II.

The present condition of a people is the latest phase of a life that has run through centuries, in all the events of which there may be traced the relation of cause and effect, and whose continuity has never been interrupted, though at times the current may seem to leave its channel, or even to disappear. The past never dies, but with each succeeding moment receives a fuller existence, survives as a curse or a blessing. The passion which urges the human mind back to ages more and more remote, until the gathering darkness shuts out even the faintest glimmer of light, is not mere curiosity, nor even the inborn craving for knowledge; rather is it the consciousness that those ancient times and far-off deeds still live in us, mould us, and shape our ends. We were with Adam when he plucked and ate the forbidden fruit, and that his act should work in us yet, like a taint in the blood, seems to be a postulate of reason not less than a truth of tradition or revelation. The cherishing of great names, the clinging to noble memories, the use of poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, or any art, to give form and vividness to glories, heroisms, martyrdoms, are but the expression of this consciousness that the present is only the fuller and more living past. No vanity, much less scorn or hate, should prompt any one to lift into the light the glory or the shame of a people’s history. As we tread reverently on the ground where human passions have contended for the mastery, we should approach with religious awe the facts which have made the world what it is.

There are many persons, who certainly have no prejudices against the Irish people, many true and loyal Irishmen even, who strongly object to the prominence given to the sorrows and sufferings of Ireland. They would have us forget the past and turn, with a countenance fresh and hopeful as that of youth, to the future. Sydney Smith, full of English prepossessions but an honest lover of liberty, who labored as earnestly and fearlessly as any man of his generation in behalf of the wronged and defenceless, could not restrain his impatience when he thought of the fondness with which Irishmen cling to old memories and sacred associations. In his opinion the object of all government is roast mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout constable, an honest justice, a clear highway, and a free chapel. “What trash,” he exclaimed, “to be bawling in the streets about the Green Isle, the Isle of the Ocean, the bold anthem of _Erin go bragh_! A far better anthem would be, Erin go bread and cheese, Erin go cabins that will keep out the rain, Erin go pantaloons without holes in them.”

This may be very well, but we are persuaded that there is not an abuse or an evil in Ireland to-day which has not its roots in the remote past, or which can be understood or remedied without a knowledge of Irish history.

The bold anthem of _Erin go bragh_, which so provoked Sidney Smith, is the thread that leads us through the labyrinth. It is because the Irish are not English that England is neither able nor willing to treat them justly; and if she has rendered herself guilty of the greatest social crime in all history, it is because she has clung for centuries with terrible obstinacy to a policy which left the people of Ireland no alternative between denationalization and extermination. When in England the national spirit dominated and absorbed the religious spirit, the Irish, who had so long maintained their separate nationality, adhered with invincible firmness to the old faith. This was imputed to them as a crime, and became the pretext for still more grievous persecutions. If they were resolved to be Irish and Catholic, England was not less resolved that they should be outlaws and beggars. They were to have no bread or potatoes, or cabins that would keep out the rain, so long as they persisted in singing the bold anthem and acknowledging the supremacy of the pope. The history of Ireland is in great part the history of her wrongs; for a long time to come, doubtless, it will be a history of suffering; and if those who write of her find that they are placing before their readers pictures of death, exile, persecution, beggary, famine, desolation, violence, oppression, and of every form of human misery, they are but describing the state to which her conquerors have reduced her.

But there are special reasons for dwelling upon the wrongs of Ireland. For three hundred years the Irish people themselves and their faith have been held responsible, wherever the English language is spoken, for the crimes of England. The backwardness of Irish industry, and the seeming want of energy of the people in improving their condition, are habitually imputed by statesmen and public instructors to a peculiar indolence and recklessness in the Celtic race, fostered and encouraged by what is supposed to be the necessary influence of the Catholic religion.

The Irish are probably not more Celtic than the French, who assuredly are not excelled in thrift and industry by any other people. There is no country more Catholic than Belgium, nor is there anywhere a more prosperous or laborious people. Irishmen themselves, it is universally admitted, are hard workers in England, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia—wherever, in a word, the motives which incite men to labor are not taken from them; and yet the popular prejudice on this subject is so flattering to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant pride that it remains in the public mind like a superstition, which no amount of evidence can affect. In a former article we have attempted to trace some of the causes to which the poverty and misery of Ireland must be attributed, and we shall now continue the investigation. During the three centuries immediately following the Conquest the country was wasted by wars, massacres, and feuds, carried on by the two armed nations, which fiercely contended for the possession of the soil. The Anglo-Norman colony, entrenched within the Pale, and receiving constant supplies of men and money from the mother-country, formed a kind of standing army, ever ready to invade and lay waste the territories still held by the native population. The Irish people, in self-defence, and also with the hope of driving the invader from their shores, turned their whole attention to war. All the pursuits of peace were forgotten, and the island became a camp of soldiers, who, when not battling with the common enemy, turned their swords against one another. In such a state of society no progress was possible. Then came three centuries of religious wars to add more savage fierceness to the war of races. Under Elizabeth, James I., Cromwell, and William of Orange the whole country was confiscated. The Catholics were driven from their lands, hunted down, their churches and monasteries were burned or turned over to Protestants, their priests were martyred or exiled, their schools closed, their teachers banished, their nobles impoverished; and to make this state of things perpetual the Penal Code was enacted. To this point there was complete harmony between the home government and the English colony in Ireland. But England has rarely poured out her treasure or her blood for other than selfish and mercenary motives. She therefore demanded, as the price of her assistance in crushing the Irish Catholics, that the commerce and industry of Ireland should be sacrificed to her own interests. The House of Commons declared the importation of Irish cattle a public nuisance. They were then slaughtered and salted, but the government refused to permit the sale of the meat. The hides were tanned. The importation of leather was forbidden. The Irish Protestants began to export their wool; England refused to buy it. They began to manufacture it; an export duty, equivalent to prohibition, was put on all Irish woollen goods. They grew flax and made linens; England put a bounty on Scotch and English linens, and levied a duty on Irish linens. Ireland was not allowed to build or own a ship—her forests were felled and the timber sent to England. The English colonies were forbidden to trade with her; even the fisheries were carried on with English boats manned by Englishmen. By these and similar measures Irish commerce and industry were destroyed. Nothing remained for the people to do but to till the soil. In this lay the only hope of escaping starvation. But they no longer owned the land; it was in the hands of an alien aristocracy, English in origin and sympathy, Protestant in religion. The Catholic people, without civil existence, were at the mercy of an oligarchy by whom they were both hated and despised. These nobles owed their titles, wealth, and power to the violence of conquest, and, instead of seeking to heal the wounds, they were resolved to keep them open. In France and in England the Northmen were gradually fused with the original population. They lost their language, customs, almost the memory of their cradle-land. Even in Ireland a considerable portion of the Norman conquerors became Irish—_Hibernis hiberniores_. But this partial assimilation of the two races was effected in spite of England, who made use of strong measures both to prevent and punish this degeneracy, as it was termed. Had the union between the Irish and the Normans not been prevented by this violent and interested policy, a homogeneous people would have been formed in Ireland as in England, and the frightful wrongs and crimes of the last seven hundred years would not have been committed.

But the interests of England demanded that Ireland should be kept weak and helpless by internal discord; and she therefore used every means to prevent the fusion of the two races. The “Irish enemy,” ever ready to break in upon the settlements of the Pale, was the surest warrant of the loyalty of the English colony to the mother-country, whose assistance might at any moment become essential to its very existence. The native population, on the other hand, was held in check by the foreigner encamped in the land. Had the Irish and the English in Ireland united, they would have had little trouble in throwing off the yoke of England. It was all-important, therefore, that they should remain, distinct and inimical races. All intercourse between them was forbidden. Their inter-marriage was made high treason. It was a crime for an Englishman to speak Irish, or for an Irishman to speak English. The ancient laws and customs of the Irish were destroyed, and they were denied the benefits of English law. As yet the English and the Irish professed the same religious faith; but now even this powerful bond of union was broken. Enemies on earth, they looked to no common hope beyond this life. Three centuries of persecution and outrage followed, during which the Catholic Irish were reduced to such a state of misery and beggary that the only thing which remained in common between them and their tyrants was hate.

Here we have come upon the well-spring of all the bitter waters that have deluged Ireland. The country is owned and governed by a few men who have never loved the country and have always hated the people. Throughout the rest of Europe, even in the worst times, the interests of the lords and the peasants were to some extent identical. They were one in race and religion, rendered mutual services, gloried in a common country, and shared their miseries. The noble spent at least a part of the year on his estates, surrounded by his dependants. Kind offices were interchanged. The great lady visited the peasant woman in her sickness, and the humanities of life were not ignored. Elsewhere in Europe the great land-owners, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were, with rare exceptions, kind to the poor, indulgent to their debtors, willing to encourage industry, to advance capital for the improvement of the land, and thus to promote their own interests by promoting those of their tenants. The privileged classes were not wholly independent of the people. If they were not restrained from wrong-doing by love, they were often held in check by a salutary fear.

But nothing of all this was found in Ireland, where the landlords were in the unfortunate position of having nothing to fear and nothing to hope from the people. They lacked all the essential conditions of a native aristocracy. Their titles were Irish, but all their interests and sympathies were English. They were the hired servants of England, and they were not paid to work for the good of Ireland. They drew their revenues from a country to which they rendered no service; they were supported by the labors of the people whom they oppressed and hated; and they rarely saw the land from which they derived their wealth and titles, but lived in England, where they found a more congenial society, and were not afflicted by the sight of sufferings and miseries of which they knew themselves to be the authors. If the people, maddened by oppression or hunger, revolted, the Irish landlords were not disturbed; for an English army was at hand to crush the rebellion, which was never attributed to its true cause, but to the supposed insubordination and lawlessness of the Irish character. In England there existed a middle class, which bridged over the chasm that separated the nobles from the peasants, and which rendered the aristocracy liberal and progressive by opening its ranks to superior merit wherever found; but in Ireland there were only two classes of society, divided the one from the other as by a wall of brass. The authority of the Protestant oligarchy over the Catholic population was absolute, and they contracted the vices by which the exercise of uncontrolled power is always punished. To the narrowness and ignorance of a rural gentry were added the brutality and coarseness of tyrants. The social organization prevented the infusion of new blood which had saved the English aristocracy from decay and impotence, and the general stagnation of political and commercial life in Ireland had the effect of helping on the degeneracy of the ruling caste. Everything, in a word, tended to make the Irish landlords the worst aristocracy with which a nation was ever cursed; and, by the most cruel of fates, this worst of all aristocracies was made the sole arbiter of the destinies of the Irish people, of whose pitiable condition under this rule we have already given some account.

We turn now to consider the causes which have brought a certain measure of relief to the people of Ireland; and we must seek for them, not in the good-will or sense of justice of Irish or English Protestants, but in circumstances which took from them the power of continuing without some mitigation a policy which, if ruinous to the Irish people, was also full of peril to England.

It is pleasant to us, as Americans, to know that the voice which proclaimed our freedom and independence was heard in Ireland, as it has since been heard throughout the earth, rousing the nations to high thoughts of liberty, ringing as the loud battle-cry of wronged and oppressed peoples. The great discussions which the struggle of the American colonies awoke in the British Parliament, and in which the very spirit of liberty spoke from the lips of the sublimest orators, sent a thrill of hope through Irish hearts, while the Declaration of Independence filled their oppressors with dismay. In 1776 we declared our separate existence, and in 1778 already some of the most odious features of the Penal Code were abolished. “A voice from America,” said Flood, “shouted to Liberty.” Henceforward Catholics were permitted to take long leases, though not to possess in fee simple; the son, by turning Protestant, was no longer permitted to rob his father, and the laws of inheritance which prevented the accumulation of property in the hands of Catholics were abrogated. This was little enough, indeed, but it was of inestimable value, for it marked the turning-point in the history of Ireland. A beginning had been made, a breach had been opened in the enemy’s citadel. But this was not all that the American Revolution did for Ireland.

The sympathies of the Presbyterians of the North went out to their brethren who were struggling on the other side of the Atlantic. They also had grievances compared with which those of the colonies were slight; their cause was identical, and the success of the Americans would be a victory for Ireland; if England triumphed beyond the seas, there would be no hope for those who, being nearer, were held with a more certain grasp. Hence, in spite of the bitter hate which in Ireland separated the Protestants from the Catholics, they were drawn together by a common interest and sympathy in the cause of American independence. England’s wars, both in Europe and in her transatlantic colonies, were a constant drain upon her resources, and it became necessary to supply the armies in America with the troops which were kept in Ireland to hold that country in subjection. General Howe asked that Irish papists should not be sent as recruits to him, for they would desert to the enemy. The best men were therefore picked from the English regiments and sent to America; Ireland was denuded of troops; the defences of her harbors were in ruins; and she was exposed to the attacks of privateers. Something had to be done, and Parliament agreed to allow the Irish militia to be called out. As an inducement to Catholics to enlist, they were promised indulgences in the exercise of their religion, but this promise aroused Protestant bigotry, ever ready to break forth. The plan was abandoned, and the defence of the country was committed to the Volunteers.

In the meanwhile Burgoyne had surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga, France had entered into alliance with the colonies, and French and American privateers began to swarm in the Irish Channel. The English Parliament, now thoroughly alarmed, and eager to make peace with the rebels, passed an act renouncing the right of taxing the colonies, and even offered seats in the House of Commons to their representatives. These concessions, which came too late to propitiate the Americans, served only to embolden the Irish in their demands for the redress of their grievances. The Americans were rebels, and were treated with the greatest indulgence; the Irish were loyal, and were still held in the vilest bondage. This was intolerable. To add to the distress, one of the periodical visitations of famine which have marked English rule in Ireland fell upon the country, and the highways were filled with crowds of half-naked and starving people.

Thirty thousand merchants and mechanics in Dublin were living on alms; the taxes could not be collected, and in the general collapse of trade the customs yielded almost nothing. The country was unprotected, and there was no money in the treasury with which to raise an army. Nothing remained in this extremity but to allow the Volunteers to assemble; for the summer was at hand, and every day the privateers might be expected to appear in the Channel. Company after company was organized, and in a very short time large bodies of men were in arms. The Catholics also took advantage of the general excitement. If the Protestants were in arms, why should they remain defenceless?

Never before had there been such an opportunity of extorting from England the measures of relief which she would never willingly consent to grant. The threatening danger, however, had no effect upon the British Parliament.

The Irish Parliament met in 1779, and the patriots, strong in the support of the Volunteers who lined the streets of Dublin, demanded free trade. The city was in an uproar; a mob paraded before the Parliament House, and with threats called upon the members to redress the wrongs of Ireland. Cannon were trailed round the statue of King William, with the inscription,“Free trade or this,” and on the flags were emblazoned menacing mottoes—“The Volunteers of Ireland,” “Fifty thousand of us ready to die for our country.”

“Talk not to me of peace,” exclaimed Hussey Burgh, one of the leading patriots. “Ireland is not at peace; it is smothered war. England has sown her laws as dragon’s teeth, and they have sprung up as armed men.” All Ireland was aroused. The Irish, said Burke in the English House of Commons, had learned that justice was to be had from England only when demanded at the point of the sword. They were now in arms; their cause was just; and they would have redress or end the connection between the two countries. The obnoxious laws restricting trade were repealed and in the greatest haste sent over to Ireland to calm the tempest that was brewing there.

The effect went even beyond expectation. Dublin was illuminated, congratulatory addresses were sent over to England, and people imagined that Ireland’s millennium had arrived. But the consequences of centuries of crime and oppression do not disappear as by the enchanter’s wand; and one of the evils of tyranny is the curse it leaves after it has ceased to exist. In the wildness of their joy the people exaggerated the boon which they had wrenched from England; the sober second thought turned their attention to what still remained to be done.

In 1780 Grattan brought forward the famous resolution which declared that “the king, with the consent of the Parliament of Ireland, was alone competent to enact laws to bind Ireland.” The time could not have been more opportune. The American colonies were in full revolt; Spain and France were assisting them; England had been forced into war with Holland, and her Indian Empire was threatening to take advantage of her distress to rebel. In the midst of so many wars and dangers it would have been madness to have provoked Ireland to armed resistance, and Grattan felt that the hour had come when the Irish people should stand forth as one of the nations of the earth; when all differences of race and creed might be merged into a common patriotism, and Celt and Saxon, Catholic and Protestant, present an unbroken front to the English tyrant. “The Penal Code,” he said, “is the shell in which the Protestant power has been hatched. It has become a bird. It must burst the shell or perish in it. Indulgence to Catholics cannot injure the Protestant religion.”

The Volunteers were, with few exceptions, Protestants, and their attitude of defiance made the English government willing to place the Catholics against them as a counterpoise; and it therefore offered no opposition to measures tending to relieve them of their disabilities. But, under Grattan’s influence, the Volunteers themselves pronounced in favor of the Catholics by passing the famous Dungannon resolution: “That we, [the Volunteers] hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves; that we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects; and that we conceive these measures to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland.”

In February, 1782, Grattan again brought forward a motion to declare the independence of the Irish Legislature, and again it was thrown out. The Dungannon resolution was then introduced, and it was proposed to abolish all distinctions between Protestants and Catholics. But to this the most serious objections were raised, and it was found necessary to make concessions to Protestant bigotry. The Catholics were permitted to acquire freehold property, to buy and sell, bequeath and inherit; but the penal laws which bore upon their religion, and their right to educate their children at home or abroad, as well as those which excluded them from political life, were left on the statute-book. Fanaticism was stronger than patriotism, and the enthusiastic love of liberty was again found to be compatible with the love of persecution and oppression. But this injustice in no way dampened the ardor of the Catholics for the national independence; and when, on the 16th of April, 1782, Grattan moved a Declaration of Rights, inspired probably by our own Declaration of Independence, he was greeted with as wild a tumult of applause by the Catholics as by his Protestant countrymen. “I found Ireland,” he said, “on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her, and, bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto Perpetua_!”

The overwhelming popular enthusiasm bore everything with it, and opposition was useless. “It is no longer,” wrote the Duke of Portland, the viceroy, “the Parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or attended to; it is the whole of this country.”

In England the Whigs, who were in power, felt how hopeless would be any efforts to stem the torrent, and they therefore yielded with grace. Fox admitted that Ireland had a right to distrust British legislation “because it had hitherto been employed only to oppress and distress her.” Ireland had been wronged, and it was but just that concessions should now be made to her. The day of deliverance had come, and, amidst an outburst of universal enthusiasm, Ireland’s independence was proclaimed.

The Catholics were the first to feel the benefits of this victory. The two Relief Bills, introduced into Parliament in their favor, were carried. They were permitted to open schools and educate their own children; their stables were no longer subject to inspection, or their horses above the value of five pounds liable to be seized by the government or taken from them by Protestant informers; and their right to freedom of religious worship was fully recognized. They recovered, in a word, their civil rights; but the law still excluded them from any

## participation in the political life of the country, and they were still

forbidden to possess arms. Nevertheless, another step towards Catholic emancipation had been taken. Two other laws, beneficial to all classes of citizens, but especially favorable to the poor and oppressed Catholics, date from this time: the Habeas Corpus Act was granted to Ireland, and the tenure of judges was placed on the English level.

Unfortunately, the social condition of the country was so deplorable that this improvement in the laws conferred few or no benefits upon the impoverished and downtrodden people. But at least there was some gain; for if good laws do not necessarily make a people prosperous, bad laws necessarily keep them in misery. The landed gentry and Protestant clergy continued without shame to neglect all the duties which they owed to their tenants, whose wretchedness increased as the fortunes of Ireland seemed to rise. To maintain the Volunteers the rents were raised, and the poor peasants, already sinking beneath an intolerable burden, were yet more heavily laden. The proprietors of the soil spent their time in riot and debauch while the people were starving. They were the magistrates and at the same time the most notorious violators of the law. “The justices of the peace,” says Arthur Young, “are the very worst class in the kingdom.”

The clergy of the Established Church were little better. Like the landlords, they were generally absentees, and employed agents to raise their tithes, in the North from the Presbyterians, and in other parts of the island from the Catholics. “As the absentee landlord,” says Froude, “had his middleman, the absentee incumbent had his tithe farmer and tithe proctor—perhaps of all the carrion who were preying on the carcase of the Irish peasantry the vilest and most accursed. As the century waned and life grew more extravagant, the tithe proctor, like his neighbors, grew more grasping and avaricious. He exacted from the peasants the full pound of flesh. His trade was dangerous, and therefore he required to be highly paid. He handed to his employer perhaps half what he collected. He fleeced the flock and he fleeced their shepherd.” “The use of the tithe farmer,” said Grattan, “is to get from the parishioners what the clergyman would be ashamed to demand, and to enable the clergyman to absent himself from duty. His livelihood is extortion. He is a wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.”[17]

Footnote 17:

_The English in Ireland_, vol. ii. p. 453.

In the midst of the general excitement the Catholic peasants grew restless under this horrible system of organized plunder and extortion. They banded together and took an oath to pay only a specified sum to the clergyman or his agent. The movement spread, and occasional acts of violence were committed. All Munster was organized, and a regular war with the tithe proctors was begun. In the popular fury crimes were perpetrated and the innocent were often made to suffer with the guilty. Yet so glaring were the wrongs and so frightful the abuses from which the peasants were suffering that they everywhere met with sympathy. The true cause of these disorders was social and not political. Misery, and not partisan zeal, had driven the Catholics to take up arms. The cry of hungry women and children for bread resounded louder in their ears than the shouts of the patriots. They were without food or raiment, and in despair they sought to wreak vengeance upon the inhuman tyrants who had reduced them to starvation. Even Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, was forced to admit that the Munster peasants were in a state of oppression, abject poverty, and misery not to be equalled in the world, and that the landlords and their agents were responsible for the degradation of these unfortunate beings.

Ireland was still a prey to agitations, hopes, and sufferings when the French Revolution of 1789 burst upon Europe. The cry of Liberty, equality, fraternity sounded as revelation to the struggling patriots. Hitherto they had contended for freedom, in the English and feudal sense, as a privilege and a concession; they now demanded it as an imprescriptible right of man. The American Declaration had indeed proclaimed that all men were free and equal, or of right ought to be; but this was merely a pretty phrase, a graceful preamble, in a charter which consecrated slavery and inequality. In America there were no privileged classes, and the people had not groaned beneath the tyranny of heartless and effete aristocracies; the evils of which their leaders complained, compared with those which weighed down the European populations, were slight, almost imaginary. But in France Liberty and Equality was the fierce and savage yell of men who hated the whole social order as it existed around them, and who, indeed, had no reason to love it. The spirit of feudalism was dead, and its lifeless form remained to impest the earth. The nobles, sunk in debauch and sloth, continued their exactions, upheld their privileges, and yet rendered no service to the state. Corruption, extravagance, maladministration, infidelity, and licentiousness pervaded the whole social system. France was prostrate with the foot of a harlot on her neck, and the people were starving. Little wonder, when the torch was applied, that the lurid glare of burning thrones and altars, the crash of falling palaces and cathedrals, should affright and strike dumb the nations of the earth—for God’s judgment was there; little wonder that Ireland, sitting by the melancholy sea, chained and weeping, should lift her head when the God of the patient and the humble was shattering the whitened sepulchres which enshrined the world’s rottenness.

In Belfast the taking of the Bastile was celebrated by processions and banquets amid the wildest enthusiasm, and the name of Mirabeau called forth the most deafening applause. The eyes of Ireland were fastened on France; the cause of the Revolution was believed to be that of all oppressed peoples who seek to break the bonds of slavery. “Right or wrong,” wrote an Irish patriot, “success to the French! They are fighting our battles, and, if they fail, adieu to liberty in Ireland for one century.”[18] Even the manners and phraseology of the Revolution became popular in Ireland. The Dublin Volunteers were called the National Guard, the liberty-cap was substituted for the harp, and Irishmen saluted one another with the title of citizen.

Footnote 18:

Tone’s _Memoirs_, vol. i. p 205.

Out of this French enthusiasm grew the Society of “United Irishmen,” which soon superseded the Volunteers. The United Irishmen made no concealment of their revolutionary principles. They demanded a radical reform in the administration of Ireland, and threatened, if this was denied, to break the bond which held them united with England. They openly proclaimed their intention of stamping out “the vile and odious aristocracy,” which was an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the Irish people; and to accomplish this they invited the French to invade Ireland. The landlords, they said, show no mercy; they deserve to receive none.

However little sympathy the Catholics might feel with men who entertained such violent opinions, they were their natural allies; and the English government, following its old policy of doing what is right only under compulsion, hastened to make concessions. From June, 1792, Catholics were admitted as barristers; they were allowed to keep more than two apprentices; and the prohibition of their marriage with Protestants was withdrawn. In 1793, when France had declared war against England, still further concessions were made. The penalties for non-attendance at Protestant worship were abolished. “On the eve of a desperate war,” said Sir Lawrence Parsons in the House of Commons, “it was unsafe to maintain any longer the principles of entire exclusion.” The Catholics were admitted to the franchise, but were not made eligible to Parliament; they were at the same time declared capable of holding offices, civil and military, and places of trust, without taking the oath or receiving the sacrament. This is the third emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland. The American Revolution brought about the first, and the independence of the Irish Parliament the second.

In the meantime the crimes and excesses of the French Republicans had cooled the zeal of the Irish patriots. The Catholics grew suspicious of leaders who applauded the assassins of priests and the profaners of all sacred things. A reaction had set in, and the English government seized the opportunity to order the people to lay down their arms; and this order was intentionally executed with such cruelty as to provoke insurrections, which, in the lack of leaders and of any plan of action, were easily suppressed. The agents of the United Irishmen had, however, succeeded in interesting the French Republic in the cause of Ireland, and in December, 1796, General Hoche set sail for Bantry Bay with fifteen thousand men; but the fleet, scattered by a storm, was unable to effect a landing. In August, 1798, General Humbert disembarked in Killala Bay at the head of fifteen hundred men who had been drawn from the armies of Italy and the Rhine, but he found the Irish people completely disarmed, and the country in the possession of a powerful English army. He nevertheless pushed forward into the interior of the island, routed an army of four thousand men, and finally, when his force had been reduced to eight hundred, capitulated to Lord Cornwallis at the head of thirty thousand. A third expedition, sent out in the month of September of the same year, met with no better success. The Rebellion of '98 had blazed forth and had been quenched in blood. That it was not unprovoked even Mr. Froude confesses.

“The long era of misgovernment,” he says, “had ripened at last for the harvest. Rarely since the inhabitants of the earth have formed themselves into civilized communities had any country suffered from such a complication of neglect and ill-usage. The Irish people clamored against Government, and their real wrong, from first to last, had been that there was no government over them; that, under changing forms, the universal rule among them for four centuries had been the tyranny of the strong over the weak; that from the catalogue of virtues demanded of those who exercised authority over their fellow-men the word justice had been blotted out. Anarchy had borne its fruits.”[19]

Footnote 19:

_The English in Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 348.

During the violence of the conflict, and in the heat of passion, both the rebels and the British soldiers committed crimes for which no excuse can be offered; but the horrible and deliberate brutality of the English after the suppression of the outbreak has never been surpassed by them even in Ireland. When at length the appetite for torture, mutilation, and hanging palled, the British ministry resolved to suppress the Irish Parliament. Nothing was to be feared from the people, for their spirit had been crushed; the lavish expenditure of money in open and shameless bribery overcame the scruples of their Protestant representatives; and thus, after a struggle of six hundred and thirty-one years (1169-1800), corruption triumphed where every other means had failed. The _Union_ was declared to exist; but Ireland was permitted to retain its name, its institutions, laws, and customs, subject, however, to the pleasure of the imperial Parliament.

The Rebellion of 1803, which accomplished nothing, and that of 1848, which met with no better fate, close the fateful list of Ireland’s wars.

Men have never fought in a juster cause, and, had they triumphed, their names would live for ever in the scroll of the world’s heroes. They have not bled in vain, if Irishmen will but learn the lesson which their failures teach. Not by arms, but by the force of the holiest of causes, is Ireland to obtain the full redress of her wrongs. They only who are her enemies or who are ignorant of her history would wish to excite her people to rebellion. That England will grant nothing which she thinks herself able to withhold we know; but these periodical outbreaks have invariably given her an opportunity of strengthening the grasp which political agitation had forced her to relax. Wars which lead only to butcheries are criminal, and they destroy the faith of patriots in their country’s triumph; while defeat brings divisions and feuds among those who had stood shoulder to shoulder on the field of battle.

After the Union Ireland relapsed into a period of lethargic indifference which might have been mistaken for healthful repose. The Protestant ascendency entered again upon the beaten paths of tyranny and oppression, and the Catholics suffered in silence.

The obstinate bigotry of George III. had prevented Pitt from fulfilling the promise, made at the time of the union of the two kingdoms, to relieve them of their civil disabilities, and the prime minister, whose intentions were honest, withdrew from the cabinet. But this step, however it might exonerate him from further responsibility in the matter, brought no relief to the Catholics; and as the sad experience of the past had taught them the hopelessness of resorting to violent measures, they entered upon the course of peaceful agitation which, under the wise and skilful direction of O’Connell, compelled the British Parliament, in April, 1829, to concede to them the rights which had been so long and so cruelly withheld.

“The Duke of Wellington,” said Lord Palmerston, “found that he could not carry on the government of the country without yielding the Catholic question, and he immediately surrendered that point”; and George IV. signed the act of Catholic Emancipation with a shudder.

This great victory, important in itself and its immediate results, was yet more important as an evidence of a radical change in the policy henceforward to be followed in seeking redress of Irish grievances.

For seven hundred years England had been busy in efforts to form a government for Ireland, and the result was the most disgraceful failure known in history. For seven hundred years Ireland had rebelled, plotted, invoked foreign aid, in the hope of throwing off the galling yoke; and after centuries of bloodshed she found herself more strongly bound to England. In the presence of this great historical teaching both nations seemed prepared to pause and deliberately to examine their mutual relations, and both seemed to feel that the special objects at which each had been aiming were unattainable. The geographical position of the two countries renders their union inevitable so long as either is able to subjugate and hold the other in the bonds of a common government. Had Ireland been in condition to maintain her independence, England, surrounded by enemies, could never have risen to the position which she has held for centuries. The national aspirations for power and dominion could not be realized while Ireland was permitted to retain her separate existence, and her conquest was therefore inevitable the moment England felt herself strong enough to undertake it; nor can the wildest visionary seriously believe that there is the faintest hope that the connection between them will ever be dissolved except in their common ruin. So long as England’s power remains, so long will she hold Ireland with the unerring instinct with which a vigorous people clings to its national life; and should England’s downfall come, there is no good reason for thinking that it would not be the knell of Ireland’s doom. They have the same language, the same fundamental principles of government, the same commercial and political interests; and under these common influences the differences and antagonisms which still exist are likely to become more and more inactive. The English people are not without their own grievances, which, in some respects, are more serious than those of the Irish—the consequences of feudalism, which in England has been able to resist more successfully than elsewhere the social movements of modern times. Henceforward Ireland is the natural and necessary ally of the more liberal and fair-minded portion of the English people, and she will co-operate most efficiently in helping them to bring about the reforms which are so much needed.

For the perfect religious liberty which can exist only after the disestablishment of the Anglican Church England will be indebted to Ireland, whose people have already compelled the British Parliament to admit principles and adopt measures which will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the union between church and state throughout the whole extent of the empire. The Irish land system must be sacrificed as the Irish Church has been sacrificed; and this will be the first step towards a complete revolution in the system of land tenure throughout Great Britain. The growing influence and increasing number of English Catholics will help greatly to create a more cordial and genuine religious sympathy between the two races of these sister islands; and this sympathy will be still further strengthened when the church in England, through the disestablishment and disintegration of Anglicanism, shall have gained a position and power which will give to her special weight in forming public opinion. As the community of interests of the two countries becomes more manifest, political parties will cease to be influenced by national or religious prejudice, and will be constituted upon principles which relate to the social interests of the people. England has already confessed the radical error of her Irish policy, and her leading statesmen have admitted that the cause of its failure lay in its viciousness—in the fact that it wantonly violated the rights and interests of the people because they belonged to a different race and held a different religious faith. Her legislation was unjust because it was narrow and exclusive—favored a class and a creed, and, in order to favor these, repressed and crushed the national energies. The government believed, whether truly or falsely, that it could rule Ireland only by fostering divisions and feuds among her people; and to do this it sought by every means to intensify and embitter the prejudice which separated the English from the Irish, the Protestant from the Catholic. With this view Scotch and English colonies of Protestants were planted in Ireland, and, lest the intercourse and amenities of life should soften the asperity of religious bigotry, the government took special care to encourage the hatred which kept them aloof from the natives, first by local separations, and afterwards by the social distinctions which arose from the enforced poverty and ignorance of the Catholic population. The American Revolution taught England, if not the iniquity, the folly of this conduct; and from 1778 to the present day she has been slowly receding from a course in which she had grown old. She has receded unwillingly, too, and with hesitation, and has thus often increased the discontent which she sought to allay. Nations, like individuals, find that it is hard to recover from inveterate habits of wrong-doing. The wages of sin must be paid; repentance can save from death, but not from humiliation and punishment. Nor has England repented, but she has entered in the way of penitence; she has made some reparation, but has not by any means done all that must be done before Ireland can be content. For nearly half a century now—that is, since 1829—there has been, we believe, a sincere desire to govern Ireland fairly, chiefly, no doubt, because English statesmen had come to see that it was not possible to govern her in any other way; but these good intentions have been thwarted by the constitutional repugnance of the English people to apply strong and efficacious remedies to social disorders. Nowhere else among civilized nations are ancient abuses guarded and protected with such superstitious veneration. Hence the government thought to satisfy Ireland by half-measures of redress, and these it took so ungraciously that they seemed to be wrung from it, and not conceded with good-will. Men are not grateful for favors which are granted because they can no longer be withheld.

Englishmen still forget that Ireland has the right to be treated by them not merely with justice, but with generous indulgence. So long as the root of the evil is left untouched little will be accomplished by pruning the branches. Ireland’s curse is the system of land tenure, founded on confiscation and organized to perpetuate a fatal antagonism between the proprietors and the tillers of the soil. Irishmen will be disaffected and rebellious so long as the national prosperity is blighted by a state of things which leaves their country in the hands of men who are happy only when they are away from it.

Parliament has passed several land acts, but it would seem that they had been purposely so framed as to produce no good results. That it is possible to change the land system of Ireland radically, without doing injustice to any one, is admitted, and various projects by which this might be done have been laid before Parliament. This is not a question of tenant-rights; it lies far deeper. Nor is there any parity in this respect between England and Ireland. In England the land is owned by the people’s natural leaders; in Ireland it is owned by the people’s natural enemies. This land question is far more important than any question of Home Rule; and if Parliament will but give a proper solution to this problem, Home Rule will no longer be seriously thought of.

When landlordism vanishes from Ireland, the day of final reconciliation will be at hand. With it will disappear the filibusters, revolutionists, and Fenians, whose disturbing influence in Irish politics is made possible by the wrongs which the English government has not the will or the courage to redress. There are other grievances than the land system, but it will not be difficult to do away with them when the country shall have been given back to the people. With a free press, free speech, and an organized public agitation sustained and increased by the sympathies and interests of the masses of the people of England, it will be found impossible to withhold much longer from Ireland full and complete justice; and nothing less will satisfy her people.

TENNYSON AS A DRAMATIST.[20]

Footnote 20:

_Harold_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1877.

_Queen Mary_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1875.

Alfred Tennyson is to-day one of the household gods of English-speaking peoples. He has a place in every library, a niche in every memory, an echo in every heart. He has unquestionably added a new and brilliant page to the great book of English literature. He has set there something that was not there before, and that is not likely to fade away with time. Doubtless there are men who would deny this. There are literary Gorgons who would, if they could, stare every man into stone. There are critics whose nature seems to distil venom, and who find no sweetness save in their own gall. To men of this class the very fact of a man being praised is in itself sufficient cause for condemnation. Over and above these there are probably some who honestly dislike or do not care for Tennyson. For such we do not speak, but for the great mass of English readers in whose estimation Tennyson occupies a very conspicuous, if somewhat undefinable, position. By them he is liked, and liked better than any living poet; and, indeed, he has given excellent reasons for being so liked.

That there have been greater English poets, even his most enthusiastic admirers must allow; that there have been few sweeter, all who have read him and others will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister purity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson’s verse. No man ever mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is not heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real massiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or Shelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous philosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty edifice like Milton. He can do none of these things. In some respects he is perhaps less than the least of these poets. He is a sweet singer, made for sunshine and peace and harmony; the poet of the happy household over whose threshold passes from time to time the sad shadow of a quiet sorrow; not the poet of despair, of wrath, of agony, of the fiercer passions or tumultuous joys, whose very excess is pain.

True it is that, as he sang in his earlier days,

“The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.”

But he is not such a poet. Never has he given voice to the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, or to that of which both of these are born—the love of love. Whenever he has attempted it he has failed. He is too retiring, too domestic. “With an _inner_ voice” his river runs, and we have to listen with ears nicely attuned to catch its whisper and its meaning. So inner is it, indeed, that it is often obscure and quite escapes the dull hearing of ordinary men. His first volume, published in 1830, is almost fulsomely dedicated to Queen Victoria, who is certainly not a heroic figure, whatever else she may be. It is a picture gallery filled with Claribels and Lilians, and Isabels and Madelines, and Marianas and Adelines—all very sweet and delicate and dainty, but not inspiring. He sings to “the owl,” he dedicates odes “to memory,” he lingers by “the deserted house,” chants the dirge of “the dying swan,” and so on. In 1832 he enlarges his gallery by the addition of the lovely “Lady of Shalott,” “Mariana in the South,” “Eleänore,” and we come nearer to the poet’s heart in “The Miller’s Daughter,” whom he evidently prefers to the haughty and much-abused “Lady Clara Vere de Vere.” Something, too, of his more marked peculiarities show here in the “Palace of Art” and that dreamy, delicious poem, “The Lotos-Eaters.” He is intensely English—an admirable quality, be it remarked _sotto voce_, in an English poet laureate. He closes the volume with some strong verses:

“You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas?

“It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will;

“A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent....”

The intense difference between the spirit here expressed and that of his more immediate and brilliant predecessors and countrymen, Byron and Shelley and Keats, may possibly account in some degree for the hold which Tennyson has taken on the English heart. He was a man, too, who felt the throbbings of the age and touched with skilful fingers the pulse of Time. Though anxious for the future, he was troubled with no “Dreams of Darkness,” or hollow-eyed despair, or morbid imaginings. He realizes change; he has hopes for a world over which he sees a God ruling. He sings boldly of “immortal souls,” and knows no “first dark day of nothingness.” He warns the intelligence of his countrymen to—

“... pamper not a hasty time, Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings, That every sophister can lime.

“Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.

“Make knowledge circle with the winds; But let her herald, Reverence, fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds.”

These lines are noble, true, and Christian; and again:

“Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, _All but the basis of the soul_.

“So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that which flies, And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy.

“A saying, hard to shape in act; _For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact_.

“Ev’n now we hear with inward strife _A motion toiling in the gloom— The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life_.

“A slow-develop’d strength awaits Completion in a painful school; Phantoms of other forms of rule, New Majesties of mighty States—

“The warders of the growing hour, But vague in vapor, hard to mark; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power.”

This was published in 1832, a period when agitations about the suffrage, and the Corn Laws, and Catholic Emancipation—questions that shook England to its foundations, only to fix them deeper than before—were rife or looming up like awful spectres in the dim mist of the future. Tennyson did not dread them, though he realized their vastness and importance. Most certainly the verses just quoted stamp him as a close observer of events in those days and a man of right moral balance, to whom might with some measure of truth be applied his own words:

“He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill, He saw thro’ his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll,

Before him lay....”

Still, these nobler passages are only fragments. He prefers his quiet mood. In 1842 appeared the first of his idyls, the “Morte d’Arthur.” Here again the better nature of the poet—a nature that we are grieved to see apparently soured and crossed, not softened and made more venerable, by the hand of Time—breaks forth in the grand prayer of the dying king:

“If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”

It was the Catholic instinct breaking through the wall of prejudice and false teaching which, in centuries of separation from the truth, have grown up around the English heart, that gave voice to this beautiful conception. Many are the instances where non-Catholic poets have leaped up to truths of this kind which the whole force of their training and education ran counter to. It is, as it were, the flash of inspiration coming on them in spite of themselves and issuing in music. The divinity of their art has lifted them above all prejudice into the sun-bright heaven. Thus Byron sings to the Blessed Virgin in strains that a saint might envy. Unfortunately, the instances are many also where men lifted up on the heights of inspiration, or by the deep yearnings of their own soul, have, as it were, glanced into heaven and seen the face of Truth, only to fall back again to their lower level, dazed and blinded by the very glimpse that was revealed to them. And we find them deny with their own lips and actions what their greater selves had announced.

It is not our purpose to enter into an elaborate criticism of Tennyson. That task has been done time and again, and by pens infinitely better fitted for it than ours. We are only taking touches here and there to bring out the poet in his truest colors, in his best and his worst lights, in order to add point to the main purport of this article, which is to show that Tennyson has mistaken himself and his powers in the _rôle_ which he has thought fit to assume in his later years. In his earlier dreams he is full of high thoughts and large aspirations. “My faith is large in Time, and that which shapes it to some perfect end,” he tells us. He looks forward longingly to “the golden year.” He is possessed with the spirit of Christian purity, and gives constant expression to it, notably in “St. Agnes” and “Sir Galahad.” In “The Two Voices” he argues down atheism. He lays bare the grinning savagery of a wasted intellect and debauched life, only to punish it with the power of a man who knows what virtue is and feels it in his soul. He sometimes catches those inarticulate murmurs of the heart which breathe in feelings rather than in words, where feeling is too deep for words, and they well out in song, as in the

“Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea!”

while in the “In Memoriam” the poet, stricken to the heart, has given voice to that sorrow, and the effect it has on our life, which most of us have felt when some bright intelligence has been taken from our side, whose young years were blossoming fair with promise of a great and good future.

In all this he is excellent, perhaps unsurpassed; in all that is sad, or sweet, or picturesque, or naïvely joyous our hearts are with him. He stands alone in his dainty pictures of scenery, of women, of certain men. He touches the commonplaces of the time with a magic pencil. He beguiled the hard and stubborn Saxon, which yielded reluctantly even to the greatest masters of English verse, into a music it had never known before. He built up fairy castles, and galleries and cities of old time, and peopled them with a fair array of Arthurs and Launcelots, of Guineveres and Elaines, of Merlins and Gawains, whose very names were music, and whose deeds were just such as befitted scenes of witchery. He is, moreover, a man of marked personality and nationality in his writings. He is an Englishman and nothing else. He does not care to be anything else or more; for he can see nothing greater. All his scenery is English; his characters are English; his thoughts, feelings, and aspirations English. Byron’s corsairs and giaours and Childe Harolds would fight as fiercely, frown as darkly, sin as deeply, in any civilized language as in English—in warmer languages even better, perhaps; Shakspere’s profound observations and reading of character would have reached the world through any other channel as surely as, perhaps more readily than, through the English; some would doubt whether Milton ever wrote English at all. But all Tennyson is English or nothing. His dawns, his gloamings, his sunrises, his sunsets, his landscapes, his fens, his fogs, his smoke, his moonlight and moonlight effects, his winds, his birds, his flowers, his reeds and rushes, his trees, his brooklets, his seas, his cliffs, his coloring, his ruins, his graveyards, his walks and rides, his love of good cheer, his hums of great cities, his profound respect for the respectable, are all English. He has the sturdy English common sense and no small share, as will be seen, of English prejudice; and, though he feels something of the movements of the outer world, he has all the English narrowness of vision. So that, while his works will probably never become a part of any other literature than the English—for they would not be understood elsewhere—they have won their way into the English heart for their very _homeliness_, if for no higher reason. So long as this English poet was content to sing to us, we were content to listen, were his lay sad or gay. He had been singing all our life, and we were not weary of his music, even though the music was all pitched in much the same key. We never tire of a familiar voice that we love. But when we would be roused and wrought up by some martial strain, by some great event, by one of those movements that catch the heart of a people and sway it and hold it captive, by the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn,” Tennyson fails. Surely, for such an Englishman as he, the death of the Duke of Wellington ought to have proved an inspiring theme. It is true that as the years went on, and the memory of Waterloo faded, and the hero of Waterloo moved about and took his part in civic affairs, people (and people are ever ready to weary of their gods, if their gods are too near them and live too long) began to clip and cut down the gigantic proportions of the Iron Duke’s colossal figure. Indeed, before he died it is safe to say that half England regarded England’s hero as rather an ordinary sort of person and a worthy but extremely fortunate soldier. Still, death generally brings back the liveliest memories of deeds that are, or are thought to be, great and good, and a true poet’s song who believed all of Wellington that Tennyson’s poem expresses might well have been tipped with fire when Wellington died. Yet Tennyson’s funeral ode is poor, tame; where not tame, forced; and, like all such compositions, indefinitely strung out. All his readers know the opening:

“Bury the Great Duke With an empire’s lamentation, Let us bury the Great Duke, To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior’s pall And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall!”

It is plain from the start that he is writing for a public. This great duke needs a capital G and a capital D to impress duly that public, the British (which is always ready to be awed by capitals attached to titles), with the great duke’s immensity. There is something of the heavy English undertaker about this—a display, a forced solemnity, a measured tread, a sense of sham. The great duke is lost sight of in the funereal trappings, the crowd, and accompaniment. See how Byron seizes on the very heart of an event, and in a few lines pictures for us the whole, the before and after. He is describing the greater man by whose fall the great duke rose to fame:

“Tis done—but yesterday a king! And arm’d with kings to strive— And now thou art a nameless thing: So abject—yet alive! Is this the man of thousand thrones, Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones, And can he thus survive? Since he, miscall’d the Morning Star, Nor man nor fiend has fallen so far.”

This indeed is “the scorn of scorn,” and the entire ode is replete with it. Byron, who had been a great admirer of Napoleon, could not consent to his idol lowering himself so far as to receive his life from England. He could not forgive himself for yielding to

“That spell upon the minds of men

* * * * *

That led them to adore Those Pagod things of sabre-sway, With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.”

“O civic muse,” cries Tennyson,

“To such a name, To such a name for ages long, To such a name Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever-ringing avenues of song.”

Here lies the whole secret of the ode’s comparative poverty. Tennyson is by position, if not by profession, “a civic muse,” and the civic muse is never heroic or great. It is more apt, like Turveydrop, to be “a model of deportment,” especially when it follows the advice of Mrs. Chick and “makes an effort.” This, for instance, is eminently civic:

“Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? Here, in streaming London’s central roar. Let the sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones for evermore.

“Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.”

We hope that Wellington was not “the last great Englishman.” If so, English greatness must indeed be “low.” But the thought is irresistible: Is not the undertaker’s hand again visible in all this? How different is it from the sad, simple, manly beauty of the lament of a poet, whose name scarcely stands in the list of English authors, for one of those soldiers who gloriously failed! Here is how Wolfe sings of the burial of Sir John Moore:

“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

“We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the glimmering moonbeam’s fitful light And the camp-fires dimly burning.”

Again, is this a worthy echo of “a people’s voice”?

“And thro’ the centuries let a people’s voice In full acclaim, A people’s voice, The proof and echo of all human fame, A people’s voice, when they rejoice At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commander’s claim With honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name.”

What wearisome and forced repetition, what commonplace allusions! This is not Tennyson. The very verse is burdened with its vulgar prose, and halts and stumbles in clumsy confusion meant for art. And here is his description in the same poem of the battle of Waterloo:

“Dash’d on every rocky square Their surging chargers foam’d themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew; Thro’ the long-tormented air Heaven flash’d a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there, What long-enduring hearts could do In that world’s earthquake, Waterloo!”

The best expression in it, the last, is borrowed from Byron’s wonderful description of the same battle:

“Stop! for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust! _An Earthquake’s spoil_ is sepulchred below!”

Again in Byron these two lines tell the whole story, as does that other,

“The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!”

So with Tennyson’s “War Songs” and “National Songs,” published in the edition of 1830 and wisely omitted in later editions. They are not much above the level of many fledglings’ performances in a like strain. They fall dull on the heart:

“There standeth our ancient enemy, Hark! he shouteth—the ancient enemy! On the ridge of the hill his banners rise; They stream like fire in the skies; Hold up the Lion of England on high Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.

_Chorus_: Shout for England! Ho! for England! George for England! Merry England! England for aye!”

Here are the chorus and full chorus of his “National Song”:

“For the French, the Pope may shrive ’em. For the devil a whit we heed ’em: As for the French, God speed ’em Unto their heart’s desire, And the merry devil drive ’em Through the water and fire. Our glory is our freedom, We lord it o’er the sea; We are the sons of freedom. We are free.”

As Mr. Tennyson has been wise enough—for shame’s sake, presumably—to omit these and similar sorry pieces from his later editions, it may seem unfair to quote them against him now. We quote them, however, intentionally, to show that there is a strong streak of English narrowness and Protestant bigotry in his nature which we were happy to think dead, until within the last few years it has cropped out again. In 1852 there were probabilities of war between England and France, then under Louis Napoleon. Tennyson thought to rouse his countrymen, and the strongest appeal he can make is to religious bigotry:

“Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead; The world’s last tempest darkens overhead; The Pope has bless’d him; The Church caress’d him; He triumphs; may be we shall stand alone. Britons, guard your own.

“His ruthless host is bought with plunder’d gold, By lying priests the peasants’ votes controll’d. All freedom vanish’d, The true men banish’d, etc.

“Rome’s dearest daughter now is captive France, The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance, _Would unrelenting, Kill all dissenting_, Till we were left to fight for truth alone. Britons, guard your own.”

And this is the gentle Tennyson! But we forbear from comment other than the verses themselves suggest, and turn at last to our more immediate object.

Whatever fault may be found here and there with Tennyson, one thing is certain: his renown was great and his fame established chiefly by his earlier and better works and by the peculiar characteristics which we have attempted to point out. The poet, however, seems not to have been satisfied. He was weary of the graceful path by which he ambled gently up to fame, and would seek by a new and rugged road a higher place than he already occupied in that temple where are gathered the mighty men who have wrought with the pen monuments more enduring than marble. In an evil hour he tempted fate, and fate gave him a severe warning. Weary of the minstrel's lute which had charmed the world, he would be what the poets of old were thought to be—a _vates_, an inspired prophet-and his vaticination was _Queen Mary_.

As that drama has been dealt with in these pages by another pen, we shall not touch on it here more than to say that never were the minds of Tennyson’s countrymen better prepared to receive and applaud a work intended, as this plainly was, to be an outcry against Rome and a picture of one of the fierce struggles between England and Rome. Mr. Gladstone had prepared the way and set all the world warring on “Vaticanism.” Tennyson could not have chosen a better time for the publication of his drama, and, were it a work of power and passion, it could not have failed to catch the heart of the people. Never, on the other hand, could he have chosen a better time for a higher duty: that of, in the words of his great master, still in his right hand carrying gentle peace “to silence envious tongues.” If the drama failed, it failed in the face of every incentive to success.

Fail it did. It was plain, even to friendly critics, that the author of _Queen Mary_ was not a dramatist, and so it was hinted generally in the mildest possible terms. What was the reason of the failure?

We have shown, we believe sufficiently, that Tennyson failed wherever he attempted to yoke the passions. His hand was too weak to curb them. His genius is reflective, introspective, descriptive. It has not the flash, the white heat of inspiration. It is always Tennyson who is singing, talking to, arguing with us, describing for us. He is a person, not a voice—a very pleasing, scholarly, refined, and in the main right-minded person—but he is for ever giving utterance to his own peculiar thoughts in his own peculiar style. The highest form of poetry, as of oratory, is not this. It is that undefinable and truest expression of feeling, of hope, of agony, of despair, of wrath, of courage, of any of the passions that lie dormant in the human breast, which at once elicits a responsive echo from the heart of humanity, so that we do not say, How sweet, how tender, how strong is this man, but, How true to nature is this thought! Thus it is that the greatest poets are the voices of all the world; their works the inheritance of all the world. In their highest heights they belong to humanity, and to no nation.

The dramatic we believe to be the highest form of poetry, because it alone attempts to portray life itself, life in action; it is not a description, however magnificently done, of life. There lies between it and all other forms of poetry the difference that exists between the painting of a hero and the hero himself. The one is the man, thinking, living, moving, breathing, speaking his thoughts, doing his deeds; the other after all is only an image, more or less vivid, of him on canvas. It may catch the color of the eye, the expression of the countenance, the texture of the dress, the shape, the form; but at the very best it is a picture, no more, infinitely removed from the reality.

