no song of bird wove a silver link between familiar scenes and that solemn retreat. The soul, stripped of its veiling cares and interests, was like Moses on the mountain, face to face with God. History, mythology, poetry――they were not! The buzzing of these golden bees that made the brow of Tusculum their hive was inaudible and forgotten. On this height was a station-house of eternity, and the electric current of the other world flowed through its blue and silent air.

“It seems to me one should prepare one’s mind before going there,” Bianca said, looking back from the foot of the mountain, after they had descended. They had scarcely spoken a word going down.

The impression made on them was, indeed, so strong that they scarcely observed anything about them for several hours; and it was only when they were going down to Frascati again in the afternoon that they roused themselves from their silence.

“We shall have time to go into Villa Aldobrandini a little while,” the Signora said, looking at her watch. “The train does not start for more than an hour. We can send the man on to the station with our bags, and walk down ourselves. Of course all these villas have very nearly the same view, but this is the finest of all.”

They had time for a short visit only, but their guide made the most of it. Going round one of the circling avenues, dark with ancient ilex-trees, she turned into a cross-road that led directly to the upper centre of the villa, where the cascades began. First, from under a tomb-like door in the side of a mound, flowed a swift ribbon of water between stone borders. It slanted with the hill, and flashed along silent in the sunshine, eager to leap through the mouth of the great mask below, to scatter its spray over carven stone and a hundred flowers.

They followed the cascades down to the lower front, with its niches, statues, chapel, and chambers, and the noble _casino_ facing it.

“Every story of the house, as you go up,” the Signora said, “brings you on a level with a new cascade, and from the topmost room you look into the heart of the upper thicket, where you might imagine yourself unseen. Indeed, splendid as these scenes are, there is, to me, a constant sense of discomfort in that frequent appearance of solitude where solitude is not. There seems to be no nook, however apparently remote, which is not perfectly overlooked from some almost invisible watch-tower. It may be necessary, but the suggestion is of suspicion and espionage.”

They left the villa by the front avenue and lawn, walking through grass and flowers ankle deep, and gathering handfuls of dear, familiar pennyroyal that they found growing all about.

When they reached the station there was yet a little time to wait, and they stood in the western windows and looked off to the distant ridges that showed their dark edges against intervening layers of silvery mist. They were ridges of jewels, marked thickly with spires, towers, and palaces. At the left the dome of the world’s temple was visible, making everything else of its sort puny, and next it, like the outline of a forest against the sky, the Quirinal stretched its royal front. All floated in that delicate mist that, from the distance, always veils the Campagna, as if the innumerable ghosts of the past became luminous when so seen, evading for ever the nearer spectator.

Framing this distant picture, a hill of olives at one side of the station-house sloped to a hill of vines at the other, and the railroad track, set in roses, curved round in the narrow strip of land between them.

The Signora, putting her arm around Bianca, and pointing to one of these ridges, whispered in her ear: “What does my darling think that is――the two dark spots shaped like two thimbles, and about as large, and the something that might be a lead-pencil standing up between them? What blessed _campanile_ and twin _cupole_ do you wish them to be?”

“Oh! I was searching for them,” the girl exclaimed, and kissed her hand to the far-away basilica. “We must go there a few minutes this evening,” she added――“go up the steps, at least, if it should be too late to go in.”

They started, and went trailing along through the enchanted land, happy to return to the city that already seemed to them like home, and, having learnt some landmarks in their outward passage, added to the number of their acquisitions in returning. The Signora indicated the principal tombs and named the aqueducts. “There are the Claudian and Marcian, side by side, galloping over the plain like a pair of coursers, each bringing a lake in its veins to quench the thirst of Rome. Sixtus V., who built our chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Bianca, used those Claudian arches to bring a new stream in when the old one failed. It is called Aqua Felice. His name was Felice Peretti.”

“_Stia felice!_” said Bianca, smiling at the grand old arches.

“In what a circle water goes,” she added after a moment, “and what a beautiful circle!――down in the rain, running in the river, where the wheel touches the earth, rising on the sunbeams, running in clouds, where the wheel touches the sky, dropping in rain again, and so on round and round.”