If this be a right conception of the difference between dramatic and all other kinds of poetry—and it seems to us to be, although it might need more elaboration to impress it upon the reader’s mind—it will be plain that the dramatic poet needs nothing short of the highest inspiration in order to make him catch the very breathings of men’s souls and throw them into living forms, as truly as the master actor loses his own personality and lets it sink or become absorbed utterly in the various characters he portrays. No mere change of costume will effect the metamorphosis needed to impress the spectator with the reality of the change in character. In the same way no clipping of a poem into acts and scenes, and no allotting of certain lines to certain different names, will convert a descriptive poem into a drama. All the world will at once detect the fraud or the inherent defect.

A not uncommon phase of an exasperated mind is to refuse to recognize failure. Tennyson tried again, rather hastily, and in the same direction, with the satisfactory result of making a more disastrous failure than before. The blunder of _Queen Mary_ has been emphasized in _Harold_. The first named may have left some minds in doubt whether or not its author could construct a drama; the production of the second has effectually set all such doubts at rest. The critics who in the first instance were kind are in the second cruel. We have rarely seen a more general and resolutely contemptuous dealing with the pretensions of any writer at all than in the treatment which _Harold_ has received at the hands of critics of every shade of opinion, English as well as American.

_Harold_ is simply narrative throughout—spoken narrative, indeed. A drama must be _act_. Scenes prior to and leading up to the Norman Conquest of England are depicted with more or less beauty of limning, but they are loose, shifting, independent of each other. There is no secret thread to link the whole and give it a unity of purpose and of plan, without which there is no drama. There are five acts. There might have been fifty, or only two, or only one, so far as the slow working of the whole up to the catastrophe at the conclusion goes. The first act opens in London at King Edward’s palace. Almost the first twenty pages are occupied by various characters in discussing the appearance, meaning, and portent of a comet. This is, of course, the old stage trick used to knit the coming horror with troubles in the air. Shakspere uses it often, notably in _Julius Cæsar_, but with him the troubled elements obey the magic wand of Prospero and minister to man, and are but the accompaniment of great events. Tennyson’s comet is too much for his characters. They puzzle themselves about it until we grow tired of it and its three tails.

After the comet has run its course, the characters being brought together to discuss it, Harold intimates to the king his intention to go to Normandy; the king warns him not to go; then follows a lively discussion on personal matters between the queen, Harold, and his brothers, which almost ends in a fight; the comet or “grisly star” is introduced again, and the scene ends apropos of nothing in particular, unless a hint of a coming plot on the part of Aldwyth. The second scene, the best in the drama, is a very sweet piece of love-making between Harold and Edith, upon which Aldwyth again throws her shadow, and the act ends. The second act wrecks Harold at Ponthieu, whence his transition to the power of Count William of Normandy—or Duke William, as we are more in the habit of calling him—is easy. Indeed, to a dramatist there was no reason whatever for the first scene of this act, as the story of Harold’s capture might, if it were necessary, have been told in a line or two while Harold was actually in the power of William. The rest of this long act is taken up with William’s compelling Harold to swear, on the relics of the saints, to help him to the crown of England. The third act presents the death of King Edward, who wills the crown to Harold. The second scene gives another piece of love-making between Harold and Edith, not so happy as the first, and announces the invasion of Northumbria by Tostig and Harold Hardrada. The fourth act opens in Northumbria. In the first scene of it the factions of the rival chieftains are put an end to by the marriage of Harold with Aldwyth, and thus the only attempt at a shadow even of a plot is summarily disposed of. The other scenes are before and after the battle of Stamford Bridge, and the act closes with news of the landing of the Normans. The fifth act opens on the field of Senlac. Harold has a dream in his tent, too like that of Richard III. in conception. Stigand describes the battle of Hastings to Edith, and the death of Harold. Here the drama should have closed. Anything after it on the stage would certainly come tamely. But Tennyson cannot resist the temptation to search for the body of Harold, and with the finding of it, the death of Edith on it, and what in ordinary parlance would be called William’s directions for the funeral arrangements, the play closes.

Such is _Harold_—narrative, narrative, narrative throughout; very excellent narrative some of it, but no drama, no centre of interest around which the whole is made to turn. The misfortune about all historical plays is that the reader begins with a full knowledge of all the circumstances, and to make them dramatically interesting needs a most skilful adaptation of plot and counterplot, a slow unfolding of events from some necessary cause, a development of character, a silent Fate, so to say, moving in and out, and, in spite of all things, shaping events to one great end, so that, while we feel the consummation impending, we yet know not how, or when, or where, or by what instrumentality it will come. There is nothing of this in _Harold_.

It has been seen that Tennyson has no great love for the Pope. Indeed, if some of the lines quoted represent the man, he has, of late years at least, the heartiest hatred for the Catholic Church. We cannot help that, however much we may regret it. We must take men as they are, and, if Tennyson hates the Pope, why let him hate him and be happy. The Pope can exist and rule the Catholic Church, and be obeyed, revered, loved, and honored by intellects as bright at least as Mr. Tennyson’s, for all that gentleman’s hate. A true dramatist, however, sinks, or at least disguises, all his private personal feelings in depicting known characters or types of character. This is only to be true to nature, to art, and to history. Where there is question regarding the right reading of a character or a period, a writer is of course at liberty, after having consulted respectable authorities, to form his own estimate. Men who lived in the eleventh century must be true to their time. To make such men think, argue, reflect, question, doubt on most matters,

## particularly on matters of faith, just as do men of the nineteenth

century, is a gross solecism. It is absurd and self-condemnatory on the face of it. To make eleventh-century Catholics speak of the Catholic faith, and Rome, and the pope after the fashion of the average Protestant or infidel journalist in these days, is absurd, not to characterize such practice by a harsher expression. This is what Tennyson has gone out of his way to do in _Harold_; and the only impression with which we rise from its perusal is that the writer detests Normans and Catholics. Between the Vere de Veres and the Pope Tennyson has lost his temper and his right hand has forgotten its cunning.

The drama presents no character of any special interest. Harold, Edward the Confessor, and William of Normandy, the three principal personages, are much the same first as last. In stage terms, William may be set down as the “heavy villain” of the piece, and a very heavy villain he is; Edward the Confessor as the “first old man”; and Harold as the “walking gentleman.” Edward is made—unintentionally too, it would seem—one of the silliest old men that ever walked the boards. As for his sanctity, imagine a saint speaking of himself in this style:

“And I say it For the last time, perchance, before I go To find the sweet refreshment of the Saints.”

Saints, in the Catholic Church at least, are not, as a rule, quite so sure about finding “the sweet refreshment of the saints.” Indeed, they have far graver doubts on this point often than sinners. But lest some of his courtiers might feel tempted to doubt the rapid transit to heaven of a man so thoroughly sure of his place beforehand, the king informs them:

“I have lived a life of utter purity: I have builded the great church of holy Peter: I have wrought miracles.”

True, every word of it. But it might have occurred to Mr. Tennyson that Edward the Confessor was mindful, at least, of that admonition: “Let not thine own mouth, but another’s, praise thee.” There never was a saint, to our knowledge, so fond of talking about himself, his miracles, his good deeds, his place here and hereafter. Listen to this again:

“And miracles will in my name be wrought Hereafter. I have fought the fight and go— I see the flashing of the gates of pearl— And it is well with me, tho’ some of you Have scorn’d me—ay—but after I am gone Woe, woe to England! I have had a vision: The seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus Have turn’d from right to left.”

The whole thing is incongruous. It smacks rather of a converted “brother” giving his “experiences” and how he “got religion” before a highly-wrought meeting of “Christian workers.” Had the “devil’s advocate” only caught scent of any such expressions in the life of the real Edward, it is to be feared he would never have been canonized. Saints are not in the habit of canonizing themselves. The only thing that occurs to us as on a par with Mr. Tennyson’s picture of a saint is one by Mr. William Cullen Bryant in a short and remarkably silly poem recently published by him. It is entitled “A Legend of St. Martin,” and the saint, while still in the flesh, speaks as follows:

“Thus spake the saint: 'We part to-night; _I am St. Martin_, and I give you here The means to make your fortunes.’”

The author’s favorite churchman is Stigand, who, whether Catholic or heretic, no man who had read the history of the time carefully and honestly could by any possibility hold up for admiration. Mr. Tennyson, however, may consider himself excused on points of historical accuracy, inasmuch as he informs us in his dedication that “after Old-World records—such as the Bayeux tapestry and the Roman de Rou—Edward Freeman’s _History of the Norman Conquest_,” and Bulwer Lytton’s historical romance treating of the same times, “have been mainly helpful” to him “in writing this drama.” But he cannot be excused for such culpable negligence in searching out authorities when attempting to depict in a truthful manner a most important historical epoch. Had he taken the easy pains of going a little deeper into history and authorities, it would probably have been better for himself and his drama, or perhaps, with his evident bias, he would not have written it at all. He loves Stigand, a thoroughly bad prelate, simply because Stigand was against the pope. If Tennyson selects his Catholic heroes from all men who have been against the pope, he will find his hands full of very queer characters, some of them worse than Stigand. Imagine even Stigand saying, in the exact tone of a modern unbeliever:

“... In our windy world What’s up is faith, what’s down is heresy.”

Certain modern Anglican prelates and ministers, or any man who acknowledges no unchangeable deposit of divine truth, might speak in just such a strain. The words, if they mean anything, mean simply that there is no such thing at all as real faith or doctrine. Stigand knew better than that. His peculiar vice was a very English one—an overdue and unscrupulous regard for this world’s goods. This Catholic prelate tells Harold of a sum of money which he keeps concealed at the other’s service, to be asked for at his “most need,” in the following eloquent style:

“Red gold—a hundred purses—yea, and more! If thou canst make a wholesome use of these To chink against the Norman, I do believe _My old crook’d spine would bud out two young wings To fly to heaven straight with_.”

Tennyson doubtless considers this very English and spirited. Stigand may have disliked the Normans, and doubtless did. With all our hearts! But this mode of expressing his dislike is, in the mouth of a Catholic and a prelate, surely not in character.

Again he asks:

“... Be there no saints of England To help us from their brethren yonder?”

As though a Catholic or Christian could dream of the saints warring in heaven or of affixing nationality to sanctity! Tennyson’s Edward, with a solitary gleam of intelligence, rebukes him thus:

“Prelate, The Saints are one, ...”

yet immediately falls into the absurd blunder he rebukes by adding:

“But those (Saints) of Normanland Are mightier than our own.”

While witnessing the battle of Hastings Stigand cries out in an ecstasy of admiration at Harold’s prowess: “War-woodman of old Woden!” Could any Christian man, Catholic or non-Catholic, couple a Christian warrior’s name with the detestable deity of the pagan North?

The character of Harold, too, is incongruous. He is represented as a most brave, wise, and honorable man, incapable of fear or falsehood: “broad and honest, breathing an easy gladness.” He weakens in many places. We cannot here go into a historical inquiry respecting the alleged oath of Harold on the relics of saints to help William to the crown of England. Much is made of it by Tennyson; so let us take all the facts for granted. A man such as Harold is here represented to be would rather have died than taken the oath, if he never meant to keep it. On the other hand, once taken, and knowing it to be false, we doubt whether the resolute Saxon soldier would have troubled himself much about the matter. He acts as a coward throughout while in William’s power. A strong man would not rail in secret at William for forcing him to take an oath which the swearer knew to be a lie. He would take it or not take it with the best grace possible. “Horrible!” exclaims Harold when the relics on which he has sworn are exposed. Harold was sufficiently man of the world—a man who had passed his life in camp and court—to have uttered no such weak cry. In the first place, if he swore falsely, such an exclamation showed at once that he never intended to keep his promise. In the second place, it would have been perfectly plain to William that he could place no reliance on the oath of such a poltroon. The same failure to apprehend the character of the man is apparent in the womanish tirade into which Harold breaks after William has left him: “Juggler and bastard—bastard: he hates that most—William the tanner’s bastard! Would he heard me!” A moment before he might have heard him, but Harold dared not speak his thoughts. Certainly the man who never lost a battle save the one in which he lost all—the man who conquered Wales, crushed the terrible invasion of Harold Hardrada and Tostig, braved his own sovereign, seized on the English throne with a grasp that only death could shake off, and died so gloriously on Hastings—never “played the woman with his eyes and the braggart with his tongue” in this poor fashion. Here again speaks the reader of modern infidel literature in the mouth of the unspeculative soldier of the eleventh century:

“I cannot help it, but at times They seem to me too narrow, _all the faiths_ Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye Saw them sufficient.”

“_All_ the faiths!” We wonder how many “faiths” Harold knew of or contemplated. Indeed, it seems to us that Mr. Tennyson here speaks for himself, and in a manner that causes some suspicion of his having lost something of his own earlier and more robust belief. Harold continues:

“But a little light!— And on it falls the shadow of the priest; Heaven yield us more! _for better Woden, all Our cancell’d warrior-gods, our grim Walhalla, Eternal war, than that the Saints at peace; The Holiest of our Holiest one should be This William’s fellow-tricksters_; better die Than credit this, for death is death, or else Lifts us beyond the lie.”

Which is heathenism and atheism beautifully combined. He goes on, still in his atheistic vein, when Edith bids him listen to the nightingales:

“Their anthems of no church, how sweet they are! Nor kingly priest, nor priestly king to cross Their billings ere they nest.”

And again, when Gurth brings news of the pope’s favoring William’s cause, Harold laughs and says of it:

“This was old human laughter in old Rome Before a Pope was born, when that which reign’d Call’d itself God—a kingly rendering Of 'Render unto Cæsar.’”

Harold must have lately risen from a perusal of Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet on _Vaticanism_ when he spoke thus, so we pardon his aberration. That pamphlet is too strong for weak intellects.

“The Lord was God and came as man—the Pope Is man and comes as God,”

he continues, still in the Gladstonian vein. He reminds Edith that love “remains beyond all chances and all churches”—a dictum and doctrine that would be strange even in a Protestant Harold. “I ever hated monks,” he says in another place, which may account for his having founded Waltham Abbey. He grows more and more Protestant towards the end, and the saintly relics over which he was so terrified at having sworn a false oath he terms the “gilded ark of mummy-saints.” And here is his final legacy to England:

“... And this to England, My legacy of war against the Pope From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age, Till the sea wash her level with her shores, Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”

This is Tennyson’s legacy, not Harold’s. It seems strange that it should have fallen into careless hands; not ours, but those of the poet’s coreligionists. The fact is that the world is growing weary of little anti-papal tooters. Great enemies of the papacy it applauds and tries to excuse; but at the mouthings of the little people it yawns. If Tennyson has shown anything in this as in his other anti-Catholic effusions, it is that when moved by rancor he can descend to all the small bitterness of a common and weak order of mind. We cannot go further into an examination of _Harold_, and, indeed, the task is not worth while. He has failed in the one character which, to a true dramatic genius, offered magnificent opportunities—William of Normandy, who was perhaps the greatest and the wisest sovereign that England has as yet known. A gallant soldier; a wary yet bold and successful general; an astute statesman; a lover of learning; a resolute if severe ruler; a man who could bide his opportunity, then move on it with the flash and fatality of the lightning, yet withal a man of almost ungovernable passions, with the old taint running in his blood and through all his successful life—this was a character that it is as great a pity Shakspere did not draw as that Tennyson should have been rash enough to attempt to draw. In what ought to be the chief scene of the play, the battle of Hastings, there is no battle at all. The weak device is resorted to of setting a description of it as it proceeds in the mouth of Stigand, who watches the field from “a tent on a mound.” Norman and Saxon, Harold and William, are not brought together for the final death-grip. Shakspere's battle-scenes are more vivid than those of any painter. They illuminate history and print themselves indelibly on the mind. Cut the battle-scenes out of _King John_, _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _Macbeth_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Henry VI._, and you mutilate the plays. Stigand’s description of the battle of Hastings might be dropped from _Harold_ and not missed. Why should not Harold die as Hotspur dies, or as Macbeth, or Brutus, or any of the others—his face to the victorious foe, the fitting ending of the tragedy? Mr. Tennyson was not equal to the task, either in this scene or at Stamford Bridge. The last clash and conflict of human passion he can only look at from afar off and reflect upon when it is over. He cannot take it in hand and present it. He would do well to retire from the field where empires, and men and events that make or unmake empires, are the subjects of song, and go back to the pretty scenery, the calm truth, and the graceful verse that have made his name dearly loved and justly honored.

ANGLICANISM IN 1877, AS AFFECTED BY THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.

We should feel inclined to apologize to our readers for again introducing the English Establishment to their notice, were it not that since, a year ago, we considered Anglicanism in connection with the “Old Catholic” conference at Bonn, the increasing agitation within the state church cannot but have continued to attract the thoughtful attention of those who, from the bark of Peter, watch the weary tossing of the Anglican craft and the mutinous condition of a portion of her crew.

Since the period to which we allude, the fact that the whole tendency of the Alt-Catholic movement is rationalistic and anti-Christian is beginning to be understood by all really religious Protestants, and we now see the better part of them holding aloof from the movement, and even the Ritualist journals condemning whatever advances were made towards it. The cause is now advocated only by the Broad-Church party, which distinguished itself by its emphatic encouragement of the apostate Loyson, one of the apostles of the new sect, who went last summer to London to enlighten the English public on ecclesiastical questions. On the other hand, the High-Church movement is, if anything, in the direction of the Catholic Church, while Alt-Catholicism is a distinct counter-agitation, and thus anything like a cordial fraternization between the two is impossible. The attempts of the High-Church party to obtain at least as much as a recognition of the validity of their orders from the Orientals—attempts which were renewed at the Bonn conference—have again signally failed. One of the “Unionist” leaders himself laments that “the Oriental Church stands entirely aloof from the Church of England, sweepingly and roundly condemns all its members, denies the validity of their baptisms and ordinations, and practically refuses to aid them in any shape or form.”

There is no doubt that at the present moment a tremendous struggle has arisen in the Establishment between the would-be Catholic and the Protestant elements; the latter not only pleading its three centuries’ possession, but also, and truly, declaring itself to be the very basis and _raison d’être_ of the schism. This claim is urged at the present time with a vehemence and jealous irritation aimed ostensibly at the “Romanizing practices” of their brethren, but the venom of which betrays itself to be especially called forth by the ceaseless, active, self-denying energy of these incorrigible early risers—an irritation not difficult to comprehend on the part of those who, with all their professions of Evangelical piety, have, generally speaking, an exceeding shyness of hard work, detest the Counsels of Perfection in general and the practice of self-denial in particular, take up the pen much more readily than the cross, and prefer bridling their neighbor’s tongue rather than their own. Nevertheless, with regard to a certain class among the Evangelicals, and these the more earnest, it is only just to say that their condemnation of Ritualists and their practices is sincerely a matter of principle. They regard the one as the guides and the other as the direct means to “idolatry”—a term which they have all their lives been taught to consider as synonymous with the Catholic religion.

When St. Edward the Confessor lay on his death-bed in the palace of Westminster, he foretold to his queen, St. Edith, and to Stigand that, in punishment for the sins of the land, God would permit the enemy of mankind to send a mission of wicked spirits into it, who should sever the Green Tree of Old England from its root, and lay it apart for the space of three furlongs; but that the tree should after a due time return to its root and revive, without the help of any man’s hand. The traditional interpretation of this prophecy has been that the English Church would be cut off for the space of three centuries from its parent stem, but that, after that time, the severed church should return to its ancient allegiance.

And what do we now see? Movement, awakening, and life where for three centuries have reigned the gloom and chillness of the tomb.

From the time of Elizabeth downwards not only the teaching but the general aspect of what is called the Church of England was intensely anti-Catholic. A brighter day first dawned for England when she hospitably received and succored the exiled priests of France. The precious leaven of their holy teaching and example never has been lost. Later, in 1829, the emancipation of the Catholics of the British Empire, under George IV., marked a fresh epoch in the history of the Catholic Church in England. The discussions which attended the passing of this act helped to increase a knowledge of her tenets, and prepared the way for their better appreciation; besides which, the restoration of some of the most illustrious families of the realm to their ancient and hereditary seats in the House of Lords, together with the admission of Catholics into the Lower House, tended further to the removal of many prejudices. Since Newman and Pusey, in 1833, recalled their brethren to the study of the Fathers of the church, many steps have been taken in the Establishment in the direction of the ancient paths—steps which Catholics have noted with interest and hope, though they perceive that but too often men who have been attracted towards the truth rest apparently contented with a bad imitation of its external manifestations and a garbled or “adapted” representation of its doctrines, forgetting that truth distorted ceases to be truth, and often is a lie. They marvel also that the invariable opposition of the pseudo-episcopate does not help these men, who are the present life of their system, to see that their imaginary “Catholicity” is wholly unauthorized and unrecognized by their ecclesiastical superiors, and that the hierarchy of their church is as consistently and persistently anti-Catholic as the constitution of that body itself. They are resisted and condemned by their bishops, and from their bishops they have no appeal except to a lay tribunal whose interference _in sacris_ they repudiate.

By the terms of a new Appellate Jurisdiction Act, recently passed in both Houses of Parliament, the jurisdiction of the Privy Council has been transferred to a new Court of Appeal. It was then provided that episcopal assessors should in future sit on the bench with the lay judges; and though it is by the latter that the judgment is pronounced, the bishops are allowed to make remarks on what is passing. They are to sit in rotation in the new court. The two archbishops and the Bishop of London are also to sit in turn, _ex officio_, and the rest in quarternions, beginning with the junior four (Chichester, St. Asaph, Ely, and St. David’s). It is impossible to say what may be the results of this equivocal assessorship, with regard to which the London _Morning Post_ disrespectfully observes that “the plan offers no security whatever that the assessors shall be fit for their office beyond the fact that they are bishops”; calmly adding that “since the purpose for which their presence is required is the imparting to the judges of a certain kind and quality of information when desired, it is a serious defect to the scheme that it provides no guarantee that the prelates who sit shall possess any proper aptitude for their position.”[21]

Footnote 21:

The following from the London _Weekly Register_ may tend to show whether this doubt is reasonable or otherwise: “The vicar of St. Barnabas, Leeds, is fatigued with parochial work and wishes to take a little rest. He asks his Lordship of Ripon to let him name a clergyman who shall take his duties for a few weeks or months. His lordship replies that he cannot do so, because—but the language is too episcopal to be misquoted: 'If there is truth in the reports which, from time to time, appear in the public papers, you are in the habit of breaking what you must know to be the law.’ His Lordship of Ripon reads the papers, and, finding it inconvenient to leave his palace at Ripon and make a call upon a clergyman in Leeds, he refuses leave of absence to that clergyman, on account of newspaper reports.” The church-wardens take up their vicar’s cause, and, in a very proper “memorial,” represent the needs of his case to his paternal diocesan. But all is useless. “The law, the law,” says the bishop, and remains comfortably in his palace, while he forbids his hard-working vicar to take a holiday, though he does not even condescend to specify his offence. And yet the Anglican bishops do not apparently object to a due amount of repose for themselves, if we may judge from the fact that at the very time we write there are no fewer than fifteen of the “missionary bishops” of the Establishment who, after a few years of absence, and even these years agreeably diversified with visits to their friends in England, have returned thither “for good,” and are now settled with their wives and families in comfortable rectories at home—an arrangement more convenient for croquet-parties than “conversions.”

Upon this another journal asks: If it be true that Anglican bishops are corporately incompetent as advisers of lay judges, even on the doctrines of their own particular communion, of what use are they at all? If they cannot, without the aid of civilians, interpret the Articles, why not make bishops of the lay judges, instead of paying thousands a year to each of these gentlemen, who do not apparently know their own business? In any case, how Ritualists can remain, with satisfaction to their consciences, in a communion whose highest arbiter is not even a sub-deacon, is perplexing to any one who regards the church as a divinely-instituted system. We have been reminded by _Presbyter Anglicanus_ that it is a necessary ingredient in any system of discipline that the superior should not be judged by the inferior, the teacher by the taught; and that the twelfth canon of the African Code ordains that, “if a bishop fall under the imputation of any crime, he shall have a second hearing before twelve bishops, if more cannot be had; a priest before six, with his own bishop; a deacon before three—_according to the statutes of the ancient canons_.” Again: “It was a recognized principle in the primitive church that the deposition of an ecclesiastic required the intervention of more bishops than were needed for his ordination. The Anglican bishops notwithstanding their professions of regard for the primitive church, are content that a presbyter, ordained and instituted by a 'bishop,’ should be deprived by a layman. And they talk of apostolic order!”

The writer just quoted, who is now safe in the Catholic Church, described, just before his conversion, the present condition of ecclesiastical discipline in the Anglican Church as follows: “The ecclesiastical courts which survived the Reformation and the great rebellion have been ... abolished; the bishop of each diocese has ceased to be the ordinary of that diocese, and the whole clergy of the Church of England are rendered amenable to, and are even directed in their conduct of public worship by, a layman, whose office has been created in the year of grace 1874 by the imperial Parliament, and who, besides playing the part of a pseudo-dean of the Arches and principal of the Provincial Court of York, is also to be the national ordinary, the Parliamentary vicar-general of the Establishment, exercising jurisdiction in every parish from Berwick-on-Tweed to the Channel Islands.” And this is the system to which unquestioning, unrepining, absolute submission is required of the clergy by the bishops of the Anglican communion.

Nor is this all; not only is it now the case that secular law courts decide what may or may not be taught and practised in the Anglican Church, but they also claim to decide who shall and who shall not be admitted to its rites and sacraments. Lawyers are thus not only the doctors and _ceremoniarii_ of Anglicanism, suspending or depriving ecclesiastics at pleasure, but they are also to be, in the last resort, the stewards of Anglican sacraments.

A case was lately pending before the Judicial Committee in which the

## action of a “priest” in refusing communion was reviewed and judged by

the court. A parishioner of a Ritualist pastor having declared that he did not find in the Bible sufficient evidence for the existence of evil spirits to incline him to believe in the devil, the clergyman prohibited his coming for communion until he did believe in the devil. The parishioner wrote a complaint to the bishop, and the latter took his part against his parish “priest” and for the devil. The matter being referred to the Judicial Committee, the bishop’s verdict was confirmed in favor of the sceptical parishioner and of his Infernal Majesty.

Nor can any individual cases of this kind be matter of surprise when we reflect to what the doctrinal decisions of the supreme courts of the Anglican Establishment have, with the consent of her entire episcopate, as expressed in their famous “allocution” on the Public Worship Act, pledged her clergy. According to the final and irreversible authority acknowledged by that episcopate, the Church of England holds, 1, that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is an open question; 2, that it is an open question whether every part of every book of Scripture is inspired; 3, that there is no “distinct declaration” in the formularies of that church on the subject of everlasting punishment, and that the words “everlasting death” in the exposition of the Lord’s Prayer given in the catechism “cannot be taken as necessarily declaring anything touching the eternity of punishment after the resurrection”; 4, that Anglican bishops are the creatures of English law and dependent on that law for their existence, rights, and attributes.[22]

Footnote 22:

See _Christianity in Erastianism_. A letter to Cardinal Manning. By _Presbyter Anglicanus_.

“The Church of England,” said Dr. Stanley, the Protestant Dean of Westminster, in a sermon recently preached at Battersea, “is what she is by the goodness of Almighty God and of his servant Queen Elizabeth.” If he had said, “of Henry VIII. and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth,” we could have agreed with him, particularly as the riper years of the Establishment continue so suitably to fulfil the promise of such parentage; but to Catholics there is a revolting profanity in classing together the goodness of God with that of one of the most implacable persecutors of his church—a persecutor, not from conviction of the justice, but the iniquity, of her cause, and from a persistent determination to extinguish in her realm the ancient faith, whose very existence was a condemnation of the state religion arranged by her father and Cranmer, improved by her brother and his Genevese assistants, and re-fashioned to her own liking by herself. The sentence pronounced by the Protestant historian Chalmers upon this powerful and unprincipled queen is that “she was a woman without chastity, a princess without honor, and a sovereign without faith”; and, as if by way of a satanic parody on the vision of the Immaculate Virgin in the Book of Revelations, we see Elizabeth, the offspring of an adulterous union, trampling under her despotic foot the Bride of Christ.

“The Church of England,” continued the dean, “was, it is true, a compromise,” and “he was not a true son thereof who used it as a weapon for promoting this or that doctrine, but, _after the example of Elizabeth_, and for the interests of the nation, used it as a broad shield under which he might work for good,”[23] etc., etc. The sense of which, in plain English, appears to be that the said church prefers general indifference to doctrinal truth, the “interests of the nation” to the glory of God, and the “example of Elizabeth” to purity of faith and life.

Footnote 23:

Hentzner furnishes us, by the way, with a singular testimony to Elizabeth’s “goodness” when, among other things of the same nature, he tells us that, in the latter years of her reign, executions for high treason (this being the term applied to denial of the royal supremacy in the church fully as much as in the state) were so frequent that he counted at one time on London Bridge no fewer than 300 heads. She herself on one occasion pointed out to the French ambassador the same ghastly trophies adorning the gates of her own palace.

But Dean Stanley represents one only of the four principal sections into which the Church of England has divided itself; and however complacently the “Broad” and even “Moderate High” Churchmen may regard the marshy nature of the ground in which the foundations of their faith, if faith it can be called, are laid, and congratulate themselves on the fact that it is neither land nor water, but something of both, there are earnest men who have no fancy for being amphibious, and who spare no pains and toil to drain away the stagnant waters from their morass, in the sincere conviction that beneath the miasma-breeding mosses there lies, for those who dig deep enough to find it, the imperishable rock.

Of this number seems to be the Rev. Arthur Tooth, vicar of St. James’, Hatcham, who is now in prison because he chooses to act upon the principle of “no compromise.” We honor a man who is willing to suffer for conscience’ sake, and to uphold the right of the church to decide in ecclesiastical causes, but at the same time we cannot but feel that Mr. Tooth is more conscientious than logical, and that by his present opposition he is breaking the solemn promise and oath which, as a clergyman of the state church, he took, at his ordination, to a state-church bishop.

Mr. Tooth, on account of certain ritualistic practices—_i.e._, the use of “Catholic” vestments, conducting the communion service so as to make it resemble as much as possible Holy Mass, having “a crucifix in the chancel, little winged figures on the communion-table, lighted candles on a ledge where he had been ordered not to place them, etc., etc.—was, by order of Lord Penzance and with the approval of his own bishop, Dr. Claughton of Rochester, interdicted from officiating again in the diocese. The writ of inhibition was served him on a Sunday morning before the commencement of the service; he not only took no notice of the writ, but also on the following (Christmas) day publicly resisted his substitute. Canon Gee had been appointed by the bishop to read the service in the place of Mr. Tooth, but, on his arriving at the church, the latter gentleman, backed by about forty of his male parishioners, met him at the door and refused to allow him to enter, upon which Canon Gee, after protesting against this insubordinate proceeding on the part of his refractory brother, was forced to retire. Having thus disposed of the episcopal delegate, the vicar proceeded to display an unusual pomp in the ceremonial. Six splendid banners were carried in procession, on one of which was embroidered the monogram of Our Blessed Lady, surrounded by the words, _Sancta Dei Genitrix_.” The church was crowded to suffocation, partly with worshippers, and also very largely by people who had come from curiosity, as was evident by their behavior no less than by their murmured expressions of ridicule or indignation; a crowd, not only of “roughs,” but numbering many well-dressed people, had assembled outside. On one occasion, the 14th of January, in particular, the scenes both within and without were disgraceful. “Inside,” we are told, “there was a good deal of fighting and scuffling, especially at the lower end,” while outside the crowd, besides breaking down the fences, shouting “No popery,” yelling, and in various ways demonstrating their inclination to break the laws as well as the parson did, had they not been kept in some abeyance by a strong body of three hundred police, joined in singing loudly the national anthem, vociferating with especial emphasis and vigor the line “Confound their knavish tricks”—improved by some to “popish tricks” in honor of the occasion. Some time after the service was over, so as to give the mob time to thin, the sight of Mr. Tooth issuing from the church under the protection of “twenty stout policemen of the F Division” had in it something almost ludicrous to those who reflected that all this commotion arose from the fact of his having spurned the “secular arm.”

When, on the 20th of January, the Rev. R. Chambers, who has been appointed curate in charge of the parish of Hatcham by the Bishop of Rochester, went, accompanied by the bishop’s apparitor, and, producing his license, requested Mr. Tooth to hand over to him through the church-wardens the possession of the church, the vicar replied that he refused to take any notice of the document or the application. He was therefore committed for contempt of court, and is now lodged in Horsemonger Lane jail.

It is not necessary to give more than two portions of the very temperate explanations with which Lord Penzance has accompanied his judgment—namely, those portions which are aimed at the delusions supposed to be most important in the controversy. These delusions are, in brief, 1st, that the new Public Worship Act was an innovation upon Anglican custom, and an invasion of its rights; 2d, that obedience should be rendered to an ecclesiastical and not to a lay superior. The answers of Lord Penzance to these assumptions are, substantially, as follows:

“1. It would be well if those who maintain these propositions were to read the statutes by which the ritual of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation was enforced—I mean the statutes establishing the two successive prayer-books of King Edward VI. and the prayer-book of Queen Elizabeth, which regulated the ritual of the reformed church for the first hundred years after its establishment. They would there find that a clergyman departing in the performance of divine service from the ritual prescribed in the prayer-book was liable to be _tried at the assizes by a judge and jury_ (the bishop, _if he pleased_, assisting the judges), and, if convicted three times, was liable to be _imprisoned for life_. The intervention, therefore, of a temporal court to enforce obedience in matters of ritual is at least no novelty; the novelty, as far as the Church of England is concerned, is rather in the claim to be exempt from it.

“2. But suppose this claim, for the sake of argument, to be admitted; what, then, are the ecclesiastical courts to whose judgment the Ritualists would be willing to defer? Unless every clergyman is to settle the form of worship for himself, and there are to be as many forms of worship as there are parishes in the land, who is it that, in his opinion, is to determine what the rubrics of the prayer-book enjoin?—for we suppose him to consider himself bound by the directions of the prayer-book. What is the court to which he is willing to render obedience? Is it the court of his bishop? If so, he must surely be aware that by the ecclesiastical law of this country, as well before the Reformation as since, an appeal from the bishop’s court lies, and has always lain, to the court of the archbishop, this Court of Arches, whose jurisdiction he now denies. What question, therefore, is there of a secular court, or an invasion of the rights of the Church of England?[24]” And the judgment passed by Lord Penzance was contained in the following words: “Applying these powers as I am bound to do, I have no hesitation in pronouncing Mr. Tooth to be contumacious, and in contempt for disobeying the inhibition pronounced by this court, and I direct the same to be signified to the queen in chancery, with a view to his imprisonment.”

Footnote 24:

A writer in the London _Times_ gives the following answer to the ecclesiastical assumptions of Mr. Tooth: “I will enumerate some of the acts on ecclesiastical matters which have become law without the consent of the priesthood, and which therefore the present agitators bind themselves to disallow and disobey: The act of Edward VI. on the Sacrament, on Chantries, on Images, on Fasting; the Acts of Uniformity, both of Edward VI. and Elizabeth; the Act of Toleration; the act abolishing the burning of heretics, under William III.; the acts, both of Charles II. and William III., for the observance of Sunday; the various Marriage Acts of William III., George II., and Queen Victoria; the various acts both for the repression and the relief of Roman Catholics during the same range of time; the acts during the late and present reigns against pluralities and against non-residence; the acts suppressing the Irish bishoprics, suppressing half the cathedral dignitaries in England, and, finally, revolutionizing the Irish Church; the act for abolishing the services drawn up by Convocation for the political anniversaries of the seventeenth century. These and many other laws, many of them of unquestioned beneficence, most of them of unquestioned obligation, all of them passed by Parliament, and by it alone, must be set aside by those who make it a point of conscience to disobey any law which has been imposed on the church by secular authority.”

And now the strife of tongues which preceded this climax was comparative calm to that which at present rages. All the winds of Æolus, each trying which can blow the hardest, seem let loose at once in the distracted Establishment. By the Ritualist party the confessor for disobedience in Horsemonger Lane jail is already dubbed “the martyr, Tooth”; while another party rejoices that, by the contumacy of this “parson in revolt,” the state church is “forced into a clear, practical assertion of her old and hitherto unquestioned right to restrain and punish disobedient and delinquent 'clerks.’” Further, the London _Times_, dilating after its own infallible fashion upon Mr. Tooth and “his pranks,” dares to aver that “to parade a banner calling the Virgin Mary the 'Mother of God’ is little less than sheer blasphemy.”

At a large meeting of the “English Church Union” it became evident that the changes in law procedure produced by the Public Worship Regulation Act are producing a murmur in favor of “disestablishment” within the Church of England herself. One of the reverend speakers at this meeting said that “the issue had now merged from one about the color of a stole to a question of church and state,” and the honorable chairman agreed that “establishment might cost too dear.” Archdeacon Denison declared that this case of “dear Arthur Tooth” would prove to be “a life-and-death struggle with Protestantism,” thus making the old mistake of putting mere ritualism in the place of the Catholic Church. Canon Carter moved that “the Church Union denies that the secular power has authority in matters purely spiritual,” upon which a journal reminds him that, from the days of the Reformation, it has been one of the conditions on which the state church enjoyed the emoluments and privileges of establishment that her clergy should perform certain duties in a way laid down by law. Whether, as in the case of Mr. Tooth, they have or have not done so is a matter which the law leaves a

## particular court to decide. If Mr. Tooth does not relish the action of

these tribunals, two courses are open to him, and only two. Either he may give up those practices which they declare obnoxious within the pale of the Established Church, or he may leave the Establishment and continue them elsewhere. The latter step would entail the sacrifice of the endowment, or, as the Ritualists would say, it would involve the guilt of schism; in which case the whole matter resolves itself into a choice of sins: the clergyman must either commit the sin of obeying Lord Penzance, and so retain the endowment, or he must commit the sin of “schism” and fling the endowment away. Thus the Church Unionists are by no means logical in comparing their present position to that of Chalmers, Buchanan, Guthrie, Cunningham, and other leaders of the Free Kirk of Scotland previously to 1843; for these men gave up all thought of state endowment, or even of ministering in buildings dependent on the state, and purchased the independence of their ministrations at the cost of all state temporalities. This is a very different matter from attempting to have the temporalities and the independence together.[25]

Footnote 25:

Certain evicted Ritualists, however, do not appear to be much affected by the measures taken to repress them, if it be true that the Rev. R. P. Dale, who has been suspended for three years, and his former parish merged into another, takes the matter very philosophically, and, in default of his own parish, finds every Sunday in one place or another a complaisant brother-clergyman, who lends him his church and his pulpit, from which he braves the pseudo-episcopal thunders.

Another observation made by Canon Carter was, though not in itself more true, yet, for him, much more to the point—namely, that “the only persecution now carried on in England is against the High-Church party.” It is on this fact that the Ritualists stand triumphant. They can honestly plead that they, the High-Church party, have done more than all the other parties put together for the revival of faith and devotion in England. They can also plead that they are men of education, of courage and energy and self-denying zeal, and that to them is due whatever residuum is left of Catholic sentiment and tradition in the Establishment. The marvel is that any of these really earnest men should continue so blind to their anomalous position.

On the same day that the English Church Union held its assembly a meeting of the ultra-Protestant school took place at the Wellington Hall, Islington, where about one hundred and twenty clergymen and laymen partook of breakfast, after which they proceeded to deliver themselves of a large amount of the peculiar and incoherent insipidities with which the readers of the _Rock_ must be painfully familiar. One specimen will suffice, which, as our readers will perceive, is not lacking in the unctuous accusations in which the “Evangelicals” are apt to excel: “As in Germany,” they said, “the Jesuits devoted all their self-denying energies to opposing the spread of the true doctrines, so here in England there was an able and resolute body of men who opposed themselves to the true principles of religion, and who, by services rendered attractive to the eye and ear, appealed by the senses to the understanding. Many of these men were no doubt sincere, and were thus unconsciously doing the work of Satan. This was the powerful opposing force with which the Evangelical body of the Church of England had to contend.”

Now, we must beg leave to observe that for these “Evangelical” gentlemen to talk of Ritualists as unconsciously doing the work of Satan is simply absurd. Did not the “beam in their own eye” blind them, we would ask them to take a glance backward and think of forty years ago, when, through the length and breadth of the land, they locked up their churches from Sunday afternoon to the following Sunday morning, and sometimes even longer; for the writer can recall three villages (there may or may not have been many more) in Leicestershire alone where, less than forty years ago, there was only one service on the Sunday, and that alternately in the morning and afternoon. We have heard of the wag who chalked on the church door of an Evangelical rector, “_Le Bon Dieu est sorti: Il ne reviendra que dimanche prochain_.” And truly, if the good God _did_ come back, it would not be, in many instances, to find his house “swept and garnished.”

Forty years ago! Sitting in the old family pew in the chancel of A ... stone church, through the long, monotonous sermons of the worthy rector, whose favorite subjects were “saving faith” and abuse of popery, what a help it was to patient endurance to watch the merry, loud-voiced sparrows fluttering in and out of the broken diamond panes of the chancel windows, through which long sprays of ivy crept and clung lovingly up the poor old walls, bare of everything but whitewash, of the once Catholic church—walls that the damp of many an autumn and winter had dyed with streaks of green, deeper and brighter in hue than the faded, ink-stained rag of moth-eaten green baize that covered the rickety wooden table standing where, in old days, the most holy Sacrifice had been offered upon a Catholic altar. Childhood, before opportunities for comparison have been afforded, is not hard to please, and we used to think that that verdant chancel might have been in the mind of the sweet Psalmist of Israel when he sang, “The sparrow hath found her a house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young: even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts!” And yet our worthy rector (a rich pluralist with a large family) was a kind-hearted, easy, amiable man, and not in any way addicted to the hunting and drinking practices of certain of his clerical neighbors; his house was the perfection of refined not overloaded luxury, and the well-kept gardens of that most pleasant of rectories were a paradise of smooth lawns, gay parterres, and shady shrubberies sloping down to the banks of the winding Soar. The rector led a mildly studious life when in the country (for half his year was spent in London), visited much among the “county families,” and shyly and rarely entered the cottages of the village; but religion in that village was well-nigh dead. If amiable clergymen of this stamp are not “unconsciously doing the work of Satan” themselves, they at any rate give Satan plenty of time and opportunity to do his own work himself among their flock, and to do it very effectually, too.

Yet it is the descendants of men like these who are foremost in groaning down and persecuting the self-denying, hard-working clergy who are always at their posts! The preachers of sentiment are furious against the upholders of the necessity of dogmatic truth. The idlers in family and social circles are desperate against enthusiasts who at least _try_ to hear confessions and to be priests. We cannot admire the consistency of the Ritualists—for unhappily it does not exist—but the inconsistency of their “Evangelical” accusers is simply “the impeachment of energy by twaddle.”

A correspondent of the London _Times_ calls attention to the fact that while Mr. Tooth, who is perfectly orthodox as regards the creeds of the church, is prosecuted for extremes in ritual, a brother clergyman is allowed to preach open infidelity from the pulpit unmolested. “The Public Worship Bill,” he writes, “has been passed to repress crimes so grave as over-magnificence in the services, but does not deign to meddle in so small a matter as that of vindicating the Divinity of our Saviour, which is fearlessly impugned in a pulpit which the Bishop of London himself has condescended to occupy.”

It is much to be doubted whether the Anglican bishops, when they obtained from Parliament the Public Worship Regulation Act, had the remotest idea of the tempest which, Prospero-like, they were summoning around them, but which, unlike Shakspere’s magician, they would be powerless to allay. And if this is the result obtained by the act just mentioned, a still more recent one, the “Scotch Church Patronage Act,” another measure intended by Lord Beaconsfield as an additional buttress to ecclesiastical establishments, has produced similar storms in the North. It has led to proceedings in connection with the “settlement” of a parish clergyman at New Deer in Aberdeenshire which recall the furious battles between the “intrusion” and non-intrusion parties that split the Established Church of Scotland into fragments thirty-four years ago, and has besides almost succeeded in uniting three-fourths of Scotland into a solid disestablishment phalanx. The Presbyterian Kirk, moreover, in addition to subjects of contention presented from without, has certain characteristic squabbles of its own. A question having recently arisen on the subject of unfermented wines in the celebration of what is called communion, the session has maintained that it “has a right to change the elements of communion, and in so doing is discharging its proper functions.” Why not? If local churches can make their own doctrines, what, we should like to know, is to hinder them from making their own sacraments as well?

Our object in this article has been merely to sketch the present condition of affairs in the English Establishment; but as we have in concluding taken a momentary glance at Scotland also, we cannot leave unnamed the Green Isle of the West, whose centuries of suffering and oppression have at last, we earnestly trust, given place to times of peace and long prosperity.

Should the reviving hopes of many hearts be realized, and the Green Tree of England’s ancient church again spread its vigorous branches over the land that was once “Our Lady’s Dowry”; and should the grand old northern abbeys, Melrose, Jedburgh, Paisley, and even, it may be, Iona, receive again as in past ages their cowled and consecrated sons, still England and Scotland will have but returned to the faith which Ireland has never lost, and which no human or Satanic power has been able to wrench from her. No! For, rather than let the cross be torn from her bleeding embrace, she suffered herself to be nailed upon it.

THE ASHES OF THE PALMS.

THE DISCIPLE.

“Are ashes scarce that palms must burn, Those sweet memorials of the only day Of triumph that thou hadst, my Prince, Upon this woeful earth?”

THE MASTER.

“All glory unto ashes, child, must turn, Of which this deathly world can make display. These ashes on proud heads convince Proud hearts of glory’s worth.”

THE DISCIPLE.

“If palms to ashes must, So be 't. _I_ still will live to praise, Though glory’s gage should burn.”

THE MASTER.

“E’en thou art naught but dust. The mark thy forehead bears betrays To what thou shalt return.”

ASH WEDNESDAY

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

AN OLD WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH YOUNG EYES; OR, TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD. By Ellen H. Walworth. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.

Every school-girl who reads this book will wish that she had an uncle who would send for her one day, while she is dreaming over her lesson-book, and invite her to accompany him around the world. This is what happened to Miss Ellen Walworth in June, 1873, and the volume before us is composed of the letters which she wrote home during her tour, and which were published as they were received in an Albany newspaper, attracting at the time considerable attention. They are the production of a school-girl of fifteen, but slightly altered from their original form, and this makes their peculiarity and their special interest. The course of her travels was through Scotland, Ireland, England, Belgium, the country of the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, China, Japan, and home by way of San Francisco. The letters are just what they should be—natural, lively, juvenile descriptions of the little incidents of travel and the scenes witnessed, with the freshness and vividness of letters written at the time and on the spot to which each one successively belongs. Two extremely interesting letters of Father Walworth, written with his well-known charm of style and minute accuracy of statement, are included in the collection. One of these contains a description of the Coptic rite, the other an account of the present state of the mission in Japan, with many interesting historical

## particulars. Our young folk will find this a very entertaining volume,

and older people may read it with pleasure. It is a book very creditable to the young author, and also an evidence of the kind of culture which is given to young girls by the accomplished ladies at Kenwood. We subjoin one specimen of the style in which the letters are written, not at all childish, although suffused with a childlike gayety:

“I remember what dispute arose among the passengers the day we went down Lake Zurich. There were mountains all around us, but from the end of the lake towards which we were steering rose quite a high range. Over their summits the clouds extended up some distance, and, strange to say, a succession of peaks were to be seen above the clouds, suspended, as it were, in the sky, and having no connection with the peaks below, except a close resemblance in form. Their outlines were distinctly marked against the clear blue sky, but they had a strange, chalky, light appearance, as if they could be blown away by a breath. Some of the passengers said they were merely unusual forms taken by the clouds; others insisted that they were a reflection of the peaks below—a species of _Fata Morgana_. A few old Alp frequenters, among them our friend of the gravel acquaintance, ventured to assert that they were real mountains, but their idea was laughed down as ridiculous. While the dispute was the hottest, the wind, by a strange freak, dispersed the clouds almost in an instant, and we had before us one of the mighty ranges of Switzerland, beside which our mountains of the lake shore were mere hillocks.

“From the foot of Lake Zurich we took the railroad carriages for Ragatz and Chur. This journey is among my most vivid recollections of Switzerland: for we were following the courses of the valleys and streams through that wonderful range of mountains that we had seen from the lake. We twisted ourselves into every possible position to see the snow-capped summits directly above us, and our fellow-travellers—English, French, and Germans—became so excited over the scenery that they would call out to each other—for, though the language might not be understood, the gestures were unmistakable—and they would rush from one side of the cars to the other, even dropping down on the floor, to get a sight from the car-windows of the very tip-top of the mountains. The enthusiasm seemed contagious; there were haughty Englishmen, stolid Germans, fashionable young ladies, and confirmed dandies equally forgetful of appearances. Indeed, as we passed peak after peak, now clustered together, now opening and showing beautiful valleys between, or dark, shaded chasms, the jagged rocks taking new shapes and hues every instant, it was like watching a grand and ever-varying kaleidoscope.”

MUSICA ECCLESIASTICA. A collection of Masses, Vespers, Hymns, Motets, etc., for the service of the Catholic Church. New York: J. Fischer & Bro.

Of this publication the Part 16 sent us, containing motets for singing at the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, is a collection well suited for use at that function. But we must object to the title of the general work, as neither this nor any figured _music_ can be sung by ecclesiastics, as such, officiating in any service of the Catholic Church. The only melody properly styled _musica ecclesiastica_ is the Gregorian chant. Definitions are always of grave moment. Suppose that some one of our enterprising publishers should present the public with a manual of prayers such as the _St. John’s Manual_, the _Key of Heaven_, or the _Mission Book_ under the title of “Manual for the Clergy, consisting of prayers, litanies, hymns, and other devotions _for the service of the Catholic Church_”; it is plain that it would not receive the imprimatur of a Catholic school-boy.

Under a proper title we give our hearty encouragement to the work which our German Catholic brethren abroad and here in the United States have within the last few years pursued with such praiseworthy zeal in the composition of music for the use of our choirs, which, if we do not think it to be the most suitable and most consistent in tone with the letter and spirit of the Catholic ritual, is decidedly a vast improvement upon the sensual, operatic style of music whose melodies and harmonies have emasculated the devotion and vitiated the taste of, we regret to say, almost the majority of Catholics in modern times.

THE COMPREHENSIVE GEOGRAPHY. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. New York: P. O’Shea, 37 Barclay St. 1876.

We are inclined to think that this series is the best of the many which have of late years been presented to the public, and certainly do not know of any which are superior to it in any respect except in the department of physical geography; and it is as complete even in this as it could well be without an additional volume specially devoted to that subject.

The feature which should particularly recommend it to Catholics is the prominence which it gives to facts connected with religion. There is no branch of study for the young in which it is so important that religion should be prominent as geography, with the exception, of course, of history. Even the best text-books hitherto published are perhaps a little too reticent in this respect. The desire to accomplish this object has in the present work led to the introduction of some rather unnecessary details; but this is a fault on the right side.

We hope that this series will become popular, as it deserves to be, in Catholic schools.

THE COMPLETE OFFICE OF HOLY WEEK ACCORDING TO THE ROMAN MISSAL AND BREVIARY. In Latin and English. New edition. Revised and enlarged. 18mo, pp. 563. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

This edition of _Holy Week_ is a new and corrected one; it is printed from large type on good paper, and is well and substantially bound. Moreover, it is complete, containing all the offices of the church from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, inclusive. This edition is the only correct one now published in this country. It has been carefully read by persons competent to guarantee against the gross blunders that are apt to disfigure Catholic works of the greatest importance. The price is so low that the book is within the reach of every one, thus enabling them to follow easily the services of the church during Holy Week.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 146.—MAY, 1877.

THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[26]

Footnote 26:

_Two Chancellors, etc._ By Julian Klaczko. Translated by Frank P. Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

_Pro Nihilo_ and other pamphlets on the Arnim question.

M. Julian Klaczko is by birth a Polish Jew and is a convert to the Catholic Christian faith. He was for a time employed in the office of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards a member of the imperial parliament. He has, however, generally been a resident in France, where his numerous essays on political topics have been published, all of which have attracted much attention and won for their author a high reputation. We have already, in our number for last March, made some observations on the career and policy of one of the two chancellors, whose lives and public actions, so far as they had progressed at the time of its publication, were sketched in the work whose title is given below. This work is one of the most interesting political _brochures_ of our time, and we propose to continue in the present article the review of it commenced in our previous one, confining our attention chiefly to the chancellor of the German Empire.

Prince Bismarck has been characterized by M. Thiers as “a savage full of genius.” He is one of Carlyle’s “heroes”—an expression synonymous with that of the clever French statesman, and denoting a giant in whom is embodied intellectual and physical force, irrespective of any moral direction. To this native strength, which has remained through life to a great extent rude and uncultivated, and not in any way to a regular and careful education, Otto von Bismarck is indebted for the success he has achieved. His studies were finished on his entrance at the university, and never resumed. It is doubtful whether he ever passed the legal examination required before entering the civil service in Prussia. Nevertheless, such a man is always a sort of extraordinary professor to himself. He has read literature and studied men and events. It is absurd to call such a man uneducated; and, although he does not possess the art of speaking or writing according to rule, he is able to use both his tongue and pen with an original power which sometimes rises to the highest level of eloquence, and to coin expressions which, once uttered, can never be forgotten. We have quoted one in our former article, about the “iron dice of destiny,” and we will give one more, which we think is unsurpassed in the annals of modern speech:

“One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations he suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the _Freischütz_.

“In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are 'enchanted balls,’ and that, in order to obtain them, he must surrender himself to the infernal spirits and deliver his soul to them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by the ball he made use of: 'Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?’ Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying out: 'It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and, pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: _Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?_’”

The suggestion will doubtless present itself immediately to the minds of many of our readers that the poetic myth of the _Freischütz_ is likely to be fulfilled in sober, actual reality when the German imperial drama is played out, and that Bismarck will prove to have been the Robin of William I. But this is an anticipation, and we return to our sheep and our young wolf. An equally marked and well-known trait of Bismarck’s style in speech and writing is a cold, biting, ironical humor, which often assumes the outward guise of frankness, sometimes ferocious, sometimes farcical, but always dangerous and often deadly when the master of the weapon is wielding it in a real fight. The general tone of his disposition is contemptuous and misanthropical, as of one who alternately sneers and laughs at mankind in general, on the whole despising the game of life, yet going in for deep play with all his soul when the chance presents itself, for mere occupation and amusement; just as he plunged into the Burschen-life in his youth and hunted bears at a later period in Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy in his character; as an enemy he is relentless, and no gentle or noble sentiments hamper his progress in the way of his policy of “blood and iron.” Yet there is a most tender and devoted affection manifested in his letters to his sister, Malvina von Arnim—“Maldewinchen”; so far as we know he has been a kind husband and father; there seems really to be something genuine in his long friendship for Prince Gortchakoff; and all the world knows that he risked his life to rescue a servant from drowning. The impression we have received from all we have ever read or heard about him is, that his natural disposition, like that of Napoleon, is generous and noble, but, like his, has been perverted by ambition.

His early life did not promise any great achievements. He went by the name of “Mad Bismarck,” and was always restless, unsettled, without steady application to any definite aim. What his real inward convictions are or have been, in religion, philosophy, and the higher sphere of political ethics, is very difficult to determine, at least for us who are at a distance; or even to decide how far he has ever formed and cherished any deep and settled convictions at all. Practically, he has been a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean, a heathen and a materialist, using all things and all ideas as so many counters of no value except for his own game. The opinions which he professed at the outset of his political career were those of “the party of the cross,” that old-Prussian, religious, monarchical, conservative party represented by the illustrious Baron von Gerlach, which has been in opposition to the administration of the chancellor, and is now in a quasi-alliance with the Catholic party.

“'I belong—' such was the defiant declaration of Herr von Bismarck in one of his first speeches in the chamber—'I belong to an opinion which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism and of tendencies of the middle age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation.’ He wanted a _Christian state_. 'Without a religious basis,’ said he, 'a state is nothing but _a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable_.’”

What can be finer or truer than this statement, in which the whole of his own policy as chancellor of the German Empire is condemned in advance out of his own mouth? In every important respect his avowed opinions and political action were diametrically opposite to those of a later date. In fact, his bold and even extravagant advocacy of the cause of the house of Hapsburg, at a moment when (1850) the attitude of Prussia towards Austria was most humiliating, was the first occasion of launching him into the career of foreign affairs. He was sent, with much misgiving on the part of the king and his minister, as Prussian plenipotentiary to the Diet of Frankfort; and here he began to go to school to Prince Gortchakoff, now commenced that world-renowned friendship between these two statesmen which has altered the course of history and for whose _dénoûement_ we are at this moment intently watching.

It would be idle to suppose that these two men traced out beforehand the common policy which they have since pursued in concert. It was impossible for any human sagacity to foresee the conjunctures which have since arisen, and have furnished to Bismarck the opportunities of which his genius has availed itself to destroy and to upbuild great political fabrics. They could only plan, in general, the aggrandizement of Russia and Prussia, by the breaking down of the traditional policy of coalition and balance among the European powers. All that we can see clearly respecting the incipient working of Bismarck’s mind at this period is, that he contracted an aversion for Austria, a contempt for the German confederation, and a mean opinion in general of the diplomats who had the management of the European state-craft. The idea of a new era of absolutism in a few great, conquering nations—an absolutism “tinged with popular passions,” or, according to his favorite expression,“spotted with red”—dawned on his mind and became gradually more distinct. Some extravagant projects were at times bubbling in his restless brain, and he often threatened to abandon the career of regular diplomatic service and go into politics “in his swimming-drawers.” But when the Prussian administration proposed to him to go to Russia as resident ambassador, with a view, as he expressed it, of “putting him on ice” to cool him down, he consented to don a “bear-skin” instead of the aforesaid habiliments of a _sans-culottes_.

On the 1st of April, _his birth-day_, 1859, Herr von Bismarck arrived in the capital of the Russian Empire, of which his former colleague at Frankfort was already the chancellor. Among the Russians he was extremely popular; for he took extraordinary pains to make himself agreeable to them, and seemed to have turned himself into a Russian, for the time being, in donning the bear-skin. Notwithstanding his outward hilariousness, he was inwardly morose, dissatisfied with the course which Prussian and European politics were following, and feeling himself condemned to honorable exile and inaction. He was once so severely ill through chagrin that his life was in danger. He said on his recovery that he had gone “half-way to a better world,” and expressed regret that he had not completed the journey. He thought of abandoning politics altogether, and with difficulty overcame his impatience sufficiently to bide his time a little longer. Gortchakoff said that Russia “did not sulk, but meditated.” Bismarck sulked and meditated. But meanwhile the course of events was preparing for him his opportunity. The strange and mixed drama in which Napoleon III., destined to be its principal victim, was the chief actor—whose critical moments were Sebastopol, Solferino, Sadowa, Sedan—was going on. This great actor, once regarded as a sphinx of political wisdom, but now designated by no more honorable title than the “dreamer of Ham,” holds a conspicuous place in the group of those apparently and temporarily great men to whom belongs the epitaph sadly composed for himself by the expiring Joseph II., Emperor of Austria: “Here lies the man who failed in all his undertakings.” More than this, he is a signal instance of that blind fatuity by which those men who set themselves to counteract the order of divine Providence are seduced, as the King of Israel was by the “lying spirit” in the mouth of his prophets, to ruin themselves and become the executioners of divine vengeance on their own persons.

If Louis Napoleon had had good sense and moral principle enough to imitate Charlemagne, he might have confirmed his dynasty, established France in solid power and prosperity, and earned true glory as a benefactor of Christendom. But he was not “of the seed of those men by whom salvation was brought to Israel.” He aspired to imitate Cæsar and Napoleon without possessing their genius. He imitated the profligacy of Cæsar in his youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in his old age. His early vices avenged themselves in the pain and disease which unmanned and incapacitated him for action in the last eventful crisis of his career. His criminal alliance with Carbonari and conspirators in his youth entangled him afterwards in a mesh which he had not courage, even if he had the wish, to break. By his alliance with the Turk he prepared an enemy in Russia, who became one principal cause of his final downfall and the humiliation of France, while he gained nothing beyond a momentary prestige of glory for his army. By his Italian campaign, and his subsequent support of Prussia against Austria, he weakened the power which would otherwise have befriended France in her dire distress; and he built up a kingdom which abandoned and betrayed him, at the cost of incurring the malediction which falls on all betrayers and oppressors of the Holy See.

By his greed of territory in annexing Savoy he alienated for ever his former ally, England. By the war above alluded to and his miserable Mexican _fiasco_ he used up the splendid army of France, and was found _minus habens_ when the day of destiny came on him unprepared. He deliberately fostered the military and political increase of Prussia, and then madly dragged down upon France that terrible power which, having first outwitted, in the second place crushed him.

We have read of some one who drew an enigmatical figure, in which a crowned serpent is represented twining from his tail upward through a combination of four letters S, and strangled by the upper crook of the topmost letter. In this figure is strikingly symbolized the course of events in Europe from the Crimean war to the Prussian conquest. During Bismarck’s residence in Russia, which followed Sebastopol, came the day of Solferino. The immediate effect of this battle was an attempt to mobilize the Prussian army, which disclosed to the crown-prince, now Emperor of Germany, its miserable condition, and suggested to him the plan of its entire reformation. This plan he afterwards carried out, accomplishing it with unprecedented rapidity and skill by the aid of Von Moltke and Von Roon, against the violent opposition of the parliament and the whole people. Thus was Bismarck’s great instrument of making force bring right under subjection prepared for him in advance, without his concurrence. The connivance and concurrence of Russia were already secured, most cordially so far as further designs on Austria were concerned, and at least conditionally and passively in respect to ulterior projects of improving Prussia’s position.

The “Iron Count” is now about to try the strength of his Thor’s hammer on the head of the sphinx. Bismarck is about to become the head of the Prussian state, and try his craft and strength in a contest for supremacy with Louis Napoleon. He was called home toward the end of 1861 for consultation and to assist at the coronation of King William, and returned to St. Petersburg only to close up the affairs of his mission and take farewell. In May, 1862, he was at Berlin, and evidently destined for the post of Chief Minister. He was, however, _ad interim_ sent on the mission to Paris, _to take the measure of Louis Napoleon_ and study more nearly the position of European affairs, which all centred at that time in the Tuileries. We should rather say that he went to Paris to _complete_ these studies and observations. Already, in 1858, he had sounded the French emperor in respect to his sentiments towards Prussia, and found them most encouraging. During the same year Louis Napoleon had sent this singular message by Count Pepoli to the court of Berlin: “In Germany Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the future; in linking itself to Austria Prussia condemns itself to immobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a higher fortune; _it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which await it, and which Germany awaits from it_.” Consider this language, and then think of the prison of Wilhelmshöhe and of the reflections which must have passed through the mind of the unfortunate dreamer so rudely awakened by the thunder of Von Moltke’s guns! King William had had an interview with Louis Napoleon at Compiègne, for which Bismarck had aided him in preparing, and it was partly the result of this interview which had determined him to call the bold cavalier of the Mark to his side. The dreamer’s vague and scheming mind revolved vast projects of Pan-Latin, Pan-German, Pan-Sclavonian combinations, uniting the three great races and the three great churches, with their respective centres at Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, in a triple alliance of universal monarchies, to dominate the world, to inaugurate a new era, to bring on the millennium of civilization, and to place the name of Louis Napoleon at least on a par with those of Moses, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Constantine, and Charlemagne.

We have read in the autobiography of some German philosopher that in his youth he was ravished with ecstasy in thinking of “_the wheels of the eternal essences_”! The visionary projects of this unfortunate imperial seer remind us forcibly of this boyish philosopher. While he was letting France drift on towards the _Où allons nous?_ of Mgr. Dupanloup, he was driving his imaginary chariot, on the “wheels of the eternal essences,” through airy regions, casting an occasional undecided glance on Belgium and the frontiers of the Rhine. Bismarck was not long in taking his measure, and it appears that Prince Gortchakoff had long since learned the passes by which he could magnetize him at pleasure. With his own peculiar, knavish frankness, Bismarck avowed his own objective aim—the rectification of the Prussian frontiers—and found it easy to amuse the decaying emperor with vague hints of compensation to France by allowing the annexation of Belgium and the territory on the left bank of the Rhine. As for the opinion which was formed respecting Bismarck himself, at this time and during the first period of his administration, by the emperor and the diplomats, it appears now strangely comical. They could not bring themselves to regard him as serious, and were thrown completely off their guard by his consummate acting. As late as 1865, when he visited the French emperor at Biarritz, the latter, while listening to his harangues during the promenades which they took together on the beach, would slyly press the arm of Prosper Merimée, and even whispered once in his ear: “He is crazy.” M. Benedetti in the following year told General Govone that he considered Bismarck to be “a maniacal diplomat,” adding that he had _long known his man_, and had _followed him up_ for fifteen years. There is something grimly amusing in this play of the cat and the mice, notwithstanding its tragical results and the pity we must feel for the victims who thought themselves so extremely astute, but were lured on by one deeper in craft than they were, as easily as the meditative, solemn bruin was enticed by Reynard the fox to go after honey.

Bismarck left Paris, convinced of three things as the result of his studies: First, that Louis Napoleon was a “great unrecognized _incapacity_.” Second, that “liberalism is only nonsense which it is easy to bring to reason; but revolution is a force which it is necessary to know how to use.” Third, “that England need not enter into his calculations.” He returned to Berlin to assume the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs and commence the work of rounding off Prussia. Austria was the one decided antagonist whom he had to meet in the critical struggle for supremacy in Germany. He was not afraid of her single power unaided by allies, but he was anxious to make doubly sure of the neutrality of France and Russia. Circumstances favored him most remarkably in producing an alienation between these two powers, which was an efficacious preventive of any amicable concord between the two to check his plans, and in persuading each one more decisively to connive at them. The Polish insurrection, encouraged by France and Austria, embroiled Alexander II. with Louis Napoleon, and renewed all the former rancor of St. Petersburg against Vienna. Bismarck was cunning enough to make secret preparations for taking advantage of the insurrection, if it proved too strong for Russia to quell, by occupying Poland with Prussian troops, and securing the final disposition of the whole Polish question for himself. At the same time he so managed as to strengthen the bond between himself and Gortchakoff, and, in the actual event, to bind Russia and Prussia closely together by an open common policy in respect to Poland. Favored by fortunate circumstances, by the co-operation of military chiefs who showed a genius in organizing and leading the Prussian army which astonished the world, by a fatuity in Louis Napoleon and a complaisance in the Russian chancellor beyond his most sanguine expectations, he played during the next four years, like a Paul Morphy of politics, four or five games at once with masterly skill. King William of Prussia and all the other rulers and statesmen of Europe were but pieces or pawns to be played with, taken, or checkmated; and on the day after the battle of Sadowa he was really master of the situation.

The objective point at which Bismarck aimed in the year 1862 was to make Prussia the most powerful state in Europe and completely independent of every other state or coalition of states. For this end it was necessary to destroy the German _Bund_, to deprive Austria of all power in Germany, to increase the Prussian territory, and to establish its hegemony in Germany. All this was accomplished, before the close of the year 1866, by means of the imbroglio of the Schleswig-Holstein succession. When Christian IX. succeeded to the throne of Denmark, his right to the succession in the duchies was disputed, because it came through a female line debarred from inheriting by the ancient law of Schleswig and Holstein. The designs of Prussia upon these duchies were, however, of a much earlier origin, and had their birth from the liberal party and its revolutionary movements in 1848. In a speech delivered in the Prussian chambers, April 21, 1849, Herr von Bismarck declared that the war provoked in the duchies of the Elbe was “an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary.” We will not pretend to determine the question of the validity of King Christian’s title, as between himself and the people of the duchies. It is evident enough, however, that the matter was one which interested all Europe, and ought to have been calmly, justly determined, in a manner consonant with the interests of the kingdom of Denmark, of the people of the duchies, of the confederated states of the German _Bund_, and of Europe. In fact, the doubt respecting Christian’s title was seized upon by Bismarck as a mere pretext for absorbing the disputed territory, _with its fine Baltic sea-port of Kiel_, into Prussia. The Prince of Augustenberg, the chief claimant against Christian, had been induced, a short time before the accession of the latter to the Danish throne, by the influence of Bismarck himself, to sell his claim on Holstein to the government of Copenhagen. No sooner was the old king dead than Bismarck declared that this same prince was the rightful duke. At a later period he brought forward several other claimants, that these rival claims might neutralize each other. How he cheated Lord John Russell; how he used the German _Bund_ as a tool for his own purposes and then scornfully pushed it aside; how he drew Austria into a war against Denmark, followed by a joint occupation of the duchies, and then commenced a quarrel against her for their sole possession; and how England, the declared protector of Denmark, looked tamely on while it was despoiled and maimed, we have not time to relate in detail. It was a great blunder in France, England, and Russia to permit what they could easily have prevented. On the part of Austria it was a stupendous and suicidal folly to make itself an accomplice in a conspiracy for destroying the bulwarks of its own power. This was soon made manifest, but too late to escape the consequences of a fatal blunder. Prussia being ready for action, the _Bund_ and the claimants of the duchies were summarily shoved aside. The question of the right of succession in the duchies was referred to a high Prussian court for adjudication. It was decided that _the King of Denmark alone_ had possessed the right of sovereignty in Schleswig and Holstein, and that, by the cession which he had been forced to make after being conquered in war, this right was now vested in Prussia and Austria. Austria was politely requested to sell her share to Prussia, which she declined to do, and the next step was to wrest it from her by force.

The dark intrigues—at the time so hidden from sight and so almost desperate, even in the view of the “maniacal diplomat” who held their threads in his hand and wove them into a mesh around his victim—by which Bismarck planned the ruin of Austria, have since been fully disclosed. With the government of Victor Emanuel a strict and secret treaty was contracted. At the same time, and for several years after, a correspondence was kept up with Mazzini, looking to the overthrow of Victor Emanuel in case of any action on his part unfavorable to the schemes of the arch-conspirators. Arrangements were made for fomenting an insurrection in Hungary under the leadership of Garibaldi. The neutrality and connivance of Louis Napoleon were secured by playing upon his Italian sympathies and holding before him vague expectations of compensation for France.

Prince Gortchakoff lent an underhand but most valuable help to his friend all through, beginning with the attack on Denmark. It was Louis Napoleon, whose incapacity and weakness were not yet fully revealed even to Bismarck’s keen eye, who was most feared and distrusted. Enfeebled as he was in respect to whatever capacity he had really possessed in his prime, and weakened as was the power of France, yet, with the help of the statesmen and soldiers who were at his disposal, he still retained the power of determining the main issue in the politics of Europe, and Bismarck knew it. He would not stir in any decisive action until well assured that he had mastered the French emperor by his superior craft. He had less difficulty in this than he anticipated. Louis Napoleon, like most other European observers, overrated the military strength of Austria, and underrated the new Prussian army with its almost untried leaders, Von Roon and Von Moltke; which even Bismarck himself somewhat distrusted up to the last moment. The French emperor desired and hoped for the liberation of Venetia. But he expected the defeat of the Prussian army in Germany, and for himself the _rôle_ of a mediator, an umpire, a general referee for settling all things on the basis of a new treaty of peace. He let Bismarck play his game out, with what result is known to the world. Although victorious in Italy, Austria nevertheless ceded Venetia to Louis Napoleon, who handed it over to Victor Emanuel. The victory of Sadowa agreeably surprised the victor, brought despair to the vanquished, and astonished the world. If all the other great powers had not been alienated from each other, and under a fatal spell of the arch-fiend, Robin’s master, whose enchanted balls had brought down the Austrian eagle, they might have intervened to prevent the grave ulterior consequences of this fatal day of Sadowa. If Louis Napoleon had not been paralyzed and demoralized to the extent of utter imbecility, he might have interfered alone, and successfully, in this his last opportunity for saving his dynasty and saving France. Nobody interfered. There was a weak show of negotiations, but Bismarck had his own way in everything. Before the end of the year 1866 his spoils were all gathered in and safely garnered, and the centre was shifted from Paris to Berlin.

The area of Prussia had been increased, by the annexation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort, and the duchies of the Elbe, from 108,000 to 135,000 English square miles, and its population from 19,000,000 to 23,000,000. It was, moreover, the head of a North German Confederation, and practically had control of the South German States, with the certainty of having all Germany outside of Austria to co-operate with it and follow its lead in case of hostilities with France. These were the “moral conquests of Prussia in Germany” which the king, as prince-regent, had announced to the nation when he assumed the reins of government. This was the fulfilment of “the federal obligations toward the Emperor Francis Joseph,” so much talked of at Potsdam, while the future chancellor was hunting bears in Russia. Such was the sequel of the protest of Berlin against the Piedmontese annexation. The prophecy of Cavour was fulfilled: that “Prussia would one day, thanks to Piedmont, profit by the example which had been given to it.”

The “Piedmontese mission of Prussia,” vaunted by the French democratic press, was well inaugurated and pretty near fulfilment. Louis Napoleon’s oracular sayings about the “great destinies of Prussia” proved to have something else in them than “the stuff which dreams are made of.” He had no longer to utter the philanthropic complaint: “_The geographical position of Prussia is badly defined._” It was perhaps not quite perfect in the opinion of Bismarck, but it was certainly vastly improved, and destined to a still further rectification which had probably not been revealed to the imperial dreamer.

Having disposed of his _first_ accomplice in the great scheme, gradually matured during his sulky meditations at Frankfort and St. Petersburg under the tuition of his master in diplomacy, Prince Gortchakoff—namely, having put down Austria—Bismarck proceeded with his next plot: against his accomplice in the one just successfully carried into execution. Austria had been lured on by the expectation of sharing in the spoliation of Denmark, defrauded of her portion of the spoils, and stripped of a great part of her original possessions, to the advantage of Prussia. In like manner Louis Napoleon was disappointed of the acquisitions he hoped to receive as a reward for conniving at the spoliation of Austria; he and his dynasty were overthrown completely, and we trust finally; France was humiliated to the dust and compelled to ransom herself from captivity by the price of her treasure and her territory. The disruption of the European bond left France, as Austria had been left, at the mercy of her perfidious ally, converted into an open and relentless enemy.

During the preliminaries of peace at Nikolsburg, afterwards ratified by the treaty of Prague, by which the German hegemony of Prussia was established, Bismarck persuaded the French emperor through his envoy, the unfortunate M. Benedetti—the same one who knew his man and followed him up so skilfully—that “the reverses of Austria allowed _France and Prussia to modify their territorial situation_.” Hints were thrown out about the Rhine provinces and Belgium. After Prussia had completed her own modification of her territorial situation for the time being, Bismarck continued, while Prussia was taking a rest and making all her political and military arrangements perfect, what he called his “dilatory negotiations” with Louis Napoleon. The latter was asking for compensations, for which he had not stipulated when he placed his services at the disposal of his employer. Mephistopheles qualified this demand as a “policy of _pour boire_.” You engage a _fiacre_ in Paris, you pay the stipulated price to the driver, and he presents his hand again, unless you anticipate him by a voluntary gratuity, with the familiar phrase: “Pour boire, monsieur, s’il vous plaît!” If you are a good-humored gentleman, you hand over a few sous and he departs contented. If you are gruff and parsimonious, and show unwillingness to comply with his polite request, he will reiterate it with less deference and civility. Whereupon, if you are violent and profane, and have sufficient command of the French language to speak after the manner of the _gamins de Paris_, you refer him to a person beyond the “_Porte de l’Enfer_.” The history of the secret treaty of offensive and defensive alliance between France and Prussia, giving the aid of France to carry out the further programme of Prussian ascendency in Germany, and the aid of Prussia to secure Luxembourg and Belgium to France, signed by France, though not signed, _only laid up in her archives_, by Prussia, is well known. A previous project of a treaty ceding the Rhine provinces to France was shown to the South German plenipotentiaries and drove them into a secret and strict alliance with Prussia. The work of Nikolsburg and Prague was completed, the whole military force of North and South Germany was at the disposal of King William, and nothing was wanting but a war with France to make him emperor of Germany, with Alsace and Lorraine as additional provinces of his kingdom, and all expenses paid by the French treasury. Bismarck could now drop the mask whenever he pleased, and bully the unfortunate emperor into the folly of trying to expiate his past misconduct by _baptizing himself in the fire_ of Prussian artillery and _mitraille_. This dark and tragic act in the drama of the Downfall of Europe is summed up with consummate truth and terseness in that little masterpiece entitled _The Fight in Dame Europa’s School: showing how the German boy thrashed the French boy, and how the English boy looked on_:

“Only one boy—his favorite fag—did William take into his confidence in the matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad named Mark, not over-scrupulous in what he did, full of deep tricks and dodges, and so cunning that the old dame herself, though she had the eyes of a hawk, could never catch him out in anything absolutely wrong. To this smart youth William one day whispered his desires [of annexing part of Louis’ garden] as they sat together in the summer house smoking and drinking beer. 'There is only one way to do it,’ said Mark. 'If you want the flower-beds, you must fight Louis for them, and I believe you will lick him all to smash. You see, old fellow, you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully, that you are really getting quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time when you were quite a little chap!’ 'Yes,’ said William, turning up his eyes devoutly, 'it has pleased Providence that I should be stout. Then, my dear Mark, what do you advise me to do?’ 'Ah! that is not so easy to say. Give me time to think, and when I have an idea I will let you know. Only, whatever you do, take care to put Master Louis in the wrong. Don’t pick a quarrel with _him_, but force him, by quietly provoking him, to pick a quarrel with _you_. Give out that you are still peaceably disposed, and carry your Testament about as usual. That will put old Dame Europa off her guard, and she will believe in you as much as ever. The rest you may leave to me.’ An opportunity of putting their little plot into execution soon occurred. A garden became vacant on the other side of Louis’ little territory [Spain], which none of the boys seemed much inclined to accept. It was a troublesome piece of ground, exposed to constant attacks from the town-cads, who used to overrun it in the night and pull up the newly-planted flowers. 'Don’t you think,’ said Mark one day to his friend and patron, 'that your little cousin, the new boy [Prince Hohenzollern], might as well have that garden?’ 'I don’t see why he should not, if he wants it,’ replied William, by no means deep enough to understand what his faithful fag was driving at. 'It will be so nice for Louis, don’t you see, to have William to keep him in check on one side, and William’s little cousin to watch him on the other side,’ observed Mark innocently. 'Ah! to be sure,’ exclaimed William, beginning to wake up, 'so it will; very nice indeed. Mark, you are a sly dog.’ 'I should say, if you paid Louis the compliment to propose it, that it is such a delicate little attention as he would never forget—even if you withdrew the proposal afterwards.’ 'Just so, my boy; and then we shall have to fight.’ 'But look here, won’t the other chaps say that I provoked the quarrel?’ 'Not if we manage properly,’ was the reply. 'They are sure to fix the cause of dispute on Louis rather than on you. You are such a peaceable boy, you know; and he has always been fond of a shindy.’ So Dame Europa was asked to assign the vacant garden to William’s little cousin. 'Well,’ said she, 'if Louis does not object, who will be his nearest neighbor, he may have it.’ 'But I do object, ma’am,’ cried Louis. 'I very particularly object. I don’t want to be hemmed in on all sides by William and his cousins. They will be walking through my garden to pay each other visits, and perhaps throwing balls to one another right across my lawn.’ 'Oh! but you might be sure that I should do nothing unfair,’ said William reproachfully. 'I have never attacked anybody.’ 'That’s all my eye,’ said Louis. 'I don’t believe in your piety. Come, take your dear little relation off, and give him one of the snug corners that you bagged the other day from poor Christian.’ 'Come, come,’ interposed the Dame, 'I can’t listen to such angry words. You five monitors must settle the matter quietly among yourselves; but no fighting, mind. The day for that sort of thing is quite gone by.’ _And the old lady toddled off_ and left the boys alone. 'I wouldn’t press it, Bill, if I were you,’ said John, in his deep, gruff voice, looking out of his shop-window on the other side of the water. 'I think it’s rather hard lines for Louis—I do indeed.’ 'Always ready to oblige you, my dear John,’ said William; and so the new boy’s claim to the garden was withdrawn. 'What shall I do now, Mark?’ asked William, turning to his friend. 'It seems to me that there is an end of it all.’ 'Not a bit,’ was the reply. 'Louis is still as savage as a bear. He’ll break out directly; you see if he don’t.’ 'I have been grossly insulted,’ began Louis at last, in a towering passion, 'and I shall not be satisfied unless William promises me never to make any such underhand attempts to get the better of me again.’ 'Tell him to be hanged,’ whispered Mark. 'You be—no,’ said William, recollecting himself, 'I never use bad language. My friend,’ he continued, 'I cannot promise you anything of the kind.’ 'Then I shall lick you till you do, you psalm-singing humbug!’ shouted Louis. 'Come on!’ said William, lifting up his hand as if to commend his cause to Heaven, and looking sanctimoniously out of the whites of his eyes. 'Come on!’ shouted William, thirsting for more blood. '_Vive la guerre!_’ cried poor Louis, rushing blindly at his foe. Well and nobly he fought, but he could not stand his ground. Foot by foot and yard by yard he gave way, till at last he was forced to take refuge in his arbor, from the window of which he threw stones at his enemy to keep him back from following. And when William, who talked so big about his peaceable disposition, and declared that he only wanted to defend his 'fatherland,’ chased him right across the garden, trampled over beds and borders on his way, and then swore that he would break down his beautiful summer-house and bring Louis on his knees, everybody felt that the other monitors ought to interfere. But not a foot would they stir. Aleck looked on from a safe distance, wondering which of the combatants would be tired first. Joseph stood shaking in his shoes, not daring to say a word for fear William should turn round upon him and punch his head again; and John sat in his shop, grinding away at a new rudder and a pair of oars. 'Come and help a fellow, John,’ cried Louis in despair from his arbor. 'I don’t ask you to remember the days we have spent in here together when you have been sick of your own shop. But you might do something for me, now that I am in such a desperate fix and don’t know which way to turn.’ 'I am very sorry, Louis,’ said John, 'but what can I do? It is no pleasure to me to see you thrashed. On the contrary, it would pay me much better to have a near neighbor well off and cheerful than crushed and miserable. Why don’t you give in, Louis? It is of no mortal use to go on. He will make friends directly, if you will give back the two little strips of garden; and if you don’t, he will only smash your arbor to pieces, or keep you shut up there all dinner-time and starve you out. Give in, old fellow; there’s no disgrace in it. Everybody says how pluckily you have fought.’”

The ingenious author has made a mistake about Aleck and Joseph. Aleck was in league with William, and his threats alarmed Joseph and kept him from interfering. Bismarck had succeeded in reconciling Gortchakoff to the sacrifice of all the old friends and family connections of Russia in Germany. Moreover, he had in some way convinced him so completely that it was for the interest and future advantage of Russia to ally itself closely with Prussia, that he turned a deaf ear to the advances of France and Austria in reference to the Oriental question, and gave a strong moral support, which in case of need he was ready to transform into active military co-operation, to his most iniquitous and oppressive measures against France. M. Thiers was convinced of this when Prince Bismarck handed to him his Russian portfolio and allowed him to read at leisure thirty letters which it contained, while he sat by quietly smoking a cigar and enjoying the chagrin and discomfiture of the aged statesman. Besides this, we must consider that England had a reason for coolness towards France in the unprincipled negotiations of the French government respecting England’s _protegée_, Belgium. And at last, when England did wish to interfere to obtain for France more favorable conditions of peace, and made propositions for concerted action to St. Petersburg, it was Russia which threw cold water upon the plan and kept all Europe back while William was finishing up his quarrel with Louis. It cannot be doubted that Bismarck had given Gortchakoff to understand that, when the proper time came, Prussia would secure for Russia a fair field and no interference for a decisive and final effort to destroy the European empire of the Turk. Fuad-Pasha, said to have been one of the greatest statesmen of Turkey, while lying on his death-bed at Nice dictated a political testament, which was sent, after his mortal career had closed, to his sovereign, the sultan. In this document he had said: “When this writing is placed before the eyes of your majesty, I will no longer be in this world. You can, therefore, listen to me without distrust, and you should imbue yourself with this great and grievous truth: that _the empire of the Osmanlis is in danger_. An intestine dissension in Europe, and _a Bismarck in Russia_, and the face of the world will be changed.” The date of this document is January 3, 1869.

The conflict between Prince Bismarck and the Catholic Church has been treated of repeatedly in former articles in this magazine. We will, therefore, abstain from going over that ground again. It has been surmised that the policy of the Prussian chancellor in respect to the church has been dictated to him by the necessity of satisfying the demands of the radical-liberal party. We cannot think that it is to be accounted for simply on this ground. The general idea and fundamental principle of Bismarck has been to destroy the community of nations which was the remnant of ancient Christendom, and raise up an independent, self-subsisting, absolute, and dominating German Empire. It is an essential part of this plan to destroy the principle of unity and community centred in the Holy See, and to make the emperor absolute head of all churches within the boundaries of his state. The idea is wholly pagan and despotic, and includes the subversion of all right except that which is a conceded privilege derived from the sovereign will of the state. Not only, therefore, is all international right ignored by it, but every right of municipalities, of orders, of legislative and judicial bodies, of subordinate members of the government, of associations and individuals, is suppressed and merged in one paramount right of force, of physical power—in a word, of tyranny, the worst, as Plato long ago taught, of all possible political organisms.

In perfect harmony with the oppressive, persecuting policy of Prince Bismarck toward the church has been his conduct toward the Prussian nobility, the legislative chambers, and all those who have in any way asserted their rights against his despotic might. This is illustrated in the case of the Count Harry von Arnim.

We had intended to go more deeply into the merits of this affair than we now find our remaining space will permit. Catholics have little reason for cherishing amicable sentiments toward this unfortunate victim of a relentless persecution under the forms of law. He has been one of the most artful and persistent enemies of the Holy See among the statesmen of Europe. The pamphlet _Pro Nihilo_, on account of which, in great part, he was condemned of treason by a Prussian court, is sufficient, by itself, to show that if he had been in power he would have been more dangerous than even Bismarck. His cold contempt is more offensive to Catholic feelings than the violence of his successful rival. Nevertheless, there is in him more of honor, probity, veracity, and the courtesy of a gentleman than is at this day very common among diplomatists of the “new era.” Besides, he has been tricked, insulted, ill-used, and all but crushed in pieces by a cruel enemy, and therefore we cannot help sympathizing with him. There is something deeply tragic in his story. The gist of it lies in this: that he would not be a blind, subservient tool in the hands of the chief of the administration, that he dared to think for himself, and that the old Prussian nobility had fixed their hopes on him as a desirable successor to the chancellorship, in case anything happened to Prince Bismarck. Hence the long, perfidious, and in the end brutal warfare waged against him by his unscrupulous and relentless enemy, who has for the time being triumphed, according to his own maxim, _La force prime le droit_. The Count von Arnim is still, however, a formidable antagonist. With the pen, on the field of legal argument, in the subtle tactics of diplomatic writing, he is superior to his persecutor, and master of a force dangerous even to the man who can command armies. He has a host of friends and sympathizers in Prussia, of allies throughout Europe. M. Benedetti was not mistaken when he applied the epithet “maniacal” to the man who was called “mad” by the friends and boon companions of his youth. His madness is not without method, and, like that of Charles XII. of Sweden, has given him a certain prestige of heroism and success. On the day of Solferino that prestige sat on the helmet of Napoleon III. Sedan, Wilhelmshöhe, and Chiselhurst were still invisible in the future. The career of Bismarck is not yet finished, nor can the destiny which awaits the empire he created be foretold. It is reported that he has recently replied to those who asked him whether there would be war in Europe over the Eastern question: “_The devil only knows!_” He appears to regard his Satanic Majesty as the god of modern Europe and the supreme controlling power in modern politics. Formerly the name of God was frequently on his lips, and his thoughts spontaneously referred all things to him. It was God who decided battles and controlled the destinies of nations. Men of great genius cannot escape from their clear and vivid intuitions of the supersensible. One who has had the insight and the sentiment of the meanness of the world, and the sole grandeur of eternal principles of truth and morality, belonging to a mind naturally great, cannot be a complete dupe of the illusions by which he deceives and subdues the multitude. We can see this deep melancholy of a mind which cannot be satisfied with the trivialities of life, and is restlessly yearning after something greater, in all the wild conviviality, restless scheming, audacious enterprise, ironical sporting in word and deed with all persons and things held in awe and regarded as sacred in the common sentiments of humanity, in the whole career of this Carlylean hero. Satan, we have no doubt, has had a great control over the rulers and the politics of modern Europe. Bismarck can see this, and has assuredly not forgotten his own prophecy of the results of the policy of adorning one’s self with the feathers of eagles which have been brought down by the devil’s bullets. When he says that “the devil only knows whether there will be war in Europe,” we hear Robin telling Max that he has concluded an infernal compact and must stand by it. We know, however, that although the devil knows his own plans, and tries to guess at those of God, he cannot fathom or thwart these plans of one who is infinitely stronger and wiser than he is, and has often before made him catch himself in his own mouse-trap. Bismarck is like the legendary giant Christopher, while he was in the service of the demon, thinking him to be the strongest master he could serve. He has acted as if he supposed that God had given up Europe to the devil’s dominion, yet he betrays his conviction in a hundred ways that there is a stronger power than the revolution or the anti-Christian despotism “spotted with red,” which is only biding its time. He despises and sneers at his own master, because he sees him wince at the crucifix on the cross-road. We think it quite probable that in his secret soul he venerates Pius IX., as did Mazzini, and is convinced that if anything on earth is great, true, and as enduring in the future as it has been in the past, it is the Catholic Church. His fear of it, and his war _à l’outrance_ against it, show an estimate of its power which can have no rational foundation except in an unwilling, hostile apprehension of its divine origin. The shallow, clever Count von Arnim is a cool, quiet sceptic. So, we conjecture, is Prince Gortchakoff. Bismarck is too deep for that sort of smooth, placid incredulity. He fears an ultramontane as children are afraid of a bear under the bed. He is afraid of Jesuits, afraid of nuns, afraid of children singing hymns in honor of the Sacred Heart.

We think he has some reason to be afraid. The waters are rising around him, and it is likely that he will yet have to plunge into them “in his swimming-drawers.” “Sooner or later radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and, _pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?_”

“Without a religious basis a state is nothing but _a fortuitous aggregation of interests_, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis all legislation, instead of _regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth_, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable.” This is the great case of Bismarck _versus_ Bismarck. His renunciation of his own principles, and maniacal following of passion against reason, is but a type of the conduct of Europe. The modern Germany has renounced and made war upon the principles which were the foundation of its old imperial greatness. France has done the same; Italy has done the same, with a worse and more parricidal impiety. Europe has done it, and the natural consequence is “war of all against all.” “La force,” says Lacordaire, “tôt ou tard, rencontre la force.” “_A house divided against itself cannot stand_”; and such a house is the one which Bismarck has built. The Napoleonic fabric was overwhelmed by the volcanic fires of Sedan. We believe that there will be a Sedan for the similar fabrics of Cavour and Bismarck, for the whole structure of modern European politics. And where can be found these “living sources of eternal truth” at which “legislation can regenerate itself”? Let us remind our readers that the Encyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX. were proclaimed in 1864, between the epochs of Solferino and Sadowa. We think they will easily understand why the Holy See condemned the principles of “accomplished facts” and “non-intervention,” and perceive to what an abyss these principles have conducted Europe. They will remember that the date of the Council of the Vatican is 1870, between Sadowa and Sedan, and perceive the import and reason of our conclusion, that the source of regeneration for Europe is the same source from which European Christendom received its birth and the life of its youth and manhood. To quote again from Lacordaire: “On n’emprissonne pas la raison, on ne brûle pas les faits, on ne déshonore pas la vertu, on n’assassine pas la logique.” That policy of which Prince Bismarck is the great master is the policy of fraudulence, perfidy, violence, and tyranny. The whole European apostasy and conspiracy against the Holy See—the centre of religious unity and political equilibrium for Europe and the world—is a revolt against reason, history, morality, and the logic by which the sequences of principles and events are demonstrated and applied to the concrete matter of human destiny. These are indestructible powers, and no artillery can overthrow them or fraud pervert their decisions. “_There is no kingdom of hell upon earth_,” but only a continuous resistance of the infernal powers to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which from time to time breaks out into a revolution. And the same calm, historic record, in which past Catholic historians have narrated the successive defeats of these revolutionary enterprises will, in each new chapter added by succeeding centuries, continue the chronicle of similar failures; placing the impartial mark of indelible dishonor against the names of all those who have sought for greatness by fraud and violence.

VERONICA A LEGEND OF MÉDOC

_In fines terræ_ _Verba corum._

Descending the river from Bordeaux amid verdant isles, and between shores that produce some of the choicest wines of France, we soon come, on the right, to Blaye, with its chivalric memories of Orlando and the fortress that makes it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was in the days of Ausonius, who says:

“Aut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum Fert militarem ad Blaviam.”

At the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient villa of St. Paulinus of Nola. The Gironde soon becomes a sea. The shore lowers and is on a level with the waves. The poor hills of Saintonge escape to the north, and the white houses of Royan become visible on the far-off shore. The sea-gull flies over our head, tireless as the ceaseless waves that feed him. We see the white tower of Cordouan at a distance framed in a dazzling sea of blue and gold, out of which it rises two hundred feet above low tide, full of grace and majesty, like an enchanted castle. It is said to stand on the remains of the ancient isle of Antros, which Pomponius Mela, in the first century, places at the mouth of the Gironde. We cannot resist the temptation to climb its three hundred steps for the sake of the wonderful view over fell and flood. The foundation of this tower is lost in obscurity. Even its very name is a mystery. Some think it of Moorish derivation, and that the first light-house here was built by the Saracens—a most ridiculous supposition; for the Moors, though they destroyed a great deal in Aquitaine, certainly had no time for building, whatever their taste for architecture. Others say it was due to Louis le Débonnaire, and that he appointed a keeper to light a beacon-fire and sound a _cor_, or horn, night and day, to warn the sailor of the perils of the coast; but any one who ever heard the noise of the tumultuous waves breaking high against the cliff of Cordouan can imagine the inefficiency of the most vigorous lungs in such violent storms as are proverbial on the Bay of Biscay. The poor keeper would have needed the Horn of Thunder of the Armorican legend, given St. Florentius by a Norman chief to summon aid when attacked by his piratical horde, or the magic oliphant of Orlando, then kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its owner once blew so terrible a blast that all the birds dropped dead in the forests of Roncesvalles and it was heard for twenty miles around.

The earliest historical knowledge we have of a light-house here is from a charter of the fourteenth century, by which we learn that the Black Prince built a tower on the cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, kept by a hermit. In 1409 the hermit’s name was Geoffroy de Lesparre, who subsisted by levying two _grossos sterlingorum_ on every vessel from Bordeaux laden with wine—a toll that Henry IV. of England authorized him to double.

As for the modern tower of Cordouan, Louis de Foix was

“Le gentil ingénieur de ce superbe ouvrage.”

He was one of the architects employed by Philip II. of Spain in building the Escorial, and the inventor of the mechanism by which the waters of the Tagus were carried to the highest part of the city of Toledo. Some curious things are related of this ingenious architect while in Philip’s service. The ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos, seems to have placed confidence in him; for he commissioned De Foix to furnish him with a book heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. The architect made one of twelve tablets of stone, six inches long and four broad, bound in steel covers embossed with gold, which weighed over fourteen pounds, and might have had for its motto the excellent _mot_ of Callimachus on the danger of weighty books. De Thou relates the account of this momentous tome, which is also referred to in the list of Don Carlos’ expenses, and says De Foix told him the idea was by no means an original one of the prince’s, but suggested by a similar volume improvised in his grandfather’s time by Don Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, who, confined in the castle of Simancas for taking part in the rebellion of the Comuneros, covered a brick of the size of his breviary with leather, and with this volume of decisive theology killed his keeper and made his escape. Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked the fate of the bishop, who was overtaken by the keeper’s son and hanged on the battlements of the castle of Simancas. All who have visited the Armeria Real at Madrid will remember the armor of this belligerent prelate.

De Foix also invented several curious clocks for Don Carlos, who seems to have inherited Charles V.’s taste for chronometrical instruments. Every one knows the anecdote of the servant who, suddenly entering the emperor’s room one day, overthrew the table and broke to pieces the thirty watches on it. The emperor laughed and said: “You are more successful than I, for you have discovered the only means of making them all go alike.” Among these clocks of complicated mechanism made for the prince by De Foix was one in the shape of an antique temple adorned with columns, that indicated the hours, days, months, and other things.

Don Carlos, as if conscious of the insecurity of his life, also ordered De Foix to construct a machine with pulleys and weights by which he could himself open and shut his chamber door while in bed, and yet no one could enter the room against his will. De Foix seems to have been faithless to the prince; for on the 18th of January, 1568—by the king’s order, to be sure—he stopped the movement of the pulleys, unknown to Don Carlos, whose chamber was thus opened and he conveyed to prison. De Thou’s account of this is confirmed by the letter of an Italian at Madrid written eight days after, in which the door with its pulleys is mentioned.

Louis de Foix (or _sans foi_) is said to lie beneath the tower he erected; so we could not say: “Light be the turf above thee!” even had we been disposed.

Six or eight miles south of Cordouan we came to Soulac, amid the sand-dunes and salt marshes, with its antique church of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, held in great veneration by the sailors of the middle ages, and recently dug out of the sands in which it had been buried for one hundred and twenty years. In fact, it had been partly buried since the fourteenth century. Few churches have so strange a history as this. Tradition attributes its original foundation to the pious Veronica, on whose linen veil the weary Saviour, on his way to Calvary, left the impress of his sacred face. It was strange to come upon her traces on this distant shore, and we took great interest in hunting up all the local traditions respecting her. Lady Eastlake considers her _de trop_, both morally and pictorially, and regards her very existence as problematical; but we who have so often met her in the sorrowful _Via Crucis_, and pondered on the touching lesson she has left us, feel how utterly that somewhat stringent author is mistaken. Seraphia, Bernice, Beronica, or Veronica—no matter by what name she is called—is a being full of reality to us. As to her identity with the Syro-Phœnician woman of the Gospel, we are disposed to say with Padre Ventura: “It is not certain the _hémorroïsse_ was the same as Veronica, but it is probable that she who had the wonderful favor of wiping the sweat and blood from the divine face of our Saviour was the same matron who touched the hem of his garment with so much courage and faith, and gave such a testimony to his divinity.” Even if the contrary were proved, this would not affect the ancient tradition respecting her apostolate in France, which modern research is far from shaking. Holy chroniclers of the middle ages assert that Veronica was not only an intimate friend of the Blessed Virgin, but one of the women whom Jesus healed of their infirmities and who consecrated themselves to his service, following him in his round of mercy, and aiding him with their substance. The learned Lucas of Bruges declares her positively the Syro-Phœnician woman healed by our Saviour, who, says Julian in his chronicles, lived part of the time at Jerusalem and part at Cæsarea of Philippi. Eusebius says he saw with his own eyes the monument she erected at Cæsarea in memory of her cure, on which she was represented at the feet of her divine Benefactor—a memorial destroyed by Julian the Apostate.

A Polish poet, Bohdan Zaleski, thus alludes to the traditional intimacy of Veronica with the Holy Family in lines full of graceful simplicity in the original:

“Joseph and Mary have lost the child Jesus at Jerusalem. Elizabeth comes to tell them he has been found. 'It must be either in the Temple, then, or at Veronica’s,’ replies Mary.

“The Holy Family go to visit Elizabeth. Jesus, afar off, joyfully hails the aged matron, as well as Veronica, Martha, and Salome.

“Joseph makes the accustomed prayer to thank God for his gifts. Jesus breaks the bread and blesses it. Veronica passes around the basket and distributes the bread among the guests.”

Pilgrims for centuries have mentioned Veronica’s house as at the corner of a street near the spot where Jesus fell for the second time under the weight of his cross. She is said to have been the wife of St. Amadour—the Zaccheus of the Scriptures, who in early life, says the legend, was in the service of the Blessed Virgin. He had watched over the childhood of Jesus, and this was why he was so joyful to receive him in his house. After the Crucifixion he and Veronica attached themselves anew to the service of Mary, with whom they remained till her glorious Assumption. According to a lesson in the breviary of Cahors—founded on an old MS. of the tenth century by Hugo, Bishop of Angoulême, which Père Odo de Gissey, who collected all the traditions respecting St. Amadour, declares he had seen—Saul, the persecutor of the church, wished to force Amadour and Veronica to return to the old law. They were condemned to die of hunger, but an angel of the Lord mercifully delivered them from the power of their persecutors and conducted them to a bark, ordering them to abandon themselves to the mercy of the waves and land wherever their boat should come to shore, there faithfully to serve Christ and his holy Mother.

One old chronicle says the demon invoked the winds, swelled the waves, and unchained the very furies against the frail bark. Death at every moment seemed at hand in its most frightful form. But the venerable matron, in the height of danger, seized the sacred relics she brought with her, and, raising them to heaven, invoked the assistance of God. Wonderful to relate, the storm at once ceased, a favorable breeze sprang up and brought the boat safely to the western coast of France to a place called Solac, in face of the setting sun. Here she built, as best she could, a church in honor of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and deposited therein with due honor the holy relics of Our Lady she brought with her.

Bernard de la Guionie, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, says that, by a particular providence of God, they brought with them many precious relics of the Blessed Virgin, such as her hair and shoes, and even some of the _Sanctum Lac_ that nourished the divine Word. It is generally believed this relic gave the name of Solac, or Soulac, to the place—_Solum Lac_, because the other relics of the Virgin were distributed among various churches. This relic was not once considered so extraordinary. It was not only venerated in many parts of Christendom as the symbol of the divine Motherhood, but it became a symbol of the supernatural eloquence and sweet doctrine of several doctors of the church. Every one who has visited the magnificent gallery at Madrid will remember Murillo’s beautiful painting representing St. Bernard deriving the food that lent to his lips such sweet, persuasive eloquence from the pure breast of the gentle Deipara. The dignity and grace of the Virgin in this painting are something marvellous, and take away everything that might seem human from the subject.

We have all heard of the Grotto of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock of offence to so many scoffing tourists. It is only those who have a profound faith in the Incarnation that venerate everything associated with the divine Infancy. St. Louis of France built the beautiful Chapelle du Saint Lait in the Cathedral of Rheims to receive the relic that gave it its name. A like relic was venerated in the church of Mans in the time of Clovis. And a vial was borne before the army at the battle of Askalon, in 1224, which reminds one of Rubens’s painting at Brussels in which the Madonna bares her breast before the awful Judge, as if he could refuse nothing at the sight of the bosom on which he had so often been pillowed, and where he had been nourished. There is an old legend of a similar vial of this sacred _laict_ being brought from the Holy Land by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped one day to repose by a fountain near Evron, and hung the reliquary on the hawthorn bush that overshadowed him, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the bush had grown into a tree and the relic was far beyond his reach. He tried to cut the tree down with a hatchet, but could make no impression on the wood. Feeling an inward assurance this was the spot where Providence wished the relic to be honored, he gave it to the bishop, who built thereon a church, which became known as Notre Dame de l’Epine Sainte. The high altar enclosed the hawthorn tree. François de Châteaubriand, abbot of Evron in the sixteenth century, gave this church a beautiful reliquary of silver gilt, in the form of a church, beneath the dome of which was a tube for the relic. Devotion to this relic still exists at Evron.

But to return to Soulac. It is not surprising the Syro-Phœnician woman should come to this distant shore. We know by Strabo that the ancient Phœnicians and Carthaginians came to traffic on this coast, and even went to Great Britain. Soulac was probably the ancient Noviomagos spoken of by Ptolemy. The old legend of Cénebrun speaks of Veronica as _la Dame Marie la Phénicienne_, who came from the East under marvellous circumstances, learned the language of Médoc, and built a church beside which God caused a fountain of fresh, soft water to spring up out of the salt shore for the cure of tertian fevers so common in this region. Moreover, it appears she was in such constant relations with the governor of Bordeaux, appointed by Vespasian, that, to facilitate the intercourse between Soulac and the capital, a Roman road was constructed, “very level and as straight as a line—_rectissimum sicut corda_.” If Vespasian had anything to do with it, we may be sure it was straight; for we know how, to rectify a bend in the Flaminian Way, he bored a tunnel through a rock a thousand feet long.

It was at Bordeaux that Veronica converted Benedicta, a woman of distinguished birth, and the wife of Sigebert, a priest of the false gods, who, attacked by a cruel malady, and hearing of the marvels wrought by St. Martial, said to Benedicta: “Go and bring the man of God; perhaps he will take pity on me.” St. Martial gave her the miraculous staff of St. Peter, at the touch of which Sigebert recovered the use of his limbs. He at once proceeded to Mortagne, accompanied by a great number of soldiers and other followers, all of whom were baptized by St. Martial. At his return to Bordeaux he overthrew all the pagan altars, with the exception of one, which St. Martial purified as a memorial of the triumph of the true faith. The inscription graven thereon is still to be seen in the museum at Bordeaux: _Jovi Augusto Arula donavit. SS. Martialis cum templo et ostio sacravit_—Arula gave this altar to Jupiter Augustus. Martial consecrated it with the temple and vestibule.