“Apropos of Sixtus V.,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “see how the church recognizes and rewards merit. It is, in fact, the only true republic. That wonderful man was a swineherd in Montalto when he was a boy, and Cardinal of Montalto when he was a man, and he died one of the most brilliant popes that ever wore the tiara. One cannot help wondering what the boy Felice thought of in those days when he watched the swine, and if ever a vision came to him of kings kneeling to kiss his feet. And, more yet, I wonder what thoughts the mother had of his future when she watched over her sleeping child, or looked after him when he went out to his day’s task. He could not have been so great but that his mother gave the first impulse. One does not gather figs of thistles.”

“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be. I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has not benefited the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her any great discredit.”

While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s exclamation: “_Stia felice!_”

His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand, and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to go on.

“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have less need than most men. I would like to put his _La Donna Cattolica_ into the hands of every Catholic――yes, and of every Protestant. I would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too, to learn from St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Gregory the Great what estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by what they say is to be found in them.”

“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at the Signora in his turn.

“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb in St. Andrea delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the woman is the priest.’”

She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death, he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’ He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”

They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an hour before _Ave Maria_; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe of pink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.

They met Mr. Vane and Isabel at the door.

“Did you think we also might not visit a church?” Isabel said. “I invited papa to go into St. Bernard’s, and, though they were about closing, they kept open ten minutes for us. I am not sure but I may adopt that church as my favorite. It is not too large. The congregations are orderly, and all attend to one service; and, besides, I like a rotunda. If I should go there, papa, you must side with me, that the house may be equally divided.”

“I’m not sure I like those cherubic churches, all head and no nave,” Mr. Vane replied. “The basilica, being modelled on the human body, has a more human feeling.”

The door opened before they rang, and the servants, having been on the watch, welcomed them with smiling faces, kissing the hand of the Signora. It was impossible not to believe in, and be touched by, their sincerity and affection, which expressed themselves, not in looks and words alone, but in actions. The house showed plainly, by its exquisite cleanliness, that the absence of the mistress had not been a holiday for them; and they had prepared everything they could to please her, even to filling all the smaller vases with her favorite flowers.

“You haven’t been spending your money for violets, you extravagant children!” she exclaimed.

They had been watching to see if she would notice them, and were delighted with her surprise and pleasure.

No, they had not spent money, but only time and strength. They had gathered the flowers themselves in Villa Borghese.

“I do not take on myself to decide great social questions,” the Signora said, as they sat talking over their supper. “I could not decide them if I would. But this I must think: that, in most cases, little happiness is to be found for people except in the position in which they were born. Look at these two good creatures who serve us. Their parents before them were servants, and they do not expect or wish to be anything more. They want the rights their claim to which they understand perfectly――fair wages, not too hard work, and an occasional holiday. They know that the fatigues of the great, the wealthy, and the ambitious are greater than theirs, though of a different sort. If wealth were to drop upon them, they would grasp it, no doubt, but it would embarrass them. They would never strive for it. Do you know, I find their position dignified, even when they black my shoes. It’s a nicer thing to do than toadying for fine friends, or striving for place, or gnawing one’s heart out with envy.”

Mr. Vane smiled slightly.

“How is it about your swineherd, who changed his rough straw hat for a triple crown, and had the royalty and nobility of centuries come to kiss the foot that once hadn’t even a shoe to it?”

“Oh!” she replied, “the church is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the meek and the poor in spirit possess it already. Besides, I always make exception of those whom God has especially endowed with gifts of nature or grace, or with both. Besides, again, this man did not seek greatness; it was conferred on him.”

Isabel felt called on to show her colors.

“America for ever!” she said. “Europe will do very well for the great, and for those who are willing to remain small; but in _my_ country there’s a fair field for everybody. Everybody there is born to as high a position as he can work his way to, and his destiny is not in the beginning of his life, but in the end of it. We are like Adams and Eves new-made, and dominion is given us over the garden of the new world.”

She paused for breath, and the Signora applauded. “Brava! I am willing you should defeat me. I will call America not only the garden, but the nursery-garden, of the new world, if you like. Long live your seedlings!”

“How would you like it,” the girl went on, rather red in the cheeks――“how would you like it, if you had been born in some very humble position in life, instead of in the position of a lady, to have some one tell you not to try to rise, but to stay where you were? Just take it to yourself.”