Benedicta continued to work miracles with St. Peter’s staff, and greatly contributed to the propagation of the faith in the province. She died in the odor of sanctity, and was buried in the oratory of St. Seurin at Bordeaux, where her remains are still honored on the 8th of June.

Sigebert, whose name signifies the powerful or courageous, became the first bishop of Bordeaux, where he is honored as a martyr under the name of St. Fort. To his _sanctum feretrum_ at St. Seurin’s people formerly went to take solemn oaths.

The foregoing reference of the old chronicler to Vespasian reminds us of the part Veronica is said to have had in the destruction of Jerusalem. A curious old play of the middle ages tells us Vespasian was afflicted with the extraordinary inconvenience of a wasp’s nest in his nose, and, after trying every known means of dislodging it, sent for the great Physician of the Jews. Finding he had been put to death by his own nation, he demanded some of his followers, whereupon Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Veronica are said to have gone to Rome. The emperor expressing a desire to see a portrait of Christ, Veronica held up the _Volto Santo_ before him, at the sight of which he was instantaneously healed. In his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance on the murderers of Jesus, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The connection between this legend and the traditional respect in which Veronica was held by Vespasian’s representative at Bordeaux is curious.

Some say it was Tiberius who was cured of the leprosy by the holy veil, which accounts for his leniency to the Christians and his placing a statue of Christ among the gods. These legends, confused by time, may be regarded as traces left by Veronica at Rome, where a constant tradition asserts she herself brought the _Volto Santo_.

This precious relic must have been in great repute to have been placed at St. Peter’s in 707 by Pope John VII. When removed to the Santo Spirito, it was confided to six Roman noblemen, each of whom had one of the keys that gave access to it. For this service they annually received two cows at Whitsuntide, which were eaten with great festivities. In 1440 it was restored to St. Peter’s, where it is preserved in a chamber within one of the immense piers that sustain the wondrous dome. None but a canon of the church can enter this chamber, but the Vera Iconica is annually exposed from the balcony. It seems to have all the solemn gravity traditional in the Greek representations of our Saviour. Petrarch respectfully speaks of it as the _verendam populis Salvatoris Imaginem_.

Veronica’s statue is beneath—one of the guardians that stand around the tomb of the apostles. Perhaps she came to Rome with St. Martial; for there are traces of her wherever he announced the Gospel. Else remembers their visit, and says, when they left its walls, they directed their course towards Gaul. Mende and Cahors carefully treasure the shoes of the Virgin she brought, and Puy has some of her hair. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, says that, according to the ancient traditions of the churches of Italy and France, Amadour and his wife Veronica accompanied St. Martial to Gaul. And St. Bonaventure, the great Franciscan, in the thirteenth century, in one of his homilies, represents St. Veronica in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave visited by St. Martial.

St. Amadour embraced the solitary life, and is believed to have been the first hermit of Aquitaine. His whole life is painted on the walls of the subterranean chapel at Roc Amadour, where he died. The inscriptions attached to these frescoes thus sum up the legend respecting him:

1. Zaccheus, because he is small and unable to see Jesus in the crowd, climbs up into a sycamore-tree. Jesus, perceiving him, says: Zaccheus, make haste and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.

2. Zaccheus is Jesus’ disciple. Veronica, his wife, becomes one of Mary’s attendants. They are persecuted for the faith, but an angel comes to deliver them from the prison in which they are confined.

3. An angel orders Zaccheus and Veronica to put to sea and land at whatever port the vessel shall enter, there to serve Christ, and Mary his holy Mother.

4. The vessel arrives on the coast of Médoc at a place called Soulac, where they live in fasting and prayer. St. Martial visits them and blesses an oratory they have erected in honor of St. Stephen.

5. Zaccheus, at the order of St. Martial, goes to Rome to see St. Peter. St. Veronica remains in the Bordelais country, where she dies. Zaccheus returns to Soulac, where he erects two monasteries and retires from the world.

6. St. Amadour, in the year of our Lord 70, chooses as his hermitage and place of retreat a cliff inhabited by wild beasts, since known as Roc Amadour.

7. The inhabitants of the country are almost savages. St. Amadour catechises them and makes known the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

8. St. Amadour erects an altar on the cliff in honor of Mary. This humble altar, now so glorious, is consecrated by the blessed apostle Martial, who visits our saint several times in his retreat.

9. St. Amadour, at the approach of death, is transported before the altar of Mary, where he expires.

Veronica herself is said to have carried in her apron the turf or clay which served to build the chapel of Soulac. It was a mere cabin, which, with the spring, was enclosed in the church built at a later period. This was probably destroyed by the Normans when they ravaged the coast of France to the terror of the people, who doubtless joined heartily in the verse then added to the liturgy, beginning:

Auferte gentem perfidam Credentium de finibus, etc.

According to the traditions of Aquitaine, Veronica lived to a great age, and, if already in the Temple at the Presentation of the Virgin, she must have been about a century old at her death. She is believed to have died about the year 70. She was, at first buried with great honor at Soulac in the oratory she had so signally endowed. It was Sigebert, or St. Fort, who, says tradition, went to Soulac to pay her the last honors. It was long the custom of the bishops of the diocese, before taking possession of their see, to visit her tomb, and render homage to the venerable traditions of the place. Her remains were afterwards carried for safety to Bordeaux, where her tomb, of the Roman style, is still to be seen in the crypt of St. Seurin. She is said to have been of uncommon stature, and this has been confirmed by the recent examination of her remains, so wonderfully preserved amid the storms of so many ages. Placed under the seal of the archbishops of Bordeaux, and watched over with religious care, a source of miraculous grace, and the object of popular veneration, they have escaped the perils of wars and civil commotions. Cardinal de Sourdis, who opened her tomb in 1616, said her festival had been celebrated in his diocese from time immemorial on the 4th of February.

Her remains were carefully examined a few years since by a learned anatomist, who not only declared them of great antiquity, but said the articulation of certain bones showed the advanced age at which she died. Thus science comes to the aid of tradition. The popular belief as to her majestic stature was likewise confirmed by this examination.

Veronica’s oratory, probably destroyed by the Normans, as we have said, was afterwards rebuilt by the Benedictines, but at what precise time is doubtful. We only know there was a monastery at Soulac in 1022, which became dependent on that of Sainte Croix at Bordeaux. In 1043 Ama, Countess of Périgord, gave the lands of Médrin to the monastery of _Sancta Maria de Finibus Terræ, ob remedium animæ suæ necnon parentum suorum_, to relieve the poverty of the monks who there served God and worthily fulfilled their duty. An old Benedictine chronicle says the devotion of the faithful towards this holy spot increased to such a degree that the monks were soon enabled to build a larger church, which they enriched with much silver and many relics. This was in the twelfth century. This church, of the Roman style, to which the Benedictines were

## partial, enclosed the miraculous fountain of St. Veronica, which had

always been in great repute, and had an altar to her memory where solemn oaths were administered as at the tomb of St. Fort. Her statue stood over the fountain, and, before leaving the church, the devout, after drinking of the water and bathing their eyes, used to cross themselves and make a reverence to “Madame Saincte Véronique.”

This church was no sooner completed than it began to be invaded by the sands, which every year grew higher and higher. The lateral doors had to be walled up, and the pavement raised three times to be on a level with the sands without. Veronica’s fountain was kept open, but soon became a well. The monastery and town finally disappeared under the dunes in the latter part of the thirteenth century. The monks returned when the sands were stayed. They found the church filled to the chancel arch and the capitals of the pillared nave. They removed part of the roof, raised the Avails, and so arranged the church that it continued to be used till devastated by the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. It was hardly repaired before the sands besieged it anew and soon buried it utterly, with the exception of the top of the belfry, which a boy could easily scale, presenting a curious and picturesque appearance on the lone shore. Under Louis XV. the open arches of this steeple became a kind of light-house, and the pines sown by Brémontier soon took root among the arches of the church totally hidden in the sands.

Tradition says Soulac was once important as a port, and alive with commercial activity. Henry III. of England embarked at old Soulac for Portsmouth about the middle of the thirteenth century, which shows how extensive have been the sand deposits since. Once the church was so near the water that in great storms the foundations were washed by the waves, though built on a slight acclivity. It appears by documents still preserved at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748 covered the greater part of Soulac, causing the loss of many salt marshes and other sources of revenue. Many other parishes on the shores of Médoc have wholly disappeared. The church of La Canau was rebuilt three times before the moving sands. Sainte Hélène has transported hers ten kilometres, leaving behind what is now an islet with a few trees to mark the spot where it once stood, still called by the people Senta Lénotte, or Ste. Hélenotte—that is, little St. Helen.

St. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in Ligno—St. Peter on the Wood, or Cross—said to have been originally built by Zaccheus, or St. Amadour, in memory of the martyrdom of the apostle, which he had witnessed at Rome, has been abandoned two hundred years, and now lies under the waves of the ocean.

Pauillac, sung by Ausonius in his epistle to Théon:

“_Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret_,”

is likewise half-buried in the sands.

But to return to Soulac. The thirteenth century was the most glorious era in the history of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres. Its popularity was at that time increased by a terrible pestilence that visited Médoc. The people had recourse to prayer, and went in crowds to the sanctuary of Soulac, vowing to renew their pilgrimage annually. The most noted of these pilgrimages was that of Lesparre, a small town which excited our interest by its reminiscences of the English occupation of the country. Its ruined fortifications; the square tower, sole remnant of the ancient castle, and the church with its Saxon arches and coarse sculpture—all bespeak great antiquity. In the twelfth century the castle and village around it were held by Baron Eyquem, a contentious lord, who liked nothing better than a brush with his neighbors. Perhaps it was this quarrelsome turn of mind that recommended the lords of Lesparre so strongly to the favor of the English sovereigns. Henry III. of England summoned Baron Eyquem to his aid at Paris. The baron’s son also served the same king with all the forces he could muster, and Henry so counted on his devotedness that, in 1244, after promising to reward his services, he commissioned him to aid by his sword and counsel in repelling the King of Navarre, who had invaded Guienne. During the entire contest between England and France the Sires of Lesparre remained faithful to the English; and when the last hour of English rule in the country sounded, the Baron de Lesparre took the lead in an effort to replace Guienne under its dominion. He went secretly to England with the lord of Candale and several notable citizens of Bordeaux to assure the king that the whole country would rise in his favor as soon as the banner of St. George should be once more seen on the Gironde. The English eagerly responded by sending the valiant Earl of Shrewsbury,

“The Frenchman’s only scourge, Their kingdom’s terror, and black Nemesis,”

to Bordeaux, but their last chance was lost by the defeat at Castillon in 1453, in which the gallant old earl, immortalized by Shakspere—doubly immortalized—was slain. The Baron de Lesparre was banished, and the following year beheaded at Poitiers for breaking his bounds. Charles VII. of France then gave the Seigneurie de Lesparre to the Sire d’Albret, to whom in part he owed the triumph of his arms.

Lesparre having lost two-thirds of its inhabitants by a pestilence, the remainder, in their terror, went to prostrate themselves before the altar of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, and made a solemn vow to return every year, if spared. The account of this annual pilgrimage reminds one of the caravans of the desert. The pilgrims were divided into two bands. A part were mounted on horseback, preceded by the cross-bearer and the _curé_; the rest followed on foot with baskets and sacks of provisions. The four bells of Notre Dame de Lesparre pealed joyfully out over the marshes to announce their departure. They stopped at every chapel they came to, to salute its tutelar saint by some hymn in his honor, and then kept on their way, chanting the litanies. Most of these chapels were dedicated to saints specially invoked in time of pestilence; for every grief of the middle ages left its record in the churches. There was St. Catharine, always popular in this region. Then came St. Sebastian, now destroyed, but which gave the name of La Capère (the chapel) to a little village we passed, and St. Roch still standing at Escarpon. As soon as the caravan came in sight of the belfry of Soulac, on a height between St. Vivian and Talais, the pilgrims descended from their horses to salute the Virgin on their knees. Arrived at the holy sanctuary, each one offered his candle streaming with ribbons—a necessary adjunct in all religious offerings in Médoc. An enormous mass of these old ribbons have been preserved at new Soulac. After their devotions the pilgrims went out on the seashore to take their lunch. The next day they returned to Lesparre in the same order. This annual pilgrimage was continued for five centuries, which accounts for the vivid recollections of it among the people. Near the manor-house of the Baron d’Arès, now buried in an immense dune, flowed a fountain as late as 1830, but since filled up, where the pilgrims stopped to quench their thirst, with the pious belief that St. Veronica had brought here a vein of the sacred spring that flowed for the healing of the people in her sanctuary.

Lesparre, once the capital of Médoc, has now only about a thousand inhabitants. From the tower there is an extensive view over the broad moor with its patches of yellow sand, here and there an oasis with a few vegetables, and perhaps an acre or two of oats, barley, or maize, which grow as they can. In winter this vast heath becomes a marsh. The water stands in pools among the sand-hills. The peasant shuts himself up with his beasts, and warms himself by the peat-fire, while the pools freeze and the sands grow white under the icy breath of the sea-winds.

St. Veronica’s Church, so venerated in the middle ages, has within a few years been dug out of the sands and repaired. The miraculous statue of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres has been restored to its place on her altar, and, after a silence of one hundred and twenty years, the bell once more awakens the echoes of the sand-hills, thanks to the interest taken by Cardinal Donnet in reviving a devotion to this ancient place of pilgrimage. Veronica is once more honored in the place where she died—a devotion that seems significant in these times. Perhaps she comes to hold up anew the bleeding face of Christ for the healing of the nations. The _Volto Santo_ is said to have turned pale a few years since when exhibited at Rome. We may well believe it, in view of all the wounds since inflicted on Christ’s Bride—the church. “O Veronica!” cries Padre Verruchino, a Capuchin friar, “suffer us, we pray thee, to gaze awhile at thy holy veil for the healing of our sin-sick souls!”

An old MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century at Auch contains the following sequence: _De Sancta Veronica Memoria_, showing how well our fathers in the faith, even in those dark ages, knew how to rise above every type and shadow to the substance of things hoped for. It is good to echo the prayers of those earnest times.

Salve, sancta facies Nostri Redemptoris In qua nitet species Divini splendoris, Impressa panniculo Nivei coloris, Dataque Veronicæ Signum ob amoris.

Salve, decus seculi, Speculum sanctorum Quod videre cupiunt Spiritus cœlorum. Nos ab omni macula Purga vitiorum, Inque nos consortium Junge Beatorum.

Ave, nostra gloria, In hac vita dura, Labili et fragili, Cito transitura. Nos perduc ad patriam, O felix figura, Ad videndam faciem Christi, mente pura.

Esto nobis, Domine, Tutum adjuvamen, Dulce refrigerium, Atque consolamen, Ut nobis non noceat Hostile conamen, Sed fruamur requie. Nos dicamus: Amen.[27]

Footnote 27:

Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, in which shines the image of the divine Splendor, imprinted on a veil white as snow, and given to Veronica in token of his love!

Hail, glory of the world, mirror of the saints, whom the celestial spirits long to behold. Purify us from the stain of every vice and bring us to the society of the Blessed!

Hail, our glory, in this rough, uncertain life, so soon to pass away! Lead us to our true country, O blessed symbol! that with a pure heart we may behold the face of Christ.

Be to us, O Lord! a sure help, the sweet refreshment and consolation of our woes, that the efforts of the enemy may not injure us, but that we may enter into the fruition of true rest. Let us say: Amen.

DANTE’S PURGATORIO. _CANTO FIFTEENTH._ TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.

Between the third hour’s close and dawn of day, Much as appears of the celestial sphere Ever in motion, like a child at play, So much appeared now of the sun’s career To be remaining towards his western way. There it was evening; here the middle night; And on our front, the rays directly beat, For we had circled so the hill that right On towards the sunset we inclined our feet; When on my brows I felt a load of light, Greater in splendor than before had been, And o’er my sense, as ’twere from things unknown, A stupor stole; and of my palms a screen I made against the excess of light that shone.

As when from water or a mirror’s face The ray leaps upward to the opponent side, Mounting in like mode as through equal space The ray descendeth, and with line as wide From the direct line of a falling stone (As science shows, and art hath verified), So did I seem, by some reflected light Before me there, to be so struck that fain I would have suddenly withdrawn my sight.

“What is it, gentle Father, that in vain I shield my visage from, and still towards us Seems as in motion?” He made this reply: “Marvel not if, as yet, the splendor thus Of heaven’s bright household overpowers thine eye. This one is sent to ask men up the height; Soon it shall be that to behold these things Will cause thee no dismay, but bring delight, Even as thy soul due disposition brings.” Soon as we reached the blessèd angel’s side He said, with glad voice: “Here you enter in By steps more easy than you yet have tried.” We thence departed, and, ascending now, Heard _Beati Misericordes_ chanted Below, behind us, and, “Be joyful thou To whom to conquer in this pass is granted!”

My Master and myself in lonely mood Still mounting, I considered as I went How I might gather from his word some good, And turned to him inquiringly: “What meant That spirit of Romagna speaking so _Of partnership forbid_?” He made reply: “Of his own worst defect he now doth know The torment; therefore, do not wonder why Others he chides to make their penance less. Because you point your wishes at a prize Where part is lost if it permit largesse, Envy’s bad bellows move your selfish sighs. But if the love of the supernal sphere Heavenward exalted every wish of yours, Your bosom would not harbor that low fear; For so much more as there they speak of Ours, More love in that celestial cloister glows, And so much more of good each soul secures.”

“Now to be satisfied my hunger grows,” I answered, “and my mind is more in doubt Than if no question I had asked of thee. How comes it, that a blessing parcelled out More rich its many owners makes to be Than if a few possessed it?” He replied: “Because thy mind its reasoning cannot stretch Beyond those things of earth to which ’tis tied; Thou from true light dost only darkness fetch. That Good ineffable and infinite Who dwells above there, runs to love as fleet As to a lucid body a ray of light, And so much giveth as it finds of heat. Broad as the flame of charity may burn, The eternal flame above it grows more great: And more their number is who heavenward yearn. More for his love there are, and they love more, Like mirrors that each other’s light return. Now, if thou hunger still, despite my lore, Thou shalt see Beatris, and sure, she will Give unto this and every wish repose; Only may those five wounds remaining still, That heal in aching, like the twain soon close.”

Whiles I was musing, and would fain have said, “Thou hast contented me,” I looked, and, lo! To the next cornice we had come; here fled All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so! For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd Met in a temple. I could also see That entering, 'mid those men, a woman stood With sweet mien of a mother, saying: “Why Hast thou so dealt with us, my darling son? Behold, in every place thy sire and I Have sought thee sorrowing.” Soon as she had done This vision vanished, and I next beheld Another lady, with such drops besprent As down the cheeks flow from a bosom swelled With scorn of some one and by anguish rent; Saying: “If thou be ruler of the town, About whose name the gods had such a strife And whence all knowledge gleams to give renown, Pisistratus! avenge thee on his life Whose bold embrace hath brought our daughter down!” And her lord seemed to me benign and mild, Answering with aspect that her fury stemmed: “What should we do to one that harmed our child, If one caressing her be so condemned?” Next I saw people raging hot in ire, Slaying a youth with stones, and shouting loud: “Martyr him! martyr him!” in tumult dire; And I saw him drop down before the crowd Dying, but lifting, ere he did expire, Looks that might win compassion for his foes; And with such eyes,—they seemed the doors of heaven! Praying the most high Father that, for those Who wrought such wrong, their sin might be forgiven.

Soon as my mind that from itself had swerved Came back to true things that outside it lie, I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed. My leader then, who could perceive that I Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved, Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep Thy footing straight, but more than half a league Hast moved, with faltering steps, as if by sleep Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?” I answered: “O sweet Father! I will tell, If thou wilt hear me, all that I have seen, While my limbs failed me and my strength so fell.” And he replied: “Shouldst thou thy visage screen Beneath an hundred masks, I still could spell Each slightest thought of thine, and read thy dreams. This vision came lest thou be self-excused Thy heart from opening to the peace that streams From love’s eternal fount o’er all diffused. I did not ask 'what ails thee,’ as men speak, Who look with mortal eye that cannot see The soul without its body. Thou wast weak, And I, to strengthen, reprehended thee. So men are wont dull servants to reprove That when their watch comes round are slow to stir.”

During these words we did not cease to move On through the evening, and attentive were To look beyond us, far as vision might, Against the level sun’s o’erpowering rays; And towards us, lo! a vapor, dun as night, Little by little growing on our gaze, Deprived us of pure air and dimmed our sight, Nor was there shelter from the blinding haze.

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

## CHAPTER XII.

“TO BE, OR NOT TO BE.’

The Signora’s life in these days was disturbed by a doubt that was all the more troublesome because she was obliged to solve it unaided, and that without delay. What should she do with Mr. Vane?

Advice could be of no use, even if she had been willing to ask it. He satisfied perfectly all the conditions concerning which outward influence could have weight with a woman of character and refinement. It is always possible to tell a woman that she should not marry a man, the reasons given being good ones; but it is never possible to tell her that she should marry him, if she does not wish, however excellent he may be. The question with the Signora was, Should she marry at all? She certainly did not wish to marry. Was she willing? Here came up a host of arguments for and against, till she was as tormented and uncertain as Hamlet. If Mr. Vane would have consented to spend his life in Rome and remain her friend, without asking for more, she would have been satisfied, and have thought that her life had gained by him a sweetness she had never known, nor even thought of. For she had not been conscious of anything wanting, till his companionship had taught her that one niche in her house was vacant. She contemplated the possibility of marrying him only in order to keep him near her, not because she wished to change their relations. But the choice was forced upon her to lose him or to marry him.

It was a choice between two evils. Her life had been so exquisite, so nearer perfect than any one but herself could know, that to introduce new and important interests there was a dangerous experiment. How much more likely they would be to disturb than to complete the harmony! And yet, how pleasant was that masculine presence, like a shady tree in the midst of a sunny garden of flowers! How pleasant the sense of a superior physical strength and manly sympathy ever near! How pleasant the consciousness of constantly pleasing one worth pleasing by the thousand little feminine ways and words, and by the very being what she was, like a fragrant rose set in a chamber, silent and gracious. How many little pleasures he gave her which a man gives only to the woman he prefers to all others! It seemed to her she had never been well listened to before. Then to see her do a favor to any one, perform some graceful little act that might pass unregarded by others, even go about her ordinary duties, gave him a vivid pleasure. He appreciated the very rose in her hair, the ribbon at her throat, the bow on her slipper. Little things: but it is the little pleasures which make life sweet, as the little displeasures may do more than afflictions can to make it bitter.

She watched to see what danger there might be of certain small annoyances which she had seen fretting the course of many a married life, and he came out triumphantly from the ordeal. He did not hang for ever about the house till the women grew tired of him, any more than he went to the opposite extreme of staying away too much. He preserved a respectful ignorance of household affairs, in which he held that women should be autocrats, and at the same time listened with interest to any details that might be vouchsafed him, as to curious particulars of a country he had never visited, but which sent him important supplies. He was habitually polite to women, but never gallant, and he would have given a civil reply to a civil question proffered him even by an infamous person; and in the most private life, he dropped only ceremony, never respect. As far as personal habits went, he was a man who might have been a hero, even to his _valet-de-chambre_.

Point by point the Signora tried him, and still found no defect which could seem to indicate a disagreeable habit or an intolerable opinion. She could but laugh—a little nervously, indeed—at her own perplexity.

“You dear soul!” she thought, “why will you not do something hateful and set my mind at rest?”

He would not. He was not even guilty of the one fault that might naturally have been expected of him under the circumstances: he had no appearance of hanging upon her words and looks, as if for some indication of a change of intentions regarding him. She was free to act herself perfectly, without fear of misinterpretation. And yet, in spite of his forbearance, she felt that time was committing her, and that she must soon either decidedly prevent or decidedly receive a renewal of his offer.

The Signora might easily be accused by persons of little refinement of being one who did not know her own mind. On the contrary, she was rather exceptionally prompt and clear as to her requirements. But she was past the age when women usually marry in haste to repent afterward at leisure; and was, moreover, one of the comparatively few women who are fitted by their character to be friends to men without marrying them. The insidious sisterhood which ends in wifehood or in mischief she saw through and reprobated. “No man can have a sister,” she was wont to say, “other than the daughters of his mother. But he may have a friend. And no man has a right to expect sisterly service and familiarity from a woman not born his sister. It is a snare.” As a friend, she would never have charged herself with the care of Mr. Vane’s collars and cravats, advised him regarding the most becoming cut of his beard, nor performed the sentimental service of “bathing his fevered brow” when he had a headache, though she might have done all these things as a sister or a wife.

It was, altogether, a perplexing and even painful situation, and the Signora found all her pleasure disturbed by that ever-present fear of either throwing away a good which she might afterward regret, or committing herself to a state of life which she might regret still more. The weather added to her annoyance. Summer had reached its meridian heat rather prematurely, the sun poured his rays down in a torrent, and at noon the city was like a martyr at the stake. The nights began to lose their freshness and be scorched about the edges; the early stars, instead of shedding dews, were like the coals left in a half-swept oven; and the mornings languished on the horizon. It was a time for not only _dolce far niente_, but _dolce pensar niente_. Besides, people, being at this season so shut up together, need to be at ease with each other. There was very little to call them out, few friends left in town, and but few _festas_.

On one of these days came the _festa_ of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the vigil of which is unique in Rome, being a real witch’s holiday, according to popular superstition. It is an ancient belief among the people that on this vigil the witches have liberty to go about where they will; and, since the world all goes to St. John Lateran, the witches go there too. In order to detect them it was the custom to procure a stick with a natural fork at the end. This fork was placed under the chin, the two prongs coming up over the jaws. Looking at a person over it in this wise, it could be known if he or she were a witch. Moreover, since it was believed that the witches would take advantage of the absence of the heads of the family to enter the houses and do harm to the children, the little ones being their favorite prey, a new broom was bought, and set, broom-end upward, outside the door. Before entering, the witch was obliged to count every spill of the broom. As a further precaution, some salt was sprinkled on the threshold, and, in case that should not prevent their entering, these words were repeated while sprinkling it: “Come tomorrow to borrow salt of me.” The witch who entered was constrained to come and knock at the door the next day, and ask the loan of a little salt. For the further safe-keeping of the children during the night, the mothers hang some object of devotion about their necks or bind it around their bodies, and, when they are about going to sleep, whisper the _Credo_ in their ear, repeating every word twice, thus: “I believe, I believe, in God, in God,” etc.

“What do they think a witch would do to the children, if she should enter?” we asked our Roman informant.

“Take off the object of devotion and touch them, or do something to them so that they would die,” was the reply. “A child that has been touched by a witch pines away to a skeleton, and dies, without any one being able to find out what ails it. I believe, and I do not believe,” she said with a shrug. “Who knows? The Scriptures tell of evil spirits having power. Who knows how it may be? My sister, however, lived and died persuaded that her only child was touched by a witch, though it was not on St John’s eve. She had been getting her baby to sleep one day, when a neighbor came and called her to the door for some reason. She went out, leaving the door open and the baby in its cradle. When she returned, there was an old woman bending over the cradle and talking to the child—an ugly, dirty old creature, that she had never seen before. My sister took fright at once, and called out to her to go away. 'I saw the door open and heard the baby crying, and I came in to soothe it,’ the old woman said. My sister told her she had no right to come in, and chased her away. On the threshold the woman turned and shook her finger. 'You will repent this,’ she said. In fact, the babe, which had been healthy, and was just dropping peacefully asleep, began to moan and cry, and nothing could pacify it. My sister examined and found that the little devotion it wore had been taken away. From that day the child pined. She got nurses for it, she tried everything possible, but nothing helped it. Finally, she carried it to the church of St. Theodore, in the Roman Forum, where all the mothers carry their sick babies. The priest blessed it, but told her that it was too late: the child would die. And it did die. She tried then one proof more. She took all its clothes that it died in, and that it had on when the witch touched it, put them in a grate, and kindled a fire under them. They burned as if there had been gunpowder among them. That was a sure proof, they said. But for me,” continued the story-teller, with another shrug, “I believe, and I don’t believe. _Chi lo sa?_”

It is curious to find how this witch-idea is embodied in every nation, and always with very nearly the same features: old, ugly, child-hating, powerful for petty malice, but a slave to the most trivial spells, repelling, disgusting—a fair representation of the utter despicableness and feebleness of evil.

At the first soft fall of twilight the family of _Casa Ottant’Otto_ stepped into a carriage and drove out to the Lateran by the roundabout way of the Roman Forum. From the Colosseum up to the church, all about the church and palace, in a part of the piazza, and the ends of the streets leading to it, every nook and door-way and every rod of ground had its table or booth, some lighted by a soft olive-oil lamp, others clear and bright with petroleum, others flaring with the red light of a torch. Piles of cakes of every shape and size, wine in bottles, flasks, and jars, cones of the delicious Roman lemons, that are so juicy and fragrant, trinkets, scarfs, knick-knacks of various sorts, covered the tables and counters. Here and there a more ambitious salesman, probably a Jew, had erected a little shop. Everywhere were pinks and lavender. Each table and counter held sprigs and bunches, and men, women, and children went about with their arms full of it. A little crowd of these noisy venders surrounded the carriage the moment it stopped, and the ladies supplied themselves with lavender for their drawers, and bought large bunches of red pinks, and each of them a St. John’s bouquet. This bouquet consists of a little white flower surrounded by pinks, and outside four sprigs of lavender. The lavender for drawers is ingeniously done up. A bunch is gathered with long stems to the sweet gray seeds and blue flowers, and a string is tied close under their little chins. The stems are then turned back to make a cage for the cluster, and tied again at the other end; and yet again turned back and tied a third time, so that only glimpses can be had of the caged bloom; and all is lavender.

“We should have come to first Vespers, if we wished to think of the austere St. John,” the Signora said. “The scene is simply picturesque and beautiful at this hour, and will be bacchanalian later. The world doesn’t begin to come till twelve o’clock, and at that time it will be almost impossible to move for the crowd, which does not disappear entirely till daylight.”

They drove off toward Santa Croce, and, turning there, stayed awhile under the soft dusk of the trees, looking back on the twinkling lights and crowding figures, and talking a little. The fiery half-ring of the three days’ moon touched the tip of a pine-tree in the west and kindled it; the stars overhead seemed to be melting out of their orbits in a glowing rain; the air was full of a sweet fragrance and delicately fresh. Sounds of laughter and mingled voices reached them now and then. But all—the wafts of air, the sounds, the radiating lights, the motions—were so soft that the whole might be a great picture which they half imagined to be alive.

The Signora leaned back in her seat and gave herself up to the scene, mingling with it the ever-present thought: What should she do with this man who sat opposite her? His face was turned to look back, so that she saw the profile, a fine one. She felt very feminine and weak just then—not at all like taking care of herself all her life long, being both mistress and master of her house, and her own adviser and support. The spirit of strength, of an enthusiastic liberty of effort and labor, faded and fainted within her. They could not live in such a scene. She wanted to be taken care of. All the insidious arguments of the sluggard began to whisper themselves to her. Of what use was this constant toil and strain, which was but a daily rolling up hill of a burden that every night rolled down again? Of what use the study, the thought, the self-denial? All had seemed pleasant; but, come to think of it, where had been the repose? Had she ever looked at a flower without, after the first glance, studying how she should present its beauties in words to other eyes? Had she ever drunk a sunset with all its color down into her own soul, and left its glory there, but speedily her pen must dip the light of it up to shine on a page for others to see? Whither had fled the long, tranquil sleep, the calm folding of the hands, the deep and steady thought for thought’s sake? There was no one in the world, it seemed to her, who thought so much of others as she did. She analyzed her pains, her religious emotions, her very temptations, for them, and studied her own breathing that she should be able to tell them how they breathed. And what was the return? Bread, and not too much of that. She had studied her art as the painter, the sculptor, and the musician study, making a science of it, and not one in a hundred looked on it as any more than an idle and facile play. She had felt her way, by a natural gift and an acquired power, into the depths of souls, and had led them out alive into the light; yet how many an ignorant critic and shallow moralist had set up his wooden or card-paper model for her to follow!

How odd she had not known before how tiresome it was! She had at times felt tired, but to know that all was tiresome, and vanity of vanities—that had but just broken on her. This soft and joyous scene, usurping the hours of sleep, making the work of the day to follow an impossible thing to be done, and finding its playground under the stars—this was what had opened her eyes. A careless laugh had done it. She looked at Mr. Vane and thought: “I hope he won’t ask me to-night, for if he should I shall certainly promise to marry him; and I do not like cutting Gordian knots with sudden resolutions. I would rather untie this a little more leisurely,” she considered, still looking at him. “If I want honors and favors, I could win more by giving good dinners than by writing good books. A dinner is more powerful than an epic; for anybody can take in a dinner, but everybody cannot take in an epic. If I want friends and the reputation of being amiable, the good-natured complacency of prosperous ease will go a great deal further than the somewhat over-earnestness of a serious life.”

She snatched her eyes and her thoughts quickly away from the subjects that occupied both, and began to talk; for Mr. Vane turned, as if aware of being observed, and looked at her.

“I must have a little longer to think,” she said to herself, with a fluttering heart. “It will never do to decide to-night.”

“If we are going to keep up our character of a sober and orderly household, we must soon be on our way home,” she said. “The witches are certainly abroad—I almost see them—and we have no spell to prevent their getting into our carriage.”

Mr. Vane had been holding his breath for the last few moments. He knew, without looking, what eyes were on him, and almost knew what thoughts were passing in the Signora’s mind. He felt that his fate was in the balance. The prize seemed to be within his grasp; for to hesitate, even, seemed to give consent. At the first word he felt that hope grow dim. Consent would have lingered in that enchanted scene, would have given itself up to some ideal dream, forgetting the flight of time. She was evidently resisting, if not refusing.

“Let us take one turn round by the wall and Santa Croce,” he said. “Then we will go. I don’t think I shall ever have another drive just like this, and I would like to prolong it a little.”

“Prolong it as much as you please!” the Signora exclaimed, with quick compunction. “I only made a suggestion, which came from habit. If you like to stay, I shall be pleased.”

His voice, a little quickened and a little deepened, had seemed to have a touch of reproach in it, as though he should say: “Think, at least, a little of me!” But his answer to her was quite friendly: “You were right. We had better not stay long. One turn will be enough.”

They went on, the Signora fighting now two forces instead of one—for pity for him was added to pity for herself. What a beautiful and noble patience his life had shown, and with what a sweet dignity he had covered that painful thought that he had never been first to anybody!

As they passed round near the wall, approaching Santa Croce, the trees hid all the lights from them. The two daughters, one at either hand of the father, leaned on his arm and sighed with delight; Marion, seated beside the Signora, leaned forward to touch Bianca’s hand, unable in that shadow to see her. The darkness touched their faces like a down, so thick and moist was it, and so full of fragrance.

They came out before Santa Croce, and, turning, went back as they had come. More than one of the company would have liked to propose walking back along the avenue, but did not venture to do so. A few minutes brought them to the piazza of St. John’s again, and into the midst of a crowd of eager buyers and sellers. Here and there out of some dim corner a face shone red in the flare of a half-shaded torch, small figures ran and danced across the lights, black as _silhouettes_; the whole coloring was Rembrandt.

Then home through the quiet streets, where occasionally they met a couple or a party, all going toward St. John’s.

“It seems to me a kind of Santa Claus time, except that it is hot weather,” Bianca said when they reached home. “I feel as though somebody ought to come down the chimney to-night.”

“By the way,” the Signora exclaimed, “I have never introduced you to my Santa Claus. How ungrateful I am! I am going to tell you my little story; for I am almost sure that you four good people are as ignorant of the genealogy of the Santa Claus of Christmas fame as I was when I came to Rome. If you are wiser, then you can at least hear how I was enlightened. When I had been in Rome but a little while, I made the acquaintance of an elderly prelate, who was so kind as to do for me many of those little services which a stranger needs, and was of the greatest use to me in many ways. I seldom, almost never, asked anything of him, but it was constantly happening that he offered some kindness at the very moment it was needed. I never went to visit a city new to me but he introduced me to some influential friend there, and I never heard of a new old sight to see but he could tell me how to gain the best view of it. His kindness was so pleasant and opportune that after a while, without the least intention of being disrespectful however, I came to call him in my own mind Santa Claus. His Christian name is Nicholas. One day, while talking with me, he asked if I had any of the manna of St. Nicholas of Bari. I replied that I did not even know what it was. He looked at me in astonishment, and explained that it was a limpid substance like water which had oozed from the bones of St. Nicholas the Great, without ceasing, for more than fifteen hundred years, the saint having been born somewhere late in the third century; that every morning the sacristan gathers it with a sponge and preserves it in bottles; and that the people of Bari and all that region have so great a faith in the saint and his miraculous 'manna’ that they use it for every malady. He ended by promising to send to his brother, an archbishop somewhere in the south of Italy, to procure a bottle of this precious liquor for me. In a few days he brought it. Here it is!” The Signora brought from a little shrine that closed with a door in the wall, and displayed, a bottle filled with what appeared to be the brightest and most limpid water. “Monsignor showed me a similar bottle that he has had forty years,” she continued, “and it was as pure and bright as this—perfectly unchanged. He had opened it, now and then, to take out a few drops. Some years ago he gave a bottle also to the Holy Father, who keeps it beside his bed on a little shelf. Here is the picture of my saint.”

It was a quaint old print, copied, doubtless, from a picture in the church of St. Nicholas, in Bari, and represented the sainted archbishop standing on the shore, with the sea and ships behind him. At his right knelt a youth on the sands; at his left three infants were rising out of a tub, commemorative of two of his miracles.

“After having given me this relic of his great patron, Monsignor, full of zeal for his honor and of pity for my ignorance, began to tell me something of his life, and how knowing of an impoverished noble family, driven to desperation by need, and almost deciding to sell the daughters to a life of vice, since they had no money to marry them, this young saint went slily by night, and dropped a bag of gold in at the window sufficient for a _dot_ for the eldest; and, after a while, in the same manner, provided for the others, the family rejoicing over their escape and repenting of their evil resolution. When Monsignor had got so far with his story, I broke out, 'Why, it is Santa Claus!’ And, sure enough, it was. The great saint was no longer a stranger to me. I had known, without knowing, him all my life, from the time when I had first read the wonderful illustrated story-books of Christmas, and seen my mother hang my stocking in the chimney-corner before taking me off to bed on Christmas eve.”

The Signora was very glad to have this little story to tell by way of making an inclined plane to the saying of good-night. Undercover of it she escaped to her own room without being entrapped into a private interview, which she almost suspected Mr. Vane of plotting.

Then they had a little expedition for the morning to see the making of tapestry in the great hospice of St. Michael.

“If the weather and the time of day were not so hot,” the Signora said, “we would go a little further on, to the scene of a miracle of Santa Francesca Romana; but I don’t believe we shall be able to do so. A little way from the hospital is the Porta Portese, and outside that is the vineyard where that beloved saint and her companions worked one January day from dawn till noon, without having anything to eat or drink. They had forgotten to bring provisions; and Francesca, when she saw her companions suffering from thirst, accused herself of having neglected to provide for them. She was then, you know, a mother-superior, and these were her oblates. Well, the youngest of them, almost crying with thirst, begged to be allowed to go to a fountain out on the public road. The saint told her to be patient, and, withdrawing herself, began to pray: 'Lord Jesus, help us in our need; for I have been thoughtless in neglecting to provide food for my sisters.’ 'She’d much better take us home at once,' said the poor little nun to herself. And then Francesca, rising from her knees, pointed to a tree around which twined a vine loaded with large clusters of grapes—just as many clusters as there were poor nuns to eat them. They had passed this very tree again and again, and seen the vine dead and withered that very day. That same Santa Francesca is one of the dearest saints in the calender,” the Signora said. “Though, to be sure,” she added, “when we think over their lives, each one seems to be the dearest.”

“My idea of saintliness is always associated with asceticism,” said Isabel.

“If only the asceticism be not sour, as it never is with the saints,” responded the Signora with a sigh. “About the most uncomfortable company one can have is that of a person who, we cannot doubt, is virtuous in many ways, but who looks upon one with an expression full of suspicion and condemnation, without seeming aware that in so doing he has committed a sin against charity which, according to St. Paul, renders his other virtues nothing. To my mind, one of the first requisites of a Christian character is to mind one’s own business.”

“Oh! I don’t mean asceticism that goes only far enough to stir up the bile,” Isabel said, “but that which clears the heart, so that the light of charity shines quite through it and brightens every object it looks upon.”

They were already on their way to the asylum of St. Michael—that immense establishment, which contains a little world within itself, where beauty and charity dwell together; where the young find protection and instruction, and the old a refuge, under the same roof; where music, sculpture, painting, and kindred arts have made their home. Here the poor, instead of being swept away like dead leaves from a garden, to decay in obscure disgrace, slip, consoled and unashamed, into the grave, like fallen leaves that die in peace between the embracing roots of the green tree they once helped to adorn. The long, arched corridors were fresh and cool, the brilliant day entering only in a tender light, or, here and there, in some splash of gold that burned only the spot it fell upon. Fountains murmured in the courts, and all the business of the place moved with a subdued and leisurely action which made work seem a pleasure. It was not toil, but occupation—that wise and healthy degree of work which makes work possible for many years, instead of crowding the force of a whole life into a few feverish days. There was not a face which showed anxious and nervous hurry. All were calm and cheerful.

Our friends did not attempt to see anything more than the tapestry-making and mending, the first in the men’s department, the last done entirely by women and girls. The two immense halls devoted to these works, with the ante-chambers, were completely hung with old tapestries, making a softly and richly-colored picture-gallery of the whole place. In the manufacturing hall upright frames held the great squares of the warp, with the design drawn or stamped carefully on the closely-stretched threads. Behind these sat the weaver, working in the figures with long spools of colored wools, pressing down closely each stitch with a little instrument he held in the left hand. A score or more of these bobbins hung at the back of the tapestry, each to be caught up and woven in in its turn. Across the lower part of the carpet already a yard was splendidly woven of solid and brilliant color. In another part of the hall hung a large picture for a future weaving—a balcony with a vine and figures—and on a table under it were arranged the myriad selected shades and colors that composed it. Here all in the work was brightly colored; but when they went to the other part of the building, where the women were occupied in restoring, it was like passing from dazzling midsummer to a late October day. The very light and atmosphere of the place seemed different. Stretched on large frames laid out like country quilting-frames were dim old tapestries with figures of gods and goddesses, of mythical heroes and heroines, or of historical persons and events, the fabrics all more or less ragged, but inestimably precious. Girls were grouped around these, mending, directed by an artist. Hanging on the walls were other tapestries that had been repaired, and so perfectly that it was impossible to distinguish what part had been restored without looking at the wrong side of the work. Lying in bunches and snarls on the work, or hanging in long rows of varied hues on the wall, were skeins of wool, of every shade and color, dim, dark, soft, or pallid, like colors seen by night, by the stars, or by the moon, or colors guessed at by eyes half-blind or by eyes that are dying. There was a suggestion of tragedy in those old new colors, as in sad or blighted faces of children. And how much more of interest and tragedy in the old tapestries for which they had lost all their brightness! Nothing else is so interwoven with romantic possibilities as old tapestry. Luxury, which may have been regal, clings to it, but it is the luxury of olden times, when the beggar touched the prince. Mystery and terror are its companions; for who knows who or what may sometimes have been hidden behind that splendid curtain? Lifting its fold on some day of an age gone by, what white, cold face might have been found there between it and the wall, what sliding figure of a hiding spy, what twinkle of a dagger-point in the dusky corner! And then what pageants does it not suggest of the times when life was a picture!

“It really takes one out of the nineteenth century,” Mr. Vane said.

“The weaving of this tapestry,” the Signora told her friends, “was first taught here by a monk—I have forgotten in the time of what pope. This monk was a backslider and ran away from his convent; after being absent ten years he repented, and came back to throw himself at the feet of the Holy Father. 'Give me any penance, Holy Father,’ he said, 'and I will do it gladly.’ The pope, rejoiced to receive this prodigal, asked him where and how he had passed the ten years of his absence, and was told that they had been spent in the tapestry-works of Coblentz, where he had learned all the art of tapestry-making. 'Go, then, to St. Michael’s,’ said the pope, 'and teach them to make tapestry. That shall be your penance.’ And so it was done; and that is the origin of the work in Rome. The story was told me by a prelate who was formerly director of St. Michael’s.”

It was too near noon when the inspection was over for them to go to Santa Francesca’s vineyard. They could only hide themselves in the large covered carriage, and drive slowly home through the almost silent streets. They sighed with contentment when they reached the doorway, where, through the half-open valves, the floor showed freshly sprinkled and all the place cool and softly lighted.

Isabel glanced back into the street. A sick beggar, who was at his post on a doorstep of the opposite convent so constantly that one might well believe he had no other home, leaned back and seemed to sleep, his pallid face whiter than the white stone it lay against. A poor man slept in the shadow of the garden wall above, lying flat on his face on the pavement. Further up, a woman, with two little children clinging to her, sat on the ground in the shadow, and ate her dinner of a piece of bread.

“It seems to me,” the girl said thoughtfully, as she followed the others up-stairs, “that there should be a perpetual thanksgiving society which every one who has a home or a roof to cover them should join.”

The Signora touched Isabel’s arm affectionately and smiled in her pretty, sober face. She found this girl changing, or, rather, developing into something nobler and more serious than she had expected.

“There is a Perpetual Thanksgiving Society in Rome, my dear,” she said. “I am so glad you have had the thought without having heard of it. It is one of the most beautiful societies in the world. It has its meetings the third Thursday of every month, at the Caravita, a little church that used to belong to the Jesuits. There is an instruction, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and afterward the _Magnificat_ is sung. The special objects of the association are to thank God constantly for the good we receive through the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, the Sacred Heart, and by the intercession of the Virgin Mary; and the special festas of the society are Epiphany, Pentecost, Corpus Domini, Sacred Heart, Annunciation, Visitation, Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, St. Gertrude, St. Felix de Cantalice, and Our Lady of Grace. The loveliest thing of all is the practice enjoined on the members of making constantly the aspiration, 'Thanks be to God.’ I wish this society were in every town in the world. We beg, we are always begging, and the showers are always coming down. How beautiful is the idea of a society which asks nothing, but sends up a perpetual _Deo gratias_, as the earth sends up mists in return for the rain!”

“I shall join that society at once,” Isabel said with decision.

The Signora laughed. “You had better take off your bonnet and have some dinner now,” she said.

“Your society pleases me very much,” Mr. Vane remarked. “But the most perfect act of thanksgiving I know is that in the _Gloria_: 'We give thee thanks for thy great glory.’”

There was a little moonlight reception and tea-party that evening out on the _loggia_. Clive Bailey came to take leave before going away for a few weeks into the country. Mr. Coleman also had been unexpectedly called to England on business, and was so afflicted about going that the Signora was vexed.

“I cannot bear to have a man about who cannot get along without me,” she said privately to Isabel, “especially when I can get along perfectly well without him. When a man falls into that dependent and moony state, he loses all his character and becomes despicable. It disgusts me the more, besides, because it is usually the strong-willed, driving women who have such masculine appendages. I do hope I’m not getting into that way. For pity’s sake, tell me if I show signs of it. I have seen ladies—I recollect at this moment a lady, clever, pretty, prompt, and circumscribed in character, who makes all her familiar gentlemen acquaintances either hate her or serve her like dogs. I’ve seen her take a man whom I thought a very respectable sort of person, with a mind of his own, and, by dint of smiling and scolding, rewarding him promptly when he was good, and punishing him promptly when he didn’t obey, end by making a perfect ninny of him. He couldn’t brush his boots or tie his cravat except just as she directed him; if she was vexed with a person, he didn’t dare be civil to them; if she was reconciled to the same, he immediately beamed upon them with the most unconscious and imbecile servility. Yet the two were not lovers, and never dreamed of being so, I presume, and both of them would have been astonished, or would have pretended to be astonished and indignant, if one had hinted that his firmness had been nothing but starch, and she had washed that out of him. I wouldn’t be such a woman for the world. I wouldn’t be a driving, positive woman for anything. I wouldn’t be a woman persistent in small things for my eyes. Mr. Coleman makes me feel as if I were growing so.”

“Nonsense!” Isabel laughed. “It isn’t in you to be so. Mr. Coleman needs change of scene, that is all. He has been circling round you so long that he has got dizzy.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s going off at a tangent,” the Signora replied, only half-reassured. “He certainly would provoke me dreadfully, if he were to go on in this way under my eyes. Don’t let him come near me this evening, and don’t give him a chance to say good-by to me. Take him quite off my hands—that’s a dear girl.”

Isabel promised, and kept her promise so well as to make of the poor bewildered gentleman as nearly an enemy as he was capable of being to any one. He had another source of disquiet, too, and that was the exceeding politeness and cordiality with which the Signora treated the very cruel relative who had come to take him away, and whom he had brought up with him that evening in the vain hope that she would help him to escape. On the contrary, she merely sealed the compact.

“You are quite right, sir,” she said. “These affairs of property can so much better be attended to in person than by proxy.”

“Besides,” replied the cousin, “a man who has property in the country has really some duties there. He should spend a little of his money for the benefit of the state, his neighbors, and the church.”

He privately despised this city of Rome, which he now visited for the first time. Its dinginess, its dirt, and its religion disgusted him.

“Church!” echoed the Signora with calm inquiry. “I was not aware that Mr. Coleman belonged to any church.”

“He has certainly deteriorated very much since he left England,” was the rather sharp response, “but our family are all Catholic.”

“Indeed!” she exclaimed, in real surprise. “I have always understood from Mr. Coleman that his family belonged to the English Episcopal Church.”

“We claim that to be the Catholic Church, madam,” the gentleman responded proudly. “Or, rather, we claim the title for that older branch of it which now restores the ceremonies and beliefs it laid aside for a while.”

“Oh! the family are Ritualists,” said the Signora.

The gentleman drew himself up. “The term does not describe us,” he said. “We have a ritual, of course; but that is not all. I consider the title trivial and disrespectful.”

“I did not intend the least disrespect in the world,” the Signora made haste to say. “I merely repeat the name I have heard. I have always considered Ritualism very—refined—and”—she seemed to be laboriously seeking some words of suitable praise—“and—delicate. It has many beauties—and—in short, is, it seems to me, an—eminently—lady-like religion.”

Mr. Vane took pity on the Englishman, who looked confounded, as if not knowing whether to believe his ears, which had heard, or his eyes, which beheld, the perfectly simple and courteous expression of his entertainer. Mr. Vane, without seeming to have heard a word, introduced the subject of property, on which men can always talk unflaggingly for any length of time.

The Signora gave her attention to an enthusiastic Catholic lady, who was making a pilgrimage of her visit to Italy. This lady was one of those charming Christians who sometimes puzzle us a little. Her whole life was given up to what may be called religious pursuits. She attended functions unceasingly, and on every day was to be found in the church dedicated to the saint whose day it was. She visited relics, shrines, and scenes of religious events, and she did all with an enthusiasm which expressed itself in the most gushing manner. In short, she luxuriated in religion. She knew all about the lives of the saints, and spoke of them with the ease and familiarity of an intimate friend. One could perceive by her conversation that she believed them to be particularly watchful over her, and rather more ready to do her favors than to attend to the wishes of most others. She exhorted people a little now and then, gently, with the air of one who knows. The whole manner of the woman, in things religious, was that of a favorite daughter in her own father’s house, to which the world at large was welcomed with a smiling charity and hospitality. But that others were there also in their own father’s house, and equally beloved by him, did not seem to occur to her. The clergy and all religious she admitted and gave precedence to, seeking and admiring them almost as she did the saints. But, after them, she seemed to walk alone; or rather, she entered with them, and others waited a permission. People in the laity, like herself, were, in some mysterious manner, assumed to be unlike her. The silence of deep religious feeling in others she treated as indifference, and sometimes strove, with seeming good intention, to stir up the souls of those already more deeply moved than herself. She abounded in little devotions, little pictures, little lamps and candles, a multiplicity of pious knick-knacks, enough to bewilder a person of simpler tastes. She wore every scapular, and all the medals she could get, and her girdle was laden with rosaries. By most people she was called a very pious woman; by many she was believed to be a saintly woman. She certainly was a fairly good woman and a nice lady of religious tastes. But, looked at by clear eyes, she was a little puzzling, like some others of her kind. One missed there a central virtue, the sweet humility that makes little of its own goodness, and the charity which rejoices to see others beloved and preferred. With such assumption, one would have expected these virtues. Looking so, moreover, one suspected the existence of a deep and pernicious pride. How did she receive a word of exhortation from an equal? Not as she expected her own exhortations to be received, certainly, but with an expression of astonishment, mortification, and even displeasure. When did she sacrifice herself for others, and say nothing about it? when did she do an act of charity, and conceal that she had done it? when did she hesitate to obtain for herself an advantage because it was to be at the cost of another, unless that other were a person in orders or in religion?