“If I had been so born I should have been a different sort of person, and cannot say how I should have felt,” the Signora replied tranquilly. “If I had been a product of generations of obedience, instead of generations of command, do not you see that the marriages would have been different, the habits, the traditions, the education, everything but the immortal spark and the common human nature? Or, if I had been like what I am now, I think I should have looked for, and found, the beauties and pleasures in my path.” She had been speaking very quietly, but here she drew herself up a little, and a slight color rose to her face as she went on: “I have never striven for any of those things the chase of which seems so mean to me. It has never occurred to me that I might be honored by any association, except with a person either very good or very highly gifted by nature. The only rank which impresses me is that in the church. For the rest――you have heard the expression, ‘a distinction without a difference.’”

Isabel gave a puzzled sigh. “I never could understand you,” she said, a little impatiently. “Sometimes you seem to me the haughtiest of women; sometimes I think you not half proud enough. One moment you seem to be a red republican, the next an aristocrat. I can’t make out what you really are. You graduate your bows to an inch, according to the rank you salute. I’ve seen your eyes flash lightning at a person for being too familiar toward you; and then I find you talking about the rights of the people almost like a communist.”

The Signora was crumbling a bit of bread while she listened, and did not look up in answering: “I am quite ashamed of having made myself the subject of conversation for so long a time. Excuse me! Shall we go out to the _loggia_ for a little while? It is very warm here.”

“Permit me!” Mr. Vane interposed. He had been looking at his daughter with great displeasure. “I would say, Isabel, that when you shall have thought and learned more, you will, I hope, understand the Signora better than you do now, and will try to imitate the justice which can give to all their due, and not rob Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, I would remind you that an intrusive familiarity is not a right of any one, even to an inferior. And now, Signora, shall we go to the _loggia_?”

Perhaps it was because she had never before been so sharply criticised to her face; but the Signora had, certainly, never before known how pleasant it is to be defended. This pleasure showed itself in her manner as they went out. She usually held herself rather erect, and had an air of composure which might easily be called pride; but now there was a slight drooping of the head and bending of the form which gave her an appearance of softness, as of one who droops content under a protecting shadow. It was a softness which she, perhaps, needed.

They heard the door-bell ringing as they went up the _loggia_ steps, and presently an exclamation in Isabel’s clear voice. She had not followed them, they now perceived, being a little displeased or hurt at the reproof to which she had been subjected.

“Who can have come?” said the Signora, listening. “It seems to be some one whom Isabel knows.”

Bianca stood at the railing and looked intently at the windows of the _sala_, faintly lighted from the room beyond. Two figures passed through the dimness and disappeared. They might be coming to the _loggia_, or they might be going to the sofa under that picture of Penelope and Ulysses――the Signora and Mr. Vane, both a little preoccupied, did not notice or care which. If any one wished to see them, he could come to them.

Bianca, alone, stood looking steadily. The full moon, shining in her face, had showed it for one moment as red as a rose; but as the minutes passed, that lovely color faded, growing paler, till it was whiter than the light that veiled it, sparkling like silver on its beautiful outlines. Where was the sweet confidence that had been growing up in her heart for the last few weeks? Gone like a cloud-house built on a cloud. She was terrified at the fear and pain that had taken the place of it, and began to lose sight of the cause in trembling at the magnitude of the effect.

“It is surely wrong that anything in the world should make me feel so,” she murmured. “What have I been doing? I must have thought of this too much, and now is come my punishment. Here in Rome, where we shall stay but a few months, I ought to have given all my mind and heart to religion. It is a shame that I have not. I do not deserve the privilege of being here.”

She strove to gather about her mind the sacred thoughts and associations which the Christian finds in the heart of the Christian world, to dwarf with the grand interests of eternity the passing interests of time, and she was in some measure successful, to the extent, at least, of inspiring herself with resolution, if not with peace.

“Oh! how terrible is life,” she said, looking upward, as if to escape the sight of it. “How it catches us unawares, sometimes, and wrings the blood out of our hearts!” The prayer that always rose to her lips in any necessity, “We fly to thy patronage,” escaped them now; and then she swiftly and firmly read to herself her lesson: “I will be friendly and gentle toward him. I will neither seek him nor shrink from him, nor show any foolish consciousness, if I can help it; and I will not be angry with Isabel. If he should care for me in the way I have thought, he will come every step of the way for me; if he should not, I shall not win either respect or affection by putting myself in his way. For the rest, I will trust my future with God.”