The Signora looked at this lady, and liked her, and admired her in many ways, but she could not help wishing that there were a little less self-complacency in spiritual matters, and a little more willingness to sacrifice her own wishes and aims at times. The thought would intrude itself into her mind that it was less a real, working Christian that she beheld than a religious sybarite. She could not say of her, as a famous author has said of some characters rather similar, that “their celestial intimacies did not seem to have improved their earthly manners, and their high motives were not needed to account for their conduct”; but she was frequently pained to perceive a striking discrepancy between the profession and the practice.

“I have been to-day for the first time to see Santa Maria degli Angeli,” the lady said, in the gay and pleasant way habitual to her. “There seems to be no one left there but a few old, old men. They were in choir when I went to the church, but I should never have suspected it. I asked the sacristan if there would be a Mass soon. 'After _coro_,’ he said. I asked when _coro_ would be, and he replied, looking at me with some surprise, that it was going on then. I had heard a sound like a little company of bumble-bees among the clover, but that it had anything in common with the great, ringing chorus of St. Peter’s or the other great churches I never dreamed. By and by choir and Mass were over, and they all came out. Such a group of dear old Rip Van Winkles! They were all tall, had long hair and long beards of white, or streaked black and white; they drooped in walking, and their black and white robes, not very fresh, gave me a strange impression of antiquity and decay. It must have been the color and oldness of their clothes that made me think of Rip Van Winkle. I was quite ashamed of the thought. More than one head among them would have answered for a St. Jerome. That dear St. Jerome!” she added, drooping into pensiveness, as if, in uttering the name, she had been rapt away.

She recovered herself after an instant, and came back smilingly to the present. “You have no idea what a devotion I have for St. Jerome,” she said.

“I can quite understand it,” the Signora replied. “His character is one to inspire a great admiration and reverence. Here in Rome one becomes more familiar, in a certain way, with the saints. One is so much nearer their earthly lives, their relics and their _festas_ abound so, and one comes so constantly upon places which they have inhabited or visited, that one has a sense of shame and humiliation at coming no nearer their virtues.”

The lady smiled. “I had not thought of that,” she said. “I approach the saints with all confidence and simplicity.”

“That is a very pleasant feeling,” the Signora said calmly, “and, to an extent, may be a virtue. But do you not think that we should have also a feeling of awe in view of that splendid faith of theirs, and of that sublime constancy and ardent charity, which led them to face torments and death without flinching, while our lives seem but a series of compromises, and dispensations from everything that does not agree with our delicate and pampered natures? It seems to me that, if we remember the difference between our lives and theirs, we shall almost expect that when we approach their shrines they will perform one miracle more, and speak an audible reproof to us.”

The lady looked disconcerted and a little displeased. But, some one interrupting them, the subject was dropped.

After they were gone Mr. Vane displayed a letter he had received that day from the prior of Monte Cassino, inviting him and his family to visit their monastery. This clergyman had been on very friendly terms with Mr. Vane in America, where he had spent a good many years, and now, hearing of his conversion, was anxious to renew a friendship which would have a charm it had not before possessed, and to welcome to a brotherhood of faith one who had always been kin to him by a community of generous nature.

“He writes that we can stay a few days on the mountain and see everything there at our leisure,” Mr. Vane said. “There is a house outside the gate where you ladies can stop, and I can have a bed inside. What do you say to it?”

The invitation was accepted by acclamation. Monte Cassino was one of the places to see in Italy—a gem of nature, religion, and art. Before sleeping that night their plans were made. They would put off the visit a little, hoping for cooler days, as the journey was one of five or six hours. Meantime they had a little trip to Genzano in view, to see the _festa_ of the Santissimo Salvatore. And close upon them was Santa Maria delle Neve.

To Be Continued.

“MAY-FLOWERS.”

Dear Mother, on our country’s breast— Our country that is thine— Our poets place as scutcheon flower Small argent stars that shine With pallid light when scarcely wake The leaf-buds from their sleep, When, nursing summer’s waiting bloom, The storm-stained leaves lie deep.

Fair, little stars that faintly gleam Like planets sunset-dimmed, The dearer for their glory scant On barren heavens limned. Pale May-flowers, whose stainless cheek Seems born of winter snow— One rosy drop of living blood Flushing the veins below.

Whose faint-breathed perfume seems to rise Like prayer of anchorite, The heart that pours its incense forth Low hidden from our sight; Whose sweetness seems like nimbus pale Crowning some saintly head, The light of self-forgotten life In holy odor shed.

Kind Mother, see, these little flowers Our land is given to wear, When still the forest arches stand Of leafy tracery bare; When still the heavens’ softened blue Grows dim with wind-swept snow, And lonely-seeming Phœbe chants Disconsolate and low.

This precious bloom bears thy dear name— Though given unaware— And in its gentle life we trace The gleam of thine more fair. In France’s thoughtful land they give Bright flowers to be thine eyes, Within their blue forget-me-nots Thy glance’s calmness lies.

Upon our matin blossom rests No depth of peaceful blue, Yet breaks the rosy dawn of love Its cheek’s pure whiteness through. Amid the darkened leaves it lies In blest humility, A lowly handmaid of the Lord, Unstained of earth, like thee—

A hidden life e’er pouring forth An offering pure of prayer; The sweet unconsciousness of grace Soft’ning the rude, bleak air. The blood-stained heart the sword hath pierced The spotless breast within, The quiet shining on a world Bitter and drear with sin.

A crown of stars that perfects all With heaven-won aureole— Let France’s blossom claim thine eyes, Claim ours thy spotless soul; Whose gracious blessing ever rest On this broad land of ours, That not in vain her poets’ shield Be quartered with May-flowers.

THE LEPERS OF TRACADIE.[28]

Footnote 28:

This article is condensed from one which appeared in the _Revue Canadienne_, by M. de Bellefeuille.

“Ah! little think the gay, licentious crowd, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround— Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many pine! how many drink the cup Of baleful grief! how many shake With all the fiercer tortures of the mind!”

—THOMSON’S _Seasons_.

“In a rage, I returned to my dwelling-place, crying aloud: 'Woe unto thee, leper! Woe unto thee!' And as if the whole world united against me, I heard the echo through the ruins of the Château de Bramafan repeat distinctly: 'Woe unto thee!' I stood motionless with horror on the threshold of the tower, listening to the faint tones again and again repeated from the overhanging mountains: 'Woe unto thee!'”

—XAVIER DE MAISTRE.

On the low and miry land forming the borders of the county of Gloucester in New Brunswick, fifty miles from Miramichi and twenty-five south of Caraquet, between a narrow river and the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, stands a little village. The situation it occupies is dreary and sad to a degree. On one side moans the gray sea, on whose dull and turbid waters rarely is seen a sail. On the other stretches a long, low line of coast, dotted at intervals by the huts of the fishermen. The whole landscape is painfully monotonous, desolate, and mournful. The cottages are mean in the extreme, while the simple church is without architectural merit. Afar off frowns forbiddingly a large building shut in by high walls. In this melancholy spot the passing traveller says to himself: “Is this place accursed alike by God and man?”

Accursed, alas! it has indeed been by despairing lips and hearts; for the building is the lazaretto of Tracadie. Before the year 1798 no register was kept of baptisms, marriages, or burials in the parish. Since that date, however, and up to 1842, Tracadie was under the care of the _curés_ of Caraquet, a neighboring parish.

On the 24th of October, 1842, arrived the first resident priest, M. François Xavier Stanislas Lafrance, who remained there until January, 1852. M. Lafrance has since died. At Tracadie he was succeeded by the present _curé_, M. l’Abbé Ferdinand Gauvreau,[29] with whose name the history of these poor lepers must always be interwoven.

Footnote 29:

The author writes: From this excellent and faithful priest I have obtained the greater part of my information on this subject. In addition, M. Gauvreau has allowed me free use of his notes and documents.

Probably the most terrible chastisement inflicted on a guilty people is that known as leprosy. In ancient times it was only too well known, for it was then more frequent than in our day. It made such fearful ravages in certain parts of the world that its very name was whispered in accents of horror and dread.

From time immemorial has this scourge been looked upon as utterly distinct from all other diseases; more virulent in its effects; more insidious in its approaches, and above all by reason of the frightful manner in which it distorts and disfigures its victims.

Leprosy has probably been known from the creation of the world. Nothing in history leads us to reject this idea, and, indeed, many interpreters who have exercised their talent on certain obscure passages of Holy Writ have found no better way of defining the terrible sign with which God marked the fratricide Cain than by supposing it to be leprosy. The alarm that has always been felt in regard to this most loathsome disease arises not alone from its hideous results, but also from the conviction that has always existed as to the absolute hopelessness of cure.

Before the time of Moses leprosy was well known. The first mention made of it in Holy Writ is in the fourth chapter of Exodus. God, having chosen Moses to deliver the Hebrews from the tyranny of the Egyptians, orders him to present himself before his afflicted people and to announce himself to them as their deliverer. Moses objected, saying: “They will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee!” Then the Lord, to convince Moses of his divine mission, said unto him, “Put now thine hand into thy bosom,” and he put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out, behold his hand full of leprosy, white as snow—“_instar nevis_.”

Here, then, was leprosy easy to recognize, since it had the whiteness of snow. Let us not forget this peculiar feature, for we shall see it again later.

From this incident we see clearly that the disease was by no means unknown to Moses, because on seeing his hand he said: “_Leprosam instar nevis._” Therefore we have a right to believe that the disease existed before Moses. To the support of this opinion Dom Calmet, in his _Biblical Dictionary_, cites Manetho the Egyptian, Lysimarchus, Appian, Tacitus, and Justin, who have advanced the idea that the Jews went out from Egypt on account of the leprosy. Each one of these historians narrates the events in his own fashion, but all agree that the Hebrews who left Egypt were attacked by leprosy.

Not only does leprosy fasten on mankind, but it clings to clothing and to the stone walls of houses. It is to be presumed, however, that the leprosy brought by the Israelites out of Egypt was not of this malignant type; for Moses, by the order of God, takes pains to mention another and more virulent kind known in the land of Chanaan, the promised land of the Israelites.

In Leviticus, chapter xiii., we find the following: “If there be a spot, greenish or reddish, in the garment, of wool or of skin, the garment must be shown to the priest; and the priest shall look on the plague, and shut it up for seven days; and if at the end of the time the spots have spread, the priest will burn the garment, for it is a fretting leprosy. If the priest find, however, that the spots have not spread, he shall order the garment to be washed; and, behold, if the plague have not changed his color, and be not spread, it is unclean: thou shalt burn it in the fire.”

As to the suspected taint of leprosy in their houses, let us see their method of proceeding: “When you be come into the land of Chanaan, if you think there be leprosy in the house, he that owneth the house shall go to the priest, who shall order the house to be emptied. If the priest finds in the walls hollow streaks, greenish or reddish, he shall shut the house for seven days. The priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look; and if the plague be spread, the stones shall be taken away, and cast into an unclean place without the city. Then the rest of the house shall be scraped within and without, and they shall pour the dust without the city, and they shall take other stones and put them in the place of these, and other mortar to plaster the house.

“And if the plague come again, and break out in the house, it is a fretting leprosy, and the house is unclean and shall be destroyed.”

Thus it is seen that the leprosy known to the ancients—this lamentable scourge, “this eldest daughter of death”—attacked in its fury not man alone, but his clothing and the very walls of his house. The primary cause of an evil so malignant and so wide-spread must for ever remain a mystery. The learned Dom Calmet, as commentator of the Bible rather than as a physician, offers a theory in his notes on Leviticus. He maintains that the disease is caused by a multitude of minute worms. These parasites glide between skin and flesh, gnawing the epidermis and the cuticle, and then the nerves, producing, in short, all the symptoms that are remarked in the beginning, the progress, and the end of leprosy. Dom Calmet concludes by saying that “venereal diseases are but forms of leprosy which were only too well known to the ancients.” In this century leprosy still exists in some portions of Italy and in Norway to a very considerable extent, according to the reports of Drs. Danielson and Boëk. It is still to be met with in Turkey in the village of Looschori—the ancient Mytilene of the Ægean Sea—in the Indian Archipelago, on the coast of Africa, and in the West Indies. I myself have seen it in Jerusalem and at Naplouse, ancient Samaria; at Damascus also, where there is a lazaretto very poorly supported by public charity. To Mr. Charles A. Dana, one of the editors of the _New American Cyclopædia_, the _maladie de Tracadie_ is not unknown; for he says that leprosy exists in Canada and in other portions of America.

But to return to the Scriptures: Moses is not the only one of the inspired writers who speaks of leprosy, and more than once our blessed Lord, on his journeys through Judea, exercised his charity and showed his goodness by curing lepers who threw themselves at his feet, entreating mercy. Job was struck by the hand of God with this scourge, and has described it with marvellous beauty and pathos. He was forsaken by his wife and his friends in his humiliation and suffering; they shrank from him, saying that he must have committed some fearful crime to have drawn upon himself so heavy a chastisement. A similar horror of this disease existed among all nations. In Pérsia no citizen infected by it could enter a village or have any intercourse with his fellow-creatures, while a stranger was driven pitilessly forth into the desert (Herod., _Clio_).

Æschines, giving an account of his sea voyage, states that, the ship putting into Delos, they found the inhabitants suffering from leprosy, and the travellers hurried away in fear and trembling, lest they themselves should fall victims.

In Egypt Pliny[30] says that when this evil attacked kings, it was most unfortunate for their people; for to cure them baths of warm human blood were believed to be efficacious.

Footnote 30:

_Hist. Nat._, l. xxvi. c. i. proem.

In later days we find that lepers have been the victims of most unjust and cruel laws among almost all nations. Thus, among the Lombards, in 643, one law ordered not only that lepers should be confined to isolated localities, but declared them also civilly dead, deprived them of their property, and confided them to the charity of the public. Several provinces in France adopted this law with some qualifications. In certain localities even the posterity of lepers were excluded—as at Calais—from all rights of citizenship, and in 757 an ordinance of Pepin le Bref permitted divorce between a healthy wife and leprous husband, or a healthy husband and leprous wife. Charlemagne augmented the severity of laws already so hard. He ordered lepers to live apart, permitted them no social intercourse whatever, and finally, as their crowning misery, these unfortunates saw themselves thrust on one side by the church itself from communion with the faithful.

At the time of the separation of the lepers from family, home, and friends, the church pronounced over them the prayers for the dead. Masses were said for the repose of their souls, and, to complete the mournful illusion, a handful of earth was thrown upon their bodies. They were forbidden to enter any church or any place where food was prepared, nor could they dip their hands in a running stream, nor accept food or anything handed them, save with a fork or the end of a stick. They were compelled, moreover, to wear a particular costume that could be seen and recognized from afar off, and, under threats of severe penalties for disobedience, were ordered to ring a little bell to announce their coming. More recently, in France, lepers herded together, in secluded places, which were called _léproseries_. In the year 1244 there were throughout all Christendom 19,000 of these léproseries, and in France alone 2,000.

There these poor wretched creatures passed their desolate lives, separated from the outside world, without occupation or interest, save that of watching the slow but sure progress of their companions toward the inevitable and horrible death that was impending.

In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, says Mgr. Gaume, leprosy extended its ravages over a large part of the world. The pestilence attacked suddenly all parts of the body at once, drying it up, as it were; and, like the plague, leprosy was unquestionably most contagious. To receive the infection it was but necessary to touch the clothes or the furniture, or even to breathe the tainted air; consequently, every one fled in dismay at the sight of a leper. They were driven from the vicinity of towns, and they were seen from afar wandering over the fields and hillsides like living corpses, while at a distance they were compelled to signal their approach by a rattle or bell. Abandoned by the whole world, and a prey to horrible sufferings, they called on death to deliver them.

The King of France, anxious to protect his subjects from exposure to this disease, formed a complete code of laws for lepers. “Every person,” said M. Deseimeris in his _Medical Dictionary_, “who is suspected of leprosy must submit to a thorough examination by a surgeon. The suspicion confirmed, a magistrate takes possession of the individual to dispose of him according to law. If he be a stranger, he must be sent at once to the place of his birth, bestowing first upon him, however, the poor gifts of a hat, a gray mantle, a beggar’s wallet, and a small keg. The poor creature, on arriving at his native village, must carefully avoid all contact with his fellow-creatures.” Even the church rejects him. Each town or village was compelled to build for his reception a small wooden house on four piles, and, after the death of its inmate, the house, with all that was in it, was consigned to the flames.

As the number of lepers was constantly increasing, the erection of so many of these small tenements became a source of great expense. It was therefore finally decided to unite them under one roof, and give them the name of a léproserie. In this way their support became less onerous, while their seclusion was far greater, and their diet and medical treatment was easier of regulation.

Louis VIII. published in 1226 a code of special laws for the government of léproseries. These laws were intolerably severe. A leper once incarcerated within the walls of a lazaretto incurred the penalty of death if he passed over the threshold again; scaffolds were erected where they could be seen from the hospital, thus keeping this fact ever in the remembrance and before the eyes of the miserable inmates.

I have recounted these details to demonstrate the utter horror with which leprosy was regarded. It must not be supposed that only the ignorant and superstitious were overwhelmed by foolish dread, or that it was an idle prejudice, a relic of barbarism; for in the nineteenth century we witness the same horror, and here on our own shores encounter the same rigorous legislation. We should also find the lepers as uncared for, as shunned and neglected, as they were of old, were it not for the Catholic Church, which, with its customary zeal in all labors of charity and mercy, aroused in the hearts of a humble priest and a few weak nuns the wish and determination to consecrate their lives to the service of this most miserable class of their fellow-creatures.

The first settlements on the Miramichi River were made after the treaty of Utrecht in 1718 by the subjects of France—Basques, Bretons, and Normans. Under the administration of Cardinal Fleury stringent measures were taken to encourage and protect these colonies. After a time, when their prosperity seemed secure, a certain Pierre Beauhair was sent from France as intendant to rule and arrange matters for the French government. He erected a small villa on a point of land that since his death bears his name, at the mouth of the northwestern branch of the Miramichi River. The island opposite l’Ile Beauhair was strongly defended, and tradition states that the intendant built within the walls of the fort a foundry for cannon, and other buildings for the manufacture of munitions of war.

During the summer of 1757 the colony on the Miramichi suffered much from the war between France and England, which sadly interrupted their traffic in fish and furs. Consequently, the following winter was one of great suffering, and many of the colonists died of hunger. Two transport ships, laden with provision and supplies of all kinds, were sent out by the French government in 1758, but both vessels were captured by the English fleet then assisting at the siege of Louisburg.

While these colonies were enduring suspense and starvation a French vessel, called the _Indienne_, from Morlaix, was wrecked at the mouth of the Miramichi near the “Baie des Vents”—a name now corrupted into “Baie du Vin.” Tradition states that this ship, before coming to America, had traded in the Levant, and that a large number of bales of old clothes had been taken on board at Smyrna. The clothes were strewn upon the beach after the vessel went to pieces, were seized by the inhabitants, dried, and afterwards worn. However this may be, it is certain that from that date arose a most terrible pestilence among the Canadians, who were already decimated by famine. The first victim of this malady was M. de Beauhair, and he, with eight hundred others, it is said, were buried at Point Beauhair. The survivors abandoned Miramichi and fled, some to l’Ile Saint-Jean—now Prince Edward’s Island—and the greater number settled along the western coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they formed scattered hamlets under the names of Niguaweck, Tracadie, and Pokemouche, combined in one parish—that of Caraquet.

For eighty years, although it was known that isolated instances of leprosy existed in the different colonies, they attracted little or no public attention up to 1817, when a woman named Ursule Laudry died of the disease.

An account written by one of the nuns of l’Hôtel Dieu attributes a somewhat different origin to this scourge. This good sister writes that the disease was carried to New Brunswick in 1758 by a ship from the Levant; the vessel having made the port late in the autumn, the crew were paid off and dispersed, many seeking a temporary home in Caraquet. Unfortunately, this crew was afflicted by a malady that was unsuspected by any one. The colonists were kind to the sailors; the women washed their clothes and in this way contracted the disease, which was transmitted from one to another and from father to son, and in time acquired its peculiar features. Hamilton Gordon, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick in 1862, has assigned a similar origin to the malady in an interesting pamphlet entitled _Wilderness Journeys in New Brunswick in 1862-3_.

“A vague and uncertain tradition exists,” he says, “that somewhere about a hundred years ago a French vessel was wrecked on the coast of Gloucester or Northumberland, and that among the crew were some sailors from Marseilles, who in the Levant had contracted the hideous leprosy of the East, the veritable elephantiasis Græcorum; however this may be, it is beyond all question that for many years a part of the French population of these two counties has been sorely afflicted by this mysterious disease, or by one that closely resembles it, and which may be, indeed, the form of leprosy so well known on the coast of Norway.”

“It is difficult,” says in his turn M. Gauvreau, _curé_ of Tracadie and chaplain of the lazaretto, in a letter published in the _Journal de Montreal_, November 30, 1859—“it is difficult to persuade one’s self that this malady could be the spontaneous generation of the locality where it now exists. The geographical position of Tracadie is on the sea-coast, with the fresh currents of a river close at hand, the waters of which are salt for eight or nine miles above the mouth. The soil in some portions is sandy, in others clayey; in the vicinity are no marshes, no stagnant water, consequently no injurious malaria. These facts seem to justify the opinion which I have long held, and which as yet I see no reason to change, that the poisonous virus was not the growth of this spot, but was brought here by some traveller.”

These traditions are, in the main, probably correct as to the origin of the scourge in this Canadian village. The inhabitants of other villages than Tracadie subsist almost entirely on fish, are equally poor, equally ill-fed and insufficiently clothed, living in the same damp and foggy atmosphere; but it is only in Tracadie or its vicinity that a leper is to be seen. The inhabitants of Labrador and Newfoundland eat fish almost exclusively, and live amid similar climatic conditions, paying no more enlightened attention to hygienic laws, and yet the “maladie de Tracadie” does not attack or decimate them.

From the date of the introduction of this disease into the village it increased slowly but steadily until 1817, when certain precautions began to be taken; but not until 1844 did the authorities try any active precautions. In that year a medical board was organized, who made a report of their investigations to the government, and later in the same year an act of the Provincial Legislature was passed, renewed and amended in 1850. It authorized the lieutenant-governor to establish a health committee. This committee recommended the erection of a lazaretto on l’Ile de Sheldrake, an isolated spot in the middle of the Miramichi River eighteen miles above Chatham. “Whoever was found to be unquestionably tainted by the disease,” says the article, “must be torn from his family, using force if needful. The husband must be taken from his wife, the mother from her children, the child from its parents, whenever the first symptom of leprosy declares itself. An eternal farewell to all they hold most dear must be said, and the poor creature is sent to the lazaretto. It often happens that a leper refuses to go quietly; he is then dragged by ropes like a beast to the shambles—for none is willing to lay a finger upon him. Often the unhappy beings are driven with blows to the very door of the lazaretto.” Things, of course, could not long remain in this brutal condition. The lepers, driven to desperation by their physical and mental sufferings, by a wild longing for the liberty denied them, and for the sight of their loved ones, sometimes effected their escape.

An attempt was finally made to ameliorate their condition, and in 1847 the lazaretto was removed to the spot where it now stands, about half a mile from the parish church of Tracadie. A large tract of land was here purchased by the government, and the present building was erected, surrounded by a wooden wall twenty feet high, set thick with nails to hinder the escape of the lepers. The windows of the lazaretto were barred heavily with iron, and thus added to the melancholy aspect of the building. The lepers, weary of the revolting resemblance to a prison, themselves tore most of the bars away, and, when the nuns arrived there they at once ordered the remainder to be removed.

In 1868 the nuns from the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal took possession of the lazaretto of Tracadie. For some few years a strong necessity had been felt for the reorganization of this institution. A wish was expressed that it could be placed under the care of the Hospital Nuns. I have now before me a letter from the Rt. Rev. James Rogers, Bishop of Chatham, in which is given an account, for the _Conseil Central de la Propagation de la Foi_ at Paris, of the steps that had been taken up to December, 1866:

“Since my first visit to the establishment,” says the bishop, “I have always thought that it would be most desirable to place it under the care of the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu, who would watch over the souls and the bodies of these sufferers, whose number varies from twenty to thirty. But so many great and pressing needs claimed my attention—while my resources were insufficient even for the alleviation of physical suffering, and also, perhaps, for the spiritual wants of certain souls—I was compelled to postpone my plans in regard to the lazaretto, until my diocese could satisfy the religious needs of its inhabitants by an increase of the number of priests, and by the erection of chapels in places where they had long and earnestly been demanded, and also by the establishment of schools for the Christian education of youth. Another obstacle to the immediate execution of my intention was the lukewarm approbation and co-operation of the government. The total lack of suitable lodging for the nuns, as well as the uncertainty whether the Protestant element which pervades our government and our legislature would be willing to grant us funds or permit us to make needful preparations for the sisters to take charge of the lazaretto—all conspired as hindrances to my desires.

“Last spring I petitioned the government, but political changes interfered, and no steps were taken until now. This is the reason why the worthy _curé_ of Tracadie continues to be the only priest who administers the consolations of religion to that portion of his flock so bitterly afflicted.”

The steps taken by Bishop Rogers seem to have been singularly felicitous. He obtained from Bishop Bourget the assistance of the nuns of the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal, and the government appears to have regarded with favorable eyes this regeneration of the lazaretto, which produced in a very brief period of time the best possible results upon the patients. Abbé Gauvreau draws a sad picture of the state in which these poor creatures lived before the nuns went to their assistance. In a letter dated April 28, 1869, addressed to the mother-superior of the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal, he says:

“I am absolutely incapable of describing the state of abject misery in which our poor lepers passed their lives before the coming of the sisters. I can only say that from the hour of their transfer from l’Ile aux Bec-scies (Sheldrake) at the entrance of the river Miramichi, discord, revolt, and insubordination toward the government, divisions and quarrels among themselves, made the history of their daily lives. The walls rang with horrible blasphemies, and the hospital seemed like a den of thieves.”

The Board of Health spared nothing to make the lepers comfortable. Good food, and abundance of it, appropriate clothing, and careful medical attendance were liberally provided; but, in spite of these efforts, the hearts of these poor creatures were as diseased as their bodies. Some of them revolted against the summons of death, notwithstanding the constant exhortations of the chaplain, and even after their last communion clung strongly to the futile hope of life. Of this number was one who had been warned by the physician that his hours were numbered and that a priest should be summoned. His friends, and those of his relatives who were within the walls of the lazaretto, implored him to prepare for death. “Let me be!” he cried. “I know what I am about!”

About nine o’clock in the evening he begged his companions in misery not to watch at his bedside, and, believing himself able to drive away Death, who was hurrying toward him with rapid strides, insisted on playing a game of cards. The game had hardly begun, however, when the cards dropped from his hands and he fell back on his bed. Before assistance could reach him all was over.

With the arrival of the nuns a new order of things began. Without entering into a detailed account of all the labors performed by the sisters since their arrival, it is enough to state that cleanliness and order prevail and true charity shows itself everywhere. The poor creatures, who formerly revelled in filth and disorder, now see about them decency and cleanliness. They are induced to be submissive and obedient by the hourly example of the sisters; their modesty and reserve, their virtue and careful speech, their watchful care and devotion, their tender attention to the sick, teach the inmates of the hospital the best of lessons. It is easy to imagine with what joy the poor lepers welcomed the nuns who came to consecrate their lives to this service, and also to understand with what affection and respect these holy women are regarded.

“The enclosed grounds of the lazaretto,” says Governor Gordon in his _Wilderness Journeys_, “consist of a green meadow three or four acres in extent. Within these limits the lepers are permitted to wander at their will. Until recently they were confined to the narrowest limits—a mere yard about the lazaretto. I entered these dreary walls, accompanied by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Chatham, by the secretary of the Board of Health, by the resident physician, and by the Catholic priest of the village, who is also the chaplain of the institution.

“Within the enclosure are several small wooden buildings, separated from each other, consisting of the kitchen, laundry, etc. A bath-house has recently been added to these, which will be a source of infinite comfort to the patients. The hospital contains two larger halls—one devoted to the men, the other to the women. Each room has a stove and a table with chairs about it, while the beds are ranged against the wall. These halls are both well lighted and ventilated, and at the time of my inspection were perfectly clean and fresh. At the end of these halls is a small chapel arranged in such a way that the patients of both sexes are able to hear Mass without meeting each other. Through certain openings they also confess to the priest and receive the holy communion.”

Many changes in the interior arrangements of the lazaretto followed the arrival of the sisters. The patients and the nuns now hear Mass at the same time. The male patients occupy two rooms twenty-five feet square, while similar apartments above are reserved for the females. The grounds of the lazaretto have also been enlarged.

“Before giving the characteristics of this appalling disease,” says Mr. Gordon, “I wish to reply to a question which you undoubtedly wish to ask: How is this malady propagated? No one knows. It seems not to be hereditary, since in one family the father or mother may be attacked, while the children entirely escape. In others the children are leprous and the parents healthy. In 1856 or '57 a woman named Domitile Brideau, wife of François Robichaud, was so covered with leprosy that her body was one mass of corruption. While in this state she gave birth to a daughter, whom she nursed—the mother shortly afterward dying in the hospital. Meanwhile, the child was absolutely healthy, and remained until she was three years of age in the hospital without any unfavorable symptoms being developed. The girl grew to womanhood and married, and to-day she and her children are perfectly healthy. Many similar examples might be cited.”

This malady, then, can hardly be contagious, since in one family husband or wife may be attacked, while the other goes unscathed. There is now at Tracadie a man, François Robichaud by name, who has had three wives; the two first perished of leprosy, the third is now under treatment at the lazaretto—the husband in the meanwhile enjoying perfect health. In one family two or more children are lepers, while the others are untainted. One servant-woman resided for eight years in the hospital, ate and drank with the patients, yet has never shown any symptoms of the disease. The laundress of the institution lives under its roof, and has done so for two years; she is a widow, her husband having died of the scourge, she being his sole nurse during his illness. She is in perfect health. It has also happened more than once that persons suspected of leprosy, and placed in the hospital, after remaining there several years and developing no further symptoms, are discharged as “whole.”

All the patients now in the hospital agree that the disease is communicated by touch, and each has his own theory as to where he was exposed to it—either by sleeping with some one who had it, or by eating and drinking with such.

I am strongly persuaded that this disease, whatever may be its origin, is greatly aggravated by the kind of life led by the natives of Tracadie, who are all fishermen or sailors. Their food is fish, generally herring, and their only vegetables turnips and potatoes. Such is their extreme poverty that there are not ten families in Tracadie who ever touch bread.

Let us follow Governor Gordon into the lazaretto.

“At the time of my visit,” he says, “there were twenty-three patients, thirteen men and ten women. They were all French and all Catholics, belonging to the lower class. They were of all ages, and had reached various stages of the disease. One old man, whose features were distorted out of all semblance to humanity, and who had apparently entered his second childhood, could hardly be sufficiently aroused from his apathy to receive the benediction of the bishop, before whom all the others sank on their knees.

“There were also young people who, to a casual observer, seemed vigorous and in health; while, saddest of all sights was that of the young children condemned to spend their lives in this terrible place. Above all was I touched by the sight of three small boys from eleven to fifteen years of age. To an inexperienced observer they had much the look of other children of their own age and class. Their eyes were bright and intelligent, but the fatal symptoms that had sufficed to separate them from home and kindred were written on their persons, and they were immured for life in the lazaretto.

“The greatest sympathy must naturally be felt for these younger victims when one thinks of the possible length of years that stretches before them, hopeless and cheerless; to grow to manhood with the capacities, passions, and desires of manhood, and condemned to live from youth to middle age, from middle age to decrepitude possibly, with no other society than that of their companions in misery. Utterly without occupations, amusements, or interests, shut off from all outside resources, their only excitement is found in the arrival of a new disease-stricken patient, their only occupation that of watching their companions dying before their eyes by inches!

“But few of the patients could read, and those who could were without books. There was evident need of some organization that might furnish the patients with employment. Both mind and body required occupation. Under these circumstances I was by no means surprised to learn that in the last stages of the disease the mind was generally much weakened.

“The suffering of the majority of the patients was by no means severe, and I was informed that one of the characteristic features of the malady was profound insensibility to pain. One individual was pointed out to me, who by mistake had laid his arm and open hand on a red-hot stove, and who knew nothing of it until the odor of burning flesh aroused his attention.”

After Governor Gordon’s visit the condition of the lepers was much improved. The sisters taught the young to read and employed them in making shoes and other articles.

The investigations of Governor Gordon, although made during a brief inspection of the lazaretto, are correct as far as they go, but are far from complete. The Abbé Gauvreau has been for eighteen years chaplain of the hospital. He has watched keenly the progress of the disease in over a hundred cases. He has noted every symptom of its slow and fatal march. He has been present at the deathbeds of many of the lepers, and he recounts with horror the terrible scenes he has witnessed.

“Without wishing to impose my opinions on you,” he says, “I cannot resist the conviction that, apart from divine will, this scourge of fallen man is a most subtle poison introduced into the human body by transmission or by direct contact, or even, perhaps, by prolonged cohabitation.

“But whichever of these suppositions is the more nearly correct, when once the poison is fairly within the system its action is so latent and insidious that for some years—two, four, or even more—the unfortunate Naaman or Giezi perceives in himself no change either in constitution or sensations. His sleep is as refreshing and his respiration as free as before. In a word, the vital organs perform all their functions and the various members are unshorn of their vigor and energy.

“At this period of the disease the skin loses its natural color, its healthy appearance, and is replaced by a deadly whiteness from head to foot. This whiteness looks as if the malady had taken possession of the mucous membrane and had displaced the fluids necessary to its functions. Without knowing if the leper of the Orient possesses other external indications, it is certain that in this stage the malady of Tracadie is precisely similar to the leprosy of the ancients—I mean in the whiteness of the skin. In the second stage the skin becomes yellow. In the third and last it turns to a deep red; it is often purple, and sometimes greenish, in hue. In fact, the people of Tracadie, like myself, are so familiar with the early symptoms of the disease that they rarely fall into a mistake.

“Only one death has ever occurred in the first stage—that of Cyrille Austin. All the other cases have passed on to the second or third stages before death; and, strangely enough, it has been remarked by the patients themselves that the treatment of Dr. La Bellois had always a much better chance of success during the third period than during the second.

“At first the victim feels devouring thirst, great feverish action, and a singular trembling in every limb; stiffness and a certain weakness in the joints; a great weight on the chest like that caused by sorrow; a rush of blood to the brain; fatigue and drowsiness, and other disagreeable symptoms which now escape my memory. The entire nervous system is then struck, as it were, with insensibility to such a degree that a sharp instrument or a needle, or even the blade of a knife, buried in the fleshy parts or thrust through the tendons and cartilage, causes the leper little or no pain. Some poor creature, with calm indifference, will place his arm or leg on a mass of burning wood and tar, and let it remain there until the entire limb, bones and all, is consumed; yet the leper feels no pain, and may sleep through it all as quietly as if in his bed.”

In another letter the abbé gives the following example of this astonishing insensibility:

“One of these afflicted beings who died at the lazaretto, and to whom I administered the last sacraments, lay down to sleep near a hot fire; in his slumbers he thrust one arm and hand into the flames, but continued to sleep. The overpowering smell of burning flesh awakened one of his companions, who succeeded in saving his life.”

One of the nuns says: “Since we reached Tracadie two of the patients have burned their hands severely, and were totally unconscious of having done so until I dressed the wounds myself.” In regard to this torpidity of the system, M. Gauvreau remarks that it is but temporary, but he knows not its duration; and the nun adds that the torpidity is not invariable with all the patients, and with some only in a portion of the body. In certain individuals it is only in the legs; in others, in the hands alone; but all complain of numbness like that of paralysis.

“By degrees,” says M. Gauvreau, “the unnatural whiteness of the skin disappears, and spots of a light yellow are to be seen. These spots in some cases are small and about the size of a dollar-piece. When of this character, they appear at first with a certain regularity of arrangement, and in places corresponding with each other, as on the two arms and shoulders—more generally, however, on the breast. They are distinct, but by degrees the poison makes its way throughout the vitals; the spots enlarge, approach each other, and, when at last united, the body of the sick man becomes a mass of corruption. Then the limbs swell, afterward portions of the body, the hands, and the feet; and when the skin can bear no further tension it breaks, and running sores cover the patient, who is repulsive and disgusting to the last degree.

“The entire skin of the body becomes extremely tender, and is covered with an oily substance that exudes from the pores and looks like varnish. The skin and flesh between the thumb and forefinger dry away, the ends of the fingers, the feet, and hands dwindle to nothingness, and sometimes the joints separate, and the members drop off without pain and often without the knowledge of the patient.

“The most noble part of the being created in the image of God—the face—is marred as much as the body by this fell disease. It is generally excessively swollen. The chin, cheeks, and ears are usually covered by tubercles the size of peas. The eyes seem to start from their sockets, and are glazed by a sort of cataract that often produces complete blindness. The skin of the forehead thickens and swells, acquiring a leaden hue, which sometimes extends over the entire countenance, while in other cases the whole face is suffused with scarlet. The explanation of these different symptoms may be found, of course, in the variety of temperaments—sanguine, bilious, or lymphatic. This face, once so smooth and fair, has become seamed and furrowed. The lips are two appalling ulcers—the upper lip much swollen and raised to the base of the nose, which has entirely disappeared; while the under lip hangs over the chin, which shines from the tension of the skin. Can a more frightful sight be imagined? In some cases the lips are parched and drawn up like a purse puckered on strings. This deformity is the more to be regretted is it precludes the afflicted from participation in the holy communion. Leprosy—that of Tracadie, at least—completes its ravages on the internal organs of its victims. It attacks now the larynx and all the bronchial ramifications; they become obstructed and filled with tubercles, so that the unhappy patient can find no relief in any position. His respiration becomes gradually more and more impeded, until he is threatened with suffocation. I have been present at the last struggles of most of these afflicted mortals. I hope that I may never be called upon to witness similar scenes. Excuse me from the details. If I undertook them my courage would give out; for I assure you that many of you would have fainted. Let me simply add that these lepers generally die in convulsions, panting for air; frequently rushing to the door to breathe; and, returning, they fling themselves on their pallets in despair. The thought of their sighs and sobs, the remembrance of their tears, almost breaks my heart, and their prayers for succor ring constantly in my ears: 'O my God! have mercy on me! have mercy on me!’

“At last comes the supreme moment of this lingering torture, and the patient dies of exhaustion and suffocation. All is over, and another Lazarus lies in Abraham’s bosom!”

After the above vivid picture of this loathsome disease we naturally ask if the evil be such that no medical skill can combat it with success. The Hospital Nun in the infirmary of the lazaretto tells us all that she has yet learned upon this point.

In 1849 and 1850 Dr. La Bellois, a celebrated French physician residing at Dalhousie, treated the lepers for six months and claimed to have cured ten of them: T. Goutheau, Charles Comeau, T. Brideau, A. Benoit, L. Sonier, Ed. Vienneau, Mme. A. Sonier, M. Sonier, Mme. Ferguson, Melina Lavoie. “All the above cases are now quite well, and the treatment I adopted was entirely for syphilitic disease, thus establishing without any doubt the nature of the disease” (extract from La Bellois’ report, Feb. 12, 1850).

Meanwhile, from the report of the secretary of the Board of Health—Mr. James Davidson—we gather that all the sick above mentioned returned after a time to the hospital; that they died there, with the exception of three, of whom two died in their own houses and the third still lives. Of this one Dr. Gordon, of Bathurst, says: “The disease is slow in its progress, but it is sure, and the fatal termination cannot be far off.”

Dr. Nicholson undertook the treatment at the lazaretto. By a certain course of medicine, the details of which he kept a profound secret, and with the aid of vapors, he wonderfully improved the physical condition of the lepers, who in many instances indulged sanguine hopes of recovery. Unfortunately, however, this physician suddenly abandoned his profession, and, to the sorrow of his former patients, died three years later. The lepers soon relapsed into their former hopeless state, and since then no change has taken place.

“On our arrival at Tracadie,” said the sister, “we found twenty inmates of the hospital, and since three more have been admitted. These poor creatures, being firmly persuaded that we could cure them, besieged us with entreaties for medicine, and were satisfied with whatever we gave. At first I selected three who had undergone no medical treatment; these three were also the only ones who suffered from contraction of the extremities. The first, twenty-two years of age, had been at the hospital four years, and as yet showed the disease only in the contraction above mentioned, and in a certain insensibility of the feet and hands. The second, fifteen years old, had been in the hospital for two years, his hands and feet were drawn up, and he suffered from a large swelling on the left foot. This young fellow is very delicate, and suffers intensely at times from spasms of the stomach. The third case is a lad of eleven, who for two years has suffered from the disease. His hands are twisted out of shape, and his body is covered with spots, red and white; these spots are totally without sensibility. I have administered to these patients the remedies as prescribed by Mr. Fowle—_Fowle’s Humor Cure_, an American patent medicine. The first and second patient experienced no other benefit from this remedy than a certain vigor previously unfelt. To the third the sensibility of the cuticle returned, but the spots remained the same. This in itself is very remarkable, because in no previous case have these benumbed or paralyzed parts regained their sensation. To another, a patient of twenty-two, I gave the same remedy. For eight years he had been a martyr to the virulence of the disease. When we arrived at the lazaretto, we found his case to be one of the worst there. His nose had fallen in; the lips were enormously puffed and swollen; his hands equally so, and looked more like the paws of a bear than like the hands of a human being. The saliva was profuse, but the effort of swallowing almost futile. Soon after taking this same medicine the saliva ceased to flow and he swallowed with comparative ease.

“On the 23d of January he was, by the mercy of God, able to partake of the holy communion, of which he had been deprived for four years. His lips are now of their natural size, and he is stronger than he has been for years. But the pains in his limbs are far worse than they have ever before been. I have also given Fowle’s cure to all the patients who had been under no previous medical treatment, and invariably with beneficial results. In some the tint of the skin is more natural; in others the swelling of the extremities is much abated; but the remedy seems always to occasion an increase of pains in the limbs, although it unquestionably acts as a tonic upon the poor creatures. In all of them the mouth and throat improve with the use of Fowle’s cure. And here let me say that this disease throughout bears a strong resemblance to syphilis. In both diseases the throat, the tongue, and the whole inside of the mouth are ulcerated. In both diseases the voice is affected to such a degree that it can hardly make itself heard. They cough frightfully, and some time after our coming a leper presented himself for admission at our hospital doors. The poor creature was covered with ulcers and every night was bathed in a cold perspiration. After he had rested for a few days, I gave him a powerful dose of _la liqueur arsenicale_, which has since been repeated. The night-sweats have disappeared, and the ulcers are healed, with the exception of one on the foot. His lips are still unhealthy, but he is much stronger, and the spots on his person are gradually disappearing.

“Two others, later arrivals have taken _la liqueur arsenicale_ and have improved under its use. Suspecting that the origin of this malady may be traced to another source, and remembering the opinion of Dr. La Bellois, I gave the bichloride of mercury, in doses of the thirty-second part of a grain, to the worst case in the hospital. It is too soon, however, to judge of its effects. The improvement in no one of these cases is rapid, but we trust that it is certain. We look to God alone for the success for which we venture to hope. I can find no statistics which will enable me to give you the number of victims that have fallen under this dread malady of Tracadie. I find, however, a letter from M. Gauvreau, bearing the date of November 30, 1859, that sixty persons perished from its ravages in the previous fifteen years, and that twenty-five of both sexes, and of all ages, were then inmates of the lazaretto, awaiting there the end of their torments.”

In 1862 Mr. Gordon said that he saw twenty-three patients at the hospital, and the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu found twenty there when they reached the lazaretto, and have since admitted three in addition; it does not seem, therefore, as if the “eldest sister of Death” had relaxed her hold on this unhappy village. Yet if the disease can but be confined to this locality, wonders will be achieved. Good care, regular medical attendance, incessant vigilance, with intelligent adherence to hygienic laws, may eventually cause its entire disappearance from our soil. Let us hope that the faithful sisters will succeed in their good work; for we ourselves, every one of us, have a personal interest in it. Unfortunately, this good result is far from certain, as the Abbé Gauvreau desires us to understand.

“One or more of these unfortunates,” he says, “feeling the insidious approaches of the disease, and shrinking from the idea of the lazaretto, have at times secretly escaped from Tracadie. They leave Miramichi on the steamer, intending to land at Rivière-du-Loup, at Kamouraska, perhaps at Quebec or at Montreal. As yet no ulcers are visible, nor, indeed, any external symptoms which could excite the smallest suspicion. On landing at some one of the places mentioned they procure situations in different houses, and remain in them for a month or two, perhaps, saying nothing all this time of their symptoms to any one, not even to a physician. They eat with their master’s family, and, even if they take the greatest precaution, they convey this poisonous virus to their masters. When they have reason to fear that suspicion is about being aroused, they depart, but it is too late, and they go to scatter the contagion still further.

“The following instance came under my own observation: A youth suffering from this disease, and dreading the lazaretto, went to Boston, where he secured a position on a fishing vessel, hoping that the sea air, with the medicines that he would take, would effect his cure. He soon found that these hopes were groundless, and was obliged to enter the hospital in Boston, where, in spite of the care and attention bestowed upon him by the physicians of the medical school at Cambridge, he died, far from friends and home.”

One naturally asks, with a thrill of horror, whether, before the admission of this poor creature to the hospital, he did not transmit to his shipmates the poisonous virus that filled his own blood.

The total disappearance of this disease—if such disappearance may be hoped for—will be due exclusively to the noble and untiring exertions of the sisters. Tracadie and its afflicted population would not alone owe a debt of eternal gratitude to these Hospital Nuns. America itself would share this feeling. With an example like this of charity and self-abnegation before us, we cannot cease to wonder at, and to deplore, the narrow minds of those persons who condemn the monastic institutions of the church. Let us compassionate all such; for to them light is lacking, and they have yet to learn the great truth that the duty most inculcated by the church, after the love of God, is the love of our neighbors.

TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO SOME OF THE SACRAMENTS.

In a former article,[31] whilst following Mr. Withrow and other Protestant controversialists through their evasions and misinterpretations of the evidence to be found in the Catacombs on behalf of certain points of Catholic doctrine and practice, we pointed out that prayers either _for_ the dead or _to_ them were the only two articles on which it would be reasonable to look for information from the inscriptions on the gravestones. We said that these prayers were likely to find expression, if anywhere, by the side of the grave. As they took their last look on the loved remains of their deceased friend or relative, the affectionate devotion of the survivors would naturally give utterance either to a hearty prayer for the everlasting happiness of him they had lost, or to a piteous cry for help, an earnest petition that he would continue to exercise, in whatever way might be possible under the conditions of his new mode of existence, that same loving care and protection which had been their joy and support during his life; or sometimes both these prayers might be poured forth together, according as the strictness of God’s justice, or the Christian faith and virtues of the deceased, happened to occupy the foremost place in the petitioner’s thoughts.

Footnote 31:

THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1876, p. 371 Jan., 1877, p. 523.

When, therefore, we proceeded in a second paper to question the same subterranean sanctuaries on another subject of Christian doctrine—the supremacy of St. Peter—we called into court another set of witnesses altogether: to wit, the paintings of their tombs and chapels. Exception has been taken against the competency of these witnesses, on the plea that they are not old enough; they were not contemporary, it is said, with those first ages of the church whose faith is called in question. To this we answer that the objection is entirely out of date; it might have been raised twenty or thirty years ago, and it might have been difficult at that time satisfactorily to dispose of it. Those were days in which writers like M. Perrot in France could affect to pronounce dogmatically on the age of this or that painting, solely on the evidence of its style, without having first established any standard by which that style could be securely judged. There are still a few writers of the same school even at the present day, such as Mr. Parker in England, who assigns precise years as the dates of these subterranean monuments with as much confidence as if he had been personally present when they were executed, and (we may add) with as wide a departure from the truth as if he had never seen the pictures at all. Such writers, however, have but few disciples nowadays. Their foolish presumption is only laughed at; and it is not thought worth while seriously to refute their assertions. Men of intelligence and critical habits of thought are slow to accept the _ipse dixit_ of a professor, however eminent, upon any subject; and all who have studied this particular subject—the paintings in the Catacombs—are well aware that the question of their antiquity has now been carried beyond the range of mere conjecture and assumption; it has been placed on a solid basis of fact through the indefatigable labors of De Rossi. Those labors have been directed in a very special way towards establishing the true chronology of the several parts of the Catacombs; and when this had been done, it was manifest to all that the most ancient _areæ_ were also those which were most abundantly decorated with painting, whilst the areæ that had been used more recently—_i.e._, in the latter half of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century—were hardly decorated at all. This gradual decline of the use of pictorial decoration has been traced with the utmost exactness through the successive _areæ_ of a single Catacomb; six or seven tombs being found thus decorated in the first _area_, two in the second, one in the third, none at all in the fourth; and the same thing has been seen, with more or less distinctness, throughout the whole range of subterranean Rome. Then, again, every casual visitor to them can see for himself that before the abandonment of burial here—_i.e._, before the year 410—many of the paintings were already considered old enough to be sacrificed without scruple to the wishes of those who would fain excavate new tombs in desirable sites. Men do not usually destroy to-day the paintings which they executed yesterday; certainly they do not allow the ornamentation which they have just lavished on the tombs of their fathers to be soon effaced with impunity. We may be sure, then, that those innumerable paintings which we see broken through in order to make more modern graves must have been of considerable antiquity at the time of their destruction. Then, again, it must not be forgotten that some of these paintings were actually appealed to as ancient testimony in the days of St. Jerome, on occasion of a dispute between that doctor and St. Augustine as to the correct rendering of a particular word in his Latin translation of the Scriptures. Finally, it is notorious that the fine arts had rapidly decayed and the number of their professors diminished before the days of Constantine—in fact, before the end of the third century.

We cannot, however, pretend to give in these pages even a brief summary of De Rossi’s arguments and observations whereby he establishes the primitive antiquity of Christian art in the Catacombs. We can only mention a few of the more popular and palpable proofs which can be appreciated by all without difficulty; and we will only add that it is now possible, under the sure chronological guidance of De Rossi, to distinguish three successive stages in the development of painting in the Christian cemeteries, the latest of which was complete when the Constantinian era began, and the first falls hardly, if at all, short of even apostolic times. This is no longer denied by the best instructed even among Protestant controversialists; they acknowledge that painting was used by the earliest Christians for the ornamenting of their places of burial; only they contend that it was done “not because it was congenial to the mind of Christianity so to illustrate the faith, but because it was the heathen custom so to honor the dead.” The author of this remark, however, has omitted to explain whence it comes to pass that the great majority of the paintings which survive in the cemeteries are more engaged in illustrating the mysteries of the faith than in doing honor to the dead.

But we must not pursue this subject any further. We have said enough, we think, to establish the competency of these paintings as witnesses to the ancient faith, and we will now proceed to question them concerning one or two principal mysteries of the faith—those that are called its mysteries _par excellence_: its sacraments. We do not doubt that, if duly interrogated, they will have some evidence to give. We say, if duly interrogated, because it is the characteristic of ancient Christian art to be eminently symbolical; it suggested rather than declared religious doctrines and ideas, and it suggested them by means of artistic symbols or historical types, which must be inquired into and meditated upon before they can be made fully to express their meaning. This is of the very essence of a symbol: that it should partly veil and partly manifest the truth. It does not manifest the truth with the fulness and accuracy of a written historical description, or it would cease to be a symbol; on the other hand, it must not be so obscure as to demand a sibyl for its interpretation; it must have a tendency to produce in the mind of the beholder some leading feature of the object it is intended to represent. And where should symbols of this kind be more abundantly found for the Christian preacher or artist than in the histories of the Old Testament? Ancient Christian art, says Lord Lindsay, “veiled the faith and hope of the church under the parallel and typical events of the patriarchal and the Jewish dispensations.”

We need not remind our readers that the principle of this method of interpreting Holy Scripture has express apostolic sanction; but few who have not studied the subject closely will have any adequate idea of the extent to which it was followed in the ancient church. We will give a single example, selected because it closely concerns the first mystery of which we propose to speak—the Sacrament of Baptism.

Tertullian, who lived at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, wrote a short treatise on this sacrament. This treatise he begins by bringing together all that Holy Scripture contains about water, with such minuteness of detail that he is presently obliged to check himself, saying that, if he were to pursue the subject through all Holy Scripture with the same fulness with which he had begun, men would say he was writing a treatise in praise of water rather than of baptism. From the first chapter of the Book of Genesis to the last of the Evangelists, and even of the Apocalypse, he finds continual testimony to the high dignity and sacramental life-giving power of this element. The Spirit of God, he says, moved over it at the first; whilst as yet the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the heaven was as yet unformed, water alone, already pure, simple, and perfect, supplied a worthy resting-place on which God could be borne. The division of the waters was the regulating power by which the world was constituted; and when at length the world was set in order, ready to receive inhabitants, the waters were the first to hear and obey the command and to bring forth creatures having life. Then, again, man was not made out of the dry earth, but out of slime, after a spring had risen out of the earth, watering all its surface. All this is out of the first two chapters of Genesis; and here he makes a pause, breaking into that apology which has been already mentioned. Then he resumes the thread of his discourse, but passing much more briefly over the remainder of the Old Testament. He notes how the wickedness of the old world was purged by the waters of the Deluge, which was the world’s baptism; how the waters of the Red Sea drowned the enemies of God’s people and delivered them from a cruel bondage; and how the children of Israel were refreshed during their wanderings through the wilderness by the water which flowed continuously from the rock which followed them, “which rock was Christ.” Then he comes to the New Testament, and briefly but eloquently exclaims: Nowhere is Christ found without water. He is himself baptized with it; he inaugurates in it the first manifestation of his divine power at the wedding-feast in Cana; when he preaches the Gospel, on the last and great day of the feast, he stands and cries, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” He sums up his whole gift to man under the image of a fountain of water, telling the Samaritan woman that he has living water to give, which shall become in him that receives it a fountain of water springing up unto life everlasting. When he gives instruction upon charity, he instances a cup of cold water given to a disciple; he sits down weary at a well and asks for water to refresh himself; he walks on the waves of the sea, and washes his disciples’ feet; finally (Tertullian concludes), “this testimony of Jesus to the Sacrament of Baptism continues even to the end, to his very Passion; for, when he is condemned to the cross, water is not absent—witness the hands of Pilate; nay, when wounded after death upon the cross, water bursts forth from his side—witness the soldier’s spear.”

There may be something in this symbolism that sounds strange to modern ears; but we are not here criticising it; we have nothing to do with its merits or demerits, but only with the fact of its general use—so general that it was the one principle of exegesis which every commentator on Holy Scripture in those days followed, and we have every right to suppose that Christian artists would have followed it also. When, therefore, we find in the Roman Catacombs (as, for example, the other day in the cemetery of San Callisto) a glass vessel, very artistically wrought, with fishes in _alto rilievo_ swimming round it in such a way that, when full of water, it would have represented a miniature image, as it were, of the sea, is it a mere fanciful imagination which bids us recognize in such ornamentation a reference to holy baptism, and conjectures that the vessel was perhaps even made for the administration of that sacrament? It may be so; but we cannot ourselves think so; we cannot at once reject the explanation as fanciful; the work of the artist corresponds too exactly with the words of the theologian to allow us to treat the coincidence as altogether undesigned. “We little fish are born,” says Tertullian, “after the likeness of our great Fish in water, and we cannot otherwise be safe than by remaining in the water.” And we seem to ourselves to read these same words, written in another language, in the beautiful vessel before us. We read it also in another similar vessel, which looks as though it had come out of the same workshop, yet was found in an ancient cemetery at Cologne; and in another of bronze, dug up in the vineyard over the cemetery of Pretextatus, that used to be shown by Father Marchi in the Kircherian Museum at the Roman College. In all these instances we believe that this is the best account that can be given, both of the original design of the vessel and also of its preservation in Christian subterranean cemeteries. However, if any one thinks otherwise, we do not care to insist upon our explanation as infallibly certain. We will descend into the Catacombs themselves, and look about upon the paintings on their walls or the carving on their gravestones, and see whether baptism finds any place there also.

And, first, we come across the baptism of our Lord himself. We are not now thinking of the subterranean baptistery in the cemetery of Ponziano, with the highly-decorated cross standing up out of the middle of it, and Christ’s baptism painted at the side. For this is one of the latest artistic productions in the Catacombs—a work of the eighth or ninth century possibly. We are thinking, on the contrary, of one of the earliest paintings in a most ancient part of the excavations, in the crypt of Lucina, near the cemetery of Callixtus, with which, in fact, it is now united. We shall have occasion to return to this same chamber presently for the sake of other paintings on its walls having reference to the Holy Eucharist; just here we only call attention to the baptism of our Lord, which is represented in the space over the doorway. We do not know of any other instance of this subject having been painted in the Catacombs besides the two that we have mentioned, but it is quite possible that others may be hereafter discovered; but of baptism as a Christian rite, veiled, however, under its types and symbols, we have innumerable examples.

Few figures recur more frequently among the paintings in the Catacombs, and none are more ancient, than that of a man standing in an open box or chest, often with a dove, bearing an olive-branch in its mouth, flying towards him. When this was first seen after the rediscovery of the Catacombs in the sixteenth century, men set it down to be the picture of some ancient bishop preaching in a pulpit, and the Holy Ghost, under the form of a dove, inspiring him as to what he should say, according to the legend told of St. Gregory the Great and some others. Nobody now doubts that it was intended for Noe in the ark; not, however, the historical Noe and the historical ark—for nothing could be more ludicrously false to the original—but those whom that history foreshadowed: Christians saved by the waters of baptism and securely housed in the ark of the church. Some persons, who seem to take a perverse delight in assigning a pagan rather than a Christian origin to everything in the early church, account for the difference between the Biblical and the artistic representation of the ark by saying that the Christian artist did but copy a pagan coin or medal which he found ready to his hands. It is quite true that certain coins which were struck at Apamea in Phrygia during the reigns of Septimius Severus, Macrinus, and Philip the elder—_i.e._, at different periods in the first half of the third century—exhibit on one side of them a chest, with a man and a woman standing within it, and the letters ΝΩ, or ΝΩΕ, written on the outside; and that these figures were intended to be a souvenir of the Deluge, which held a prominent place in the legends of Phrygia. It is said that the town of Apamea claimed to derive its secondary name of κιβωτός, or ark, from the fact that it was here that the ark rested; and it is quite possible that the spread of Christian ideas, gradually penetrating the Roman world, and filtering into the spirit even of those who remained attached to paganism, may have suggested the making of the coins we have described; but it is certain, on the other hand, that we can claim priority in point of time for the work of the Christian artists in the Catacombs. The coins were struck, as we have said, in the beginning of the third century; the earliest Christian painting of the same subject is assigned to the beginning of the second.

But whatever may be the history of the forms under which Noe and the ark are represented, there can be no question as to their meaning. We have the authority of St. Peter himself (1 iii. 20, 21) to instruct us upon this point; and Tertullian does but unfold what is virtually contained in the apostle’s words when he says that the ark prefigures the church, and that the dove sent out of the ark and returning with an olive-branch was a figure of the dove of the Holy Spirit, sent forth from heaven to our flesh, as it emerges from the bath of regeneration. And if we quote Tertullian again as our authority, this is not because he differs in these matters from other Christian writers who preceded or followed him, but because he has written at greater length and specially on that

## particular subject with which we are now engaged. St. Augustine, writing

two hundred years later, gives the same explanation, and says that “no Catholic doubts it; but that it might perhaps have seemed to be a merely human imagination, had not the Apostle Peter expressly declared it.” It is, then, from no private fancy of our own, but simply in conformity with the teaching of all the ancient doctors of the church, that we interpret this scene of a man standing in an ark, and receiving an olive-branch from the mouth of a dove, as expressing this Christian doctrine: that the faithful obtain remission of their sins through baptism, receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of divine peace—that peace which, being given by faith in this world, is the gage of everlasting peace and happiness in the next—and are saved in the mystical ark of the church from the destruction which awaits the world. And if the same scene be rudely scratched on a single tomb, as it often was, and sometimes with the name of the deceased inscribed upon the chest, we can only understand it as denoting a sure and certain hope on the part of the survivors that their departed friend, having been a faithful member of the church, had died in the peace of God and had now entered into his rest.

We pass on to another of the Biblical stories mentioned by several of the Fathers as typical of baptism; and we will select as our specimen of it a painting that was executed about the very time that Tertullian was writing his treatise on that sacrament. It is to be seen more than once on the walls of a series of chambers which open out of a gallery in the Catacomb of San Callisto, not far from the papal crypt. The first figure that greets us from the wall on the left-hand side as we enter these chambers is Moses striking the rock and the water gushing forth. Are we to look upon this as a mere historic souvenir of the Jewish legislator, or are we to see in it a reference to Christian baptism? The artist in the present instance does not allow us to doubt. Side by side with it he has painted a fisherman, and we need not be reminded who it was that compared the work of the Christian apostle to that of fishermen; and immediately he adds, with still greater plainness of speech, a youth standing in the water, whilst a man pours water over his head. Finally, he fills the very little space that remains on the wall with the picture of a paralytic carrying his bed, and it would be easy to show that the Fathers recognized in the pool of Bethsaida, to which place this history belongs, a type of the healing waters of baptism. Was it possible for the Christian artist to set forth the sacrament more unequivocally? There is no legend to interpret the painting, but surely this is not needed. The mystery is veiled, indeed, from all who were uninstructed; but it was perfectly intelligible to all the baptized; it was veiled under types and symbols taken partly from the Old Law and partly from common life.

We need hardly say that this same figure of Moses striking the rock occurs in scores of other places throughout the Catacombs; but we have selected this particular specimen, both because it appears with a more copious _entourage_ of other symbols determining its sense beyond all dispute, and also because it is here brought, as we shall presently see, into immediate proximity with the other sacrament, to which it is a necessary gate of introduction—the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. But before we pass on to examine the symbols of the Holy Eucharist, let us first inquire whether there is anything further about baptism to be gleaned from the Catacombs—not now from their paintings, but from their inscriptions.

We must remember that the most ancient inscriptions were very brief—very often the mere name of the deceased and nothing more, or a short ejaculatory prayer was added for his everlasting happiness. It is clear that we should search here in vain for any mention of the sacraments. By and by, when it became usual to say something more about the deceased, to mention his age and the date of his death or burial, or other similar

## particulars, perhaps room might be found also for saying something about

his baptism. Accordingly, there are not wanting monuments of the fourth or fifth centuries which tell us that the deceased was a neophyte, or newly illuminated—which means the same thing: viz., that he had been lately baptized—or that he had lived so many months or years after he had received the initiatory sacrament of the Christian covenant. Occasionally, also, a faint reference may be found to another sacrament—the Sacrament of Confirmation. This was often, or even generally, administered in olden times immediately after baptism, of which it was considered the complement and perfection. “From time immemorial,” says Tertullian (_ab immemorabili_), “as soon as we have emerged from the bath [of regeneration] we are anointed with the holy unction.” Hence it is sometimes doubtful which sacrament is intended, or rather it is probable that it was intended to include both under the words inscribed on the epitaphs—the verbs _accepit_, _percepit_, _consecutus est_ (the same as we find in the fathers of the same or an earlier age), used for the most part absolutely, without any object whatever following them; but in one or two cases _fidem_ or _gratiam sanctum_ are used. An epitaph of a child three years old adds: _Consecuta est D. vi. Deposita viii. Kal. Aug._ Another says simply: _Pascasius percepit xi. Kal. Maias_; and a third: _Crescentia q. v. a. xxxiii. Accepit iii. Kal. Jul._ A fourth records of a lady that she died at the age of thirty-five: _Ex die acceptionis suæ vixit dies lvii._; to which we append another: _Consecutus est ii. Non. Decemb. ex die consecutionis in sæculo fuit ad usque vii. Idas Decemb._ This last inscription is taken from a Christian cemetery in Africa, not in Rome; but it was worth quoting for its exact conformity with the one which precedes it. In both alike there is the same distinction between the natural and the spiritual age of the deceased—_i.e._, between his first and his second birth. After stating the number of years he had lived in the world, his age is computed afresh from the day of his regeneration, thus marking off the length of his spiritual from that of his merely animal life.

A Greek inscription was found a few years since on the Via Latina, recording of a lady who had belonged to one of the Gnostic sects in the third century, that she had been “anointed in the baths of Christ with his pure and incorruptible ointment”—an inscription which probably refers to two separate rites in use among the Gnostics, in imitation of the two Christian sacraments. Of a Christian lady buried in Spoleto, her epitaph records that she had been confirmed (_consignata_) by Pope Liberius; this, of course, belongs to the middle of the fourth century. And we read of a boy who died when he was a little more than five years old: _Bimus trimus consecutus est_—words which were a veritable enigma to all antiquarians, until the learned Marini compared with them the phrases of Roman law, _bima trima die dos reddita_, _bima trima die legatum solutum_, and pointed out that as these phrases undoubtedly signified that such a portion of the dowry or legacy was paid in the second year, and such another portion in the third, so the corresponding words in the Christian epitaph could only mean that the deceased had received something when he was two years old, and something else when he was three; and although the particular gifts received are not mentioned because of the _disciplina arcani_, we can have no difficulty in supplying baptism and confirmation. De Rossi adopts this interpretation; indeed, it does not seem possible to suggest any other.

It seems, then, that there is not much evidence to be derived from the Catacombs as to the Sacrament of Confirmation; that, on the contrary, which has reference to the Holy Eucharist is most precious and abundant, and it is generally to be found in juxtaposition with monuments which bear testimony to the Sacrament of Baptism. The chamber in the crypt of Lucina which gives us the oldest painting of the baptism of our Lord gives us also what are probably the oldest symbolical representations of the Holy Eucharist; and certainly the chambers in the cemetery of San Callisto, in which we have just seen so many and such clear manifestations of the Sacrament of Baptism, contain also the most numerous and the most perfect specimens of the symbolic representations of the Holy Eucharist carried to their highest degree of development, yet still combined with mysterious secrecy. Before enumerating these in detail it will be best to make two or three preliminary remarks helping to clear the way before us. First, then, we may assume as known to all our readers, both that the doctrine about the Blessed Sacrament belonged in a very special way to the discipline of the secret, and also that from the very earliest times one of the most common names under which our Blessed Lord was spoken of was the _fish_, because the letters which go to make up that word in Greek were also the initials of the words Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. And, secondly, we must say a few words about the different circumstances under which a fish appears in the artistic decorations of the Catacombs; at least, of the different kinds of feasts or entertainments in which it seems to be presented as an article of food. These feasts may be divided into three classes: First, the fish merely lies upon a table—a sacred table or tripod—with one or more loaves of bread by its side, and not unfrequently with several baskets full of bread on the ground around it; secondly, bread and fish are seen on a table, at which seven men are seated partaking of a meal; and, thirdly, they are seen, perhaps with other viands also, at a feast of which men and women are partaking indiscriminately, and perhaps attendants also are there, waiting on the guests, pouring out wine and water, hot or cold. Paintings of this latter class have not uncommonly been taken as representing the _agapæ_, or love-feasts, of the early church. But this seems to be too literal an interpretation, too much out of harmony with the symbolical character of early Christian art. More probably it was meant as a representation of that wedding-feast under which image the joys of heaven are so often set forth in Holy Scripture; and in this case it is not necessary to suppose that there was any special meaning in the choice of fish as part of the food provided, unless, indeed (which is not at all improbable), it was desired to direct attention to that mystical food a participation in which was the surest pledge of admission to that heavenly banquet, according to our Lord’s own words: “He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.” However, it is not necessary, as we have said, to suppose this; it is quite possible that in these instances the fish may have been used accidentally, as it were, and indifferently, or for the same reason as it sometimes appears on pagan monuments—viz., to denote the abundance and excellence of the entertainment.

Paintings of the first class, however, are much too peculiar to be thus explained, neither is there anything resembling them in the works of pagan artists which could have suggested them; and those of the second class, we hope presently to show, can only have been intended to represent a particular scene in the Gospel history. It is only with paintings belonging to one or other of these two classes that we need concern ourselves to-day. And, first, of the bread and fish when placed alone, without any guests at all. In the crypt of Lucina it appears twice on the wall opposite our Lord’s baptism, and in a very remarkable form indeed. The fish is alive and apparently swimming, and he carries on his back a basket full of loaves, in the middle of which is a vessel of glass containing some red liquid. What can this mean? Nobody ever saw anything like it in nature. We know of nothing in pagan art or mythology which could have suggested it. Yet here it finds a place in the chamber of a Christian cemetery, and as part of a system of decoration, other parts of which were undoubtedly of a sacred character. Is this alone profane or meaningless, or does not rather its hidden sense shine forth distinctly as soon as we call to mind the use of the fish as a Christian symbol on the one hand, and the Christian doctrine about the Holy Eucharist on the other? The fish was Christ. And he once took bread and broke it, and said, This is my body; and he took wine and blessed it, saying, This is my blood; and he appointed this to be an everlasting ordinance in his church, and promised that whosoever should eat of that bread and drink of that chalice should inherit everlasting life. Here are the bread and the wine and the mystical fish. And was it possible for Christian eyes to attach any other meaning to the combination than that it was intended to bring before them the remembrance of the Christian mysteries, whereby death and the grave were robbed of all their gloom, being only the appointed means of entrance to a never-ending life? If anybody is tempted to object that the vessels here represented as containing the bread and wine are too mean ever to have been used for such a purpose, we must remind him that it had already been put on record by archæologists, before the discovery of this monument, that the early Christians in the days of poverty and persecution continued to use vessels of the same humble materials as had been used in the sacrificial rites of Jews and Gentiles before them, and that these were precisely such as are here represented. Nay, further still, that even when vessels of gold and silver had come into use in the church, still there were exceptional times and circumstances when it was lawful, and even praiseworthy, to return to the more simple and ancient practice. St. Jerome praises St. Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse in his day, because, having sold the church-plate to relieve the pressing necessities of the poor, he was content to carry the body of Christ in a basket made of wicker-work, and the blood of Christ in a chalice of glass. Most assuredly St. Jerome would have been at no loss to interpret the painting before us.

But let us now pass on into the cemetery of San Callisto, and enter again the chamber in which we saw Moses, and the fishermen, and the ministration of baptism, and the paralytic. Let us pursue our walk round the chamber, and immediately after the paralytic, on the wall facing the doorway, we come to the painting of a three-legged table with bread and fish upon it, a woman standing on one side in the ancient attitude of Christian prayer, and a man on the other stretching out his hands over the fish and the bread, as though he were blessing them. Can it be that we have here the act of consecration of the Holy Eucharist, as in the adjacent wall we had the act of baptizing, only in a somewhat more hidden manner, as became the surpassing dignity of the greater mystery? Nobody, we think, would ever have disputed it, had the dress of the consecrator been somewhat more suited to such an action. But his breast and arm and one side of his body are considerably exposed, as he stretches out his arm from underneath his cloak; and modern taste takes exception to the exposure as unseemly in such a time and place. We have no wish to put a weapon into the hands of the anti-ritualistic party. Nevertheless, we believe that it is pretty well ascertained that at first no vestment was exclusively appropriated to the celebration of Mass. We are not sure that Dean Stanley was in error when he wrote the other day that St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul and first Bishop of Tours, wore a sheepskin when he officiated, and that “he consecrated the Eucharistic elements with his bare arms coming through the sheepskin.” And at any rate it is certain that in the days of Tertullian, to which the picture before us belongs, many ministers of Christ’s word and sacraments used the pallium as the dress most suitable to their own profession. The writer we have named published a short treatise on the subject, in which, with his usual wit and subtlety, he commends its use, and he concludes with these words: “Rejoice, O Pallium! and exult; a better philosophy claims thee now, since thou hast become the vestment of a Christian.” Forty years later a fellow-countryman of this writer, St. Cyprian, expressed a strong objection to the dress, both as immodest in itself and vainglorious in its signification. Thus everything conspires to support the interpretation which the picture itself suggests and the age to which it has been assigned; and we conclude with confidence that those who first saw it never doubted that it was meant to set before them the most solemn mystery of their religion.

They would have recognized the same mystery again without hesitation, under another form, in the painting which follows immediately afterwards, in which seven men are seen seated at a table, partaking of bread and fish. Our own thoughts, as we look at it, fly naturally to the last chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, where such an incident as this is minutely described after the miraculous draught of fishes which was the occasion of it. But unless we are very familiar with the writings of the Fathers, our thoughts would probably go no further; they would rest in the mere letter of the narrative; we should not penetrate beneath the surface, and see (as all the Fathers saw), in every circumstance related, a prophetic figure of the whole history of the church: first, the immense number of souls caught in her net, then the union of those souls with Christ, “the fish that was already laid on the hot coals” (_Piscis assus, Christus passus_), their incorporation with him through partaking of that living Bread which came down from heaven, and consequently their sure hope of abiding with him for ever in the world to come. This is no private or modern interpretation; it is drawn out at greatest length by St. Augustine; but it is to be found also in all other patristic commentaries on Holy Scripture; and the marvellous unity, not only in dogmatic teaching, but even in the use of allegories and artistic symbols, which reached from east to west in the ancient church, warrants us in assuming that it was not unknown to him who selected this scene as the central piece of decoration for the principal wall of this chamber.

Next after it he painted Abraham with his son Isaac, the ram, and the faggot for the sacrifice—a type both of the sacrifice on Mount Calvary and (in a yet more lively manner) of the unbloody sacrifice still perpetually renewed on Christian altars.

Thus there is the most exact similitude between the illustrations used to set forth the Holy Eucharist on the one wall and those of holy baptism on the other. Both sacraments are at the same time veiled from unbelievers, yet indicated to the faithful, by types taken from the history of the Old Law, by incidents belonging to the life of Christ, and by representations, sufficiently simple yet obscure, of the actual manner of their administration. And then the last wall was reserved for the setting forth of our resurrection, in the example of Lazarus, which was, in truth, the natural end and completion of all that the sacraments led to.

We have not left ourselves space to speak at length of the miracles of changing water into wine, or the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, as other figures of the Holy Eucharist often to be seen in the Catacombs. That they were painted there in this sense we cannot doubt, when we consider how they were connected with that sacrament in the sermons and catechetical instructions of the early church. In the first miracle the substance of water was changed into the substance of wine; in the second a limited substance was, by Christ’s power, so multiplied as to be made present in a thousand places at once, capable of feeding a thousand persons, whereas a minute before it had been only present in one place and was sufficient only to satisfy the appetite of one. The analogy is obvious; but these miracles do not seem to have entered so early into the system of decoration of the Catacombs (except in a very fragmentary and indirect manner), neither do they anywhere enter into so long and beautiful a series of mystical figures, as those others which we have been just now examining. Those form a series of rare and very special interest. They are repeated, as we have already said, in several successive chambers, whose date can be determined, by a number of concurrent indications, as not later than the first quarter of the third century. In these chambers the same histories and the same symbols are repeated in the same style, freely changed in their arrangement and in some accessories of the composition, yet constant in their hidden meaning and theological sense; and that sense is briefly this: the idea of a new life imparted to the Christian soul by baptism, fed by the Holy Eucharist, and continued uninterruptedly throughout eternity.

TWO MAY CAROLS. BY AUBREY DE VERE.

DARKNESS.

The authentic Thought of God at last Wanes, dimly seen, through Error’s mist: Upon that mist, man’s image cast Becomes the new God-Mechanist.

The vast _Idea_ shrivels up: Truth narrows with the narrowing soul: Men sip it from the acorn’s cup: Their fathers drained the golden bowl.

Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies; Shrinks in their hand their measuring-rod; With dim, yet microscopic eyes They chase a daily-dwindling God.

His temple thus to crypt reduced, For ancient faith is space no more, Or her, its Queen.[32] To hearts abused By sense, prime truths are true no more.

Footnote 32:

Father Newman has, I think, remarked that in the Protestant scheme there is _not room_ for Mary.

LIGHT.

The spirit intricately wise That bends above his ciphered scroll Only to probe, and analyze, The self-involved and sunless soul,

_Has_ not the truth he holds—though plain; For truth divine is gift, not debt:— Her living waters wouldst thou drain? Let down the pitcher, not the net!

But they, the spirits frank and meek, Nor housed in self, nor science-blind, Who welcome truths they did not seek;— Truth comes to them in every wind.

Beside his tent’s still open door, With open heart, and open eye, The patriarch sat, when they who wore That triad type of God drew nigh.

The world of faith around us lies Like nature’s world of life and growth: Seeing, to see it needeth eyes And heart, profound and simple both.

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. FROM THE FRENCH.

NOVEMBER 16, 1869.

Thérèse has followed her sister.... At the last moment reason returned; she looked at her mother and said: “Here is Mad; give me your blessing!” O my God! it is, then, true—the nest is empty.

Kate, how are Berthe and Raoul to be consoled?

NOVEMBER 22, 1869.

Margaret is here again—a ray of sunshine after the storm, in this dwelling, twice visited by death. Oh! how we wept in embracing her. And with what affection she hastened to Berthe, this devastated, disinherited, wounded, and bleeding heart! “How shall we leave this cemetery now?” said my mother to Gertrude. Oh! I would wish to remain here with her. To return to Orleans, to find their traces everywhere, would be too much grief. What a crushing blow! What incredible, unforeseen suddenness! It is enough to take away one’s reason. Raoul speaks no more, hears no more, sees no more; Berthe is in tears: we have to console and support them. Help us with your prayers, happy Kate, who witness no death! In the middle of the park are two trees which Raoul planted on the day his daughters were born. They are to be transplanted to their tombs. Dear children, so united, so beautiful, and inseparable, even in death! O the mother! what sorrow is hers. Ought children to die before their mother?

Mme. de T—— is heroic in self-denial, and yet these deaths revive all her troubles. Ah! who could have foretold that my happiness would so soon have declined, and that God would so quickly have claimed his portion of our treasure! See, here are Gertrude and Berthe—two mothers without children: Ellen and Edith in eternity; Marcella at Naples. I now experience an indescribable apprehension, and count the beloved heads by which I am still surrounded.... I remember the L—— family, carried off in one year.

A radiant letter from Marcella, who does not yet know of our mourning. _Beati qui lugent!_ Let us love God, let us love God!

It is in him that I cherish you, my Kate.

NOVEMBER 28, 1869.

All our Ireland in letters of fraternal condolence. The saintly Isa speaks to me sweetly of the happiness of the souls thus called away, and exhorts me to perfect love. Lizzy invites me to cross the Channel to receive the consolations of those whom I consoled formerly. Sarah and the others comfort me in our beloved tongue. O Kate! it was so beautiful, our peaceful home, with its assembly of children and grandchildren, forming, as it were, a glorious crown around my venerated mother; and now a void has been made, the birds have spread their wings, and, like the dove from the ark, return no more.

O charming towers, silent witnesses of our happiness! O vast sea, coming to murmur at our feet! O flowers they loved! O thickets where their voices, fresh and pure, resounded! O lawn whereon they tried their earliest steps; dear abode which witnessed their growth! O forests through which they sped along, lively and swift of foot, in chase of butterflies or of their favorite dog! O solitary paths which they so often traversed to go and lavish on the poor their gold and their love!—speak to us of _them_, and of _them_ always.

Dear Kate, pray for the desolate parents. “All my future has vanished,” says Berthe. May God be with her! Everything else is very small in trials so great as these. My mother begs you to ask for fifty Masses at Fourvières; we have not the strength to write.

Life, the sunshine, and blue sky—all have disappeared. Adieu, dear sister.

DECEMBER 5, 1869.

Adrien is reading to us _Herminie de la Bassemoûturie_, a true narrative of a life of suffering and humiliation, borne with a courage so heroic and supernatural that one’s heart kindles at it. Margaret is going away, perhaps to-morrow. On the 30th Heaven sent Lucy a dear little daughter, who was baptized yesterday without any pomp. Gertrude was godmother, and the godfather is a brother of my pretty sister’s. They have called this little daughter of Brittany _Anne_—a good name.

_Dec. 6._—I have just returned from accompanying our friends as far as to D——. Emmanuel continued to send me kisses while the carriage went slowly away.... Dear Margaret! how much I regret her. Everybody loves her, wherever she goes. Now we are alone.... Johanna, Paul, and their children leave us this evening to spend some months at Paris. I never tell you about Arthur and Edward, whose vacation is over, and who are very good friends together. The _abbé_ remains with us, that we may not be deprived of daily Mass. From henceforth follow me in thought into the great drawing-room, once so bright with the dear young creatures whom I so loved, and there you will see, in her large easy-chair, my mother, whom grief has aged, with your Georgina on a low chair at her feet. Gertrude, with needlework in her hands, occupies the other side of the fire-place, Berthe is near her, then Adrien, René, Raoul, Edouard, and the _abbé_ round the table, near which is seated also the charming Lucy.

But a ray from on high pierces the sombre veils: our dear ones see God; they contemplate him in eternal ecstasy. I had bought at Orleans a poetic little picture—a lily broken on earth, which flowered again in heaven—and underneath it a verse of the beautiful lines by Mlle. Fleuriot on the death of _Alix_. How this lily recalls Picciola to my mind! René is working at a miniature which he intends to give to Berthe: in the foreground the twins are embracing a poor old man; in the distance are two lilies on a tomb and two doves taking flight. I am continuing the _History of the Popes_; it will be for Marguerite and Alix.

How I wish you were here! My heart aches for Berthe, formerly so happy, and so lonely now. Ah! what burning tears are those that spring from the hearts of mothers when God takes back from them the precious ones lent them for a day. O remediless grief, deep void, unfathomable abyss!

Yes, we shall remain in Brittany. The noise of the festivities of this world would be to us a martyrdom; but I am athirst for my Kate, and it seems as if I shall be stronger when her gentle hand has laid balm upon my wounds. René and I will be in Paris on the 23d for a few days.

Mistress Annah shed many tears at the moment of leave-taking. Margaret was pale and greatly moved; why should there be any separations, sister? Ah! doubtless because earth would be too delightful. May God be always with you!

DECEMBER 12, 1869.

Do you know that Overbeck is dead? Edith MacMoor sends me long and interesting details from Rome. Edith has taken up her abode in the city which is the fatherland of Catholics, and her old sympathy with me, she says, has reawakened before the _Sibyls_. Dear, ardent soul, always so amiable! O our artist, so beloved, so admired! The world is no more anything to me but a _Campo Santo_.

Have you heard of the _Pearl of Antioch_? I am reading this Christian romance with René.

On the 8th we observed as a special festival the opening of the great sittings of this Council which will crown with a new glory the reign of Pius IX. Our life is quite monastic: no more joyous laughter rings along the corridors; silence—the “first power in the world,” as the Père Lacordaire called it—dwells with us. We are in mourning for our beloved children, and these dark dresses are of a solemn sadness which strikes our visitors. Every day, no matter what the weather may be, René accompanies me to the cemetery. In spite of the cold, there are flowers, and this marble is almost _joyous_. The _Revue_ gives an interesting story—“Laurence,” an account of a young girl who wished to die because her sister, on whom she lavished all her love, had departed to heaven. I do not think that Thérèse wished for death, but think rather that Picciola asked of God that she might share her felicity.

Lucy is well, and thanks you for your sisterly prayers. We are expecting news from Margaret and Marcella. Mary and Ellen write regularly to Berthe and to me. Good and kind hearts, full of gentleness and affection!

Kate dearest, what do you say to my idea?—the adoption of these children would console my sister. Would it be well to propose it to her?

I find René changed. Pray for us.

DECEMBER 15, 1869.

Margaret sends me her Journal since the departure, every line of which is redolent of poetry and affection. Emmanuel is hourly asking for us. Marcella sends me pages bathed with tears: “Why did you allow me to go away, dear and generous friend? I feel that your soul would have taken refuge with mine in these sad days.”

Kate, what, then, is happiness, since it lasts so short a time?

Marcella is going to spend the winter at Rome; Anna continues to grow both taller and stronger, “but the departure of her friends makes her wish for heaven, and everything gives me the presentiment that in a few years my beloved one will enter a convent. You will scold me for thinking this so long beforehand, but you will agree with me that her piety is beyond what is ordinary. I have so unlearnt happiness that I live always in uncertainty.” A friend of Adrien’s tells him of the reception given at Naples to the happy family party: Mme. de V—— is allied to the Princess of X——. How fair a future has opened before my friend! “To return to Rome, where so many of my memories linger, was my earnest desire; blessed be God, who permits it to be realized!”

René is writing to you. Good-by for to-day, dearest sister!

DECEMBER 18, 1869.

Read an admirable pastoral letter by Mgr. Berthaud. “It is a fountain of living water, a springing fountain,” writes Louis Veuillot, who has the happiness to be in Rome.

Berthe yields to the entreaties of her mother, who begs her to go to her in her old castle on the banks of the Rhine. Lucy is going away at the same time to show her sisters the beautiful little Anna, her rosebud. I look forward with fear to the feeling of solitude which will seize upon us after they are gone. O my God! these will all return, but thou keepest thine angels.

The happy Karl sends the most fraternal letters that he has ever yet addressed to me. He is now in retreat, almost ready to mount the steps of the altar and accomplish Ellen’s last desire. “I am never lonely,” he writes. What ardor consumes him! How he burns to shed his blood for Christ! “My whole soul springs forth towards those disinherited souls who know not God! If you still take an interest in your unworthy brother, wish for him crosses, trials, sorrows, and persecutions. But I am not worthy to participate in the Passion of my Redeemer, and it may be that my cross may be the burden of a useless life.” Saintly friend! noble heart! His director, who is a relative of our good _abbé_, never wearies in his praises of Karl. According to all probability, he will set out for Marseilles the day after his ordination, where the first ship that sails will take him on board. What am I, my God, by the side of this brother left me by Ellen?

I am coming to see you, dear Kate, to refresh myself with you—a too rapid apparition, too fleeting a happiness, and one in which I scarcely can believe.

DECEMBER 22, 1869.

Dear Kate, this sacrifice must also be made. Yesterday a frightful accident threw us all into the greatest agitation. My mother’s horses ran away. The footman, losing all presence of mind with terror, leaped down and was killed by the fall. He was taken up quite mutilated.... Horrible! horrible! My mother has fever; we remain. The unfortunate Antoine will be buried to-morrow morning. He leaves three children. He was an excellent Christian, and was preparing to make his Christmas communion.... I am writing to Karl, and at the same time to the venerable superior to obtain permission for our friend to give us one or two days previous to quitting France and Europe.

My mother was coming back from the town, whither we had all gone to take those of our party who were leaving. René and I were to have taken our departure this evening. All in this world is nothingness, except the pure and holy love of God. I had so set my mind on this journey that I can only give it up by doing violence to my heart. But if the shock my mother has undergone should bring on an illness, I should never forgive myself for having gone away.

Pray, dear Kate!

DECEMBER 25, 1869.

My mother is better, dear sister, although the doctor condemns her still to repose. The good _curé_ is very unwell, and, since my mother would not have been able to attend the midnight Mass, the _abbé_ offered to say it at the parish church. Ah! if the twins had been here. We left the house at ten. What a night! What impressions! In a clear and calm night, with the sky spangled with thousands of stars, to go through hedge-bordered paths to this old Breton church, so vast and so full; the singing, the sounds of the organ played by René, the _Gloria in Excelsis_, so sweet and grand, the numerous communions, the dimly-lighted sanctuary—all these things had about them an indescribable old-world poetry, a certain interior and heavenly charm, which made me ask if we were not at Bethlehem, and if we were not suddenly about to behold with our bodily eyes, like the shepherds, the adorable new-born Saviour in the manger. “The Cedar of Lebanon is gone forth from the hyssop in our valley.” Lord Jesus, grant thy blessing upon France!

It is two years to-day since Ellen entered into glory. With what ecstasy _she_ must behold Karl at the altar! Dear Kate, I know not what atmosphere is surrounding me, but it seems to me that every sorrow brings me nearer to God.

My mother was visibly affected on reading your kind lines; how she loves us! Gertrude is more saintly than ever; her self-denial is increasing. She has owned to me that she never loses the presence of God. We five form a severe group, in which the highest questions are discussed. Gertrude is on fire when she speaks of charity. There is no sort of mortification in which she does not take delight; how I startled her yesterday by coming suddenly upon her as she was exchanging her shoes for those of a beggar! She fasted on bread and water the three last days of Advent, and has asked me if I would go with her barefoot to the crucifix on the mountain, the path to which is covered with brambles. You see she is a worthy imitator of the _Acta Sanctorum_.

_A Dieu_, best beloved!

DECEMBER 28, 1869.

Karl arrives on the 31st. Dear Kate, his letter showed me heaven. Good news of everybody, and my mother is in the drawing-room. So the year is about to end—this year, so eventful, and so plentiful in tears! O my God! how many loving looks follow me no more. In my meditation this morning I asked myself whether I am yet submissive and resigned. Alas! I truly wish whatever God wills, but I am weak.

Just now two little birds came and perched on my window, fluttering as if wanting to come in. I opened it gently and crumbled a cake for them, and the pretty little hungry creatures pecked up the crumbs gladly. Then they flew away, and I began to think of the two sweet birds which, almost before we were aware, have flown away also. I was so proud of this beautiful family, so happy to belong to it! Oh! you know well, Kate, that it is above all for the sake of the poor father, the sorrowing mother, that I regret these two attractive creatures! Raoul writes that Berthe is more calm, and he thinks she will remain some time where she is. What an image of death is this silence and the solitude that now surrounds us! I work hard, take long walks, teach two little boys their catechism, and yet, in spite of everything, as soon as René is no longer there, as soon as I recall the past, my heart is ready to break.

“Take care, my dear daughter,” my mother says to me. “Strengthen your soul; throw yourself upon God.” And Gertrude: “The thought of God softens everything. He has permitted it—let us submit; let us live in heaven.”

Would that we could go thither together, dear sister!

Accept all my best wishes for the New Year—wishes for every day and every hour, for your earthly and eternal happiness.

JANUARY 5, 1870.

Dear Kate, how good God is! This is the cry of my heart, crushed beneath the weight of its gratitude. Karl has been our Good Samaritan. If Berthe and Raoul could only hear him! What unction in his words!

He made his appearance like the angel of Providence amongst us. It was in the evening. René had gone to wait for him; we had heard no noise, when the door opened.... It was he! There was a moment of emotion and tears, and when he consented to bless us, and I saw him in the light, I understood the words of Gertrude: “He has found true happiness.” Then his Mass the next day, the Communion, and Thanksgiving said aloud, the chanting of the _Magnificat_ and of the _Lætatus_—it was heaven. This impression still remains; thanks to a concurrence of circumstances in which I perceive the intervention of our good angels, the newly elect of the priesthood remains with us until the 20th—an unhoped-for and most precious favor. Alas! shall we see him again?

He has given me a little book which he had kept by permission of his superior; you are aware that this generous Karl despoiled himself of everything before giving _himself_ also to God. This _Basket of Eucharistic Flowers_ is full of sweetness to my heart. I find in it some verses on Picciola—not mine, but the flower—and the heavenly utterances of the pious Marie Jenna, my favorite poetess. Listen to this:

“Oui, cette vie en larmes est féconde; J’ai peu vécu, j’ai déjà bien souffert. Mon Dieu, j’ai soif, et les routes du monde Ne me sont rien qu’une aride désert. Mais à tes pieds mon âme se repose. O tendre Ami, Divin Consolateur, Qu’importe à moi de perdre toute chose, Si je te garde, amour de mon Sauveur!”[33]

Footnote 33:

Yes, this our life is plentiful in tears. Though I am young, still I have suffered much. My God, I thirst! and this world’s weary ways Are but an arid desert unto me. But at thy feet my soul finds her repose, O tender Friend and Comforter Divine! What matters it to me if I lose all, But still keep thee, my dearest Saviour’s love!

And this cry of the soul:

“Jesus, pour seul bonheur, ah! donnez-moi des larmes Que vous consolerez.”[34]

Footnote 34:

Jesus, for my sole happiness, oh! give me tears Which thou wilt wipe away.

JANUARY 10, 1870.

Karl has spoken to me much of you, dear sister. He wishes that his last sculpture in Europe should be for our chapel: René and his brothers have for some time past been working at a pulpit; the principal figure will be our missionary’s work. He has consented to let me prepare his baggage. Kate, I was complaining of our solitude, and now it has become sweet to me, because I love God more. Oh! what a blessing to the soul it is to love.

I am slipping these few words in with René’s, and send you a thousand loving messages.

JANUARY 14, 1870.

Impossible not to give you the history of our day, although it is very late. I wished to go to Auray with Karl, and my mother felt strong enough to go with us. On the way we met with a German, poor as Job, a true disciple of Luther, his Bible in his hand. His gentle and melancholy air interested us. We entered into conversation with him, Karl preached to him, he came with us to Auray, and when we came out of the church he told us that his mother was a Catholic, that the sight of our fervor had touched him, etc., etc. In short, we brought him back with us to the château, and Karl is going to catechise him and finish his conversion. You see the good Saint Anne has indeed had a hand in this. Is it not a charming episode?

15th.—Letters: 1st, Margaret, who sends you her heartful of good wishes; 2d, Marcella, with the chronicle of the Council and the account of an audience with the Holy Father; 3d, Lizzy, who wants to make me admire her Daniel; 4th, Lucy, who is impatient to come back, because her pretty Anne cannot be happy without us, says our amiable sister; 5th, my Kate. I mention all in chronological order; you know very well that you are first in order of affection. But how short it is, dearest! Tell me soon the reason of this brevity; you must have so much to say!

_A Dieu_, my dearest Kate. All and each of the happy inhabitants of my Brittany offer you their homage and respect.

JANUARY 19, 1870.

Well, dearest, he leaves us to-morrow—this friend, this good brother and generous priest. Our German is converted, but for reasons of prudence the baptism is deferred. The worthy man does not wish to quit us, and does his utmost to render himself useful. He is passionately fond of music, and teaches it to our pastors, who in return _strengthen_ him (as he says) in the catechism. How sadly we shall miss Karl! But then, souls, souls! Ah! I would not keep him back, even if I could.

I have had a strange dream. I was with you in your cell. You seemed to be asleep; I spoke to you, but you did not answer me. I went to kiss you, and in this kiss I felt so strange a thrill, as if your beautiful face had been of marble, that I woke, crying out in a manner which alarmed René. It is in vain that I say to myself again and again that it is but a dream; the impression remains—a profound terror, and an anguish which oppresses my heart. Write to me; reassure me, dear Kate. I have lost faith in happiness. What am I saying? So long as I belong to God, and nothing can separate me from him, shall I not have the only happiness worthy of the name?

Karl promises to write to us. He is going to China, that literary country, where barbarism and civilization are so strangely mingled. My mother, _the Adriens_, and we are putting together our savings to give them to the dear missionary, that with them he may have more facilities in his work of gaining souls. How I bless fortune on these occasions!

A thousand lovingnesses, dear sister—the dearest of sisters.

JANUARY 26, 1870.

We accompanied Karl to his ship, which I visited, and which we saw start on her voyage. Thus he is now between sea and sky, exposed to tempests. Oh! “how beautiful are the feet of those” who have left all—family, friends, country, repose, comforts, enjoyments—to go in search of the lost sheep. It seems to me that the angels of faith and love must spread their wings over the vessel and keep far away all contrary winds.... We seem as if impregnated with sanctity. Grief is a powerful lever to raise one to God and to transform souls!

You do not write. René is uneasy and tries in vain to conceal his anxiety from me. Did you receive his letter of the 24th? Dear Kate, if you are ill, send one word and we will hasten to you. O my God! Ill! You! Could it be possible? That terrible dream is always before my eyes. You will scold me, dearest.... Remember that for some months past I have suffered so much that even the thought of a misfortune overwhelms me.

Oh! may God guard you, darling Kate, my sister, my soul. Take care of yourself for the love of me.

My mother entreats you to write; she suffers on account of my anxiety. My God! grant that that may have been only a dream.

JANUARY 29, 1870.

Still nothing; perhaps your letter is lost.... May God protect you! The _Univers_ pleases me. Mgr. Berthaud has had a triumph at Sant’ Andrea della Valle—the dear church where we have prayed. “His imagery is rich and abundant,” writes Louis Veuillot, “because his faith keeps alive in him a perpetual enthusiasm for the works, the mercies, and the love of God. His thoughts are an endless song. What he says he sees; what he sees he admires and adores. External things, enveloped and, as it were, transpierced by the rays of the divine Sun, appear to him as magnificent as he describes them to be. Things are the works of God; men are the children of God, divinities in flower, called by their adoption to the ineffable glory of the divine union. As soon as they are in their way, their vocation, their order, their accidental defects are effaced; there is no more ugliness, there are no more rags, no more miseries—all is already transfigured, already at the attainment of its end, and the lyre, vibrating to the touch of a sacred enthusiasm, gives forth sounds at once vehement and sublime.”

What eulogy! What style!

Mgr. Mermillod made a magnificent discourse at Saint Louis des Français, on the perpetuation in the church of the Gospel scene of the Magi. “The

## action of God in the world, the redemption of souls, the perpetuity and

definition of the truth, all repose upon these three great weaknesses: a Child at Bethlehem, a Host in the tabernacle, an aged man at the Vatican.”

Kate dearest, I admire, but nothing dispels my preoccupation, the dominant note of my thoughts—you! yourself! Why this silence? I must know it! Write to me; I am suffering....

JANUARY 31, 1870.

It is here, on my writing-table, this white page on which you have traced but one word.... “It was not a dream!” We start at once; this note will precede us by a few hours. Oh! live for me, my beloved sister; ask God to cure you.

My God, I have so often prayed thee to preserve her to me—to let her live as long as I!

* * * * *

JOURNAL OF GEORGINA AFTER HER SISTER’S DEATH.

FEBRUARY 15, 1870.

O amare! O perire tibi! O advenire ad Deum!

Still would I write to you, beloved sister who have left me! Oh! can this be possible? You, my Guardian Angel! It is in heaven that I now look for you, that I now behold you—in heaven, your true home—in heaven, where you have found again our mother. O my God! my God! Always shall I remember this last journey, of which you were the object; the anguish on the way, the haste to arrive, the chill that fell on my heart at the gate of the convent. Oh! you knew that I could not bear to see you suffer; and then, perhaps, you might think you would recover, for I cannot believe that you desired to die.... Ah! to see you dying; to embrace you, watch by you, hear the last effusions of that tenderness to which my mother had bequeathed me; to see this flame, which was my life, die out, and yet not die myself—Kate, Kate, I can think only, speak only, of you!

I have been very ill. I feel weak, very weak—almost discouraged to live. Tell me that you are not gone away; soul of my sister, speak to my soul! Oh! how it seems to me as if I had lost everything. You it was who gave so great an interest to my life, animating everything with your affection. And now....

FEBRUARY 28.

Dear Kate, obtain strength for me. I desire to live for René. Why did you not stay with us, my beloved? I have bitter regrets.... I should have wished to nurse you, to keep you here. O foolishness of love! what right have I to wish to keep you from your own country? Dear sister, the correspondence which was my daily delight must not end: I will write my journal for _you_. God, who is so good, even when he separates two hearts which were one, could not refuse anything to his elect. Ask him, then, my sister, that you may every day come to me, if even only for an instant. Oh! would that I could see you. It seems to me that with you all died; that nothing more will ever in this world smile on me, that the eternal mourning of my soul can never more be comforted. Our friends write to me. Margaret and Marcella weep with me. My mother, Adrien, Gertrude, and René are full of unspeakable tenderness and solicitude towards me; and yet I have scarcely any response to make them but my tears. All is night around me: the Sun has set.

Oh! speak to me, Kate—only one word, one vibration of your dear voice, one of your smiles. Is it true, my God, that for twenty-five days past this face so dearly loved has been covered with a shroud?

Is it true? Has death indeed come between us? Had we not enough of absence and of separation, that other mourning of the soul? I still hear her last word.... Oh! who will give me back my past joys, fled away, and the affection which enfolded all?

Adrien is reading me the _Beatitudes_, by Mgr. Landriot. There are some admirable conferences on the divine words, _Beati qui lugent_. “There are,” says the Père Lacordaire, “tears in all the universe; and they are so natural to us that even if they had no cause, they would flow _without_ cause, solely from the charm of that ineffable sadness of which our soul is the deep and mysterious well.” Again: “Melancholy is the great queen of highly sensitive souls; she touches them without their knowing how or why, in a secret and unexpected moment. The ray of light which gladdens others brings veils to them; the festive rejoicing which moves and delights others pierces them with an arrow. It is with much difficulty that God and our Lord can scatter from the heart which loves them these vain and chilling clouds; the suffering is so much the more difficult to vanquish from having a less real cause.”

Oh! the cause of my sorrow, can I forget it? Kate, obtain strength for me. How truly I feel you present!

MARCH 5.

We are come back to Brittany. They say that I have become a mere shadow. Kate dearest, I wish to be courageous, but my poor human nature gives way on this Calvary. O my memories! They are a golden book in which I read every hour, in which every leaflet recalls my other self, her devotedness and love. Your papers have been given to me—the private pages which God alone has read with me. How you have loved me! Dearest, I weep no more, except over myself. You were hungering for heaven, as were Mad and Thérèse, Ellen and Edith. Oh! gone—you also, you my guardian angel!

I wanted to write, to relieve myself a little; my heart swelled, and I could do nothing but sob. I have fearful moments. Oh! speak to me, Kate. Last night I seemed to witness your death again. Oh! those eyes, those eyes which I almost worshipped—I had to close them. Kate, what is happiness? Mine has fled away like a cloud, and I seek after it in vain.

I know that you are happy, and yet my selfishness grieves. Pray for your Georgina!

MARCH 8.

Strange blindness of heart! You were to me so sweet, so infinitely precious, that the thought of an _adieu_ without ever meeting here again had never occurred to me.

You were six years old when you imprinted your first kiss on the brow of your Georgina. Our most distant memories show me your beloved image. You never left me; the sight of you was a talisman that stopped my tears; your voice taught me my first baby-words. Oh! this union of ours from the very cradle was my mother’s pride—this mother, so beloved and so beautiful, who saw herself over again in you. You did not know that you were fair; you early disdained earthly frivolities; and how much it must have cost you, later, to remain in the world for me!

Everywhere you were surrounded by sympathy and respect; your sisterly devotion made you an aureole. Kate, who was like you?

Tell me that you hear me, that you see me every day. How shall I live without you? A great void has been made in me; my heart is like a desert. Ah! I loved you too well, and our God is a jealous God.

I adore his will, and, in spite of my inexpressible desolation, I kiss his divine hand beneath the blow which overwhelms me. I desire to become truly your sister by sacrifice and love.

Help me! I know not how to climb up Calvary!

MARCH 10.

No, I cannot believe that it is at an end; that I have no more a sister. At times I believe myself to be under the influence of a nightmare. My black dress—this sombre vestment which made me afraid—is become dear to me since I wear it for you; but ... what faintings of heart! In what an ocean of grief my soul is plunged!

To-day I wished to go out and visit my poor; my strength failed. Kate, sorrow is killing me.

MARCH 12.

An unexpected consolation—a visit from the Père de G—-. His touching, penetrating words roused me. Pardon me, Kate! I was cowardly. God forbids not tears, but he forbids despair. Alas! formerly I comforted others, and now I am unwilling to accept any solace in my trouble; I wish for no truce to my regret. Oh! be happy, soul of my sister. Obtain for me grace to love much, more than ever, all who suffer, all the elect of misfortune. The gentle Abbé Perreyve used to say: “The greater part of souls would remain closed to other souls, if they had not suffered; trial bruises them, and compels them to shed around them floods of love.”

I loved them already—these dear poor of the good God! But I feel that my time belongs to them, that I owe myself also to those who love me, and that it remains to me to pray and suffer while I love.

Help me, dear Kate, help me!

MARCH 15.

How kind René is, dear Kate, and how fraternal! He understands my wish to write to you still, to continue my life so violently cut in twain, and unceasingly to speak to you. I am stronger, but not yet resigned. Can one be resigned to such a loss?

I saw yesterday a young girl whom Gertrude knows, and who has opened her heart to me as to a friend. With what ardor of desire she dreams of the religious life! God permits her to be cruelly tried: her mother is utterly opposed to her departure. There are several other sisters, one of whom shares the aspirations of my new acquaintance. How they both suffer! Would that a heavenly light might illuminate the heart of their mother, who little comprehends the martyrdom of her children! How everything is at cross-purposes in this poor world! People are saddened by things at which they ought to rejoice, and _vice versâ_. Mothers, who have had experience of the cares and pains of marriage and the world—mothers, who know too well the sum of happiness that may be expected from even the best-assorted unions—make themselves miserable at the mere thought of their daughters’ union with God, as if he were not the Supreme Good, the Spouse _par excellence_, the faithful Friend, the plenitude of every virtue and of love! Ah! it is because everything in this world has its shades and its defects, and because few souls know truly how to love.

Thus is it that there is a mixture and alloy in my affection for you when I weep for you so bitterly, dear sister of my life!

Nothing can separate our souls. I am yours in life and death!

MARCH 18.