“Bianca,” said her sister’s voice at her elbow, “who do you think has come?”

Whatever might happen, it was a pleasure to meet him, and there was no effort or embarrassment in her greeting. That moment of pain and recollection had lifted her merely earthly affection so that it became touched with the serious sweetness of heavenly charity, as the mist, lifting at morning from the bosom of the river, where it has hung through the dark hours, grows silver in the upper light. She held out her hand and smiled. “You are welcome! Papa, here is an old friend of ours.”

The Signora was instantly all attention. Her own affairs were quite forgotten in those of her beloved young favorite. She was eager to see this man, to watch him, to understand him. If he should suit her and be good to Bianca, there was nothing she would not do for him; if he should be lacking in principle, or in kindness to her darling, woe to him! She would most certainly――

And here, just as she was meditating in what way she could most fittingly punish him without hurting any one else, he turned, at Mr. Vane’s introduction, and saluted her with a smile and glance that won her completely. It was not the meeting of two strangers. He had thought of his lady’s guardian with almost as much interest, perhaps, as she had thought of her friend’s lover, and had expected to find in her either a help or a hindrance. Her searching regard had not disconcerted, then, but reassured him rather.

The Signora soon made an excuse to go into the house a moment, and left the Vanes and their visitor to renew their intercourse without interruption, and go through the mutual questioning of friends reunited after many and varied experiences. Returning quietly after a while, she stood in a corner of the _loggia_ and observed them. Mr. Vane sat with a daughter at either side, and Marion stood opposite them, leaning back against the railing and talking. The moon shone in his face and flowed down his form, investing both, or revealing in both, a beauty inexpressibly noble and graceful. One might say that he looked as if he had been formed to music. A gold bronze color in his hair showed where the light struck fully, a flash of dusky blue came now and then from under his thick eye-lashes, and when he smiled one knew that his teeth were perfect and snowy white. His voice, too, was very pleasant, with a sound of laughter in it when he talked gayly――a laughter like that we fancy in a brook. It was as though his thoughts and fancies sparkled as they passed into the air.

“He is certainly fascinating,” the Signora thought. “I hope he does not try to be so.”

He did not. No one could be more unconscious of the effect produced by what was personal in his talk than Marion. If he sometimes appeared, while talking, almost to forget his company, it was not because he thought of himself, but because he was absorbed in his subject. He saw plainly before his eyes that which he described, and he made others see it. Bright, animated, varied, passing, not abruptly, but with the grace of a bird that swims through the air, and alights for a moment, now here, now there, on a tree, a shrine, a house-top, a mountain-top, a window-ledge with an inside view, he carried his listeners along with him, charmed and unconscious of time. He knew that they were pleased, but gave the credit to the subject, and thought nothing of himself. He would have kept silent if he had believed he could be thought talking for effect.

The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside.

“If only he could find so much in worn and hackneyed people!” she thought. “If he could compel the cold, the conventional, and the mean to break the dull crust that has accumulated around the original nature of them, what a boon it would be! There must be something tolerable, perhaps a capacity for becoming even admirable, left in the lowest. I would like to have him point it out or call it out; for sometimes my charity fails.”

His recital finished, he stood an instant silent, looking down; then a swift glance probed the shadowed corner where the Signora stood, showing that he had all the while known she was there. It was not the inquisitive nor intrusive look of one who wishes to show a knowledge of what another has tried to hide from him, but a pleasant glance that sought her presence, and begged her not to separate herself from them.

She came forward immediately, more pleased at the frank invitation than if he had pretended to be unaware of her presence.

“I feel bound, in honor, to declare my intentions to you, Signora,” he said; “for you may look on me as a foe when you know them, and it is but right you should have fair warning. I have been told that you are disposed to win this family for Rome, and I am equally disposed to keep them in America. I should despair of success in such a rivalry but that I believe I have right on my side. Is it peace or war?”

“Peace,” she replied. “I cannot war against right, and I ought not to wish against it. Moreover, since the family are the majority, and have free will, we can only try to influence, but must leave them to decide. I am sorry, though, that you distrust Rome so.”

“Oh! it is not that,” he said quickly, “though, indeed, I do distrust Rome for some people――or rather, I distrust some people for Rome. I have known cases of the most deplorable deterioration of character here in persons who were considered at home a little better than the average. But that was not my thought in this instance. I hope our friends will return to America for other reasons. No one should, it seems to me, expatriate himself without a sort of necessity. The native land assigned us by Providence would seem to be the theatre in which it is our duty to act, and one of the motives of our visits to other countries should be to enrich our own with whatever of good we may find there. Every country needs its children; but America

## particularly needs all her good citizens, and the church in America

needs good Catholics. That is not a true Christian who spends a whole life abroad without necessity. The climate is not an excuse, for we have every climate; economy has ceased to be a sufficient motive; and mere pleasure is no reason for a Catholic to give.”

“What, then, may be considered a good reason?” the Signora asked, wondering if she were to be included in the catalogue of the condemned.

“An artist may study here a good many years,” was the reply. “The sculptor or the painter finds here his school. But I maintain that when the sculptor and painter are out of school, and begin to work in the strength of their own genius, if they have any, their place and their subjects are to be found in their own land. If they stay here they will never come to anything. They will only produce trite and worn-out imitations. The writer has a longer mission here, perhaps the longest; for thoughts are at home in every land, and that is the best where thoughts can best clothe themselves in words. There is another class who must be allowed to choose for themselves, though it would be better if they would choose to endure to the end in their own country――that is, certain tender souls from whom have been stripped friends and home, leaving them bare to a world that wounds them too much. Here, I have been assured and can well believe, they find a contentment not possible to them anywhere else. Their imaginations had flown here in childhood and youth, and had unconsciously made a nest to which they could themselves follow at need, and find a sort of repose. If they have not the courage or the strength to stay in the midst of our ceaseless, and sometimes even merciless, activity, I have not a word of blame for them. I would not breathe, even gently, against the bruised reeds.”

He spoke with such tender feeling that for a moment no one said anything; then he added, smiling: “I hope the Signora does not think me too dogmatic.”

“I think you are quite right,” she replied.

“You have forgotten one large class of Americans who may be excused, and even lauded and encouraged, for taking up a permanent residence in Europe,” Mr. Vane said.

“What, pray?”

“Snobs,” he replied solemnly.

The subject was whirled away on a little laugh, and a change of position showed them Annunciata on the shadowed side of the _loggia_, making coffee at a little table there, at the same time that Adreano offered them ices and cake. The place where the girl stood was quite darkened by the wall of Carlin’s studio and by an over-growing grape-vine, and the moonlight about revealed of her only a dark outline. But the flame of the spirit she was burning threw a pale blue light into her face and over her hands, flickering so that the light seemed rather to shine from, than on, her.

“It looks Plutonian,” Marion said. “We are, perhaps, on a visit to Proserpine.”

“Speaking of Proserpine reminds, me of pomegranate-seeds,” the Signora said; “and pomegranate-seeds remind me of something I heard very prettily said last summer by a very pretty young lady. We were in Subiaco, and had risen very early in the morning to go up to the church of St. Benedict. I noticed that Lily was very serious and silent, so did not speak, but only looked at her while we waited a little in the _sala_ for another member of our party. She walked slowly up and down, and seemed to be praying; presently, as if recollecting that we had a difficult climb before us, she seated herself near a table on which a servant had just piled up the fruit she had been buying. Among it was a pomegranate, broken open, and bleeding a drop or two of crimson juice out on to the dark wood. Lily drew a small, pointed leaf from an orange stem, and made a knife of it to separate the grains of the pomegranate, presently lifted one, and then another, and another to her mouth. I only thought how pretty her daintiness was as she absently fed like a bird, when all at once she turned as crimson as the juicy grain she had just eaten, and sprang up from the table, throwing the leaf away, and uttering an exclamation of such distress that I thought she must have been poisoned. Her exclamation was odd: ‘O Pluto!’

“‘You see,’ she explained after a minute, ‘I was saying the rosary, and had finished it, when I caught sight of the fruit here. And I thought then that, though our prayers may be flowers before the throne, our actions are fruits. Then I sat down to look at the pomegranate, and wondered what sort of a good action it was like; and while I wondered, I got tangled in a thicket of similitudes, and wandered off into mythology; and as I divided the grains I remembered poor Proserpine, and how Pluto, who knew well she could not leave him after having eaten, induced her to eat three pomegranate grains. I wondered if they were just like these, and how they tasted to her, and put one and another in my mouth, imagining myself in her place, and that presently my mother would come seeking me, and want to carry me back to heaven with her, and would find that I could not go because of these same pomegranate seeds. And then, my mind catching on the word Mother, which I had just been repeating on my rosary so many times, I remembered the Mother of God, and began to search for some Christian meaning in the myth. I thought Ceres was the giver of wheat and grain, therefore of bread, and Mary gave us the Bread of Life. Ceres came searching and mourning for her daughter, snatched away by the prince of darkness, and Mary watches and prays over those whom the enemy has snatched away from the garden of God, and who cry out to her for help. Ceres found that her daughter, having tasted of the fruit of the lower regions, was bound to spend one-half of her life there. Before I had time to find a Christian parallel for that part of the story, it flashed over me that my three pomegranate-seeds had cost me heaven for to-day, and deprived me of a privilege I might never have again. O Signora! I was going to receive Communion to-day in the grotto of St. Benedict!’”

“It is not often,” the Signora added, “that one can retrace the wandering path of a reverie as my poor Lily did. Her story reminded me of an illustrated poem, with wheat and roses wreathed around the leaves and hanging in among the verses.”

The bell announcing visitors, they went into the house again, and found Mr. Coleman and Signor Leonardo, the latter having come to see when his pupils would wish to resume their lessons.

“I can assure you, Signor, that I am the only one who has thought of study during the last three days,” Isabel said. “You should commend me. I have faithfully learned an irregular verb every morning while taking my coffee. That is my rule; and it is becoming such a habit with me that the mere sight of a cup and saucer suggests to me an irregular verb. The night we spent at Monte Compatri I learned three, not being able to sleep for the fleas.”

The Italian murmured some inarticulate commendation of her industry, and dropped his eyes. Her perfectly free and off-hand manner confounded him. To his mind such a lack of the downcast reserve of the girls he was accustomed to regard as models of behavior indicated a very strange disposition and an education still more strange. Yet he could not doubt that Miss Vane was respectable.

Mr. Coleman, who was hovering near, begged permission to make a comment, which he would not be thought to intend as a criticism. “You say the night you ‘spent’ at Monte Compatri. Is it, may I ask, true that Americans always speak of _spending_ time? In England we say we _pass_ time. I have heard the peculiarity attributed to your nation, the reason given for it being that Americans are almost always engaged in business of some kind, and naturally use the expressions of trade.”

Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.

“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I believe we Americans do almost always speak of spending time. It may be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression, and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”

Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.

“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them, my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you, however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W. M. Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless language in which they are――not clothed so much as――armed. He has little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes in _chiar-oscuro_.

“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behave themselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”

Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the slightest relapse.

Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with him after a while, and soon found him a liberal――not one of those who make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.

“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a country of which we can boast and be proud.”

Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of boast――war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into another, instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her own _unique_ advantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous sisters. The _rôle_ does not suit her.”

“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”

“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world, who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the mere half trying? You have proved your own weakness, and merely exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with contempt.”

The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight against generations of ghosts.”

“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta, the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and join in the dusty race?”

“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”

The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion the better part of valor.

“How odd it is,” the lady remarked, when they were left alone with Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of it, Mr. Vane?”

“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?――as, when we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be discordant, is intolerable.”

Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on being appealed to.

“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment? May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health, like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of anything which reminds us that it is not.”

The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke, appeared not to see.

“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the two went to their rooms together. “I can’t imagine what set me blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”

“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly. “When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red as――”

“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”

“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night without another word.

“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,” thought her friend, and wondered a little.

TO BE CONTINUED.

ROMA――AMOR

“Strength is none on earth save Love.” ――AUBREY DE VERE.

SUGGESTED BY A STATUE BY MISS A. WHITNEY EXHIBITED IN BOSTON, APRIL, 1876.