Berthe’s brother has just sunk under a malignant fever. The poor widow is ill of grief. Three such beautiful children, whom he loved so much—so many powerful bonds which bound him to this world so suddenly broken—all this makes the grief immense. Gertrude said to me: “Why, then, are those mourned for who enter the port—those who go hence to rest in God? They only who remain behind are really to be pitied.” Ah! what deadly affliction must not our friend feel, widowed of her happiness, which nothing can restore to her—nothing, until that hour when, delivered in her turn from this life sown with crosses, she too shall see God, and, with God, him whom she weeps!

Kate, would that I could see you and embrace you again as in that last hour! Everywhere death, everywhere mourning!

MARCH 21.

Count de Montalembert died on the 13th of March. It is a great funereal date. May God receive him into his glory! I was just now hearing some beautiful pages by Alfred Nettement, dead also the 14th of November—dead in the breach, in those combats of pen and thought so worthy of admiration and of enthusiasm when their object is the defence of the church. Our dear M. de Riancey is also dead, faithful, to his last moment, to this proscribed monarchy, which sees its best defenders falling one by one. O my God! what losses. Kate, if I could forget you for a single instant, would not these deaths lead me back to the thought of you?

Adrien has given me _The Book of All who Suffer_, by M. Gautier. How well this good brother was inspired!

Marcella, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa, and so many other kind hearts write to me frequently, but nothing can replace my Kate!

APRIL 1.

Dear sister, I have suffered fearful pains for ten days past. My good René has been to me like a Sister of Charity. I am like Thérèse, I cannot live without my other _self_. Oh! to see you, to hear you, to kneel by you, and kiss your beloved hands.

Until now I did not know what separation meant. I remember with a sort of remorse how joyous my first letters were after that first farewell which was to be so soon followed by a farewell that seems eternal. I saw you as having attained the object of your dreams. I entered with glad heart into this new life where all was golden. Kate, I am ungrateful! God has permitted me to know no other troubles than those which should not be such to the Christian—death, the beginning of true life for those who love God. Help me, that I may be strong; my sadness clouds so many brows!

APRIL 8.

Nelly, who flattered herself that she would recover, has bid adieu to this poor world, in which she suffered so terribly, although possessing numerous certainties of happiness, if it be true that anything can be certain here below, even when one is only twenty years old.

My new young friend visits me often; her fervent piety and the ardor of her desires find an echo in my heart. You were thus, O sister of my soul! at her age, in that spring-time of life thrice happy and thrice blessed when one belongs to God.

APRIL 15.

The Duchess de Berry died on the 10th, at her castle in Upper Styria, far from Naples, far from France, far from her son. Yet another grand figure disappeared! Kate, do you remember our presentation to this heroine? But she is now with you, in the true fatherland of souls, far from agitations and sufferings. Call us, call us, all together—all our _corner of Brittany_; I, too, am athirst for heaven.

What a day was this Good Friday! Made four times the _Way of the Cross_ for the souls in purgatory. Is there any possibility that you are in that place of expiation, dear Kate? Oh! tell me, or rather assure me, that you are in heaven. Gaston yesterday asked his mother to show him Mme. Kate up in the sky; he believes that you have become a star. Charming belief!

APRIL 16.

A year ago, and I was full of joy and hope. O my happy days with my sister! you have for ever fled away.

APRIL 17.

God be praised! I saw you this morning.... Oh! do not let me be told that it is a dream. I _saw_ you, dear Kate; your beautiful hair falling over your shoulders, and you were smiling. Happiness enough for one whole day!

Christ is risen! The weather is splendid; we are in the full bloom of spring; bright sunshine, songs of birds, verdure everywhere; joy in our souls. Kate, I weep no more; you are in heaven!

APRIL 19.

Walk with Amélie, the future _religieuse_ of whom I spoke to you. She relieves herself a little to me of some of the desolation that fills her heart. She is not allowed to depart, and yet the delay requested is expired. Her grief makes my heart ache, and I would that it were given me to smooth for her the way to the cloister. For that I should be obliged to go out, to visit the mother; and as soon as I see any one I burst into tears. Do you blame me for the fidelity of my regrets? In listening to Amélie I understand what you must have undergone when once the Lord’s choice was clearly manifested. Pardon me for having wished still to hold you back!

Gertrude, our saint _par excellence_, speaks admirably of heaven. Lucy weeps with me, and makes her pretty Anne wipe away my tears. Kate, will you read this?

APRIL 26.

Minds are much occupied respecting the _plébiscite_. My politics are not of this world; I hear what others say, and that is all. Sister, what is earth? I fear and pity it.

Berthe is at Paris, somewhat preoccupied by present agitations. My poor soul passes through the most varying states: nameless anguish, indescribable discouragement, sweet and pure joys; one thing comes as a repose to the other, and life slips away.... Amélie came to me yesterday; she talked long of _her crosses_, glad to be understood, compassionated, and loved; she would willingly have remained with us for the night. Her home, where she was formerly so happy, appears to her now an insupportable place of abode, and her life, with all its struggles and contradictions, is a real martyrdom.

I read her, from the _Pilgrimages of Switzerland_, a beautiful page on Christian resignation. Oh! how I would wish to console others—I, who cannot be consoled, alas!

APRIL 30.

Kate, I have been dreaming of you. Why did you go away so soon, sweet sister, so beloved?

A cousin of Amélie’s died the day before yesterday, after two years of marriage. See how short a time human felicity lasts! Every terrestrial happiness reunited on this charming head for so short a time! Her poor mother had buried all her other treasures one by one, and concentrated her affections and her hopes on this idolized daughter, the only one spared to her, and who was to be stricken down after two years of so happy a union! Were these two souls truly religious? I know not. Ah! who will comfort the mother, if God is not her comforter? Alas! these rapid destinies, these human fragilities, these futures broken, these deaths, this mourning—will they not open the eyes of those who persist in not seeing? Amélie is always breathlessly eager to attain her object, and distressed at the hindrances which hold her back. How pitiful that difficulties so contemptible and vulgar should be raised in order to turn aside the flight of this poor soul from the heavenly Bridegroom! I can only conceive a mother with an absolute devotion, a complete self-forgetfulness, a perpetual _sursum corda_. But these miserable obstacles, these calculated delays, to enchain this dear Amélie in spite of her tears and ardent longings—how they make me suffer! It appears that for three years she has been soliciting her mother’s consent. My God, where are the hearts which see but thee in all things? Mme. de Vals[35] is overwhelmed by this catastrophe. All the family is in a state that breaks one’s heart. Oh! if these distressing scenes had only shown Mme. de Vals the vanity of earthly illusions; if she had only understood that we must cling to God above all!

Footnote 35:

The mother of the young wife who died.

Kate, my sister in heaven, pray for this friend of your Georgina, and pray also for me, who cannot live without my sister!

MAY 5.

The month of flowers, the month of songs, the month of the ever-blessed Virgin, comes to me with bright memories. My own Ireland, mother, sister, where are you? What cowardice is mine!

Brittany is smiling, rosy under a beautiful sun; the sea is calm and magnificent. I have just been leaning over my balcony and looking long at this grand spectacle: the blue sky, the green sea, in the grand and majestic silence of immensity. Was there not a Christian meaning in the words of the philosopher of antiquity who said: “God does all in silence”? How fine is this expression!

Dear Kate, bless me! I go out, move about, wish to be useful; I work with Gertrude, with my mother, with René. But I drag heavily the cross of your absence. I complain to God without ceasing. Love makes everything sweet and light: I have, then, no love?

From this month of May will date for your Georgina the adoption of a prayer, sweet among all others—the Office of the Blessed Virgin. Oh! these psalms, these hymns, these harmonious supplications—how sweet they are to my poor soul! I love especially the _Lætatus_. Lucy and René sing it with an expression which charms me. You, dearest Kate, have entered there, into the house of the Lord!

MAY 12.

I am reading the _Interior of Jesus and Mary_, by the Père Grou, the _Conferences_ of Père de Ravignan, and our dear _Review_. The letters on the Council interest me particularly. I try to imagine that I am reading them with you; that your dear head is resting on my shoulder.... Oh! the fair and happy times which return to my memory. We so loved the _Chansons de Gestes_, those pretty French ballads which my mother translated with so peculiar a charm! M. Léon Gautier has published a thoughtful and exquisite study on France under Philip Augustus; he brings on the scene the fair Aude, the _fiancée_ of Roland, who died on hearing of the death of her Paladin—I can understand love like this!—and the charming little Aelis, and Sibylle de Lusignan, and the Duchess Parise, and Aye d’Avignon, and the courageous Ameline, and Berthe, the wife of Duke Girart, and Guiboure, that magnificent type of the Christian woman! Do you remember, sister, Count Robert of Flanders refusing a crown because he was in haste to see his son again? the little Garnier nursing his father, stricken with leprosy? the mother of the sons of Aimon—Belissende and Heustace? How we had learnt to love those middle ages!

Pray for Amélie, dear Kate; she is so unhappy! O inestimable favor, priceless benefit, incomparable fidelity of the religious vocation! how little are you understood in this world.

It seems as if I heard you saying to me: _Speranza! Pazienza! Coraggio!_

MAY 16.

My soul is fallen again into an abyss of desolation. It is strange, and at the same time painful, these struggles between myself and myself; between nature which revolts and grace which submits. On this day four years ago where were we? Kate, help me!

MAY 28.

I have been travelling a little, and my moments have all been employed. René wants to give me change and distraction; but I cannot drag my thoughts away from these images of death. Hélène has written me a letter, saintly and sweet. Alas! who does not suffer here below?

JUNE 5.

I have just quitted Amélie, who is keeping her room from indisposition. Her mother is kind, I believe, but how severe in aspect! Berthe and Raoul arrived yesterday. Kate, I dreaded this meeting again, our hearts were all so sad! Berthe is more tranquil than I had expected; she has seen Mary and Ellen, the dear exiles! who showed her that they greatly desire to see us. Inspire me, dear Kate. Lucy is going away again; the house without children is like a heaven without angels. Johanna will not return for two months.

JUNE 12.

René would like to bring the two orphans himself. My mother approves. They will occupy the apartments of the twins. Kate, who will replace you?

More funereal letters: two friends of our dear ones who have flown away have also been summoned to their Father’s house. Happy souls! if they were prepared; but poor mothers whose joy they were!

JUNE 17.

Dear Kate, I thought I saw you yesterday evening.... A young and amiable religious, collecting for her poor, caused me a thrill. I calmed myself and conversed with her. Her life is admirable. But what emotion afterwards, and poignant grief!

Sister dearest, let me hope that you read these lines; that there exists a means of communication between heaven and earth; that you have not wholly quitted me! It was so sweet to write to you, to confide everything to you. I should like to write your life; to relate to myself the story of our childhood—that golden morn when so many smiles and joys surrounded us; but these souvenirs are so distressing!

JUNE 24.

Mary and Ellen are sleeping beneath those curtains of gauze which I have so often parted.

They are grown, and prettier than ever. With what grace they presented themselves yesterday! And already I am anxious; have they not been taken sufficient care of? I know not, but their almost constant cough oppresses me like a remorse; and to replace their mother....

JUNE 29.

Berthe loves our orphans, who rarely quit her. Gertrude draws me with her in her walks, in her life of devotedness and labor, and I let it be so. I am no more _myself_; my better part is wanting. Oh! you were my strength, my counsel, my happiness.

Feast of SS. Peter and Paul—a glad festival for the Christian. Louis Veuillot, who has the happiness of being at Rome, writes there charming, sublime incomparable pages; he counted on the _desired dogma_ being proclaimed to-day, but all is not so easy, even in the things of God. Anniversary of the death of _Albert_.

JULY 1.

Mary and Ellen are very attractive. Decidedly we shall keep them with us. Berthe sees in them a resemblance to her doves; my mother likes their smiles for the poor, for flowers, for every living thing, their precocious reason, and their already remarkable piety. Lucy is gone. What voids! and how different to '67, the happy year, at least during its first months! Trial, you used to tell me, is a grace; that those favored with the good things of this world ought to expiate their enjoyments. Kate, I submit!

JULY 4.

The letters of Marcella and Margaret are frequent. My friend beyond seas speaks of returning soon; she knows what a balm the sight, the beloved sight, of her brings. Marcella quits Naples and its blue sky no more; Anna writes to me of her joys, without suspecting what a price the health of which she is so proud cost us.

The _abbé_ takes in the _Univers_, rendered so attractive by the truly magic pen of the author of the _Parfum de Rome_. Finished _La Marquise de Montagu_, an interesting book, the style of a great lady of the seventeenth century. Reading is worth less than prayer, but both ameliorate exile.

René is carving an altar for the parish church. He and Adrien are making curious studies in the precious MSS. of the _Saint of the Sea-shore_. What splendid gifts God has bestowed upon this friend of my soul!

JULY 8.

The pious and learned editor of _Eugénie de Guérin_, who also revealed to the world the treasures of Cayla—M. Trebutien—is just dead. René assures us that _Eugénie_ must have opened to him the gate of Eden. Oh! I love to believe this. Amélie is at the height of her wishes: her mother has suffered herself to be vanquished by our united entreaties, and her entry into Carmel is fixed for the 6th of August. Another separation. God wills it thus.

JULY 14.

Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess, has written some noble pages on the regretted M. Trebutien. “It is the hand of a friend still trembling with emotion that has written this”; it is the first cry of affection and of grief, but of pure and holy affection, and of grief resigned and Christian in the highest acceptation of the word. “If this were a learned man, an antiquary, an artist, above all he was a soul—a soul, that masterpiece of God, that thing so fair that he himself delights in it, that he has profoundly loved, even when, having lost the attraction of innocence, she had no other attraction than misfortune. He was an ardent Catholic, he prayed, he loved God. He, who so hungered after justice, love, and beauty, could not but love God! The gifts of the understanding exercised over him an irresistible magic; but if he lived by intelligence, he lived still more by the heart. His friendship was full of strength and tenderness; he gave himself without measure.”

Ah! dearest Kate, I forget that you are no longer here. Ellen is extremely sympathetic towards me; she listens to me, speaking of you, for hours together. This morning, after a long account, in which her mother’s name and yours recurred a hundred times, she said to me with feeling: “I am going to pray God to put me soon where they are.”

O Blessed Virgin! may she stay with us.

JULY 18.

Arthur is ill. Johanna writes agitated and sorrowful pages. My saintly Kate, pray for us!

The rumors of war which have for some days been circulating are taking consistency. What is about to become of this poor country? Will the hour of vengeance strike, or will mercy again carry the day? Epidemic maladies and drought have already spread desolation everywhere.

Kate, I would fain penetrate into the future. O folly! What would it be, when I cannot even support my present grief?

René has had three attacks of fever. O this dear invalid, this son of liberty and space, restless as a lion! in repose. Dear, good friend! Come, then, and see him, dear Kate, when three times a day he attends to an unfortunate child whose wounds horrify everybody. “The hand of M. René passes over my sores like the wing of an angel!” What charming praise, and especially in Breton, in the mouth of this frightful little lad, who is distressed at his own ugliness! Gertrude is teaching him the catechism; Mary and Ellen prepare his meals with their little white hands. Ellen has lovely eyes of sea-blue, very dark.

JULY 24.

The _Univers_ of Wednesday, the 20th, is splendid: “The Infallibility is proclaimed! _Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia!_ The times are hard; war, pestilence, famine; but the year 1870 will be none the less immortal. This will be called the Century of Pius IX., the Pope of the Immaculate Conception and of the Infallibility.” Great joy in the Catholic world.

Here is war with Prussia—that power which, whatever may be said, is truly redoubtable. Happy the people whose history is wearisome! Misfortune to those who depart from the path traced for them by Providence! What a magnificent page might France have added to her history had she so willed! “Archimedes asked but a lever and a fulcrum to move the world,” said the Père Lacordaire at Notre Dame; “but in his time this lever and this fulcrum were unknown. They are known now: faith is the lever; and the point of support, the Breast of the Lord Jesus.”

Who, then, will lift this lever? My God! may they who seek thee find gladness and joy in thee. _Tristis es, anima mea!_

Arthur is better; our dear Parisians are returning to us; the horizon is so dark to those who see things rightly! Berthe is gone to the town for the funeral of a friend of her childhood who passed through the greatest trials in the world. She made a most edifying death, preserving the fulness of her faculties to the last, blessing her children, and putting all her soul into her last directions. And when she had said all, and was asked if she desired nothing, she answered with her failing voice: “I desire nothing but God!” The long agony of her heart, the suffering which has killed her, this painful martyrdom—all is over, and the Blessed Virgin, whom she so loved, must have welcomed her into glory. _Amen!_ The two little children, alarmingly pale, followed the coffin. How one would pity them, if God were not the Father of orphans!

Spain in a state of revolution. Queen Isabella has abdicated in favor of Prince Alphonso. Poor Spain! Where is Isabella the Great, the Catholic?

Adrien is reading to us the tenth volume of the _Histoire du Monde_, by De Riancey. The illustrious and lamented author wrote from Rome, after receiving from the Pope and the Comte de Chambord precious tokens of affection: “Now I am almost ready to sing my _Nunc Dimittis_, and there remain only the joys of heaven to be added.“ Dearest Kate, I said something like this when I still possessed you....

[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]

UP THE NILE. CONCLUSION.

The dignity of some of these half-clad Nubians is almost beyond conception. As we walked through the town of Korosko we saw numbers of elephants’ tusks, ostrich feathers and eggs, and great piles of gum-arabic. We told Ali to pick up a handful of the gum, and then demanded the price. With a shrug of the shoulders, the owner answered in the most indifferent manner: “Whatever you please.” Ali offered him one piastre. The merchant took out his purse and coolly handed a piece of the same value, saying: “If you cannot pay more than that for the gum, you must be very poor; take this for backsheesh.” “Well,” broke in Mr. S——, unable to restrain his indignation, “would you like us to give you two pounds for that handful of gum?” “Oh! no,” he replied quietly; “whatever you please.” He was finally satisfied with the amount first offered.

This Korosko is an important town; for from here the direct road lies across the desert to Aboo-Hamed, Shendy, Sennaar, and Khartoom. The bend in the river between this place and Derr is so great that the river flows south-southeast. Going up, we were detained some time. The north wind, which carried us up thus far, was now almost dead ahead, and we were obliged to wait till it died out. The temple at Wady Sabooah a few miles below is of the time of Rameses II. His favorite amusement, to judge from the figures on the temple walls, was to catch hold of a few score of his enemies by the hair of the head, all at once, and in one hand too, while with the other he knocked them about with a club. The old temple was afterwards used as a Christian church. In the time of the great temple-builder a figure of some god stood in the adytum; the Christians covered it with plaster (it was a bas-relief), and then painted on it a picture of St. Peter. The other figures are not altered, and the result is that the great Rameses is now making offerings to a Christian saint.

I was anxious to obtain a dress—a full dress—of a Nubian young lady. I did not propose to introduce this style at home—it would scarcely be suited to our winters, although it might answer in summer—but it would be a pleasant thing to show it, and, when some fair one should ask what it was, to reply: “Oh! that is a dress that belonged to a lady friend of mine in Nubia; she gave it to me to remember her by.” Just think how jealous all the men would be! Frank carefully treasures up a ribbon, and Charley considers priceless a lock of hair which his fair one has worn—small trinkets compared with mine, even if I cannot put mine in a locket. So I am bound to have one by fair means or foul.

The reader will probably be anxious to know what this dress is. Well, he must not be shocked; he must remember the climate is warm, and the immediate descendants of Eve set the fashion here. The full costume consists of a leather girdle, from which hangs fringe of the same material, about six inches long, ornamented with shells. I have one. It belonged to a very pretty, dark-eyed young lady of thirteen, from whom I purchased it as a curiosity. The girl’s wardrobe being unusually well stocked, she sold me her best for the small sum of six piastres.

The people are very much afraid of the evil eye, more dangerous on this account: that no one can tell who possesses it. Even some of the innocent howadjii may have it; if they look at any one who is near, he or she is instantly possessed by some spirit and becomes sick. But they have medicine; for they immediately send to some priest and inform him in what way the sufferer is afflicted. For a small fee he writes out a portion of the Koran which will cure the disease. This is enclosed in a leather bag and worn on the arm or around the neck. The disease is not only cured, if the extract be the right one, but all future danger from the evil eye is averted.

We have been visiting temples and tombs almost every day for the past week, and have been very much annoyed by the crowds that followed us and in many cases prevented us from properly inspecting. On Feb. 6 we visited the little temple of Baybel Welly. I put into operation a plan I had thought out last night. I wanted to try the effect of sarcasm on these half-civilized Nubians. The temple was very small and the crowd pushed in after us. We withdrew, and I then spoke in a quiet, dignified manner to the one who appeared to be the leader. “This temple is not large enough for both of us to visit at the same time. We will wait outside until you and your friends finish your examination, and then we will look at it. If you find anything particularly interesting, you will be kind enough to inform us.” At first he did not take the point; after a time a light broke upon him, and he replied: “You go in; I will keep these walluds out.” And he did so.

I have told of the presents we gave the crew. They made a common pool, a sort of joint-stock company on the mutual-benefit plan. Reis Mohammed was treasurer. They held a meeting and resolved to declare a dividend, after the manner of many modern railway dividends—for it was paid out of the capital. A very noisy confab prevailed for an hour or more; then votes were cast, and it was resolved “that the treasurer be instructed and empowered to purchase a calf at a price not exceeding seven dollars, said calf to be served up immediately for the use of the stockholders.” This should furnish a hint to antiquarians; perhaps they may be able to trace back the origin of our modern corporations to the old Egyptians. The similarity of management should afford some clue.

On the 10th of February we reached Philæ. On the mainland opposite is the small town of Belal. Here is an old mosque; from its minaret the first Moslem call to prayer in Nubia was made. It is February 12, and we are still lying at Mahatta, waiting for the Shellallee, to take us down the cataract. They will not come to-day, so we go to visit the quarries of syenite granite from which the obelisks were taken. Two of the party mount the diminutive donkeys; I want to oversee them, so I climb on a camel. He kneels for me to mount, and then rises at command. The camel rises with three distinct motions. I have said that he kneels for one to mount; this will hardly convey the proper idea. His legs are doubled underneath and his belly touches the ground. With the first motion he raises himself on his fore-knees, then straightens up his hind-legs, and then his fore-legs. The effect of this motion upon the rider is very curious. He is first pitched violently backwards, but before he has time to fall off is thrown forwards again; and just as he feels certain that he is about to dive into the sand, he regains his equilibrium, and off goes the camel. When he walks, the rider sways back and forth; his run is not unlike the trot of a horse.

An unfinished obelisk—one that has never been entirely detached from the rock—shows us the means employed by the Pharaos for cutting out these immense masses. Holes were cut along the whole line of the block a few feet apart. Into these wooden wedges, saturated with water, were firmly driven. The swelling of the wood, causing an equal pressure, split the rock in a straight line. Just above where we are moored is the body of a man lying in the water. His hands are tied behind his back—probably a slave from away up country, beaten to insensibility and then thrown into the river. Perhaps he stole a few piastres, or was not sufficiently quick in obeying his master’s commands. It is a sickening sight, this putrid, bloated corpse, so we ask Ahmud to have it taken out and buried. It was carried by the current into this little cove some four days ago; hundreds of people pass it daily, yet no one will remove it. Ahmud says it is the duty of the governor to bury it, and, unless he does so, the natives will let it remain until the fish and vultures eat it up. “If I see the governor,” continues Ahmud in the most unconcerned way, “I will speak to him about it.”

Early next morning the Shellallee assembled and preparations were begun. To make the descent it is requisite that the water should be smooth and not a breath of wind stir the air. The day was all that could be desired; so at six A.M. began the charge of the black brigade. On they come from every quarter; every rock sends forth two or three. We have sixty or seventy on board. Ali says that most of them come to get a place to sit down and smoke their chibouks. There is the usual amount of talking, and at a quarter to seven we cast loose from our moorings and stood out into the stream. God’s flag was tied to a post on the port side of the quarter-deck—a red flag with two yellow stars and a diamond, the latter representing the sword of Mohammed, and over all the sacred name “Allah.” This was placing the dahabeeáh under the divine protection to ensure a prosperous descent. Our old friend Nogood was with us, seated by the flag, smoking a long pipe and reading the Koran. Another sheik was seated on the opposite side telling his beads. Four men stood at the helm, and two at each oar. To judge from the noise and excitement, you would be led to think that no boat had ever descended the cataracts before. Ahmud was so nervous that tears came into his eyes. The balance of the Shellallee squatted on the deck, lit their chibouks, and never moved until we hustled them off at Assouan. The current carried us swiftly on to the west bank, and we neared the great gate. A piece of wood was thrown overboard; it was a guide to the steersmen. Now all was quiet; not a word was uttered on board. The rowers stopped, the howadjii held their breath; a moment more we rounded the corner almost at a right angle, and shot into the great rapid. The boat grazed the rocks on the port side. The waves dashed over the bow. Directly ahead the rocks rise perpendicularly to the height of twenty feet. The howadjii shudder; surely we will be dashed to pieces. Before we have scarce time to think, before we are at the bottom of the rapid, the rudder is jammed hard to starboard, the boat swings round at a right angle; we are in smooth water—we have descended the cataract in safety. This rapid is two hundred feet long between the rocks, about seventy feet broad, and falls from six to seven feet. Old Nogood springs up now with astonishing activity, and snatches the turban from Reis Mohammed’s head. This is his perquisite. It is the custom for the head sheik to take both tarbosh and turban from the captain’s head when the descent is safely accomplished. This was all very well when these descents were first made, there being then some doubt as to their safe accomplishment. Now numbers of boats are taken down every year and an accident rarely happens. This custom should be done away with—at least, so thought Reis Mohammed; for he put on the oldest tarbosh he had, and it was so bad that Nogood would not take it. Every one shook hands all around. One of the Shellallee cut his foot very badly; I put court-plaster upon it, and then bound it up with my own handkerchief. He smiled and asked for backsheesh.

About nine we reached Assouan. Every one wanted backsheesh, even those I told about who sat on the decks smoking chibouks, and had never raised a finger to help us. Finally we got rid of them all. What a relief it was to be alone again with our little family!—for we are coming to love our sailors; they have been with us so long, and, in spite of their few faults, they are a good set and we have had no serious trouble with them. There is a modern temple at Kom Ombos, about thirty miles below Assouan, built by one of the Ptolemies about one hundred and fifty years before Christ. It is interesting, and, notwithstanding its recent construction, we examined it with care. There is another of these Ptolemaic temples at Edfoo, one of the most interesting temples on the Nile. True, it is far younger than Karnak, but then it is the best-preserved temple in Egypt. As a perfect specimen of an Egyptian temple, complete in all its parts, it stands unrivalled. Let me go into details here and describe this temple. It will give an idea of all the others; for the temples of ancient Egypt were all constructed on the same plan, except rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which has been described before. The Egyptian temple was not a place of public worship, like a Greek or Roman temple, or a Christian church. It was an edifice erected by a king in honor of some triad of divinities to whom he wished to pay special homage in return for benefits conferred or in hope of future favors. A rude brick wall surrounded the whole enclosure and shut out from the vulgar gaze all that took place inside. This wall is almost entire at Edfoo, but a small portion of it having been destroyed. A gateway admits us into the enclosure, and we pass through an avenue of sphinxes to a second gateway with its propyla, or immense pyramidal tower, on either side. Over the gateway is a winged scarabæus in high relief. The pyramidal towers are covered with intaglio sculptures representing the king holding a brace of his enemies by the hair, and about to knock off their heads with a club. Flag-staffs were attached to the outside of these towers, rising many feet above their summit. Entering a large hypæthral hall through this second gateway, we see before us the portico of the temple itself. We enter this between two columns; from these to the side walls are screens reaching about half-way to the roof. A little further on we reach the sanctum sanctorum—a magnificent monolithic chamber of polished gray granite, in which was kept the hawk, the emblem of the god Horhat, who was the principal divinity of this temple. The rest of the naos, or portion of the temple behind the portico, and in which this sanctuary was placed, was cut up into a number of small chambers used for religious purposes. Within the enclosure was the temenos, or grove, thickly planted with trees, and near at hand was a lake. The whole length of this temple, including the gateway and wall of circuit, is four hundred and fifty feet. The breadth of the propylon—the inner gateway with its pyramidal towers—is two hundred and fifty feet and its height one hundred and fifteen feet. The sculptures all over the walls are extremely interesting. Some give the names of the several chambers of the temple, and their dimensions in cubits and parts of cubits, so that the modern measurements can be compared with the ancient ones. Others give valuable information respecting the ancient geography of Egypt.

During the reign of Psammenitus, son of Amasis, a most remarkable prodigy befell the Egyptians, says Herodotus; for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes, which had never happened before nor since, to my time, as the Thebans themselves affirm. For no rain ever falls in the upper regions of Egypt, but at that time rain fell in drops at Thebes. In the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four the same remarkable prodigy befell the Egyptians, say I; for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes. If we did not know the dignity and sober character of that ancient traveller, we might suppose a sarcastic witticism lay hid in the closing part of the above story. See how cautious he is: the rain fell in drops. Well, that is precisely the way it fell when we were there. And the drops could be counted. There was no shower. The dust was not even laid. But it rained. I saw it—perhaps the first time in three thousand years. It is no small affair for a man to be able to say to his grandchildren in years to come: “It rained when I was at Egyptian Thebes—in drops, you know.”

Ten days tied up at Luxor, measuring the columns of Karnak, looking at the endless procession of gods and warriors, and going far into the mountain-side to search for the sarcophagi of Egypt’s long-departed rulers. The ruins of Thebes are familiar—at least to every one who has read any of the numerous works on Egypt; so I will not describe them. There is one place, however, not mentioned in the guide-books about which I will say something. Behind the temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, on the western shore, there are several mummy-pits. Mr. S—— and I determined to visit them. We descended a well about ten feet deep, at the bottom of which we found a narrow passage, so low that we were obliged to crawl. This led into a large chamber filled with bodies. Ali begged to accompany us, but, when he caught sight of the first body, he beat a hasty retreat to the upper air. Truly, it was a solemn, ghastly sight. The mummies were piled up to what depth no one knows; as they then were they had filled up the room to a level with the narrow passage, forming a floor over which we walked. The Arabs had been there hunting for scarabæi and other antiques to sell to travellers, and in so doing had handled the corpses without care or ceremony. Here was a man standing on his head with his feet resting against the wall; there a woman broken in two, the legs placed astride the neck; corpses all around in every conceivable position—grinning, staring corpses, enough to give one the nightmare for weeks to come. Beneath this top row they were placed in layers. I found the body of a young woman well preserved, and with hair banged across the forehead, like the French style of a few years ago. I carried the body out to show it to the rest of the party, thinking somewhat of bringing it home. “Desecrating graves,” “robbing sepulchres,” and words of like import met my ears, and, feeling somewhat abashed, I took the body back, but detached the hair and brought it with me. In this pit we found numbers of the small clay figures of Osiris. They were rudely made—for these were the fellaheen, or lower class, who were thrown into a common pit. They were embalmed in the cheapest way, which was done, according to Herodotus, by thoroughly rinsing the abdomen in syrmæa, and then steeping it with natron for seventy days.

The boy who owned my donkey was sick, so Fatma, his little black-eyed sister, attended for him. She was a pretty, bewitching little creature, yet of a marriageable age—thirteen, I think. Day after day she ran behind my donkey, urging it on, and occasionally coming up alongside to make some pleasant remark and disclose teeth like Oriental pearls. When we were parting I gave her a small present and asked her if she would go with me to America. “Certainly.” And the little one jumped and clapped her hands with joy. “Do you know where America is situated?” I asked. “Not exactly, but down the river, somewhere near Alexandria, is it not?”

Here we are at Keneh, and when we see a fine large house, in appearance not unlike a provincial theatre, we naturally ask who inhabits it. The consuls of France and Prussia—the lion and the lamb lying down together. Here they live together in the same house on the best of terms, just as if King William had never marched into Paris or Napoleon III. had not surrendered at Sedan. We did not meet them, but very probably they were like Ali Murad—natives, with a faint idea that there had been some misunderstanding between France and Prussia; but then they were not concerned with that, so they smoke their pipes together and let the outside world take care of itself. Passing Sheik Selim’s place on March 9, we stopped and sent some of the sailors with presents. We arrived at Bellianeh, whence we proposed to visit the interesting temple of Abydos. We rode for six miles through rich fields of grain, principally wheat, and reached the modern village of Arabat, called by the Arabs Madfuné (the buried), from the ancient buildings that until recently lay all around covered with desert sand. On entering the town we saw a gang of men working at excavations under the charge of an overseer, who quickened their movements with a bamboo. We saw pictures of this on the tombs four thousand years old. A fine-looking man, with an immense red turban on his head, broke from the gang, rushed up to us, threw himself on the ground, embraced our feet, and piteously implored us to take him away. He was a sheik of a neighboring village, he said, and had been torn from his family and pressed into service. In proof of this he produced a long document, about as intelligible to us as the hieroglyphics on the temple wall. It was done by order of the viceroy, so we could not interfere, and he went reluctantly back to his work. His appeal to us angered the overseer, who struck him a fearful blow with the bamboo that felled him to the ground. Said—good-hearted Said—took the man’s part, and for a time it looked as though we were going to have a lively row. But it all evaporated in talk; the overseer promised not to beat him any more, and then he and Said became the best of friends.

These workmen are not paid very much—five cents a day; but their work is not very heavy—at least, as they do it. One man fills a small basket with earth, then sits down and smokes a cigarette. The basket is dragged about twenty feet, emptied out, then he has a little talk with some of his friends. We were looking for the celebrated tablet of Abydos, but the passage-way was so filled up with sand that we could not approach it. This tablet is called the new one, although M. Mariette supposes it to be the original of the fragmentary one found in the temple of Rameses II. at this place and now in the British Museum. It contains figures of Sethi and Rameses offering homage to seventy-six kings, their predecessors, beginning with Menes and ending with Sethi I., and has been of incalculable benefit to the historian. But we are going farther back than Menes, for there is the Kóm es Sultan, the Holy Sepulchre of the ancient Egyptians—the tomb of Osiris. It is not a natural tumulus, but is formed by the heaping up of tombs during many ages one upon another. Are they not the tombs of those rich Egyptians that Plutarch tells of who came from all parts of the country to Abydos to be buried near Osiris?

A few days after we were strolling along the east bank when we came upon a Coptic church. Entering, we saw a novel rendering of the legend of St. George and the dragon. I have said before that St. George is the patron saint of the Copts, and here they turn the dragon into a Turk, substituting a real enemy for a mythical one. St. George, on a spirited steed, is frantically endeavoring to pin a Turk to the earth. He has his lance run through the neck, but the Turk is a tough fellow and is fighting so hard, while the horse is balancing himself in the most incredible manner on one leg, that it is a question which will get the upper hand.

As we run close to the bank scores of urchins salute us with that now familiar cry, “Backsheesh, howadji”—“Alms, O shopkeeper”—not that they took us for shopkeepers, but then these were the first to travel for purposes of trade; and when others, travelling for pleasure alone, came after them, no distinction was made by the natives, but all were classed in the same category. Everywhere in the East, from the poorest beggar to the sultan himself, is heard the same demand, “Backsheesh, howadji”—from the great ones couched in hidden terms and well-set phrases, but as well understood as the outspoken clamor of the rabble. After careful study and deliberation I have classified the different uses of this phrase. I have divided them into eleven different demands, expressing the following ideas: First, the distant or dubious demand. This is made by small urchins from the bank as we sail by. The tone of voice indicates that they doubt very much whether they will receive anything, but deem it worth while to make the attempt, although sometimes a quarter of a mile of water separates us from them. Second, the salutative demand from older ones. As we ride or walk through the country we meet an Arab. “Naharak Saiid” (May the day be good to you), say we. “Backsheesh, howadji,” he replies in the same salutative tone, and moves on. Surely he cannot expect anything; he does not even stop. Third, the imperative demand, growled out in a fierce tone by half-grown boys—your-money-or-your-life demand of highwaymen. This is always unsuccessful. Fourth, the curtailed demand from over-lazy ones, as this: “Backshee, howadj”—a very indifferent one. Fifth, the plaintive demand—the fourteen-children and seven-year-widow story listened to by tender-hearted people. Sixth, the non-expective demand, a mere matter of form, and surprise exhibited if complied with. Seventh, the interrogative demand—to wit: “Did it ever occur to you, O howadji! that a small present would be acceptable to your petitioner?” An idea similar to this frequently crossed the howadji’s mind. Eighth, the confidential demand from the donkey-boy when near the end of a trip. In a low whisper, and with a knowing look: “Howadji and I understand one another; it is all right; about two piastres will do.” Ninth, the future demand: the praises of the donkey are sounded when starting out; professions of fidelity and attachment on the part of the attendant are loud and constant; he will show you everything, and—“Backsheesh kabeér dahabeeáh” (Much backsheesh on the return to boat), in a matter-of-course tone. Tenth, the infantile demand, from imps scarce able to talk: “Backtheeth, howath”—most successful of any. Eleventh, the fraudulent demand, practised principally in Nubia. A mother holding an infant in her arms: “Backsheesh for the baby, O howadji!” and when the kind-hearted traveller places a coin in the little dimpled hand held out to receive it, the mother takes possession of it for her own use. When the traveller approaches a town, every child is snatched up into some one’s arms—it is immaterial whether the mother gets her own child or some one belonging to another—and presented to him.

Little Saida, our gazelle, broke her leg at Thebes; we sent for the barber, who is doctor also, to bind it up. He performed the operation in a bungling way, and mortification set in a few days after. She had become a great pet, and was beginning to know us and eat from our hands. So we concluded it was best to kill her, as she was suffering very much. Wishing to preserve the skin, she was hit on the head with an axe, so as not to injure it. After the skin had been removed we offered the body to the crew for a meal. Reis Mohammed threw it overboard, saying that it was not killed in the proper way for them to eat: it should have been shot, or else the throat cut, after repeating certain passages from the Koran. It is strange to see how obedient these Arabs are to the sacred writ. They are fond of meat, but do not have it very often. On one occasion we were lunching in a temple. When we had finished, some fine slices of ham were left. I gave them to Ali for himself and the two sailors who were with us, and whose lunch had consisted of dry bread. Without a moment’s hesitation he threw them to a dog who was near us, saying that it was good food for dogs and Christians, but not for Arabs.

On the summit of the rocks of Gebel Aboofayda, near their southern end, are the caverns of Moabdeh, commonly called the crocodile mummy pits. We stopped and procured some fine specimens—small crocodiles which had been treated as gods five thousand years ago. Every one in this country seems to know every one else. It seemed to me that, when our crew wanted to see any one, they simply called out the name—Ali, Mohammed, or whatever it was—and he soon appeared. When purchasing goods it makes no difference whom you pay, whether owner or not, provided you pay some one. Many people marvel how the old Egyptians transported their obelisks and colossi from the quarries at Syene to their destination several hundred miles down the river. Back of the Christian village called Ed Dayr en Nakhl, on the east bank nearly opposite Rhoda, are a number of grottoes cut into the mountain-side. In one of them is one of the most interesting paintings found in any of the Egyptian tombs, which will enable us to understand how these immense masses of stone were conveyed from one place to another. We had great difficulty in finding this grotto; for, although it is mentioned in the guide-book, the natives seemed unaware of its existence. At last we found it, away up on the mountain-top, the entrance so filled up with débris that we were obliged to crawl in. But we were well paid; for we saw the famous painting of “A Colossus on a Sledge,” which, as far as I am informed, is the only one of the kind in Egypt. The person represented by the colossus was called Thoth-ôtp, and was of high distinction in the military caste. He is styled the king’s friend, and one of his children was named Ositarsens, after the king. This grotto was his tomb. The figure is seated and placed upon a sledge, being firmly secured to it by ropes. One hundred and seventy-two men, in four rows of forty-three each, pull the ropes, attached to a ring in front of the sledge, and a liquid—most probably oil—is poured from a vase by a person standing on the pedestal of the statue, in order to facilitate its progress as it slides on the ground—or more probably on a tramway made for the occasion, though that is not indicated in the picture. Some of the persons engaged in this laborious duty appear to be Egyptians; others are foreign slaves who are clad in the costume of their country. Behind the statue are four rows of men, three in a row, representing either the architects and masons or those who had employment about the place where the statue was to be conveyed. Below are others carrying vases filled with water, and some rude machinery connected with the transportation of the colossi, followed by taskmasters with their wands of office. On the knee of the figure stands a man, who claps his hands to the measured cadence of a song to mark the time, and to ensure a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together. Before the statue a priest is presenting incense in honor of the person it represents. At the top are seven companies of men—a guard of honor, or perhaps reliefs for dragging the sledge. Beyond are men slaying an ox and bringing the joints of meat to the door of the building to which the statue was to be transported. From this we may judge with tolerable certainty how the great obelisks were conveyed to the temples before which they were set up, and how the great stones of the Pyramids were transported from their mountain-beds.

We are now rapidly sailing down stream and nearing civilization. In a few days we reached the lofty cliffs of Gebel et Tayr, which rise abruptly from the river to a height of several hundred feet. On its summit stands the Coptic convent of Sitta Mariam el Adra (Our Lady Mary the Virgin). As we approached several of the monks jumped into the stream—not from the top of the cliff, however—and swam out towards us. They seized hold, jumped aboard, entirely naked, and saluted us with “Ana Christian, ya howadjii” (I am a Christian, O howadjii!) Of course we could not resist this appeal, but a few paras satisfied them, and, putting the coins in their mouths, they swam back to shore, to sit like birds of prey waiting for their next victims—for they never miss a dahabeeáh that passes. This Gebel et Tayr—“The Mountain of the Bird”—has a strange legend attached to it. It is said that all the birds of the country assemble annually on this mountain, and, having selected one of their number to remain there till the following year, they fly away into Africa, and only return the next year to release their comrade and substitute another in his place.

A funny accident happened to Reis Ahmud. We had grounded on a sand-bank, where we remained sixteen hours, and the usual means were being employed to pull the boat off. An anchor was thrown out some seventy feet ahead in the direction of the channel. A rope was attached to this, and the other end carried through a pulley on the deck. The entire crew pulled upon this rope, when it became entangled in a block on the starboard side. Reis Ahmud went forward to release it, and, without slackening the rope, he began to pry it with a long pole. The strain on the rope was of course very severe. He succeeded in raising it over the block, but it acted like the string of a bow, and Ahmud, being in the place where the arrow usually is, was struck by it. He was shot directly over the top of the kitchen, and plunged headlong into the water on the other side of the boat as though he had been shot out of a catapult. The expression of fear, terror, and uncertainty as to what struck him, shown plainly in his face as he went flying over the boat, pole in hand, was most ludicrous. Fortunately, he was not hurt. A bad fright and thorough ducking will teach him to avoid strained ropes in future. Some statues, a few fragments of granite, and some substructions are all that can be seen of the ruins of a city which, if there is any truth in the descriptions given of it, must have exceeded any modern city as much as the Pyramids exceed any mausoleum which has been erected since those days (Curzon). So one day was enough at Memphis, and still on to the south we sailed. Now the great Pyramids loom up in the distance, and at ten of the morning of March 30 we reach the iron bridge at Cairo, our long Nile journey over. That night we left our dahabeeáh, and bade farewell to our crew. I have travelled far and wide throughout this world of ours, but I know of no trip that has afforded me more real satisfaction and pleasure than these four months on the Nile. The expense is not very great; a party of four can contract with a good dragoman to supply boat, crew, provisions, and everything necessary for the voyage for from five to six pounds sterling a day. The winter of 1873-'74 was cold for Egypt. The superintendent of the viceroy’s sugar-works at Rhoda informed us that it was the coldest winter known in Egypt for seventeen years. See what a cold winter is in the Orient—for these observations I took myself: Average thermometer from December 20, 1873, to March 28, 1874, sixty-nine degrees. Highest thermometer during same period, eighty-two degrees on February 21, 1874; lowest, February 8, 1874, sixty degrees. The observations were taken in the cabin—in the shade, of course—at noon of each day.

MAY.

The month of Maia—Cybele’s Roman name[36]— Ere Rome was Christ’s. And ’twas for Vulcan’s priest To kindle at her shrine the rosy flame On sweet May-day. Womb’d in the fruitful East, Not vainly Westward, as the myths increased, This purer rite, nor unprophetic, came: A flower that should be gather’d for the feast Of Truth—with more that erst deck’d Pagan shame. Not now the mother of vain gods[37] we pray, But Her, the God-Man’s Mother, ever a maid: And still to her this fairest month of May Assign—our hearts upon her altar laid, That her chaste love, descending with its fire, May purge them from the dross of base desire

B. D. H.

Footnote 36:

Maia, or Majesta: not to be confounded with Maia, the mother of Hercules.

Footnote 37:

Cybele was the “Mater Deûm” of the Greeks and Romans.

THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.

The war of 1870 between France and Germany has taken the place, in the minds of the French, of those other, not more glorious, but more successful, wars with which the very word “war” was formerly associated. They were used to think of nothing but triumphs; individual losses were swallowed up in national exultation; and they connected with the memories of the two Napoleons the peculiarly French axiom that there existed no such word in their language as “impossible.” _That_ is still true to-day, notwithstanding the reverses through which they have passed; for moral heroism stands upright on a lost battle-field as well as on a triumphant one, and the nation can say with its chivalrous monarch of old: “All is lost, save honor.” If the discipline was faulty, if the management was indiscreet, if the government was weak, if circumstances were contrary, there was still individual courage, and not only among the soldiers, but among all classes. The very misfortunes of the country roused the spirit of women, priests, students, exiles, of the weak and the poor, the secluded and the helpless; never was there such spontaneous truce to all differences, such generous sacrifice of personal comforts and, what is more, of personal antipathies; all good men and true shook hands across the barriers of politics, religion, and caste, and, with one mind and heart, did each his best in his own way for his suffering country. Of course there were cowards, time-servers, and place-seekers, making profit out of their fatherland’s necessities, getting into safe, so-called official, berths, and generally skulking; but they were not the majority, and it is superfluous to ask here if every nation has not its scum.

The part which the French clergy took in the war of 1870 exceeds that taken by them in any previous war, when some few members of their body acted as salaried chaplains to the troops. Even during the “wars of religion” under Henry IV. of France few priests accompanied the troops; the _abbés_ of Turenne and Condé’s times were officers and gentlemen rather than pastors and nurses; during the wars of the great Napoleon public opinion would have frowned down their services; and the successful wars of the Crimea and of Italy under the late emperor, though they stirred the clergy more, were yet _too_ successful to vie as a field of action with the ever-present needs of city and country parishes. But the last disastrous conflict was emphatically a _home_ war; each family in the quiet hamlet where his cure of souls lay came to the parish priest, asking blessings for its departing members and prayers for its dead ones; each wife and mother claimed his comforting words and poured her sorrows and fears into his ears; soldiers on the march made his presbytery their natural home, slept and ate there, asked him for common little necessaries, and made sure of getting no denial had they asked for anything he possessed; boys whom he had christened came home to die, and it was he who gave them the last sacraments and read the burial service over their graves; in a word, he lived on the battle-field even while still cooped up in his village. It was not strange, then, that he should easily take one step further, and go himself to share abroad the same danger whose face was so familiar to him at home. A German historian, writing of the late war, says that there was more patriotism found among the French clergy as a class than in any other class in the whole nation. General Ambert, a soldier and a civil servant, has gathered together[38] many interesting episodes of the war relating to the heroic behavior of the priests, who from the beginning came eagerly to ask leave to act as chaplains for the love of God and their neighbor only; for when war was declared there were but forty-six accredited chaplains in the whole army. Not only parish priests presented themselves, but also hundreds of monks, brothers, and confraternity-men; every order was represented—Jesuits, Capuchins, Dominicans, Benedictines, Carmelites (the most distinguished of whom was Père Hermann, who died at Spandau), Trappists (of whom one convent alone furnished thirty-five), Cistercians, Oratorians, Lazarists, Redemptorists, Christian Brothers (of whom nineteen died during the war, besides those who were the victims of the Commune), and other brotherhoods, old orders and new, their members drawn from all classes, from the Legitimist nobleman to the peasant and the artisan, from the doctor of laws or of theology to the brother-scullerer or porter. One day in mid-winter, during the armistice, the Christian Brothers had been for more than twelve hours unceasingly at work digging in the snow for the bodies of the French dead of Petit-Bry, Champigny, and Croisy. Two Prussian officers, at the head of a detachment of their men, were doing the same for the bodies of the Germans. It was a bitterly cold night, the wind blew the flames of the torches about, and nothing was heard but short, business-like sentences, the sound of pickaxes breaking the ice, and that of the carriers’ feet as they bore the dead away on rough litters. The Prussian officers looked admiringly at the silent brothers, and one said to the other: “We have seen nothing so fine as this in France.” “Except the Sisters of Charity,” answered the other.

Footnote 38:

_L’Héroïsme en Soutane._ By General Ambert. Paris: E. Dentu, Palais Royal. 1876.

One day Brother Nethelmus, of St. Nicholas’ School, Paris, was wounded by a ball, which proved his death-blow two days later, and hardly was he buried before a young man asked to see the superior, and said to him very simply: “I am the younger brother of Nethelmus, and have come to take his place.” “Have you your parents’ consent?” asked the superior. “My father and mother blessed me before I left, and bade me come,” said the youth, as if nothing was more commonplace.

The service of the wounded was the priests’ favorite field of work, and it was in this that they most frequently met death themselves. The Abbé Géraud, after the defeat of Mans, being chaplain of the Vendean _francs-tireurs_, was seeking out the most dangerously placed among the wounded. The latter had in many cases been abandoned by the drivers of their ambulances, who, in the general rout and panic, had unharnessed the horses and run away. On one of these carts were two soldiers and two officers of “Mobiles”—one of whom tells the story—all badly wounded and trembling with cold and ague. Many a man ran past them, intent on his own safety and heedless of their piteous appeals, and the men despaired of help, when they saw a priest running quickly towards them with cheery looks and words, telling them he was looking for them. The first thing he did was to take off all his available clothing to cover the men and warm them a little; then, stopping some of the runaways, he begged, promised, and reproached so effectually as to induce several to help him. “Push the wheels, my fine fellows,” he cried, as he harnessed himself to the shafts, and from the battle-field he drew the cart to a village, where he never rested till he had begged for his charges food, coverings, and straw, and at last a horse, with which he drove them to the nearest hospital. He continued his labors throughout the war. The Abbé de Beuvron, who has lived with the soldiers for fifteen years in various times and climates, tells us of the priests at Fröschwiller, who, after confessing and anointing the dying placed in the village church, saved the wounded while the building was in flames, and persuaded the Prussians who guarded the wells to let them have a few drops of water for the sick; this blockade lasted for four days, after which fifteen Alsatian peasants were condemned to be shot for having mutilated the bodies of some Prussian soldiers. This system of shooting the first-comer for a crime committed by an unknown person was one of the most cruel features of the late war. These poor wretches, taken at random—some mere boys, some old, infirm men—were tied with their hands behind their backs to one thick rope which kept them all on a level. The Protestant clergyman, who had himself gone to the general and asked the lives of these men, came to beg M. de Beuvron to intercede for them; he was equally unsuccessful, and, when he begged as a Catholic priest to be allowed to see the condemned, the general smiled and said: “You are welcome; I will give you an escort.” But on addressing the poor men the priest found that they understood no French, and he could not speak German. He pointed to heaven, and spread his hands while he gave them absolution, and they, with one accord, fell on their knees, sobbed and prayed, and bowed their heads. This solemn, silent service seems to us as noble as the most magnificent of triumphant processions, with chants and rejoicings, and imperial _cortége_ following—this, the last moment between time and eternity, between faith and vision.

It is M. de Beuvron who has said with truth: “It is the country parish priest who makes Catholic France.” And Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia echoed this sentiment when he said at an official dinner in 1872, at the table of the Bavarian ambassador: “There is in France but one class that is noble and patriotic, earnest, courageous, worthy of respect, and really influential, and that is the clergy. Impossible not to admire it as it appeared on the recent battle-fields.” Some of these heroic men preserved their incognito; one is mentioned by the London _Times’_ correspondent who followed the Saxon regiments. “There is a man,” he writes, “whom I have noticed, since Sedan until the struggles before the walls of Paris, constantly following the wounded. He has neither horse nor conveyance, but, stick in hand, he follows the track of the army, and, with the consummate finish of the man of the world and the tenderness of a woman, he attends and comforts the dying. He is a French priest, a Benedictine.... The other day I met him suddenly on a field of battle, and he asked me to direct him to where the wounded were. He had walked twenty miles that day. No government pays him; he is a volunteer in the best sense of the word.... He is in the prime of manhood, of handsome build, distinguished-looking, and with no less than courtly manners.” Another unknown volunteer, but a layman, was found dead at Forbach. No one had seen him till the day of the battle, and he wore a dark dress and cap and a fancy rifle. At the moment when the battle began he suddenly joined a brigade and fought like a hero. His purse held a large sum of money in gold, and his linen, unmarked, was remarkably fine, while round his neck was a medal hanging by a silken ribbon. There was nothing to identify him.

But to return to our parish priests, of whom many refused rich rewards and promotion after the war, as M. du Marhallach, who, though he accepted the Legion of Honor, declined the bishopric of Quimper, and, when his townsmen forced him to represent them in the National Assembly, managed to resign before long and return to humbler scenes of usefulness in his country parish. If a book were to be filled with incidents of the devotedness of the country priests, there would yet be ten times as many unknown and unrecorded. As the Prussians entered the village of Verrey, slaying all in their way—men, women, and children—the _curé_, M. Frérot, was almost ubiquitous among the dying. He was wounded twice with bayonets, and, as he retreated into his garden, the soldiers fired and wounded him twice more. He dragged himself to the doctor’s, where some wounded were being attended to, and got his wounds dressed, when the doctor, taking the flag of the Geneva Association with him, undertook to get him safe into his own (the doctor’s) house, where some of the wounded had been carried for safety. The enemy, heedless of the flag, fell upon him again with ball, bayonet, and gun-stocks till he fell down insensible. He died a few days after, glad, as he said, if his death could be in any way useful to his country. Useful! Yes, as an example; but how many precious lives are lost thus, while vile, worthless ones preserve themselves! One can only compare the pouring out of such blood to the “waste” of the precious ointment which our Lord so highly commended.

The Abbé Miroy, of Cuchery, near Rheims, died another kind of death: he was judicially murdered for having allowed arms to be hidden in the barn of his house. When asked for this permission, he was in the first agony of grief at the news of the death of his parents at a hamlet burnt by the Prussians. However, whether responsible or not—and probably as a Frenchman he saw no harm in passively helping in the defence of his country—he was shot at Rheims, at daybreak, on a bleak February morning and a Sunday. It was during the armistice. His people put this inscription on his tomb-cross: “Here lies the Abbé Charles Miroy, who died a victim to his love of country.”

M. Muller, parish priest of Sarreguemines, when asked for the keys of his church, flatly refused to give them up, and, on being threatened, answered:

“How many shots do you fire on a condemned man?”

“Eight and the '_coup-de-grâce_.’”

“Very well, then, before you cross the threshold of my church to desecrate it fire these eight shots and the _coup-de-grâce_ at me; for you shall only step in over my dead body.” There were many like instances; for the priests knew well that the enemy delighted in wantonly outraging the most sacred feelings of the people by profaning and robbing their churches. A barbarous story is told (General Ambert vouches for it) of the treatment undergone by the aged Abbé Cor, of Neuville in the Ardennes, who had considerably delayed the march of the Prussians by certain information given to the French, and who, notwithstanding his age (he was more than eighty), was tied to a horse’s tail and dragged along for a good distance, with another rope tied to his leg, with which a soldier pulled him up whenever he fell. At last the soldiers got tired, and threw him into a ditch, and, marvellous to relate, he recovered. One of his parishioners cried out in pity: “O father! what a state you are in.”

“Oh!” he answered cheerfully, with a twinkle in his eye, “it is only my _old_ cassock!”

The parish priest of Gunstatt was brought before an improvised council of war just after the battle of Forbach; what was requested of him the

## book does not say, but his answer just before he was shot points to

something evidently against his country’s interests: “I prefer death to the crime of betraying France.”

If these facts, which speak for themselves, allow us to make any commentary, we can think of none so appropriate as this: how does this France contrast with the feverish, theatrical, rationalistic, immoral France presented to us by a certain wide-spread form of French literature? No country is so libelled by its own writers as France. Granted that many novels represent “life as it is,” yet it is not the undercurrent of life, not the life of the majority. It is the artificial, sensational, exceptional life of large cities and of reckless cliques; and, besides this, novels have a trick of magnifying this diseased life into illusive dimensions. It fills the eye of the foreigner, it shapes his judgment, it draws his curiosity, till the sober, prosaic, quiet, respectable, and vital life of the country fades out of his memory. He forgets the _vie de province_, the impoverished gentlemen living in dignified retirement, like Lamartine and his mother at Milly, like the family in one part of a _Sister’s Story_, like Eugénie de Guérin with her homely, housekeeping cares; the cosey homes of the middle classes, their precise, thrifty, cheerful ways; the family bond that enables different families to live patriarchally in a fellowship which few Anglo-Saxons would or could imitate; the peasant-proprietors with their gardens and little farms; the healthy rural, natural life that is everywhere, and even _in_ cities; the kindliness, the simplicity, and the innate refinement which ought to make many a traveller of the Anglo-Saxon race blush for his surliness and brutal, superficial, haughty way of setting down every foreigner as a monkey or a barbarian.

Among the country priests there were not only heroes, but strategists. Towards the beginning of the war a French column was on its way to join the main body, and had to retreat through a hilly, wooded, and unknown tract to avoid being surprised by the enemy. No one knew just what to do or advise, and the little maps were very unsatisfactory. The general stopped at a Lorraine village and sent for the authorities. The mayor and most of the inhabitants had fled in anticipation of danger; only the _curé_ was left, with a few sick and old people. He was over seventy himself, tall and large, his hands and face swollen and his feet protected by huge wooden shoes. The general did not hope for much advice from him, but the old man sat down and explained that he was gouty and unable to get about, but knew the country. When the general had joked about this impromptu council of war, and the priest in return had reminded him how often the church had had occasion to help the army before, they examined the map together, and the _curé_ took a pencil and quickly drew certain lines in a most business-like manner, calculating how long such a road would take to traverse, how much headway would be gained over the enemy, what points would be a safe resting-place for a few hours for the tired troops, the route which, believing the bridge to be destroyed, the Prussians would probably follow, the houses where the general would find willing and able contributors to the necessities of his men—in a word, every chance and every detail that an accomplished commander would have thought of. Then he asked for four soldiers, two to be placed in the steeple to look out for the Prussians and toll the bell the moment they came in sight, and thus give the understood signal to the column at its masked resting-place; and two to watch with him at the entrance of the village.

“_Monsieur le curé_,” cried the general, “you are a hero!”

The old man sneezed violently—he took snuff—and laughed as well, as he said: “_Mon général_, the seminaries are full of such heroes as _I_ am. It is no heroism to love one’s country. Now, when you have given your orders, I shall carry you off to the presbytery and give you a roast chicken and some good omelet; and I think Turenne would have been glad sometimes to barter a few of his laurel branches for an omelet.”

The priest and the two soldiers had a long and cold watch through the night. At three o’clock in the morning the latter were getting tired, but the old man said: “Hist! do you see something over there?” The men peered through the dark and saw nothing; there was a wide circle of old trees and a road across—a well-known spot, the Fontaine wood. But the priest both saw and heard, or else he guessed by instinct. “See, they are creeping nearly on all fours behind the trees; now they stop to listen, they are gathering together. There is an officer speaking to them in whispers. It is time to ring the bell. Go now, children.”

“But how can we leave you alone?” said the soldiers.

“Never mind me; God will take care of me. Your general’s orders were to leave the moment the bell rang.” And as his companions withdrew he rang his little bell and the church tocsin immediately answered. Its sound was nearly drowned by the discharge of the Prussian rifles. The old man knelt down and began the Lord’s Prayer; he had not said the second line before a ball hit him and he fell. The French column escaped without the loss of one man; and when the general reported to his superior in command, the latter, lighting a cigar, said: “That priest was a brave fellow.” But the general was to meet him once more. The _curé_ was not killed, but was afterwards condemned to be shot, which sentence was commuted to exile on account of his great age; and when he met his old friend, who believed him dead, he greeted him with the cheerful question: “Well, how did you like my omelet?” The other caught him in his arms and repeated with as much tenderness as admiration: “You are a hero!”

The next story we choose from the many related by Ambert is one of pure Christian self-sacrifice, and one that has its daily counterpart in hospitals and plague-stricken cities, even in peaceful times. Small-pox in an aggravated form had broken out among the French troops, and, on the approach of an infected battalion of Mobiles to a village not far from Beaune, a _gendarme_ was sent on to bid the inhabitants lock their doors and keep out of the way, while the sick were taken through to an isolated camp-hospital at some distance. There were hardly any able-bodied men left in the village, as they were off harassing the Prussians and watching their movements, and the women, in their loneliness, felt a double fear. The patients came. A death-like silence prevailed; no face was seen at door or window. The sick men dragged themselves slowly and painfully along, asking for nothing, touchingly resigned to their lot of lepers and outcasts, though many of them were raw recruits of a few weeks only, whose homes were in just such villages as the familiar-looking one they were crossing now. They had passed the last houses, but at the door of one a little apart from the rest one soldier fell, and, seeing how hopeless it was to urge him further, a sergeant placed him on the doorstep and knocked at the door for help. No answer; and the battalion resumed its march, while the sergeant went back to tell the mayor. When he was out of sight a man and two women came hastily and furtively out of the house, carried the unconscious soldier some distance to the foot of a tree, and there left him. The sergeant had found the parish priest on his way back from a sick-call, and asked him to tell the mayor, as he was in a hurry to join his regiment. They came to the house, and, not finding the sick man, asked the owner where he was; the man half opened the shutter and pointed in silence to the tree. Without even seeking help, the priest, finding the soldier still alive, carried him home in his arms and laid him on his own bed. The hubbub was great in the parish; the old housekeeper indignantly remonstrated, but the priest gave her a few clear and severe orders as to her own liberty of staying away, and the substitute whom he had the means of sending for to replace him in church, also the manner of bringing him his food once a day, and then went out to speak to his excited parishioners. “There,” he said, pointing to a placard on the wall of the mayoralty, “you read 'Liberty, fraternity, equality.’ Am _I_ to be deprived of the _liberty_ of helping my neighbor? Is he not our _equal_, and does not _fraternity_ require that we should give him every chance for his life? I cannot forget that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

“But he does not even belong to the parish!” murmured the crowd.

“In such times as these,” said M. Cloti with enthusiasm, “all France is my parish, and every brave fellow who dies for you is my parishioner.”

And for sixty-five days and nights he watched the stranger, Jean Dauphin, made his bed every night, cooked his food, mixed his medicines, swept the rooms, and scarcely slept or ate himself. The doctor had insisted on the utmost cleanliness, but said that, with all precautions possible, only a miracle could save the soldier’s life. Charity wrought the miracle, and by the fortieth day the patient was sitting up listening to the priest reading to him. Only one person in the village caught the disease—the daughter of the man who had spurned the soldier from his door; and, though she did not die of it, she lost her beauty for ever. Some months after the doctor asked the priest if he knew at the time that he was risking his life, and that there was but the barest chance of escape for him. “Yes,” said M. Cloti simply, “I knew it.”

A terrible barbarity was the occasional punishment of the _bastonnade_—a kind of “running the gauntlet.” This occurred once at the village of Saint-Calais, where the enemy found some guns hidden in the belfry, and one hundred and forty-five male inhabitants, including the mayor, Baron Jaubert, and the priest, were seized. They were compelled to walk slowly between a double row of Prussian soldiers armed with clubs and sticks, and received merciless blows on their bare heads, their shoulders, back, arms, and legs. The number being odd, the priest was placed last and alone, so that both rows were able to reach and torture him. He fainted, and was given a glass of water, after which the torture began again; and when he fell the second time, his head was found to be split in five places, and his body was thrown aside for dead. He recovered, however, after a long and severe illness, but the baron died of his wounds. One priest, at Ardenay, was maltreated and imprisoned and finally carried away to Germany for having kept on his steeple a tricolor flag which had been there since 1830. Some priests whom one can forgive for their patriotism, but who were perhaps too forward, as ministers of peace, to foment war, used to go on the battle-fields and search the bodies of the dead for cartridges for the living; but these instances of enthusiasm were exceptional, and it should be remembered that some among the clergy were old soldiers.

Among the prisoners of war the priests found ample room for their ministry. Some of the clergy were themselves prisoners, while some left their country and volunteered for this special service. There was much to do. Besides saying Mass and administering the sacraments, there were the ignorant to instruct, the scoffers to convert, the young to protect, and the intemperate to reclaim. In that forced idleness many gave themselves up to drunkenness and grew reckless and desperate. This sin, which in our time seems to have sprung into new life and strength, showed itself lamentably strong among the captives, and the priests, to counteract it, had to attend not only to the spiritual needs of their charges, but to invent amusements and occupations to wean the soldiers from gross self-indulgence. Father Joseph, a missionary and military chaplain, published an interesting work on the prisoners, their behavior, pastimes, etc., the statistics of their captivity, their treatment, and such little things. During the war, more than 400,000 were taken prisoners. Letters with contributions came constantly through and from the country _curés_. Father Joseph, who was stationed at Ulm, quotes many of these letters, of which the following is a specimen: “I venture to recommend to your care one of my parishioners, made prisoner at Strasbourg. I recommend his soul to you—for it is his most precious possession—but also his bodily wants; I am afraid he is in need of clothes. If your circumstances allow it, be kind enough to give him what is needful; if not, set the whole to my account, and I will reimburse you. Our country will bless you for your charity.... May our soldiers, whom so many have labored to demoralize, be led to understand these truths; for then only will they be worthy of victory.” This dignified attitude of resignation to the hard lesson God allowed the unsuccessful war to teach France specially characterized the clergy of all ranks, but it did not take one jot from their eager and hot patriotism. Another country priest, over eighty years of age and nearly blind, begins by excusing himself on that score for his bad handwriting, and, mentioning one of his flock among the prisoners, says: “The poor boy must suffer terribly. Help him and comfort him; I shall look upon all that you do to him as done to me. It is long ago since it has been dinned into the people’s ears that we are their foes, while in truth they have no better friends; we are accused of not loving our country, while, on the contrary, we are her most devoted sons.... I fear that my age will prevent me seeing the end of her troubles, but it will be a comfort to me in death that to my latest breath I shall have labored in her service.” Charitable committees abroad and at home, mostly under church superintendence, sent food, money, and clothing, books, papers, games, etc., to the prisoners. Mgr. Mermillod’s committee at Geneva, and those of Lausanne and Bordeaux, chiefly distinguished themselves; but in this work religious fellowship overcame national prejudice, and the clergy and sisters of the Catholic Rhineland cordially helped their so-called enemies. They vied with the French in ministering to the prisoners in the several cities where the latter were confined; but not only they, for there were numberless Germans, both civil and military, who behaved generously, kindly, and delicately towards the prisoners.

We have already mentioned the terrible custom of choosing at random hostages or victims in reprisal for the acts of some unknown men. This took place once at Les Horties, a village where, despite the Prussian sentries, two hot-headed youths succeeded in picking off three German soldiers. The shots were returned, but the agile youths got away unscathed. A detachment was sent forthwith into the village, with orders to seize the first six men they happened to meet. This was done, the hostages guarded by the Prussians, and the mayor given till eleven o’clock the next morning to give up the real offenders, under penalty, if it proved impossible, of seeing the six men shot. Those who had fired on the Prussians were strangers, who hovered constantly on the outskirts of the enemy, accomplishing, most likely, some vow of vengeance for a wrong done by soldiers to some near and dear to them. There were many such. Heaven forgive them! for they brought untold sorrow on the heads of families like their own, whose death they were so blindly trying to revenge. It was out of the mayor’s power to give up the culprits, and no prayers or tears made any impression on the Prussian officer in command. The women’s lamentations were terrible; the men’s despair appalling. One of them, a widower of forty with five children, was all but out of his mind, blaspheming horribly and crying out: “Yes, yes, it was my three-year-old Bernard who fired on the wretches. Let them take me and my five boys, and let the rest go!” The priest, M. Gerd, was unable to comfort him, and slowly left the school-room where the poor victims waited their fate. Going to the headquarters of the German captain, he said: “I believe you only wish to shoot these men as an example; therefore the more prominent the victim, the greater the lesson. It cannot matter to you individually _who_ is shot; therefore I have come to beg of you as a favor to be allowed to take the place of one of these men, whose death will leave five young children fatherless and homeless. Both he and I are innocent, but my death will be more profitable to you than even his.” “Very well,” said the officer, and the _curé_ was bound with the rest of the men, and the man he had saved left him in tears. The night passed, and, like the martyrs of Sébaste, whose fortitude was strengthened by the young heathen who joined them in the stead of one of themselves who had faltered, these unhappy men were transformed by the priest’s words and examples into unflinching heroes. The hour came, and he walked at their head, saying aloud the Office of the Dead, the people kneeling and sobbing as he passed, when the condemned met a Prussian major who was passing by chance with some orders from the general. He was struck by the sight of the priest—an unusual one, even during this “feast of horrors”—and inquired into the matter, which seemed less a thing of course to him than it had to the captain. He countermanded the order and referred the whole thing to the general, who called the _curé_ before him. It ended in the former saying that he was unable to make an exception in any one’s favor, but that for _his_ sake he would pardon every one of the hostages, and, when the priest had left, he turned to his officers and said energetically: “If all Frenchmen were like that plain parish priest, we should not have long to stay on this side of the Rhine.”

But here is another story, very like this one and more tragic, which has not come within Ambert’s knowledge, and to which we are indebted to an English novelist, who, vouching for its truth, has worked it into a recent tale. Neither name nor place is given, but it runs thus: The same thing happened as at Les Horties, and a certain number—I forget how many—male inhabitants were condemned, all fathers of families. After vain appeals for mercy from the priest, the mayor, the old men, and the women, the former called all his people into the church, which had been pillaged and half burnt some time before. He went into the pulpit and held up a common black cross; it was the only ornament or symbol left of the simple village church treasury.

“My children,” he said in a voice trembling with sobs, “you know what has happened, and how many hearths are going to be left desolate. Here, in God, in Christ, is our only comfort and our only strength. I have no ties but such as bind me to each one of you equally. I have but one life to give, but I will gladly take the place of one of these fathers of families, and trust to God to protect you when I am gone. Now, if any of you feel that God will give you grace to die in the stead of any other of your brethren, say so, and God bless you!” He knelt and bent his head on his clasped hands in prayer; silence, only broken by suppressed sobbing, filled the church. The women were in agonies of weeping; the men’s faces worked as if in some mighty struggle. Presently one young man rose up and said: “Father, I will follow you; I have neither wife nor children. I will take such a one’s place.” And then rose another youth, giving up all his hopes of the future for the sake of another of the victims; and the women crowded round them, blessing them, crying over them, pressing their hands, and calling them heroes and deliverers. Those for whom no substitutes had appeared caught the high spirit of the occasion, and bore their fate like Christians and men. No Providence interposed in this case, and the priest was allowed to consummate his sacrifice. Such courage was more than human.

The part taken by the sisters of various orders in the scenes of the war and the Commune was one which neither France nor Germany will ever forget. They shared every danger to which the soldiers themselves were liable, even that of being shot in cold blood, which was the fate of four sisters at Soultz, near Colmar, on the Rhine. They were found nursing the wounded, and the Prussians accused them of advising and encouraging the inhabitants to resist. There was no inquiry, no form, but a few of the scum of the invading army dragged the women away at once, set them against a wall, and shot them. During the retreat after the battle of Reischoffen a Sister of Charity made her way among the disorganized troops, seeking some one to help. Balls and shells were whizzing past, and frightened horses wildly galloping by. A cry was heard as a man fell mortally wounded, and the sister stopped, knelt down, and began her work; but hardly a minute after a ball struck her and carried off both her legs. She fell in a swoon by the soldier’s side. M. Blandeau, who tells the story, did not know her name; he only says pointedly: “She was a Sister of Charity.” An officer of the French Army of the Rhine gives an account of a Trinitarian nun, Sister Clara, who the night of the 16th of August, 1870, after a bloody battle, was tending the wounded in a barn; they were in such pain as not to be able to bear being carried to a safer place, and all they cried for was “Water, water!” Every five minutes the nun went quietly in and out, under the fire of the enemy, to fetch as much water as her scanty number of vessels would hold; you would have thought she was armor-plated, to judge by her calm and smiling demeanor. The next day began the dreary retreat towards Metz; the wounded were heaped on carts and wagons, and there again was Sister Clara, comforting, helping, encouraging the men, giving water to one, changing the position of another. She left on the last cart, holding against her breast the head of the nearest wounded man; but not half a mile further the column was made prisoner by a detachment of Uhlans, the ambulances cut off, and in the _mêlée_ a shot struck and killed the sister, who was probably buried by and among strangers. At Forbach the superior of the Sisters of Providence, whose house was a hospital and asylum at all times, was killed by a shell, and at Metz no less than twenty-two Sisters of Charity died either from wounds, disease, or exhaustion in the service of the soldiers. At Bicêtre, during the siege of Paris, eleven died of small-pox in one day, and a request having been made for the same number to supply their place, thirty-two presented themselves at once. At Pau, at Orleans, at Mans, at Nevers, and in numberless other cities, as well as in impromptu hospitals, canvas towns, villages, and battle-fields, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Sisters of Charity, the Visitation Nuns, and other orders too many to mention distinguished themselves. Many sisters were forced later on to accept the Legion of Honor, but a far greater number of those who deserved it did not live to have it offered. At the siege of Paris their courage seemed absolutely superhuman. An officer once met near Châlons, on the road to Paris, a blind and wounded soldier led by a Sister of Charity. He was an old veteran from Africa, without relations, of a terrible temper, and with not much religion. The Prussians had left him on the road, finding him an encumbrance among the prisoners. The sister found him and undertook to lead him to the _Invalides_, where, she said, he had every right to claim a home. In all weathers this strange couple plodded along. She begged food and shelter for him, and always gave him the best; but he was fractious and not very grateful. One day the weather was a little finer, and he heard a lark sing; he seemed quite touched and happy. The sister asked him to kneel down and repeat the “Our Father” after her, and he did not refuse. This was the beginning of his conversion. But the Sister now grew ambitious, and wanted to restore his physical sight to him as well as his spiritual; so she said: “We will not go to the _Invalides_ after all, but I will take you to the best surgeons and the most famous oculists in Paris, and beg them, for the love of God and their country, to do their utmost to cure you; and if God sees fit to let them succeed, you will promise me to be a good Christian as long as you live, will you not?” Three months later the soldier was as hearty as ever and had recovered his sight, while the sister had long been at work in a country school; but at Notre Dame des Victoires may be often seen a veteran praying on his knees before the grated door of the shrine—praying for his deliverer.

The Pontifical Zouaves formed a volunteer regiment of their own during the war, and fought like lions; most of their members were the descendants of old French families whose sympathies are with the last of the exiled Bourbons, and who, while they reject the empire and the republic equally, and keep out of the way of office or active employment of any kind, even to the prejudice of their career and to the point that many of their young men are forced to make a life for themselves in foreign service or by emigration, yet are full of real love of their country. The virtues of such enthusiasts always come out in adversity, while in prosperity their attitude of aloofness may seem rather childish. In the last war they fought nobly. Plenty of Breton peasants joined them; they have nearly the same traditions and fully the same faith; in fact, they have long been natural allies.

The incidents of the Commune—a period so much more terrible and shameful than that of the war—have been so often and fully described that we will not add much to this sketch by going over the fearfully familiar subject. Every one knows the phase of rabid feeling which came uppermost among the Communists: the hatred of God, religion, and priests—even a more rabid feeling than that entertained towards owners of property. The clergy were thus forced to be prominent in that national delirium: the chief victims were ecclesiastics. In Paris and other places it has been noticed that a certain class of lazy, good-for-nothing men live from hand to mouth around the barracks and the churches, living on the alms of soldiers and priests, inventing excuses to account for their indolence, cheating and lying and taking ravenously all they can get. When a revolution comes, these men become denunciators, assassins, and leaders. It is they who cry the loudest against the army and the priesthood—the “butchers” of Versailles and the “hypocrites” in cassocks. Raoul Rigault spoke their sentiments when he said to the porter of M. Duguerry’s house (the famous parish priest of La Madeleine, shot with Archbishop Darboy at La Roquette): “God! you fool!” (the man had exclaimed, as is the custom, innocently meant, in France, '_O mon Dieu!_') “Hold your tongue; how dare you speak of God! Our revolution is against your God, your religion, and your priests. We will sweep all that rubbish away!” And, by way of contrast to this plain confession of faith, here are the words of M. Duguerry in prison to his biographer, the Baron de Saint-Amand: “My dear friend, if I knew that my death would be of any use to the cause of religion, I should kneel down and beg them to shoot me.” But it is not necessary to multiply quotations to show the intense hatred of the Commune towards religion and its ministers. Holy Week in 1871 was indeed the _Passion_ Week of many of the latter. The devilish conduct of many women recalled the worst excesses of the Reign of Terror. A woman with a military cap on rode at the head of the escort of the hostages, three of them Jesuit Fathers, who were taken from La Roquette to Belleville to be shot. She swore and yelled and gave orders, insulting the priests especially. On the Boulevards, as the condemned passed, riots took place, and disorderly crowds nearly killed the prisoners in their impatience. Women again were prominent, brandishing guns, knives, and pistols, throwing bloody mud on the priests, and blaspheming as badly as any man; it would have been safer to run the gauntlet of a crowd of maniacs let loose from the asylum. Mgr. Surat was killed in the streets on another occasion by a young girl of sixteen, who deliberately put a pistol to his forehead. “Mercy, mademoiselle!” cried the priest quickly; but with an untranslatable slang play on his words[39]—equivalent, say, to “You shall have it hot and peppery,” or some such phrase—she drew the trigger and stretched him dead at her feet. The Abbé Perny, in his evidence before the council of war, says: “I have lived among the savages for twenty-five years, but I never saw among them anything to equal the hatred on those faces of men and women as we passed them on our way from Mazas to La Roquette.”[40] Father Anatole de Bengy, a Jesuit, was a remarkable man who had been military chaplain in the Crimea, and was volunteer chaplain of the troops during the last war till the siege, when he attached himself to the Eighth Ambulance. He had a singular power of commanding the love, obedience, and confidence of others; he was brave and good-tempered, and such a thorough soldier that Marshal Bosquet said of him: “Upon my word, if there are many Jesuits of that kind, _I_ say hurrah for the Jesuits!” His letters are full of pleasantry and life. He tells his friends how he helps “our poor soldiers,” and jokes about his tramps with “his bundle on his back,” which phrase, he says, “always rouses a certain pity in the listener; but indeed, my dear Aymard, the bundle (_le sac_) does not deserve its bad name: it urges the body forward, and its inconveniences are fully made up for by the advantages it gives rise to. Some thinker should undertake the Praise of the Bundle, and rehabilitate it in the eyes of pilgrims.” The words of this manly and brave priest at the funeral of Commander de Dampierre would serve as his own eulogy: “The fountain-head of duty is in the three world-famous words, _God wills it_.” When his name was called at La Roquette, on the list of condemned, the Communist official stumbled over it, and Père de Bengy stepped briskly forward, saying: “I know my name is on the list—Bengy; here I am.” M. Crépin, a shoe-maker, who was condemned, but saved by the entrance of the troops, saw the butchery of Belleville, and in his evidence said: “Let no one speak ill of the clergy before me again! I have seen them at home now; I know them by experience; I have witnessed their courage and been comforted by their words.”

Footnote 39:

_Tu l’auras maigre et non pas gras_ (_grasse—grâce_).

Footnote 40:

At Ménilmontant a woman named Lefêvre proposed, amid cheers and bravos, to undermine the Cathedral of Notre Dame, fill it as full as it would hold with priests and nuns, and blow it up. At a club-meeting another woman—Leblanc—cried: “We must flay the priests alive and make barricades with their carcasses”; and at Trinity Church a woman argued thus on the existence of God: “Religion is a farce got up by men, and there is no God; ... if there were, he would not let me speak so. Therefore he is a coward, and no God....” And there were other and even more revolting things said and done.

The Dominicans of Arcueil transformed their school into an ambulance during the siege, and Père Bengy happened to be chosen chaplain. But the Commune was to elicit greater sacrifices. The monks might have left, but did not, and reopened their hospital for the wounded wild beasts, whose curses sounded upon their watchers even from their sick-beds. The Geneva flag was hoisted, and the Sisters of St. Martha acted as domestic servants, besides many other women and girls. There were twenty wounded in the hospital on the 19th of May, 1871, when the Commune arrested the inmates of the house, thirty-eight persons—priests, lay brothers, tradesmen and servants in their employment, some of them foreigners, nuns, married women and widows, two young girls, and a child of eight years old, daughter of the tailor, who was afterwards shot with the priests. The latter were, with a devilish show of mercy, offered their liberty if they would take arms against the Versailles troops, and, when they refused, they were condemned. Their death took place a few days later, and the shooting was not done with military precision, but bunglingly, so that the victims were rather butchered than shot. After the bodies had ceased to breathe they were savagely mutilated, the heads and larger bones hacked with axes, and the flesh pierced with bayonets. Some of the priests managed to escape in the crowd and smoke, all of them wounded, however; and one was saved by a woman who hurriedly threw her husband’s clothes to him. According to the saying of a National Guard who escorted the Belleville victims to their death, and who, on being asked by a passer-by, “Where are they taking those men to?” answered gravely, “To heaven,” the road these priests walked was truly the “narrow road that leadeth to salvation.”

Surely, if any class of French citizens did their duty in troublous times and deserve well of their country, it is the clergy.

DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.”

## PART II.

We said, in our last article,[41] that the Catholic reader would find this second play much more painful than the first. We are sure, too, that the non-Catholic reader will deem it inferior in point of interest. Yet we do not agree with the London _Spectator_ that there is an “artistic chasm” between the two plays. At any rate, whatever constructive defects are to be found in the present performance, there is no falling off in dramatic power.

Footnote 41:

THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1877, p. 777. We regret to be informed by the publisher that this really great drama is now out of print.

The play is preluded by an “Introductory Scene,” in which Mary is discovered prostrate on the tomb of Jane Grey. This does not at all surprise us after the remorse we have witnessed in the last scene of the preceding play. Holding herself criminally responsible for the execution of her cousin, it was natural for her to perform “penances severer than the Church prescribes.” The gentle Fakenham—now Abbot of Westminster—may well express anxiety for his penitent.

“Pray God Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken. These tearful macerations of the spirit, These fasts that chain all natural appetites, Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone, Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.”

While he is soliloquizing Gardiner enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham has requested the latter’s presence.

“Whate’er hath passed, Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you. Therefore we trust your coming may dispel The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit; Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.”

Elizabeth answers:

“You hope too much. Awakened jealousy Preys on her, like the Egyptian’s asp.”

But she is mistaken; for presently the queen, on recognizing the “veiled mourner,” says tenderly:

“I part The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee _With the strong yearning of a blighted love_. I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms— And let me weep.”

The weeping revives Mary’s energy, but that energy takes a shape in which we see the old despair combined with a new fanaticism.

“ELIZABETH. These mingling tears wash out All venom from past sorrow—”

QUEEN. “Not from mine! Immedicable evil hath infected The fount of life within me. I shall die In premature decay; and fall aside As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch. I, like a mother by her dying babe, Have closed the eyes of hope; and o’er my heart Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.”

Then, suddenly apostrophizing the “Eternal Majesty,” she appeals, as one “hemmed in by dark conspiracies” and “baited by schismatics,” for “prescience to detect” and “strength to control them”; deeming herself, once more, “the Lord’s Vicegerent,” to execute his judgments.

“Fly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen: And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth Consuming impious men: even _till the Church, Swinging her holy censer in the midst, Shall stay the pestilence_, God’s wrath appeased!”

This is a fine allusion to the destruction of the three schismatical upstarts in the wilderness; and it is surprising to see a Protestant author attribute to Catholics so much knowledge of the Bible. Nevertheless, poor sinful mortals never make a greater mistake than when they fancy themselves ministers of what they call the “justice” of Him “whose thoughts are not as our thoughts.”

Perhaps Fakenham was about to make some such reply; for this poet-created Mary Tudor—after pausing, we suppose, to take breath—continues:

“Answer me not. I rise from this cold grave, My penitential couch, with heart as frozen As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”

Thus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she proves singularly innocuous.

The play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the subject of the queen’s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to marry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a very different candidate for her hand. The abbot’s candidate is Reginald Cardinal Pole—a character to whom our author does full justice as among the loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a “student at Padua”:

“A nobler presence Never embodied a more gracious soul: Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use. _Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease, It seemed incorporated with his substance; And beamed forth, like the light that emanates From a saint’s brow._”

And again:

“Oft have I watched him sitting For hours, on some rude promontory’s edge, Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained With outspread palm, o’ershadowing his eyes. And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered In strange community with nature; mingling With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean, The rock, the forest—looking back defiance Unto the elements: _as some lone column Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud_.”

For the thought in these last six lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to Lord Byron, that poet “of Titan birth”—who, indeed, would have sat for the picture far better, we imagine, than Pole; except that, instead of “looking defiance at the elements” (an attitude for which we see no reason in Pole’s case either), his face would have shown ecstatic joy at “mingling with all around.”

“Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted!”

(_Childe Harold_, canto iv.)

The way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham’s candidate, and then introduces his own, affords us an opportunity of correcting the author’s misconceptions of this prelate. First, then, there is no proof whatever that Gardiner was blood-thirsty, or even severe. Had he been the relentless persecutor he is popularly represented, his own diocese of Winchester would have become the scene of numerous executions for heresy; whereas, in fact, not one such execution can be shown to have taken place there. Neither, again, is there any more evidence that he egged on Mary to acts of cruelty. If he did make the attempt, he failed signally; for the real Mary Tudor was personally guiltless of a single act of intolerance even. The only authentic instance in which Gardiner played the part of evil genius to the queen was when he urged her to retain the Royal Supremacy established by her father—her title and authority as head of the English Church—a counsel which elicited the witty reply: “Women, I have read in Scripture, are forbidden to speak in the church. Is it, then, fitting that _your_ church should have a dumb head?” At the time of giving this bad advice Gardiner belonged to the anti-papal party—which, of course, was therefore schismatical, though nominally Catholic. And this time-serving adhesion was the one great sin of his life. He repented of it some time before his death, and publicly lamented it in a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, preached on occasion of the reconciliation of the kingdom with the Holy See; nevertheless, the memory of it so weighed upon his conscience when he lay on his death-bed that he asked to have the Passion of Our Saviour read to him, and, when the reader came to the denial of Peter, said: “Stop! I, too, have denied my Lord with Peter; but I have not learned to weep bitterly with Peter.”

We may here remark that, had our author been acquainted with the above facts of Gardiner’s history, he would not have sacrificed truth to poetic effect by making him die suddenly after the burning of Cranmer; nor, again, have put into his mouth such an un-English argument as this against Pole’s fitness to share the throne with Mary:

“He is _but an Englishman_: And ’tis an adage older than the hills That prophets are not honored in their land.”

One so anxious, as Gardiner must have been at that time, to keep _foreign domination_ out of England could never have advocated the marriage of his sovereign with “Spanish Philip,” nor, indeed, have been likely to call the latter’s father

“That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians, Potent of captains, fortunate of men.”

But, of course, the poet stands to his colors. Having selected Gardiner for the villain _par excellence_, he makes him welcome even foreign domination in the person of a bigoted prince, who, he knows, will imbrue his hands in the blood of heretics.

Philip does not come upon the scene till the third Act; but the intervening scenes form a prelude to his advent.

First we have the queen in council on the question of her marriage, and

## particularly of the Spanish prince’s suit. While asking Gardiner’s

advice she betrays her love for Reginald, and is quickly crushed into abandoning that hope by the chancellor’s daring assurance that her cousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly, she yields reluctant assent to the prayer of Philip’s ambassador. Then, in the same scene, follows a “patient hearing” of Ridley and Latimer, whose contumacious spirit is well shown by the dramatist. Mary treats them with great forbearance, and leaves them to ponder what she has said. The closing passage of this

## scene is noteworthy. Latimer boasts:

“O queen! that day is past When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests. Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck. Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough The fruit of knowledge.”

Mary’s reply is of surprising force and beauty:

“Ah, sirs, have a care! The tree of knowledge was an evil thing, _With root in hell, and fruitage unto death_. But in the self-same garden likewise grew Another mystery, the tree of life. This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time: And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we, _Condemned to cultivate what first we stole, Must tend the second tree with watchful love, Or perish by the poison of the first_.”

The remaining scene of this Act and the opening scene of the next are taken up chiefly with the disturbance occasioned by the approaching nuptials. Underhill, the “Hot-Gospeller,” is introduced, together with riotous citizens and the antagonists Sandys and Weston. Underhill is an honest fellow, and loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist he becomes at the play’s close. Though the rioters are in the minority, the rebellion becomes strong enough to attack Whitehall Palace, where Mary is seen at the opening of the second Act. Her masculine valor is here displayed. First she leans from the window to encourage her soldiers, then actually sallies forth to head them in person, and wins the day by thus risking her life. In the second scene Underhill excites the indignation of Sandys by his chivalrous defence of the queen not only as the one

“Whom the Lord gives to rule o’er Israel,”

but for her clemency.

“UNDERHILL. _The queen is not well served_. You heard yourself How, leaning from the Holbein gallery, Where she so long stood target to your shafts, She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake Peace to the suppliant throng.”

“SANDYS. Yet your fierce captains Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves, Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats; Or at their own doors summarily hang them.”

* * * * *

“UNDERHILL. Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum If measured by domestic pangs, yet _small If balanced by the evil of their plots_: Small if contrasted with the precedents Of former feuds. In Henry’s time, they say, Full seventy thousand their viaticum Had from the hangman.”

But our author does more than make Underhill her apologist. He seems anxious, every now and then, to remind us that he privately thinks much better of his heroine than the history he has read allows him to represent. He sets off the gentler side of her nature in strong contrast to the vindictive, and, indeed, attributes the latter to inherited qualities for which she is not responsible. Accordingly, in the third and fourth scenes of the second Act Mary’s generous forgivingness, and especially to Elizabeth, shines out gloriously.

Count Egmont, Philip’s envoy, has placed upon her finger his master’s betrothal ring, when Renaud, the Spanish ambassador, strikes in with:

“Permit me To be so bold as to suggest ’twere prudent His Grace delayed till treason be put down. _Too many prisoners your Grace releases_.

QUEEN. It was the custom of my forefathers To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.

* * * * *

RENAUD. Pardon me: there may be Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.

* * * * *

Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come While criminals remain unjustified? _Your sister waits her trial._

GARDINER. Let me speak. While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety For England, for the Church.”

Here Bridges, Lieutenant of the Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.

“BRIDGES. Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this, Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant Commands me yield the princess—to be dealt with As sentence shall direct.

QUEEN. O thou good servant! Thy queen, on her heart’s knees, thanks and rewards thee. Whose is this deed? By God’s death, answer me! Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing, If thou hast done it.

GARDINER. Let me see the paper. A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me, I had no hand in it. [_He tears the warrant._

QUEEN. _Inhuman hounds! That worry your poor victim ere you slay it._ But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner! Too much already hath been said: your tongues Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you, Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth Secure my sister. You have known and loved her. You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.”

Thus foiled in their design, Renaud and Gardiner pretend, of course, that they did not for a moment mean the death of the princess, but only her removal; and the Spaniard goes on to explain that this “removal” was to be effected “by a bridegroom’s sweet compulsion”—mentioning Philibert of Savoy as a suitor—and then, finding that offer contemptuously rejected, suggests “the kind keeping of the Hungarian queen.”

“QUEEN. Be content, sir. _My sister hath but one friend in this council— Myself_, companion of her youth. _It may be She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I, Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her By death or exile._ You are malcontent. Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.”

In the following scene, where Mary and Elizabeth have it all to themselves, the generosity of the former is the more touching by reason of her reproaches, which Elizabeth can only answer by acting a part which such a dissembler could very easily feign. Mary shows strong grounds for suspecting her loyalty, but nobly acquits her and replaces on her finger the ring which was the pledge of love between them, saying:

“Or innocent or guilty, I forgive you.”

We regret that space does not allow us to transcribe this scene in full.

We pass to the third Act, which introduces the two best-drawn characters of the play—Philip and Reginald Pole.

In these two men the author has illustrated—perhaps unconsciously—the antipodal extremes of the moral results of the Catholic religion. In Pole we see a character perfectly Christlike in its mixture of majesty with gentleness; in Philip one who has degraded faith into superstition, and made doctrines and means of grace the instruments of selfishness and passion. The greater the good in a system, the greater the evil into which it may be perverted. The amiable Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the previous scene, his mind about the Spaniard’s portrait:

“A moody man, Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal: For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister, Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer. _I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse, Than such a man, whose hell is in himself._ He is a tree of death.”

Gardiner may well wince as he replies:

“You have a caustic brush: The canvas burns beneath it.”

Yet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite metaphor)

“the rainbow of her future years— Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.”

Neither does she betray any foreboding in consequence of the storm that ushers in her wedding-day. The bridegroom, on the contrary, peevishly exclaims:

“A sorry day for our solemnities! I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen, Most holy James of Compostella!”

_He_ does not see in this conjugal union

“The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.”

The “omen” is not unfelt, though, by some of the spectators,

## particularly when Doctor Sandys gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene

is simple enough. The queen says, very prettily, when Philip offers a diamond ring:

“Nay, my lord: I would be wed, like any other maiden, With the plain hoop of gold.”

It is the remaining half of the play which makes the whole so inferior to the first play. Not that, as we have said, there is any deficiency of dramatic power. Philip and the cardinal are masterfully handled. Full justice, too, is done—from the author’s stand-point—to the characters of Gardiner, Cranmer, and the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs the entire picture; and the glaring historical untruth of much of it is no relief to Catholic eyes.

Philip and Pole clash instantly. The Spaniard has a presentiment of this at the moment when Sir John Gage announces

“The cardinal legate’s boat hath touched the beach.

QUEEN. The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin! Go, my lord chamberlain—go, Sir John Gage, And bear our greetings to his Eminence. Let his legantine cross be borne before him; And all appliances of holy state Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king, And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.

PHILIP. You are right gracious to the cardinal. In Spain we condescend less.

QUEEN. Ah! you’ll love him, As I do, when familiarly you know him.

PHILIP. I somewhat doubt it.”

In the next scene, when the cardinal has congratulated the queen on the return of England to the faith—telling the nation:

“Be sure The light devolving from great Gregory Still shines from Peter’s chair. Who turns from it Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams”—

and Mary has joyfully responded:

“Here stand we without question, king and queen; And, with our Parliament, implore the pope For reconciliation. Take this missive: It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!”—

Philip interjects:

“Your Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees— Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.”

No wonder the queen faints as the cardinal blesses her.

Philip, having thus early begun with insolence, loses no time in showing the mixture of brute and devil that he is. He threatens to leave England because his sanguinary counsels are not taken; whereupon we are rejoiced to see the author make Mary as well as Pole defend the policy of “free discussion.” Of course Gardiner supports Philip eagerly. Presently—so outrageous is Philip’s conduct to his wife—the cardinal’s indignation can contain itself no longer, and his dignified remonstrance stings the king into exclaiming:

“Were I a basilisk, I’d look thee dead!”

Gardiner urges Pole to retire; but the hero answers:

“Not so. My heart is strong: And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb, I shrink not from the combat. _He who carries His cross, a daily burden, well may stand In front of any giant of the ring Who boasts he can move spheres._”

And again he warns the monster:

“Ay: you are great Above us by your station, as the vulture Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then? The arrow makes a pathway in the air: _The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant_, _And from the vale quench his despotic eye_.”

—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.

We find a profound study in Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly in its persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond wife-like duty—she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her childhood—is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet intends this new love for a part of her madness—like her passion for the worthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any spouse with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then, again, the treatment Pole receives at Philip’s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the result of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the latter’s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:

“Poor heart! Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated! Witnessed—by him!—by Pole! O Reginald! Avenged!”

And the next, see her so overjoyed by an usher announcing “the king” that she springs up from the suppliant posture in which she has just been praying

“that even as the thief On the third cross I may have peace in heaven”—

springs up, and exclaims wildly:

“The king! King Philip! O speed him hither! Stay: here’s for thy news— A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.”

And again, though his Majesty enters “moodily,” she can actually greet him thus:

“O Philip. Philip! art thou come to me? _And shall there not now be an end of weeping?_ I was thinking of thee—whom else think I of? I talked of thee—of whom is all my talking? But thou art here again: _and my poor heart, Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars, To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom_. Speak—speak—_my soul_! and give me peace.”

Verily, this _is_ madness! Who has ever seen so extraordinary a picture of woman before? Has not the poet drawn something impossible? Not at all. He simply displays, we think, an unusual knowledge of the feminine heart. A much less acquaintance with that organ should prevent surprise at any phenomena it may exhibit—particularly in the shape of undeserved love or unreasoning constancy.

Of course the poor woman’s fondness only irritates her lord, instead of appeasing him; so he tells her bluntly what he has come for—to deliver his ultimatum; which is, first, the removal of the legate; and, secondly, the death of the heretical prelates. Of his feeling towards the cardinal he says:

“Call it not hatred, but antipathy: Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks, Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it: That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror When we approach. I know he cannot harm me; _And have small doubt he would not if he could_. But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him, As when one strokes a cat’s hair ’gainst the grain.

* * * * *

Odious is his garb Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands; _That beard down-streaming like the chisel’d locks Of Moses from the hand of Angelo_.”

Like a gleam of sunshine, for a moment, comes a happy description of a visit from Elizabeth to the queen. Underhill is the narrator. It is in the ninth scene of this too long third Act.

“Her royal barge Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around An awning of green satin, richly broidered With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one Beneath this canopy reclined in state, Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman. Her royal sister on the bowery shore Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles; Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow. With hospitable care, and love, she led Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates. The music they so love breathed in their ears Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn Rippled along the wave with soberer ray, The princess stept once more into her barge, And floated down the current like a swan.”

Yet one more quotation from this Act; for we shall have but little to cite from Acts fourth and fifth. The cardinal, after arguing with Gardiner against the severe measures that are being taken under his and Bonner’s supervision, and defending the queen from the charge of approval—her consent having been forced, and things of which she was ignorant done in her name—finds relief in conversing with Fakenham, whose virtues he thoroughly appreciates. The latter speaks of his friend’s failing strength; and Pole, at a loss to account for it, says he has “heard of vampire poisons,” but instantly suppresses the suspicion. They have been up all night, apparently.

“CARDINAL. A sudden sunburst!—Lo! God’s Image in our heart is as yon orb Unto the universe; _the eye of nature, Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues_; Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes. At times that Image walks through spheres remote; Unobvious to the largely wandering eye: Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul: Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul, Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house. _But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves; And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed So palpably to meet Divinity, That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God._”

In the fourth Act we have, first, the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived by Philip and Gardiner. The queen refuses to let him go; but while, in obedience to her, he remains in England, he resigns his legateship in submission to the interdict. Then comes the picture-scene, which is admirably contrived. The poor queen stops before Philip’s picture and talks to it as if it were a shrine. The original enters and brutally disenchants his worshipper. After a bitter interview, in which Mary accuses him of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard takes his departure, answering her “Begone!” with a sudden “For ever!”

“QUEEN (_alone_). I submit to God’s decree. Was it for this my maiden liberty Was yielded?—to be spurned, despised, and still Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame! [_She approaches the picture of Philip._ Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy, And is my torture! Back!—See, I have rent you, False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame! I wrench thee forth—I look on thee no more! And thus—and thus— [_she tears up the picture_] I scatter thee from out The desecrated temple of my heart! [_A pause._ My brain is hot—this swoln heart chokes my throat Yet I am better thus than self-deceived. Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife! _I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!_”

Next follows the trial of Ridley and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present, and disputes, but is not on trial. The contrast between Gardiner and Pole is admirable. Mary, too, is represented as sedulously just. Ridley and Latimer speak, of course, as if perfectly conscientious and worthy of martyrdom, but make no attempt to disprove the principle of submission to authority, insisting solely on their own infallibility. The cardinal is at last compelled to say of them:

“This is very grievous! Madam, so please you, these be heated men, Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”

He has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon him no less.

Here be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the ecclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate heresy. This penalty was the law in those days—days when every kind of felony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may think of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and most pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and aggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover, what made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was always coupled with sedition and treason.

But before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary’s reign, let us look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the one we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford—the last of the fourth Act.

Mary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to comfort his cousin.

“Poor soul! Be to yourself more charitable. Think That One there is who answers for your faults And multiplies your merits.

QUEEN. Hope rests there: Or I were mad.

CARDINAL. All men are born to suffer. What are the consolations of the Scripture, The fruit of exhortation and of prayer, If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.

QUEEN. _My web of life was woven with the nettle._ My very triumphs were bedewed with tears. What now is left?

CARDINAL. Religion. _As the sunbow Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud A shape of glory_, in thy path she stands A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem! Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.

QUEEN. Thanks be to God! time works while we grieve on. _Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs, The sad quiescence of desponding thought_. Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud, And so was comforted. Remember, also, In weeping I can pray. Should I not?

CARDINAL. Yea. Pray with thanksgiving: ’tis the sum of duty.”

The sublimity of this passage needs no comment. The rest of the scene is equally touching. Mary speaks for an instant of Philip. She is still obliged to say:

“Whene’er I turn my thoughts to God, one image Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.

CARDINAL. To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn The dead, is sinful.

QUEEN. Speak no more of him. Thoughts holier be my guide.”

Then Reginald teaches her what it is

“To stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.”

* * * * *

_The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness_: And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes— Hidden with God.”

She offers him the archbishopric of Canterbury. He answers musingly:

“He who hath stood Upon the first step of the papal throne, And vacant left the Vatican, may look With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.”

Then he accepts, and presently the queen observes:

“I have long thought it strange that you refused The greater honor though the heavier burden: The proffered crown of Rome.

CARDINAL [_after much agitation_]. Look not alarmed. [_A pause._ You touch the mind’s immedicable wound. O God! that I had died before I knew thee! Pardon me—pardon me!

QUEEN. We both need pardon. Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!

CARDINAL. Fear not. _Henceforth we gaze upon each other, As the two Cherubim upon the Ark— The living God between._

QUEEN. Then take my hand. It will be colder soon. May God be with you!”

This “immedicable wound” is the poet’s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos of the scene is exquisite.

The prison-scene at Oxford gives us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer taking leave of Cranmer; then Cranmer watching their execution from the window, and Gardiner, unobserved, watching him. The famous recantation number one takes place; and the subsequent despair of the wretch closes the fourth Act.

The fifth Act we do not care to analyze minutely, so much of it is sickeningly untrue. Mary has become fanatical again. Pole tells her that “the poor, by thousands, perish in the flames.” This is utterly false. All the executions under Mary’s government did not amount to more than two hundred and seventy-seven, and “from this list of 'martyrs for the Gospel’ must be excluded,” says a learned writer, “the names of those who suffered for political offences or other crimes.” Dr. Maitland, the celebrated librarian of Lambeth, in his _Essays on Subjects connected with the Reformation in England_, speaks of “the bitter and provoking spirit of some of those who were very active and forward in promoting the progress of the Reformation; the political opinions which they held, and the language in which they disseminated them; the fierce personal attacks which they made on those whom they considered as enemies; and, to say the least, the little care which was taken by those who were really actuated by religious motives, and seeking a true reformation of the Church, to shake off _a lewd, ungodly, profane rabble_, who joined in the cause of Protestantism, thinking it, in their depraved imaginations, or hoping to make it by their wicked devices, the cause of liberty against law, of the poor against the rich, of the laity against the clergy, of the people against their rulers.” From this rabble, then, came the “poor” who “perished in the flames.”

As to Oxford’s pretended “martyrs,” Ridley and Latimer were inciters of sedition and brought upon themselves the vengeance of the law; while Thomas Cranmer was, without exception, the most unmitigated miscreant in the whole disgraceful business of what is called the Reformation. Who will question that he richly deserved the stake after bringing to it so many victims, in Henry’s reign, for denying doctrines which he himself was secretly denying at the time? There are living Anglican writers who rejoice in calling all these boasted reformers a set of “unredeemed villains.”

Of course, as we said in our review of the first play, we acquit the author of all conscious prejudice. The last words he puts into his heroine’s mouth—“Time unveils Truth”—are an appeal to “the avenger,” who will not fail to do her justice yet. It was a noble thought to make Underhill, the Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist. Oxford vaticinates:

“Awful queen! Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge: For they shall measure thee—

UNDERHILL. Let me speak, sir: For I have known, and been protected by her, When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not That she was innocent of grave offence; Nor aught done in her name extenuate. But I insist upon her maiden mercies, _In proof that cruelty was not her nature_. She abrogated the tyrannic laws Made by her father. She restored her subjects To personal liberty; to judge and jury; Inculcating impartiality. Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor: And fed the destitute: and they loved her. _A worthy queen she had been if as little Of cruelty had been done under her As by her._ To equivocate she hated: And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was _In all things excellent while she pursued Her own free inclination without fear_.”

NANETTE. _A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV._