II.

If science can reply to the appeals of our souls, if by its own power and light it can reveal to us the end of this life, can make us see clearly the beginning and the end, so much the better; we will cling to science without asking for anything more. We have this exact and sure guide completely within our control; why should we seek adventitious aid and inexplicable revelations? It is true that everybody cannot be learned, but everybody believes in science. However scanty her proof may be, the most rebellious yield as soon as she has pronounced her decision. There is no schism or heresy with her. If sometimes the _savans_ quarrel, which they can do perhaps even better than other men, they are not long in finding a peacemaker: they take a retort, a microscope, or a pair of scales; they weigh, compare, measure, and analyze, and the process is terminated: until new facts are ascertained, the decree is sovereign. What an admirable perspective opens before humanity if these hidden questions, which now puzzle and confuse, will in the future be cleared up and accurately determined by the aid of science. Time and the law of progress give us an easy way of putting an end to our perplexities. The fruit of divine knowledge, the old forbidden fruit, we can now pluck without fear, and we can satiate ourselves without danger of a fall!

Unfortunately, all this is only a dream. In the first place, the authority of science is not always admitted. It has more or less weight, according to the subject it may treat. In the investigations of natural things, in physics, and in mathematics, its decisions are law. But when it leaves the visible world, when it turns to the soul, interminable controversies arise. Its right to be called science is then disputed; for it appears to be only conjectural, and half the time its principal efforts consist in trying to demonstrate that it has the right to be believed. This is exactly the kind of science with which we have to do. The questions which disturb man are not the problems of algebra or chemistry; they are the secrets of the invisible world. We cannot expect unanswerable solutions of these doubts, for science, in the field of metaphysics, has none such to give us.

Can science gratify its fancy in these investigations with perfect liberty and without limit? No, an impassable barrier opposes and imprisons it in the invisible universe, as well as in the breast of physical and material nature. All science, whatever it may be, has its determined limit in the extent of finite things. Within this limit, everything is in its power; beyond it, everything escapes it. Could it possibly be otherwise? It is the product of our mind, which is finite; how then could human science be anything but the explication of the finite? Induction, it is true, transports us to the extreme frontier of this material world, to the door of the infinite, and the results of induction are with reason called scientific; yet what does this wonderful faculty, this great light of science, really do? Nothing else than to put us face to face with the unknown mysteries which are completely closed to us. It shows them in perspective, it makes us see enough to persuade us that they really do exist, but not enough to make known any truth precisely, exactly, practically, or experimentally--in a word, scientifically. The invisible finite, that is to say; the human soul, the dwelling of the human _Ego_, science is capable of explaining; the invisible infinite, the supreme, creative spirit, escapes it completely.

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But this is exactly what must be penetrated and thoroughly known, if we expect to resolve the great problems which concern our destiny in a scientific manner. It is then impossible, it is more than an illusion--it is folly to hope for a solution of these questions from human science.

Is this equivalent to saying that philosophy is powerless to speak to us about natural problems? that it has nothing to say to us about our duties, our hopes, our destiny? No, certainly not. It is qualified, it has the right to treat of these questions; to _treat_ concerning them, not to resolve them. The most daring effort of spiritual philosophy can never span the abyss; it can only make the borders more distinct. Noble task, after all! A sound philosophy, which abstains from useless hypotheses, which gives us that which it can give, namely, the clear proof that an invisible order does exist, that realities are behind these mysterious problems, that they justly disturb us, that we are right in wishing to solve them; all this, certainly, is not worthless knowledge nor a trifling success for the human race. As soon as this philosophy flourishes in a place, if it be only among a small number of generous spirits, the perfume is spread abroad, and, little by little, one after another, the whole people feel its influence, and society is reanimated, elevated, and purified. And religion, we do not fear to say it frankly, is badly advised and wants prudence, no less than justice, when, in the place of accepting the aid of this system and welcoming it as a natural auxiliary, seeing in it a kind of vanguard, which is to prepare minds and overcome prejudices, she keeps it at a distance almost with jealousy, combats it, provokes it, places it between two fires, and loads it with the same blame and bitter reproaches as the blindest errors and the most perverse doctrines receive. If these unfortunate attacks had not been made, perhaps we should not see certain reprisals, an excess of confidence, and a forgetfulness of its proper limits that its friends do not now always avoid; for if it is true that we should be just toward it, it is no less true that it should be held in check. M. Guizot, as a real friend, has frankly rendered it this service. Perhaps no one before him has traced with so sure a hand the limits of philosophical science. He claims for it the sincerest respect, and ably sustains its legitimate authority, but clearly points out the limit that must not be passed.

More than one, its adherents will complain: "You discourage us. If you wish us to maintain the invisible truths against so many adversaries, do not deprive us of our weapons; do not tell us in advance how far we may go; let us trust that some day this gate of the infinite, at which we have struggled for so many centuries, will at last be opened."

We could answer: "If you had only made some progress during these centuries, we could hope for more in the future. We would not have the right to say, 'So far shall you go, but no farther.' But where are the advances of metaphysics? Who has seen them? Possibly there has been a progress in appearance, that there is now more clearness and more method. In this sense, the great minds of modern times have added something to the legacy of the philosophers of ancient history; but the inheritance has ever remained the same. Who will presume to boast that he knows more of the infinite than did Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato? The natural sciences seem destined to increase. {346} Feeble at first, they gradually go from victory to victory, until they have created an empire, which is constantly increasing and always more indisputable. Metaphysical science, on the contrary, is great at its birth, but soon becomes stationary; it is evidently unable ever to reach the end it is ever seeking. If anything is needed to prove this immobility of metaphysics, it will be done by referring to the constant reappearance of four or five great systems, which in a measure contain all the thousand systems that the human mind has ever, or will ever invent. From the very beginning of philosophy, you see them; at every great epoch, they are born again; always the same under apparent diversities, always incomplete and partial, half true and half false. What do these repeated returns to the same attempts, ending in the same result, teach us, unless the eternal inability to make a single advance? Evidently man has received from above, once for all and from the earliest times, the little that he knows of metaphysics; and human work, human science, can add nothing to it."

If, then, you rely on science to pierce the mystery of these natural problems, your hope is in vain. You see what they can attain--nothing but vague notions, fortified, it is true, by the firm conviction that these problems are not illusory, that they rest upon a solid foundation, on serious realities.

Is this enough? Does this kind of satisfaction suffice for your soul? What does it signify if a few minds, moulded by philosophy, comprehending everything in a superficial manner, remain in these preliminaries, contented with this half-light, and need no other help to go through life, even in times of the most severe trial? We are willing to grant what they affirm of themselves, but what can be concluded from this? How many minds of this character can be found? It is the rarest exception. The immense majority of men, the human race, could not live under such a system; it is too great a stranger to the philosophical spirit; it has too limited a perception of the invisible. All abstraction is Hebrew for it. And even supposing that the vague responses that come from science were to be presented in a more accessible form; still the essential facts would be for most men without value or efficacy, and a most inadequate help.

What is the human race going to do if, on one side, it cannot do without precise responses and dogmatic notions concerning the invisible infinite, and if, on the other, science is the only means of attaining this end? If it aspires to learn truths which transcend experience, and yet takes experience for its only guide? If, in short, it will only admit and accept the facts that it observes, confirms, and verifies itself? How shall we escape from this inextricable difficulty?

To Be Continued.

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Cowper, Keble, Wordsworth; Or, "Quietist" Poetry, And Its Influence On Society.

The Spanish priest, Michael Molinos, who spent the last eleven years of his life in the prisons of the Inquisition, was destined to exert considerable influence over many of the most thoughtful and gifted spirits of his age. It was in 1675, and in the heart of Rome, that he published a _Spiritual Guide_, in which he pointed out various methods calculated to raise the soul to a state of contemplation and quietude, in which she makes no use of her faculties, is unconcerned about all that may happen, and even about the practice of good works and her own salvation; reposing on the love of God, and, through his presence, safe, all-sufficient, and entirely blest. It can be easily imagined how acceptable the unction of ascetic eloquence might render such doctrine to minds mystically disposed. Multitudes in every age are ready to run after any quack of human happiness who is ingenious enough to hide his fallacies under a show of reason; and Molinos had this advantage over many charlatans, that before deceiving others he had completely deceived himself. He was honest, therefore, and certainly a great advance on the Quietists of the 14th century, called in Greek Hesuchasts, who in their monastery on Mount Athos passed whole days in a state of immobility, "contemplating," as their historians say, "their nose or their navel, and by force of this contemplation finding divine light." Molinos found many partisans in Italy and in France, where his system was fervently embraced by the celebrated poetess and mystic, Madame Guyon, who conceived herself called from above to quit her home and travel, inculcating everywhere the gospel of quietism. Fenelon, whose sweetness and goodness flung a charm around every opinion he expressed, adopted in part the theories of Molinos, and Madame de Maintenon herself is numbered among Madame Guyon's converts to the Spaniard's novel and dreamy creed.

The inmates of Port-Royal, and the Jansenists in general, had, as may be conjectured from the example of Fenelon, strong affinities for quietism; and the sympathy entertained for their sufferings by English Calvinists in the last century, sufficiently accounts for the poet Cowper becoming an admirer of Madame Guyon's writings, and imitating in the _Olney Hymns_ many of her fervent compositions.

Without falling into the errors of the Quietists, Cowper imbibed much of their spirit, and transfused it into his verses very happily. His poetry is essentially of a quietist description, provided the term be understood in a favorable sense. His mind was naturally tranquil, and even during the melancholy of his later days, his mental aberration partook of the original placidity of his character. His rhythm is musical, his language choice, and the flow of his thoughts calm and tranquillizing. He discards stormy and passionate themes from instinct rather than resolve. He delighted in such subjects as "Truth," "Hope," "Charity," "Retirement," "Mutual Forbearance," and

"Domestic happiness, the only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the Fall."

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And he has clustered around them all the graces of poetry and charms of Christian philosophy. In that work in which his powers are exhibited to most advantage and at greatest length--_The Task_--he has touched on every topic that is most soothing, and in verses, many of which have become proverbs, has expressed, with unrivalled precision and ease, thoughts and feelings common to every Christian who is

"Happy to rove among poetic flowers, Though poor in skill to rear them."

He is never obscure, his emotions are never fictitious, his humor is never forced, nor his satire pointless. Hence he became popular in his generation, and has lost no particle of the credit he once obtained. Brighter stars than he have in the present century come forth and dazzled the eyes of beholders, by the intensity of their radiance and the boldness of their career; but they have not thrown the gentle Cowper into the shade. He still shines above the horizon, "a star among the stars of mortal night," of heavenly lustre, unobtrusive, steadfast, and serene. He still exerts a wholesome influence on society, still refreshes us in the pauses of the battle of life, still refines the taste, fills the ear with melody, elevates the soul, and fosters in many those habits of reflection from which alone greatness and goodness spring. The "Lines on the receipt of his Mother's Picture" have rarely been surpassed in pathos. There never was a poet more sententious or a moralist more truly poetic. "He was," says one of his biographers, "an enthusiastic lover of nature, and some of his descriptions of natural objects are such as Wordsworth himself might be proud to own." His poems, observes Hazlitt, contain "a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself." Of all his encomiasts, none has spoken of him with more fervor than Elizabeth Barrett, afterward Mrs. Browning, and the following stanzas from her beautiful poem called "Cowper's Grave" deserve to be quoted in connection with the present subject:

"O poets, from a maniac's tongue Was pour'd the deathless singing! O Christians, to your cross of hope A hopeless hand was clinging! O men, this man in brotherhood Your weary paths beguiling, Groan'd inly _while he taught you peace_, And died while ye were smiling."

But has Cowper had no successor in the peculiar path he so successfully trod? Was Wordsworth not in one sense a Quietist? Were the subjects he selected not as passionless as those of his master, and treated with equal thoughtfulness and calm? No doubt. Yet there was an important difference between them. The quietude which Cowper inculcated was to spring from religion; while that which Wordsworth promoted had its sources principally in contemplation of the beauties of Nature, and in obedience to her powerful influences. Each of these gifted minds has benefitted society, but in different ways; and it is well that, in a poetry-loving age, there should be some counter-balance to the morbid excitement and passionate intensity which the school of Byron, Moore, and Shelley rendered so popular. It is well that minor and gentler streams should irrigate the ground which has been desolated by their torrents of impetuous verse. It is well that divine no less than human love should have its laurel-crowned minstrels, and that principle and conscience should be proved no less poetical than passion and crime.

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It is undoubtedly difficult for one who foregoes the passions to rise to a very high eminence as a poet, since the violent emotions of our nature are well adapted to verse, and full of dramatic effect. The bard of Rydal-Mount has, nevertheless, attained a lasting celebrity, after patiently enduring years--long years--of neglect and ridicule. He has carefully eschewed those stormy and harrowing subjects with which poets of the highest genius had, before his time, generally delighted to familiarize our minds. He leaves such themes as Prometheus bound by Jupiter to a rock, with a vulture preying perpetually on his entrails, [Footnote 58] Count Ugolino devouring the flesh of his own offspring in the Tower of Famine, [Footnote 59] and Satan summoning his fallen peers to council in the fiery halls of Pandemonium, [Footnote 60] to such masters as "AEschylus the Thunderous," Dante, and Milton, and addresses himself to the softer and more homely feelings, and to the calmer reason of men. He is firmly persuaded that a truer and deeper source of poetic inspiration is to be found in the every-day sights and sounds of Nature; that the changing clouds and falling waters, the forest-glades, wet with noon-tide dew, the rocky beach, musical with foaming waves, the sheep-walks on the barren hill-side, and the "primrose by the river's brim," supply the imagination with its best aliment, and effectually tend to calm, elevate, and hallow the mind. This is his great, his constant theme. His longer and more philosophical poems ring ever-varying changes on it, and may be called an Epithalamium on the espousals of Man and Nature. But for his devoting a long life to the poetic development of this fundamental idea, we should never have seen our literature enriched by the productions of Shelley and Tennyson's genius. In poetry, as in all that concerns the human mind, there is a law of progress. The poetic harvest-home of one generation is the seed-time of that which is to follow. Thus Dante speaks of two poets (Guinicelli and Daniello) now forgotten, or known only by name, in terms of strong admiration, as predecessors to whose writings he was considerably indebted. [Footnote 61] The following lines are but a sample of a thousand passages in Wordsworth which set forth the agency of natural scenery in the work of man's education and refinement. It is taken from the _Prelude_, a long introduction to the _Excursion_, which lay upon the author's shelves in manuscript during forty-five years: [Footnote 62]

"Was it for this, That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved _To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song_, And from his alder-shades and rocky falls, And, from his fords and shallows, sent _a voice_ _That flowed along my dreams?_ For this didst thou, O Derwent! winding among grassy holms Where I was looking on, a babe in arms. _Make ceaseless music, that composed my thoughts_ _To more than infant softness_, giving me, Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind, A foretaste, a dim earnest of _the calm_ _That Nature breathes among the hills and groves?_"

[Footnote 58: _Prometheus Vinctus_.]

[Footnote 59: _L' Inferno_, c. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 60: _Paradise Lost_, Book i.]

[Footnote 61: _Il Purgatorio_, xi. 97; xxvi. 115, 142, 92, 97.]

[Footnote 62: 1805 to 1850.]

Wordsworth's life was an exemplification of the doctrine he taught. Cheerfulness and peace marked his character at each stage of his eighty years' pilgrimage, and, towards the close of his career, he had the satisfaction of perceiving that his works were slowly effecting the result to which he had destined them--making a lasting impression on the literature of his age, and leading many a thoughtful spirit from artificial to natural enjoyments, from the imagery of dreamland to that of daily life, from bombast to simplicity, from passion to feeling, and from turmoil to repose.

"O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears, So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears, As to the weary swain, with cares opprest. Beneath the silvan shade, _refreshing rest_; As to the fev'rish traveller, when first He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst." [Footnote 63]

[Footnote 63: Dryden's _Virgil_, Pastoral v.]

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Nor was Wordsworth's love of nature and her soothing influences dissociated from religious belief. He was no materialist, maintaining the eternal existence and self-government of the universe by fixed and exclusively natural laws. He was no pantheist, worshipping nature as an indivisible portion of the divine essence--a body of which God is actually the soul. He believed in other laws besides those which regulate the movements of the celestial bodies, and the gradual formation and destruction of the strata that compose the surface of our globe. The view which he took of the material universe was such as became a Christian, and is luminously expressed by him in the following lines:

"I have seen A curious child applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell. To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely, and his countenance soon Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within Were heard--sonorous cadences! whereby, To his belief, the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. E'en such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of faith, and doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things. Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, And _central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation_."

It is impossible to read the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_ without perceiving that Wordsworth's passion for natural scenery was no fictitious emotion, assumed for the purpose of appearing brimful of philosophy and sentiment, and making an effective parade of moon and stars, flowers and rivulets, in verse. No, it was a deep and abiding principle--a feeling of which he could no more have divested himself than Newton of his bent toward science, or Beethoven of his ear for music. This unaffected enthusiasm enabled him to speak with the authority of a master, and to instil into the minds of disciples the ideas that had taken so strongly possession of his own.

From the poetry of inanimate nature, the transition was easy to that of simple feelings, particularly in rustic life. In the innocent plays of children of the cot, and the sparkling dews on the cheeks of wild mountain maids, Wordsworth found themes for reflection deep enough to sink into the memory of men. Who has not felt the inimitable simplicity of the verses in which the child, who often, after sunset, took her little porringer, and ate her supper beside her brother's grave, persisted in saying: "Oh! no, sir, _we are seven_," and in ignoring the power of death to sever or to annihilate? Purity marks all which this chief of the Lake School has composed; for how could he soothe the spirit if, like Moore and Byron, he pandered to vicious inclinations? Hence his successor as Poet-Laureate congratulates himself very properly on wearing

"The laurel greener from the brows Of him that uttered nothing base."

A poet's best eulogy is that which comes from a poet. Having quoted that of Tennyson, therefore, I shall add that which Shelley also bestows on Wordsworth:

"Thou wert as _a lone star_, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: Thou hast like to a _rock-built refuge_ stood Above the blind and battling multitude In honored poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."

The quietude commended by infidel poets is, at the best, that of despair. It is rest without repose, pathetic but not peaceful--a spurious and delusive calm, difficult to attain for a moment, and certain not to endure.

"Yet now despair itself is mild. Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child. And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear." [Footnote 64]

[Footnote 64: P. B. Shelley.]

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Such is their language; so writes one of the most distinguished of these "apostles of affliction." How different are the feelings of the Christian "quietist:"

"Nor let the proud heart say. In her self-torturing hour, The travail pangs must have their way. The aching brow must lower. To us long since the glorious Child is born, Our throes should be forgot, or only seem Like a sad vision told for joy at morn, For joy that we have waked, and found it but a dream." [Footnote 65]

[Footnote 65: Keble. _The Christian Year_. Third Sunday after Easter.]

Nor is this strain unreal. The writer's life was the best guarantee for the sincerity of his sentiments, and the response he has wakened in myriads of hearts is a seal set on the depth of his convictions. He hymned not the happiness of the Christian, because the theme suited an ambitious lyre in that it is lofty, or an ordinary one in that it is familiar, but because he was persuaded that the poet's highest glory consists in calming the agitated spirit, as David did when he played cunningly on the harp in the presence of Saul; and that, while it is incumbent on us to make others happy, our paramount duty is to be happy ourselves; that if we are not so, the fault is our own; and that there are in the religion we profess, in every crisis and condition, ample provisions for that happiness to which all aspire.

"O awful touch of God made man! We have no lack if thou art there: From thee our infant joys began, By thee our wearier age we bear." [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: Keble. _Lyra Innocentium_.]

This is the key-note of his thoughtful rhymes.

Keble's reputation as a poet was established long before the leading periodicals of the land called attention to the beauty of his compositions.

Their publication in the first instance is said to have been owing to his seeing several of them in print without being able to conjecture by what means they had found their way to public light. He soon learned, however, that some of his manuscripts, which he had lent to a lady, had been dropped in the street and lost. He therefore resolved on completing and publishing _The Christian Year_. It was not till nearly twenty years after its first appearance that it received in the _Quarterly Review_ that meed of applause to which it was justly entitled. The article which there called attention to its extraordinary merits was written, we believe; by Mr. Gladstone, whom neither the bustle of parliamentary life, nor the aridity of financial study, renders insensible to the charms of those muses who are generally supposed to haunt woods and caves, and to smile only on the recluse.

To us Catholics the name of Keble will always be remembered with interest, because he shared with Drs. Newman and Pusey the leadership of that great party in the Anglican Church which has given so many children to the true church, and has spread through England and through the world many Catholic doctrines and practices long dormant or forgotten. We think of him with affection, because he carried on to the end the work of soothing the troubled spirit by means of religious verse; because he was through life the friend of that distinguished convert to whose genius and writings we owe so much; and because he has, both in prose and verse, laid down, more clearly and explicitly than any other Protestant writer, the grounds of our veneration of the blessed Mother of God Incarnate.[Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: _See Lyra Innocentium_, "Church Rites;" and _The Month_, May, 1866, "John Keble."]

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He did not, indeed, follow out his convictions to their legitimate results; he fancied that he responded to them sufficiently by remaining where he was. But his poems will ever remain a witness against the church in which they were composed, because it can never reduce to practice the doctrines he taught in reference to the holy eucharist, the confessional, and the communion of saints. Meanwhile they are silently imbuing the minds of Anglican readers with feelings and arguments favorable to the divine system of the Catholic Church. Though his _Christian Year_ is adapted to the services of the Church of England, and though its chief purpose, as stated in the preface, is "to exhibit the soothing tendency of the Prayer-Book," the author's sympathies are with the Book of Common Prayer in its Catholic, and not in its Protestant aspects. During more than forty years it has been chiselling the Anglican mind into a more orthodox shape. It moulds the chaotic elements of faith into substance, form, and life. It supplies the lost sense of Scriptures, and lays the foundation of towers and bulwarks it cannot build. It opens bright vistas of realized truth, and points to glorious summits from the foot of the hill. It is not inspired with genius of the highest order; the range it takes is more circumscribed in some respects than that of Cowper; it seldom reaches the sublime, and is always pleasing rather than original. But in spite of these drawbacks, it has wound itself more and more into public esteem. No poetry is read more habitually by members of the Established Church. The number of those is very large who take down _The Christian Year_ from their bookshelves every Sunday and festival. It rings every change on the theme Resignation, and presents it in all its truest and most beautiful lights. It has extracted from the sacred writings the very marrow of the text, has developed in a thousand ways the typical and mystic import of Scripture histories, expressed from them abundantly the wine and oil of consolation, and conveyed it to us in poetic ducts of no mean kind.

"As for some dear familiar strain Untired we ask, and ask again. Ever, in its melodious store. Finding a spell unheard before;" [Footnote 68]

so, many Anglicans of the devouter sort recur to Keble's poems year after year, and end the perusal only with death. Other poets charm and instruct the mind, he forms it; and while others are but read, he is learnt. Even the conviction which he cherished of the heavenly mission of the church of Queen Elizabeth, though misplaced, added to the sweetness and soothing character of his verses. But it is deserving of note that his latter volume, _Lyra Innocentium_, which contains more lamentation than he uttered before over the shortcomings of his own communion, and more intense aspirations after Catholic dogma and practice, evinces at the same time less inward quietude in the writer, and imparts less of it to the reader. One poem, indeed, called "Mother out of Sight," on the absence of the holy Mother of God from the English mind, invoking her, as it did, in a strain of glorious verse, was omitted, lest it should perplex and disquiet those who were unused to such invocations, and believed them to be forbidden by the Anglican Church.

[Footnote 68: _Christian Year_, "Morning."]

To cite passages from Keble's poems illustrative of their soothing tendency, would be to copy almost all he wrote. They fell like the dew of Hermon, and were a sign and symbol of the man himself. {353} "His bright, fresh, joyous, and affectionate nature," says one who knew him well, "was an ever-flowing spring, always at play, _always shedding a gentle, imperceptible, and recreating dew upon those who came within its reach. There was a Christian poetry about him_, a natural gift, elevated and transformed by his consistent piety and religious earnestness, which gilded the commonest things and the most ordinary actions, and cast the radiance of an unearthly sunshine all around him." [Footnote 69] What wonder that the illustrious author of the _Apologia_ used to look at him with awe when walking in the High Street at Oxford? What wonder that, when elected a Fellow of Oriel, and for the first time taken by the hand by the Provost and all the Fellows, he bore it till Keble took his hand, and then, as he said, "felt so abashed and unworthy of the honor done him, that he seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground"? [Footnote 70] Yet the greater was blessed of the less. For depth and subtlety of reasoning, for power and pathos in prose composition. Dr. Newman has surpassed beyond all measure everything which Keble did or could accomplish. In poetry, the world in general has awarded the palm to Keble, and the world, we believe, is right. In the art, at least, of calming the ruffled spirit, the poet of _The Christian Year_ has outdone his beloved rival and friend.

[Footnote 69: _The Month_, vol. iv. p. 142.]

[Footnote 70: J. H. Newman's _Apologia_, p. 76.]

The _Lyra Apostolica_ brought Keble and Newman together as athletes in the arena of poetry; and that series of poems affords a good opportunity of comparing their several merits, to those who have the key to the writers' names. They appeared in the _British Magazine_, signed only with Greek characters representing the following writers:

Alpha J. W. Bowden. Beta R. H. Froude. Gamma John Keble. Delta J. H. Newman. Epsilon R. J. Wilberforce; Zeta Isaac Williams.

By far the greater number of the pieces were written by Keble and Newman, and almost all by the latter have reappeared this year in a series, which supplies a poetic commentary on the author's life. These _Verses on Various Occasions_ range over a period of forty-six years, and having each of them the date and the place where composed attached to it, the interest of the whole is thereby greatly increased. Among the poems is that remarkable one, "The Dream of Gerontius," which was published in _The Catholic World_ in 1865. But neither Dr. Newman's verses thus collected, nor the series entitled _Lyra Apostolica_ in general, are marked by that repose which is the prevailing feature of _The Christian Year_. The motto chosen by Froude for the _Lyra_ was truly combative, and shows the feeling both of Newman and himself, then together at Rome. It was taken from the prayer of Achilles on returning to the battle, and it implores Heaven to make his enemies know the difference, now that his respite from fighting is over.

[Greek text] [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: _Iliad_, [Sigma] 125. _Apologia_, p. 98.]

The scars of warfare are visible even in Newman's hymns. He has evidently passed through many an inward conflict, and fought with, many an external foe. He has vacated ground he once occupied, and he defends principles which he once assailed. He pierces many heights, and depths, and has to be always on his guard against his lively imagination. {354} He is lucid as any star, but not always as serene. He flashes now and then like a meteor; he hints and suggests in nebulous light. He is a pioneer of thought; he shoots beyond his comrades; he walks "with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns." He sees, where others grope; he is at home, where others feel confused and out of place. He is, like Ballanche, [Footnote 72] more satisfied of the truth of the unseen than of the visible world. Mysteries are his solemn pastime. He strikes his harp in Limbo, as Spaniards weave a dance in church before the Holy Sacrament. His dreams are Dantesque; he is half a seer. The veil of death is rent before him, and his soul, by anticipation, launches into the abyss. The chains of the body are dropped, and angels and demons come round him to console and to harass his solitary spirit in its transition state. His condition there, like his poetry, and like himself on earth and in the body, is one of mingled quietude and disturbance;

"And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet, Had something, too, of sternness and of pain." [Footnote 73]

[Footnote 72: _Dublin Review_, July, 1865, p. 10. "Madame Récamier."]

[Footnote 73: "Dream of Gerontius," § 2.]

The happy, suffering soul ("for it is safe, consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God,") sings in Purgatory in a strain identical with that to which it was used in this mortal life:

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be, And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me. There motionless and happy in my pain, Lone, not forlorn-- There will I sing my sad perpetual strain Until the morn; There will I sing and soothe my stricken breast, Which ne'er can cease To throb and pine and languish, till possest Of its sole peace." [Footnote 74]

[Footnote 74: Ibid. § 6.]

There is, indeed, one of Dr. Newman's poems, and that one the most popular and beautiful he has ever composed, which is singularly pathetic and peaceful. Yet even here darker shades are not wanting. The angel faces are "lost awhile," and the "pride" and self-will of former years recur to the memory like spectres. It was in June, 1833, when becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio in an orange-boat [Footnote 75] that Dr. Newman wrote "Lead, Kindly Light." The _Pall Mall Gazette_--no mean critic--has said of it recently, [Footnote 76] "It appears to us one of the most perfect poems of the kind in the language."

[Footnote 75: _Apologia_, p. 99.]

[Footnote 76: Jan. 23, 1868]

"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom. Lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Would'st lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears. Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

"So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

Fond as Dr. Newman is of modern poetry he has not imitated it. His style is original--a rare mixture of strength, sincerity, and sweetness, moulded rather after the choruses of Greek dramas, than the rich creations of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Longfellow. Hence his poems bear a nearer resemblance to Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ than to any other English production. His lyrical pieces, again, often remind us of George Herbert, and of Shenstone, Waller, and Cowley. They have a clearness of expression and bright fluency, which makes you love the writer even when you cannot greatly admire his verse. One of the best specimens of his poetic faculty in the _Verses on Various Occasions_ is a poem called "Consolations in Bereavement," written in 1828. {355} It turns on one idea--the rapidity of death's work in the case of the dear sister whom he mourns. He solaces himself with the reflection that the deed was quickly done, and thus derives comfort from a thought which is in most cases afflictive. Perhaps Byron's lines were unconsciously running in his head:

"I know not if I could have borne To see thy beauties fade: ......

Thy day without a cloud hath past, And thou wert lovely to the last; _Extinguished, not decayed_; As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high."

Dr. Newman's poetry did not properly fall within the scope of this article, but we have been led to speak of it because he was Keble's colleague in the _Lyra Apostolica_, and because the verses of the surviving poet have just appeared in England in a new form, and have attracted general attention and been made the subject of admiring and affectionate criticism not merely by Catholic periodicals, but by non-Catholic reviews and newspapers of every political and religious shade. Indeed, the praise bestowed on them by such journalists has exceeded that of our own critics, because it has, generally speaking, been more discriminating and uttered by higher authorities in the literary world.

Let us then rejoice that English literature includes three poets at least--Cowper, Keble, and Wordsworth--who are in a good sense quietists, and the tenor of whose writings, from first to last, is tranquillizing. They may not, perhaps, be the authors who will afford us most pleasure in the tumultuous season of youthful enjoyment; but as years advance, and the trials of life present themselves, one by one, in all their painful reality; as reason matures and reflection ripens; as the probationary character of our mortal existence becomes more and more clear to our apprehension; as the discovery of much that is formal and hollow in society enamors us of rural retreats and sylvan solitudes; as the inexhaustible treasures of beauty and magnificence in the material universe unfold before our gaze; as the things unseen triumph over visible objects in our thoughts and affections, we shall find in such poetry as we have attempted to describe, more that is congenial and charming, and shall cherish with fonder remembrance the names of Cowper, the mellifluous exponent of Christian ethics and delights; of Keble, the bard of Biblical lore; and of Wordsworth, the child and poet of nature. Like skilful tuners of roughly-used instruments, they will reduce to sweetness our spirits' harsher and discordant tones, and fit us to take our part in the everlasting harmonies of the boundless universe. They will each make poetry, in our view, the handmaid of science and revelation, accepting with rapture the vast, amazing discoveries of the one, and ever seeking to harmonize them with the momentous and soul-subduing disclosures of the other. They will impart to mute matter the voice and power of a moral teacher, imbue inanimate things (to our imagination) with life and feeling, inspire us with "a glorious sympathy with suns that set" and rise, with "flowers that bloom and stars that glow," with the birdling warbling on her bough, and the ocean bellowing in his caves; and will lead us by nature's golden steps to the footstool of the Creator's throne; for, in the eyes of such poets, earth is "crammed with heaven," and every common bush on fire with God.

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{356}

The Early Irish Church. [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: _Essays on the Origin, Doctrines, and Discipline of the Early Irish Church_. By the Rev. Dr. Moran, Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome. Dublin, 1864. Pp. vii., 337. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.]

The early Irish Church is now the subject of a close scrutiny and deep study, that bids fair to shed upon it all the light that can be poured upon the subject by such written material as war, oppression, persecution, and penal laws have been insufficient to destroy. There are two schools, and their emulating labors will allow little to escape, both being well versed in ecclesiastical history, the Irish language, annals, and literature.

It is needless to say that there are a Catholic and a Protestant school--the latter of comparatively recent origin. The Anglican Church in Ireland, studying what it had long despised, now seeks to hold forth to the world that it is the real successor and representative of the early Irish Church; while the Catholic Church in Ireland is simply a papal continuation of the foreign church, forced on Ireland by Henry II. and Pope Adrian IV., and their respective successors. Unfortunately, however, the memory of man records not the fact that, in the sixteenth century and later, the Thirty-nine Articles and Book of Common Prayer were presented to the Irish as being the creed and liturgy of its early saints. Those who burnt the crosier of Patrick broke with the early Irish Church as effectually as they did with the romanized Irish Church of later days.

At the beginning of this century, Ledwich, following in the wake of the wild theories of Conyers Middleton, denied entirely the existence of St. Patrick, and his theory met with no little favor among those opposed to the church. Now his existence is admitted, his life studied and written, and efforts made, with no little skill, industry, and learning, to show that the Roman Catholic Church has no claim to St. Patrick or the church which he founded; a church so full of life, that its missionaries spread to other lands, and went forth with papal sanction to plant catholicity or revive fervor on the continent. It is to this curious phase of controversy that we are indebted for the volume of Essays which are here contributed by Doctor Moran, and which evince his learning and research, as well as his fitness for close historical argument.

That there should be much material for a discussion as to so early a period as the fifth century may surprise many, especially those who have always been taught to clear with a bound some ten or more centuries prior to the sixteenth. And it must be admitted that it is indeed surprising, when we consider the wholesale destruction of Irish manuscripts by the English in Ireland from the time of Henry down to the present century. From the period of the invasion to the Reformation, though invaders and invaded were alike Catholic, the English treated the Irish with such contempt that only five families or bloods were recognized as human, and even monasteries were closed to men of Irish race. The literature of the proscribed was of course slighted and despised.

{357}

From the Reformation the literary remains of earlier days were proscribed and destroyed, not only as Irish but as popish.

In this almost universal destruction, the ecclesiastical books, missals, sacramentaries, breviaries, penitentials, the canons of councils, doctrinal books, many historical and biographical treatises perished. The Irish people and their church hold by tradition to their predecessors, and claim to be direct successors of the church and converts of St. Patrick. Nor can the Anglican party which destroyed so much of Irish literature now base any argument on the silence of manuscript authority or draw any inference in their favor from the absence of proofs, for whose disappearance they are themselves accountable.

The uninterrupted adherence of the Irish nation to the Roman Church gives it the force of prescription, and it will hold good against all but the most direct and positive evidence.

No mere inferences can invalidate her claim.

The documents regarding the early Irish Church begin with the confession of Saint Patrick and his letter to Coroticus, a piratical British chief, published by Ware in 1656, from four manuscripts, and by the Bollandists from a manuscript in the Abbey of Saint Vaast.

The canons ascribed to the saint were published by the same, as well as by Spelman and Usher.

Of the lives of the saint, the least valuable of all is that by Jocelin, an English monk, who wrote soon after the conquest. This is given in the Bollandists and in Messingham's Florilegium. Earlier and better lives, four in number, were collected and published by Colgan in his Acta Triadis Thaumaturgae, a work of which we doubt the existence of a copy on this side of the Atlantic.

Among these earlier lives, one by Probus is of much value. It was printed, strangely enough, among the works of Venerable Bede, in the Basil edition of that father issued in 1563, and, apparently, the whole work was taken from manuscripts preserved at the Irish convent at Bobbio.

These are the more important material for the life of the apostle of Ireland, together with unpublished matter in some very ancient Irish manuscripts, codices known for centuries, such as the Book of Armagh, a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, which contains a life of Saint Patrick by Muirchu-Maccu-Mactheni; the Leabhar Breac, considered the most valuable Irish manuscript on ecclesiastical matters; the Tripartite Life in the British Museum, the early national annals, etc.

As to the antiquity and value of these ancient codices Westwood in his _Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria_ (London, 1843-5) may be consulted.

For the liturgy of the early Irish Church, we have a missal preserved at Stowe, in England, and ascribed to the sixth century, but which unfortunately has never been fully and completely published; a missal preserved in the monastery founded by Saint Columbanus at Bobbio, and printed by Mabillon in his _Iter Italicum_; the _Antiphonarium Benchorense_; the Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass preserved in the Leabhar Breac and a treatise on the Mass Vestments in the same volume, as well as the Liber Hymnorum, and various separate hymns.

The lives of the Irish saints, many of which have been published by Colgan, Messingham, the Bollandists, as well as the meagre Irish secular annals, throw much light on the social and religious life of the ancient Irish.

{358}

Such is, in brief, the documentary array to be appealed to in the controversy, as to the origin and character of the Irish Church.

And surely what has come down in fragments shows a church which the Anglican Church could not but condemn. The warmest advocate of the identity of the Anglican Church in Ireland with the early Irish Church, would find the old Irish mass, as preserved in the Stowe or the Bobbio missal, a very objectionable worship; the monks and nuns unsuited to our age; and the prayers, penitentiary, and belief in miraculous powers in the church utterly inconsistent with Protestant ideas; while the Catholic Irish would find the mass, if said in one of their churches, so like that they daily hear, that it would excite scarce a word of comment; monks and nuns would certainly excite less; and the prayers of that early day still circulate with the commendation of the actual head of the Catholic Church, the successor of Celestine.

The position having been abandoned that St. Patrick never existed, national pride, which from the days of Jocelin has bent its energies to prove that he was a Briton of the island of Great Britain and born in Scotland, now would prove that he was a genuine Englishman in his total renunciation of papal authority.

In the recent life of St. Patrick by Dr. Todd, this, though treated lightly as a matter of slight import, is really the marrow of the book.

The mission of St. Patrick has been uniformly attributed to Pope St. Celestine, who held the chair of Peter from 422 to 432; and is intimately connected with a previous one of the deacon of Celestine, St. Palladius, who made an unsuccessful attempt to christianize Ireland; and the mission of St. Palladius grew out, it would seem, of a deputation of Gallic bishops to Britain to check the progress of Pelagianism.

Todd endeavors ingeniously to break up these connected facts. He seeks to show that Palladius was a deacon not of St. Celestine, but of St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre; that the history of Palladius and Patrick have been confounded; and that Patrick was not sent to Ireland till 440, and consequently could not have been sent by St. Celestine. This would, to some extent, deliver the early Irish Church from the terrible responsibility of having received its origin from Rome.

Dr. Moran's work is made up of three essays: "On the Origin of the Irish Church and its Connection with Rome;" "On the teaching of the Irish Church concerning the Blessed Eucharist;" and, on "Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the Ancient Church of Ireland."

In the first of these essays he meets the arguments of the Senior Fellow of Trinity by a careful and close examination, showing that both Palladius and Patrick owed their mission to Rome and to St. Celestine, and settles conclusively the date of St. Patrick's landing in Ireland.

He discusses at length the mission of Palladius; sketches the life of St. Patrick, and his connection with St. Germain; and states briefly the proofs of his Roman mission. He then refutes the array of modern theories in regard to the great apostle from Ledwich to Todd, and accumulates evidence to show how the early Irish Church regarded the holy see.

The period when Saint Palladius and Saint Patrick successively proceeded to Ireland, was not one of obscurity. The church was full of vitality, and met Nestorius in the east, Pelagius in the west, the Manichees in Africa, with the power and might of a divine institution. {359} It was the day of St. Augustine, St. Germain, of Vincent of Lerins, of Cassian, Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome. St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius, even, and St. Anthony were still fresh in the memory of those who had heard the words of life from their lips, or gazed on them in reverence. The Council of Ephesus was actually in session defining the honor due to the Mother of God. The canon of Holy Scripture had been settled thirty-five years before, in the Council of Carthage, and St. Jerome's version was gradually supplanting the Vetus Itala in the hands of the faithful.

The monastic life, a vigorous tree planted at Rome by Athanasius, had already spread over the Latin Church, in its multiform

## activity and zeal. It grew under the mighty hand of Augustine,

was nurtured by that St. Martin of Tours, whose reputation was so widespread. It gave a Lerins, with its school of bishops, writers, and saints; the abbey of St. Victor at Marseilles, where Cassian prayed and wrote.

But if this was a great age of the church, the Roman empire showed no such signs of vitality. It was tottering to its fall. Along its whole western territory, stretching from Italy to Caledonia, the pagan barbarians of Germany were pressing with relentless power, threatening destruction to Roman, romanized Briton, and romanized Gaul--for all of whom the German had but one name, still preserved by the race, the Anglo-Saxon terming the descendants of the Britons Welsh, as the Fleming does the French or the south of Germany the Italian. A little later this German race, last in Europe to embrace the faith and first to revolt from it, overran Britain, establishing the Saxon monarchy, making Gaul the land of Franks, and giving Spain and Italy Gothic sovereigns.

Before this torrent burst, the church in Italy, Britain, and Gaul was closely united. Heresies appeared and gained ground in Britain. To meet this Pelagian enemy, the insular bishops appealed for aid to Gaul. The bishops of that country in council, selected St. Germain and St. Lupus to go to Britain; and Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that, through the instrumentality of Palladius the deacon, Pope Celestine in 426 sent Germain in his own stead to root out heresy there, and direct the Britons to the Catholic faith.

But this was not the only work. To recover what was straying was well; but a new island was yet to be conquered to the faith, one in which the Roman eagle had never flashed, but which seems to the eye of faith a field white for the reaper.

Attached to Germain by ties of which there is no doubt, was a man of Roman-British race, whose whole associations were with the church of Gaul, who had been a slave for several years in Ireland, and yearned to return to it as a herald of the Gospel. He is stated, in the earliest lives, to have been recommended by Saint Germain to Pope Celestine, as one fitted for such a work. The pope, however, either to give greater dignity to the new mission, or to leave no doubt of the Roman character of the work, chose in 431 Palladius, deacon of the Roman Church, already mentioned, to be the first apostle to the Scots, as the Irish were then termed. Saint Germain and Saint Lupus went to Britain in 429, and labored with zeal and success there during that year and the next. The ancient Irish writer, who wrote a commentary on a hymn in honor of Saint Patrick by St. Fiacc, and who is cited by Irish scholars as scholiast on Saint Fiacc's hymn, states that Saint Patrick accompanied the Gallic bishops to Britain. {360} In itself it would be probable. The intimate relations between the Bishop of Auxerre and the British priest, would naturally lead that prelate to choose him as a companion. That Palladius, who had been the pope's agent in the matter, accompanied them, also, would seem natural. His selection for the Irish mission after Saint Germain's return in 430, would follow as naturally.

He was made bishop, and sent to the Scots (Irish) in 431; and that Saint Patrick was in some manner appointed by the pope to the same work, or connected with the mission with a degree of authority, is evident from the fact that, when Saint Palladius, after an ineffectual attempt to establish a mission in Wicklow, was driven from the country, and died, as some say, in Scotland, his Roman companions at once hastened to Saint Patrick, to notify him as one who possessed some jurisdiction in the matter; and all accounts agree that on this intelligence, Saint Patrick at once proceeded to obtain the episcopal consecration, and sailed to Ireland.

Looking at the whole action of the pope in regard to the checking of Pelagianism in Britain, and the conversion of Ireland, this theory, first suggested by Dr. Lanigan, answers every requirement. It contravenes no fact given by any early author, and is in perfect harmony with every part. The Rome-appointed subordinates of Palladius reported to Patrick as a recognized superior, and it is utterly impossible that between him, the disciple of Germain and Palladius, the Roman delegate to Germain, there could have been diversity of faith or ecclesiastical discipline. The appointment of Patrick to the Irish mission was simultaneous with that of Palladius, to whom the priority was given. On the death of Palladius he succeeded, and required but the episcopal consecration to begin his labors as a bishop in Ireland.

This would make the Roman origin of the Irish Church too clear for Dr. Todd to accept it without a struggle. With what might almost be termed unfairness, he ignores the statement of a perfect catena of Irish writers as to the character of Palladius, in order to make him a deacon, not of the pope, but of Saint Germain.

Later lives of Saint Patrick, written long after the death of the saint, by introducing vague traditions, have doubtless embarrassed the question. That some took his appointment by, Celestine to have required his visiting Rome after the death of Palladius, was natural; but he would really have been appointed by Celestine, even though consecrated in Gaul after the death of that pope, if this was done in pursuance of previous orders of the holy see. It would not be strange to Catholic ideas that Saint Patrick had what would be now termed his bulls unacted upon, either from humility or some other motive; and the history of the church contains many examples where bulls have been so held, to be acted on ultimately only when the necessity of the church made the candidate feel it a duty to assume the burden from which he shrank.

Dr. Moran proves that Patrick drew his mission from Rome by a solid array of authorities, which embrace some of the most ancient Irish manuscripts extant. The Book of Armagh contains two tracts, one the _Dicta Sancti Patricii_, expressing his wish that his disciple should be "ut Christiani ita et Romani;" the other the annals of Tirechan, written about the middle of the seventh century, stating absolutely that in the thirteenth year of the Emperor Theodosius the Bishop Patrick was sent by Celestine, bishop and pope of Rome, to instruct the Irish.

{361}

The Leabhar Breac, styled by Petrie "the oldest and best Irish manuscript relating to church history now preserved," furnishes us evidence no less clear and decisive. The second Life of Saint Patrick, ascribed to Saint Eleran, (ob. 664;) the scholiast on Saint Fiacc, the Life by Probus, are all equally explicit, showing it to have been a recognized fact in Ireland within two centuries after the apostle's own day.

Dr. Moran, besides these, accumulates other authority of a later period, some hitherto uncited, and due to the researches of German scholars among the manuscripts still extant, due to the hands of the early Irish apostles of their land.

One argument of Dr. Todd was based on the silence of Muirchu Maccu Mactheni in the Book of Armagh; but Dr. Moran answers this fully by showing that part of that early writer's work is missing; and that, as the Life of Saint Probus follows, word for word, the parts extant, we may assume that Saint Probus followed him in other parts; and in regard to Saint Patrick's mission, Saint Probus is clear and plain.

The church in Ireland, then, was the spiritual child of Rome and Gaul. Her great missionary, a Breton, came from the schools of Gaul, with authority from Rome, and the church which he founded was in harmony with the church in Britain, Gaul, and Italy. What the faith of the church in those countries was, admits of no doubt; and were there no monuments extant to give explicit evidence of the faith of the Irish Church, this would give us implicit evidence sufficient, in the absence of any contradictory authority, to decide what its faith, doctrines, and liturgy were.

The vice-rector of the Irish College marshals his authorities again and shows that the church founded by an envoy from Rome retained its connection with the holy see and its reverence for the See of Peter. He adduces hymns of the Irish Church, various writings of successive ages, express canonical enactments regarding Rome, and finally the pilgrimages to the holy city, in itself an irrefragable proof of the veneration entertained for Rome; but he crowns all this by adducing the many extant cases in which Irish bishops and clergy appealed to Rome.

But it may be thought that the terrible changes caused by the invasion of the barbarians which in a manner isolated Ireland may have led insensibly to differences of faith or practice in that island, cut off from the centre of unity by the pagan England that had succeeded Christian Britain, and the pagan France that replaced Christian Gaul.

Have we aught to prove what the Irish Church believed and taught; at what worship the faithful knelt; how they were received into the body of believers; what rites consoled them in death? Fortunately there is much to console us here, as well as to convince us. One of the most important parts of the work we are discussing is the clear and distinct manner in which he proves the Irish character of the missal found at Bobbio, and reproduced by Mabillon in his _Iter Italicum_. Having, by what light we possessed, come to the conclusion that it was in no sense Irish, we examined this portion with interest, and must admit that the proof is clear. Bobbio was a monastery founded by St. Columbanus, and its rich library gave much to the early printers, and yet much still remains in the Ambrosian library at Milan. {362} This missal has no distinctive Irish offices, and its containing an office of St. Sigebert, King of Burgundy, seemed to refute any idea of its being Irish. Yet we know that St. Columbanus founded a monastery at Luxeu before proceeding to Bobbio, and in both places retained his Irish office. The adding of a local Mass would not be strange. In itself this missal corresponds with that Irish missal preserved at Stowe in many essential points, and with no other known missal; the orthography and writing are undoubtedly Irish; the liturgy in itself is not that of Gaul; it resembles it in many respects, but the canon is that of Rome. This striking feature appears in the Stowe missal. Mabillon, from its antiquity, himself infers that Saint Columbanus brought it from Luxeu, and it is as probable that he brought it from Ireland.

It gives us the Mass of the ancient Irish Church, and Curry gives in his lectures a translation of an "Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass" from the Irish in the Leabhar Breac. The Mass and the exposition place beyond a doubt the belief of the Irish Church in the Real Presence. The exposition is as distinct as if written to meet any opposition. "Another division of that pledge, which has been left with the church to comfort her, is the body of Christ and his blood, which are offered upon the altars of the Christians; the body even which was born of Mary the Immaculate Virgin, without destruction of her virginity, without opening of the womb, without the presence of man; and which was crucified by the unbelieving Jews out of spite and envy; and which arose after three days from death, and sits upon the right hand of God the Father in heaven." (_Curry's Lectures_, p. 307.)

The words of the Mass are no less explicit, and the Bobbio missal contains these words: "Cujus carne a te ipso sanctificata, dum pascimur, roboramur, et sanguine dum potamur, abluimur." The whole early literature, the lives of the saints, and other monuments teem with allusions to the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood, and the saying of Mass is not unfrequently expressed by the term "conficere Corpus Domini."

The proofs adduced by Dr. Moran on this point extend to sixty pages, showing the most exact research and learning, and accumulating evidence on evidence, meeting and refuting objections of every kind.

The sacrament of penance and its use is no less apparent; nor is the devotion to the blessed Virgin and the saints a point on which the slightest doubt is left.

Dr. Moran's work is certainly, since the appearance of _Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History_, (4 vols. Dublin, 1822,) the most valuable treatise on the early Irish Church, and completely sets at rest the theories set up by W. G. Todd, in _A History of the Ancient Church in Ireland_, London, 1845; and with great learning and skill by James H. Todd, in his _Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland: A Memoir of his Life and Mission_, Dublin, 1864.

We need now a popular treatise embracing the result of his labor, in a small volume, like the work of W. G. Todd, and a volume containing the Bobbio missal, (that at Stowe is probably sealed,) with the treatise on the Mass and vestments from the Leabhar Breac, and a selection of the prayers and hymns of the early church that have come down to us. With these common in the hands of the clergy, to familiarize them with what remains of the church of their fathers, we may hope to see the old Irish Mass, the "Cursus Scottorum" or Mass of the early Irish Church, chanted by the cardinal archbishop of Dublin on the great patronal feast, as the Mozarabic liturgy is in Spain, or the Ambrosian at Milan. It would be a living proof that, if the Irish and other churches laid aside their peculiar liturgies to adopt exclusively that of Rome, it was not that the former were objectionable; but that unity was too desirable to be postponed.

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{363}

My Angel.

"He hath given his angels charge over thee."

There's an angel stands beside my heart, And keepeth guard. How I wish sometimes that he would depart, And its strong desires would cease to thwart With his stern regard!

But he never moves as he standeth there With unwinking eyes; And at every pitfall and every snare His silent lips form the word, "Forbear!" Till the danger flies.

His look doth oft my purpose check And aim defeat. And I change my course at his slightest beck. 'Tis well, or I soon would be a wreck For the waves to beat.

------

{364}

Translated From The French.

An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 78]

[Footnote 78: _Rosa Ferrucci: her Life, her Letters, and her Death_, By the Abbé H. Perreyve.]

[The first Italian edition of the _Letters of Rosa Ferrucci_ appeared at Florence in 1857, a request for their publication having been made to her mother by his Eminence Cardinal Corsi, Archbishop of Pisa. The pious prelate was not less desirous of seeing the account of so edifying a death published, when he had learned the circumstances from the Prior of San Sisto, who had attended Signorina Ferrucci in her last moments.

A second edition appeared in 1858, enriched with numerous details, at the express request of Monsignor Charvaz, Archbishop of Genoa.

During a brief stay which I made at Pisa, Monsignor della Fanteria, vicar-general of the diocese, spoke to me of the profound impression which the death of Signorina Ferrucci had left on all memories, and of the edification which he hoped from her _Letters_. He expressed a wish that they should be made known in France, and even urged me to undertake their translation myself.

Authorities such as these, and the testimony of persons of undoubted judgment as to the good this little work has already done, have determined me to publish it for the second time. May it edify yet again some young souls, by showing them in Christianity an ideal too often sought elsewhere.

_December_, 1858.]

The following are the circumstances which led to the publication of the _Letters_ here presented to the reader.

Toward the end of April, last year, (1857,) as I was returning from Rome, I stopped at Pisa. The hand of God conducted me then into the midst of a family, of whose unclouded happiness I had been the witness only a few months before, but which had now, alas! been visited by death. It was one of those sudden, heart-rending bereavements which make one falter on the desolated threshold of his friend, and which chill on one's lips the tenderest words of consolation.

What would you say to the father and mother who lose an only daughter--their joy, their life, and, moreover, the pride and the edification of a whole town? Better be silent and ask God to speak.

Happily, in this case, God did speak; and the noble souls whose sorrows are to be recounted here, were of the number of those who know his voice.

After the first tears and the first outpouring of a grief which time rendered only the more poignant, the poor mother asked me to accompany her to the house where her daughter had died, and which she herself had quitted from that day. A servant belonging to one of the neighboring houses had the keys of this funereal dwelling, and he opened the doors for us. We expected to find only the presence of death and the vivid remembrance of the sorrows of yesterday in the silence of those deserted chambers; but Christian charity had watched over the spot, and from our first steps a delicate perfume of roses betrayed its loving attentions. {365} Indeed, we found the chamber of the dead girl strewn with flowers. They were fresh, some faithful hand having renewed them that very morning. This unlooked-for spectacle awakened in our minds the thought that the Christian's death is not so much a death as a transformation of life. Therefore it was that, when, kneeling near the poor sobbing mother, I asked her if she wished me to recite the _De Profundis_, she answered in a firm voice and almost smiling, "No, let us recite the _Te Deum_."

The hymn concluded, I led the pious woman from that room where her sorrow seemed changed into exultation, and I said to her on the way: "From all that I know, from all that I can learn of your daughter, she was a saint. The delicate piety of your neighbors attests how powerful is still the recollection of her: the example of her life, and the details of her holy death, must not be lost. You must preserve them for the edification of her companions; for the edification of the town which has known her, loved her, venerated her; for the edification of ourselves also, who must one day die, and whom the examples of all holy deaths encourage and support." I was not the first to express this desire; many friends had anticipated me in begging for a history which they believed well calculated to reflect honor on our holy religion.

Before I left Pisa, I had obtained the desired promise, pledging myself, at the same time, to make known in France, to some Christian readers, this history, wrung from the anguish of a mother by the single desire of promoting the glory of God. Some months later, the book appeared at Florence, with the following title, _Rosa Ferrucci, and some of her Writings, published under the supervision of her Mother_. It remains, then, for me to fulfil, on my part, the pious obligation I have contracted.

Rosa Ferrucci was the daughter of the celebrated Professor Ferrucci, of the University of Pisa, and of the Signora Caterina Ferrucci, a lady well known in Italy for her poetry, and for some excellent works on education. It is little more than a year since this young girl was, by her brilliant intellectual gifts and the holiness of her life, the honor of the city of Pisa. The grave habits of a Christian family, all the veils, all the precautions, all the fears of modesty, had not been able to shield her from a sort of religious admiration which she inspired in all who saw her. How prevent mothers from pointing out the holy child to their daughters, or the poor from blessing her as she passed? Rosa possessed natural talents of a high order, and her education was singularly favorable to the full development of every gift of mind and heart. At six years of age she read Italian, French, and German. At a later period she knew by heart the whole of the _Divine Comedy_. She read in the original, under the direction of her mother, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus; and, among modern authors, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Fleury, Milton, Schiller, Klopstock. I mention at random the authors' quoted by her in her letters to her friends, passing by writers of our own day. She has left a correspondence in three languages--French, German, and Italian. The greater number of the Italian letters are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, Signor Gaetano Orsini, a distinguished lawyer and perfect Christian, to whom Rosa was betrothed, and whose hopes have been shattered by her death. {366} Each part of her correspondence is remarkable, but it is of the last-mentioned letters that I propose particularly to speak. Independently of her correspondence, Signorina Ferrucci wrote many short treatises on religion and Christian morality, several of which have been published since her death.

Here, then, we find in a young girl a degree of mental cultivation--a depth of learning, I might say--which would be remarkable in a man even of distinguished education. To dwell long on gifts so rare would interfere with the object I proposed to myself in writing this little history. I will, then, remark here, once for all, that, having for several weeks lived on terms of intimacy with this excellent family, I have witnessed in this extraordinary girl only a child-like modesty, which made her always skilful in self-concealment.

I omit, then, all that relates to this intellectual culture, and to this taste for classical learning--a taste which was so pure, so exalted, in this young Christian maiden. Understood and accepted in Italy, this literary turn of mind would seem strange in France, where there exists an extravagant fear of raising woman above a certain intellectual level. I prefer, therefore, having said on this point merely what was necessary, to speak henceforth only of the virtues of the saintly girl.

Even of these I shall specify but one. I leave it to pious imaginations to guess what there must have been of meekness, of purity, of obedience, of modesty, of angelic devotion, in such a soul. I shall speak only of her charity. Love for the poor was with her a passion, and that from her tenderest years. Certain souls seem to come into this world commissioned by God to do honor to a particular virtue; everything in them converges to that as to a divine centre. The voice of a mother and the voice of the church have but to quicken the germ of holiness committed to such souls before their terrestrial journey, and, as soon as the development of reason allows them to act, they tend quite naturally to the end which the finger of God had pointed out to them from above. Rosa Ferrucci brought with her a tender and unbounded love for the poor. From the little birds which, while yet an infant, she used to feed in winter-time, to the poor beggars of Pisa, whom she relieved by denying herself in dress and amusements, and the neglected graves to which she carried flowers, "because," she used to say, "I feel a pity for neglected graves," all poverty touched her heart. Her mother relates some affecting incidents of her great charity. During a severe winter her parents remarked that she no longer ate bread at her meals, although she never failed to pick out the largest piece for herself. They affected not to know her motive, which she explained, blushing: "Have I done wrong? Indeed, I did not know it was wrong; but bread is so dear this year, and this piece would be sufficient for one poor person."

If she met in her walks a poor woman tottering under the weight of a load of wood, her first impulse would be to run to help her, and it was difficult to restrain this charitable eagerness. She would then complain, declaring that she could never get accustomed to seeing poor people toiling so hard.

On her birthday she ran to her mother and said to her: "Gaetano is indeed all that I could wish! We have just formed a project which makes me quite happy. We have promised that on our birthdays and saints' days, instead of making each other presents, which are often useless, we will give a large alms to some poor family."

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She was a good musician, and knew how to interpret truly the sentiment of the masters. One day she went to Florence, accompanied by her brother, to purchase some pieces of music. But just as she was entering the town, she met a poor family, who seemed to be in the last extreme of wretchedness. Their rent must be paid the next day, or these poor people would be homeless. Farewell to the pieces of music! And on her return home, when her friends, to conceal their real joy and admiration, affected to chide her, she answered: "What would you have had me do? I could not help it. Tell me yourselves how I could have done otherwise than I did? Now, you see well that it was impossible!" O holy _impossibilities!_ which embarrass only those who can never be resigned to the sufferings of others.

Innumerable are the incidents of this kind which might be related of Rosa; for charity is never weary, the more good it has done, the more it desires to do; but I leave this subject--reluctantly, indeed--to dwell at more length on the two episodes of this Christian life, in which I think may be found the most solid edification and the best encouragement for souls. I speak of a love and a death, both transfigured by the cross.

The transfiguration of the life and heart of man in chastity, in hope, in sacrifice, is a palpable glory of Christianity and one of the surest marks of its divinity. Jesus Christ, when he came to sanctify the world, did not destroy the natural conditions of human life. Since, as before, the shedding of his blood, man is born in suffering; he weeps, combats, loves, and dies. And yet, if he is a Christian, all is changed for him. From his cradle to his grave he walks in a marvellous light, which transfigures all things in his eyes and thoroughly changes the meaning of life. He suffers, but each day he adores suffering on the cross; he weeps, but he has heard that, Blessed are they who weep! he combats, but with his eyes fixed on heaven; he loves, but in all that he loves, he loves God; he dies, but then only does he begin to live. Nay, even the entrance into beatitude is for the Christian not the last transfiguration; for a blissful eternity is but a continuous transfiguration in a glory ever increasing, and, as it were, the eternal flight of created love toward Infinite Love. This divine flight finds in heaven its region of glory; but it must not be forgotten that its starting-point is earth--that before finally gaining the eternal heights, it must first cross "the fields of mourning, _lugentes campi_." [Footnote 79]

[Footnote 79: Virg. AEn. i. 4.]

Hence it is, that for the saints there is no interruption between heaven and earth; the same path that conducted them yesterday from virtue to virtue, will lead them to-morrow from glory to glory, and their death is but an episode of their love. Hence, also, perhaps that mysterious fraternity of love and death which is the soul of all true poetry; men catch a glimpse of it and chant it in their own tongue:

"The twin brothers, love and death, At the same time, gave birth to fate." [Footnote 80]

[Footnote 80: Léopardi.]

But only the saints know its true secret: "Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ." [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Phil. I. 23.]

When the young soul of whom we now speak had reached a certain elevation in her flight toward God, she, too, met the sweet and austere company of those two strong-winged angels--Christian love and death. She loved: almost as soon she presaged death, and she died. But she loved as a child of God loves, and she died as a saint.

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I have, then, little more to do than to translate her _Letters_, in which shines gloriously the beauty of Christian love, and to give an account of that death worthy of the church's brightest days. As I have already remarked, these _Letters_ are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, to whom Rosa had been betrothed for two years before her death; a truly noble character whom heaven seemed to have made worthy of her. A profound and tender love united these two kindred souls. The simple and sweet manners of good Italian society allowed their seeing each other often, and did not forbid their almost daily correspondence. An entire conformity of faith, of piety, of holy desires, blended into a still closer union those hearts already so strongly bound to each other; but a more celestial ray was continually passing from the soul of Rosa into that of Gaetano. Through her joys, her hopes, the festive preparations for her wedding, and the dreams of the future, this pious young girl always saw God. One idea, immense and insatiable, was dominant over all her desires, the idea of perfection. She gazed through the veil of her joyous dawnings on the divine sun of eternal beauty. Her happiness embellished earth to her, but the earth thus embellished immediately reminded her of heaven; earthly love put a song on her lips, but the song soon became a hymn, and always ended with God. It is this insensible and almost involuntary transition, of which she herself seems unconscious, from an earthly affection to ardent longings after divine love and perfection, which constitutes all the beauty of her _Letters_. The reader must not forget that they were written by one who was little more than a child, and that whatever there was of maturity in her young soul was derived from that sun of Christian faith whose warm rays ripen the intellect, in the continued childhood of the heart.

I would fain believe that this young Christian's sisters in the faith, will find in her _Letters_ something more than a subject of poetical dreaming. In truth, no life is so really practical as that of a saint; and, through the veil of beautiful language, we may discover in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci many duties faithfully performed by her, many lessons of duty faithfully to be performed by ourselves. I would then beg of those young persons to read the following pages with recollection, and, in order to penetrate their true meaning, to enter as much as possible into this young girl's ardent desire of perfection.

I have spoken of the eternal soaring of souls toward God. Have you ever, in the beginning of autumn, watched those flights of birds which, lengthening out in a long train, follow, to the very last, the same sinuosities? 'Tis said that the strongest, flying in advance, cleaves the air; and that the weaker, coming after, enter with ease the aerial furrow. Ah! too feeble that we are to attempt alone the road to heaven, let us at least learn to enter the furrows of the saints. Their strong and certain wing will draw us onward in their track; and when we shall see them so lovely because they were so loving, we shall advance with less fear toward Him who was the supreme object of their love.

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Rosa To Gaetano.

Pisa, April 6, 1856.

I can never thank God enough for giving me in you, Gaetano, an example and a guide for my whole life. I cannot refrain from often saying so to my mother, and I say it because it is in my heart. Spite of all the faults and imperfections which have so many times prevented me from remaining faithful to the good resolutions which I constantly make before God, I have so high an idea of the perfection of a Christian wife, and of the duties I shall soon have to fulfil, that I should indeed be terrified if I did not confide in the goodness of God, who can do all, and who will aid me who can do nothing. I often speak to my mother of the holy respect with which the sacrament we are going to receive inspires me; and I earnestly beg of you to ask our Lord for the graces which are necessary to make me what I ought to be. I promise you to use all my efforts for this end; and I will dedicate the prayers of the month of May to this intention, for I have great confidence that the Blessed Virgin will obtain for me what I still lack. I believe that we shall have made great progress toward perfection when we come to detest sincerely all those little daily faults which seem trifles to us, but which must be so very displeasing to the infinite perfection of God. In all this, be sure that I will receive your counsels and admonitions as they ought to be received from him who, by the will of God, takes the place of father and mother.

April 17.

I am persuaded that the true means of preparing ourselves to receive the sacrament by which we shall be united for time and eternity is, to use all our efforts to attain that state of Christian perfection to which God calls us; and I am also sure that, if we cannot arrive absolutely at that degree of perfection which we ardently desire, we can at least kindle in our hearts the flames of that divine love which is itself the whole law. In this you will be my guide and my example, Gaetano; we two shall have but one will, one love also, loving each other in God, in whom all affections become holy. Our affection did not spring from outward accomplishments, nor from fleeting beauty, that flower of a day. It was a stronger tie that bound our souls together. We love each other because we love God. In him does our union consist, because in him is all the strength, all the purity of our love; because in him also is our supreme end. Hence come those alternations of joy and sadness, according as we approach, or seem to be receding from, that ideal type of perfection which is the object of our desires. Ah! how good God is; and how often I bless him for having put such desires and such hopes into our hearts. For me, I now see in God not only the eternal power which created heaven and earth, or the eternal love which redeemed us, but also that sweet mercy which has given me in you, as it were, his crowning blessing.

April 25.

Forgive me, Gaetano, my eternal repetitions; but what can I do? For some time I have been able only to say the same things over and over again. This very day reminds me of another day, a dear and solemn one to me. I recollect with unspeakable pleasure the solitary walk I took, with my mother to speak of you. The stillness of the country, the fresh aspect of all nature, the distant voices of the peasants, which alone from time to time broke the profound tranquillity of the scene--all seemed new to me, all spoke to my heart. I shall never forget the humble little church in which, for the first time, I ventured to pray to God to bless these new thoughts--thoughts which held me suspended, as it were, between doubt and hope, but which found my heart firmly resolved to do the divine will in all things. {370} From that day I have implored, and still unceasingly implore, the graces which we need in order to lead together a truly Christian life. Do you do the same, Gaetano; and let me assure you that I cannot now pray to God for myself, without at once finding your name mingled in my supplications.

April 30.

He only is worthy of a reward who has merited it. Do you not know that combat--and what is life but a continual combat?--must precede victory? No, Gaetano, we will not be like cowardly soldiers who would fain have the honors of a triumph without having seen the face of the foe. Let us rather strive to lay hold on eternal felicity, which alone can satisfy our desires, by faithfully performing all our duties; by supporting, for the love of God, all the trials of life, heavy or light; by devoting ourselves as much as possible to good works; then the desire of heaven will not be for us a dreamy ideal or subject of vague speculation, but it will enter into our daily life to sanctify it. May your life be prolonged to serve the cause of God by strong and constant virtues!

May 2.

I believe that, without proposing to ourselves a too ideal and, as it were, an unattainable type of perfection, we can effect much by earnestly striving to strengthen our will. Let us keep a watch over it, and never allow it to incline toward what is evil, even in the smallest things. Let us always bear in mind those beautiful words of the _Following of Christ_: "If each year we corrected one fault, how soon we should become better!" Yes, strength of will is always necessary, and not less in small trials than in great ones. In this, it seems to me Christian perfection really consists; for what can be more pleasing to God than to see our will always conformed to his? [Footnote 82]

[Footnote 82: The desire of Christian perfection had inspired Rosa Ferrucci with the idea of collecting some short maxims, which were well exemplified in her pious and innocent life. Among her papers were found this little selection, which seems to us worthy of translation.

"To see God in all created things. To refer all to God. To remember always 'God sees me.' To have a tender love for the holy Catholic Church. To unite my actions to those of Jesus Christ. To keep alive in my heart the desire of heaven. To beg of God the faith and the constancy of the martyrs. To have an unwavering confidence in the efficacy of prayer. To succor the poor for the love of God. To watch and pray. To do good to all. To obey my father and mother. To be gentle and docile to my teachers. To be silent as soon as I perceive in my heart the first motions of anger. Never to read a doubtful book. To have a scrupulous regard to truth. Never to speak ill of any one. To view in the best light the actions of others. To subdue all feelings of envy. To pray often for humility. Never to slight God's holy inspirations. To work and study diligently. Frequently to raise my heart to God. To forgive all, at all times and in all things. To seek my happiness in the performance of Christian duties. To do whatever is my duty, and for the rest trust to the goodness of God. To fear sin more than death. To ask for the sacraments at the beginning of a serious illness. To speak to God as a tender and beloved father. To unite my death to that of Jesus Christ."]

May 30.

No affection which has not its source in the love of God can ever make us happy. Let us be well convinced of this, and let us dedicate our whole life to Him who has done all for us. As for me, I believe that just as the external pomp of worship is valueless in the sight of God if it is separated from interior devotion, so works can do nothing to merit grace unless they are inwardly animated by a pure intention and the desire of pleasing God alone. We must, then, always pass from what is without to what is within, and it is this that I mean when I tell you that I often seek in visible things a lever to raise me toward the invisible; discerning in all that meets my eyes here below an image of that Eternal Beauty which unveils itself only to the intelligence and to the heart. Thus nothing remains mute to me. {371} How many things the mountains tell me, and the stars, and the sea, and the trees, and the birds!--things which I should not have known if this mighty voice of nature had not taught them to me. Oh! how admirable is the goodness of God, who thus by a thousand ways leads back our souls to the thoughts and the holy affections for which they were created.

I have been reading in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, this beautiful idea of Jean Paul Richter: "When that which is holy in the soul of the mother responds to that which is holy in the soul of the son, their souls then understand each other." This thought has made a great impression on me; and it seems to me to contain a grand lesson for all mothers engaged in the religious education of their sons. It shows us, moreover, the nature of those close ties which unite us to our relations and our friends. And, indeed, why do we love one another with such a true and constant love? Because what is sacred to your soul is sacred also to mine. Why am I so deeply moved when I hear of some noble action? when I contemplate the greatness of this world's heroes, and, above all, the greatness of the saints and martyrs? Why do I weep as I think of the sacrifices they made with such self-devotion and fortitude? Because what they held sacred I also hold sacred. Could more be said in so few words? Yes, every man ought to keep alive that celestial fire which God has kindled in his heart. Unhappy he who lets it languish and die out! He loses it for himself, and is himself lost for his brethren, since he has broken the bond of love which would have united him to them for ever. As the flame ascends on high,

"Which by its form upward aspires,"

SO by nature our souls tend to rise toward God, and if they return again toward earth, there can be no longer for them either hope of peace or hope of happiness.

July 10.

Let us not be discouraged, Gaetano, let us always hope; our good God will help us to become better; for, if we lack strength, at least we are not wanting in good desires. They are a gratuitous gift of him who wills our good; of him who has given us the most living example of humility; of him who knows, and will pardon, the weakness of our poor nature, if only we will combat with that perseverance which alone has the promise of victory. Ah! if we truly loved the Lord, we should think of him alone--of him who is holy and perfect, instead of always thinking of ourselves, weak and miserable creatures; and we should end by forgetting ourselves, by losing ourselves, to live only in him so worthy of our love; and then we should indeed begin to know that we are nothing, and that he is all.

Jesus wishes us to be gentle with ourselves, and would not have us fall into dejection when, through the frailty of our nature, we fail in our good resolutions. At times when we are too much dejected at the sight of our miseries, Jesus Christ seems to say to us, as to the disciples going to Emmaus: "What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?" He who is called the Prince of Peace would have us pacific toward ourselves, and full of compassion for our own infirmity. When, therefore, we are seized with sadness at sight of our poverty and of the dryness of our souls, let us say simply and humbly this little prayer of St. Catharine of Genoa: "Alas! my Lord, these are the fruits of my garden! Yet I love thee, my Jesus, and I will strive to do better in future."

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July 19, (Feast of St Vincent de Paul.)

Do you know what we ought to desire? Neither honors, nor riches, nor any such earthly vanities, which could add nothing to our peace. Do you know to what end our will, strengthened by love, ought to turn? Yes, you know it well, and often have you taught it me; we ought both to aim at realizing in our life something of that perfection which, after all, can be but partially obtained on earth. We ought to look at the things that are immortal and eternal, rather than at those that are temporal and subject to change, living in such a manner that a true love of God may actuate our hearts and our thoughts, develop our sentiments toward what is good, and direct all our actions to a holy end. How many touching examples of virtues are recalled to our minds by this day and the festival which it brings! What indefatigable and universal charity in St. Vincent de Paul! What lively and ardent piety! What unbounded compassion for all the errors, all the faults, all the misfortunes, all the sufferings, physical and moral, of men! What exhaustless patience! And who among us will dare to say that he cannot reproduce in himself some shadow of those beautiful virtues? If we cannot, like this illustrious saint, relieve the sufferings of a great number of our fellow-beings, at least we can be humble, patient, and animated by that true religion which is ever forgiving, ever loving, because it loves Him who is all mercy and all love.

To Be Continued.

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The Episcopalian Confessional.

It is with great satisfaction that Catholics behold the adoption by any class of Protestants of their peculiar rites or ceremonies. It is an indication of an approach to the doctrines so vehemently renounced at the Reformation, and ought, by strict logic, to result in the return of many to the old faith. And though, unfortunately, there are men who play with religious doctrines as if they were of no practical consequence, there are always some who are in earnest, and are found ready to make sacrifices for the sake of truth. From the use of Catholic ceremonies, which are really all founded on vital doctrine, some conversions must certainly flow; and the Protestant Church, which moves in such a direction, is drifting from its old moorings, and floating toward the safe waters where the bark of St. Peter rides out every storm.

If there be any of our practices which are essentially a part of our religious system, surely that of confession is one which is absolutely _peculiar_ to the Catholic Church. It cannot lawfully exist without the faith which we hold, and when used, it drags along with it, irresistibly, our whole moral system. It is hard to see how any one can confess his sins to a priest, without accepting the sacerdotal and sacramental system, which can have no life out of the Catholic communion. Besides, the practical influence of such confessions leads directly to those habits of devotion which have no home in Protestantism. {373} In the few remarks we are now to make, we do not intend to lose sight of these convictions, while it is our object to consider briefly the adoption of the confessional in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the logical consequences which flow from it, and even the dangers which attend it. Surely the subject is one of great moment. If it be of any importance at all, it is of _vital_ importance. It is either necessary to the soul, or it is an assumption of powers prejudicial to the interests of true religion. It cannot be looked upon as an indifferent matter, which may be used or neglected, according to the taste of the individual. To a few reflections, therefore, upon it, we earnestly invite the attention of the honest reader.

1. There is no doubt that there is quite a party in the Episcopal Church which upholds the practice of auricular confession, and seeks to extend it. There are ministers of that communion who are anxious to set up the confessional, and disposed to teach its necessity. In the city of New York, it is well known that the clergy of St. Albans' are solicitous to hear confessions and love to be styled _Fathers_, on account of their spiritual relation to their penitents. The Rev. Dr. Dix, the respected rector of Trinity Church, the oldest and most influential corporation of his denomination, is said to have quite a number of penitents, and to be the most popular confessor, especially among the higher class. We presume he makes no secret of his practice, while his position as the spiritual director of the "Sisters of St. Mary" is notorious. How general is the custom of confession in Trinity parish we have no means of knowing, nor do we know how many of the assistant ministers follow in the wake of their rector. We have heard of one or two others who are disposed to be confessors, and there are probably many such ministers whose names are not brought before the public. We cannot suppose that any high-minded clergyman would be willing to hear confessions in an under-hand or secret manner, and we must believe that they who do so are not ashamed of it, nor unwilling to have their practice made public. No offence is therefore intended by the mention of names, and we will rest satisfied that none is given. How many of the bishops favor auricular confession does not appear. So far as we have heard, no one has openly recommended it; but the Right Reverend Dr. Potter, of New York, has allowed a manual to be dedicated to him, in which the practice is strongly urged, and devotions for its use are extracted from Catholic prayer-books. While he has rebuked the Rev. Mr. Tyng for preaching in a Methodist church, he goes openly to St. Alban's, and, to say the least, gives sanction to Ritualistic performances. We have a right, then, to conclude that he favors the confessional, and is willing to see it set up in the churches which he superintends. It will be observed that this confession in the Episcopal Church, is not simply consulting a clergyman in a private conversation about spiritual matters, but the humble acknowledgment of sins in detail, in order to receive absolution from one who thinks himself authorized by Almighty God to give it. It is certainly a sacrament in the true definition of the term, an outward sign of an inward grace, administered by one pretending, at least, to bear a commission from Christ. Those who go to the Episcopalian ministers to confess their sins, surely go under this belief, and no argument is necessary to show that they would not go, unless under the conviction that their offences against God could be forgiven in no other way. {374} The Ritualists have made of this a most important matter in their devotional books, where can be found questions for examination of conscience, tables of sins, and prayers to excite contrition and improve the great gift of absolution. When, then, we speak of the confessional in the Protestant Episcopal communion, we are not drawing upon fancy, but touching upon a fact which must have an important effect upon the body which it especially interests.

2. The first remark we have to make upon this acknowledged fact is almost a truism. It is, that auricular confession is not a Protestant practice, but quite the contrary; and that they who adopt it cut themselves off from all sympathy with the doctrines of the reformation. We hardly need to prove that there is not one Protestant church which approves of the custom of which we speak, or believes that its ministers have the power to remit and retain sin. If the Church of England be adduced against us, we have only to point to the incontrovertible fact, that she declares that penance is not a sacrament, and therefore conveys no inward grace. The absolutions left in her daily services are only declaratory of God's willingness to forgive the repentant sinner, and could be as well used by a layman as by a minister. For who cannot say that "God pardoneth and absolveth all who are truly penitent"? And as for the absolution in the office of the visitation of the sick, we have only to say that it is a relic of by-gone days which is seldom used, and that whatever be its meaning, it cannot, contrary to the article, be presumed to confer grace. The English Church certainly did never consider it a matter of any necessity, otherwise it would have said so. The Episcopalians in the United States have not this form to refer to; for the compilers of their liturgy have expunged it altogether, at the same time that they omitted the Athanasian creed. In the form of the ordination of priests, a substitute was also provided for the old words, "Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall remit, they are remitted unto them." The reason of this substitution we leave the honest reader to imagine. We are informed that very few of the bishops are willing to use the old form, and an Episcopal minister of Puseyitical views once told us that he was very anxious to have the bishop who ordained him use it, but was restrained from asking this favor by the assurance of one of the prelate's intimate friends that, if he said anything about it, he would get a flat refusal, together with a good scolding. While thus the articles of faith in the Episcopalian body deny the power of absolution, the practice of that denomination of Christians is entirely against it. The ministers who hear confessions and the people who make them, live in a "dreamland," about which once we read a very pretty piece of poetry. This "dreamland" is not very extensive or tangible here, and we wonder if now there are any somnambulists in or about Buffalo. We yield the right to every man to do as he pleases, and call himself what he likes, only we object to his having two contradictory characters at the same time. It is not quite reasonable; and we say, with the good common sense of mankind, "My dear friend, choose for yourself, but please be either one thing or the other."

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But we go further, and assert that the practice of confession is the assumption of a sacerdotal power which was the very first point attacked by the reformation, and which is really the central point of the Catholic system. Once admit the great power of absolution, and you receive at the same time logically the doctrine of priesthood as it is held by the Church. This doctrine does not and cannot stand alone; it brings with it the church in her unity, and the necessary safeguards which divine wisdom has thrown around the exercise of so great a gift. Who has the power to forgive sins? Not every man, nor every one who may choose to call himself a priest. There must be some external call to so high an office; and as it is Christ's priesthood which is exercised, there must be some way of authenticating the power delegated, and articulating it to the great head of Christianity. The Catholic Church alone maintains the practice of confession, and if she is good for this, she is good for everything. Eclecticism may be advisable in matters of science, but in divine revelation it is both absurd and impossible. The foundation of faith is in the word of God. The church is no teacher if she be not guided by supernatural light; and if she be thus guided, her authority is universal. Episcopalians may believe that their ministers can forgive their sins, but they have no reason for such a belief. Their own church surely does not say so, while the Catholic voice expressly denies it. It will be hard to see how they can prove it from Scripture as applied to their particular communion. Not only is the unity of the church connected logically with the idea of priesthood, but also that of sacrifice, and of sacramental grace. And these doctrines bring with them the Tridentine system of justification, which is diametrically opposed to the Lutheran theory which underlies all consistent Protestantism. We do not believe that any one can go to confession for any length of time, and not feel the truth of these remarks. He will be irresistibly borne to the gates of the Catholic Church with whose faith his religious life will be in sympathy, and he will, day by day, lose his love and respect for his own communion.

3. So far, therefore, we have reason to rejoice in the adoption of the confessional by the Episcopalians, and to renew our prayers for their conversion to that truth which at a distance proves so attractive to them. Yet there are dangers in regard to which the sincere ought to be forewarned, and serious evils to many souls may result from the incapacity of confessors who have never been trained for this most delicate and difficult work. It is in the spirit of Christian charity that we revert to these dangers.

In the first place, we hardly need say that no one but a duly authorized priest of the Catholic Church has the power to give absolution. As we are addressing chiefly those who believe in some ecclesiastical system, we have only to advert to the fact, that to such a power both orders and jurisdiction are necessary. The Episcopal Church does not admit the existence of this power, and the whole Christian world which does accept it, unites in the opinion that the Episcopalian clergy have no orders whatever, any more than the Methodists or Presbyterians. Any layman is as good a priest as the most distinguished Anglican minister. Such is the decision of the Catholic Church, and of every sect which has retained the apostolical succession. Is this decision of no consequence to the Ritualists who pretend to believe in authority and antiquity? But orders are not sufficient for the exercise of the power of absolution. {376} Jurisdiction is also required, because they who believe in the priesthood must also believe that Christ has left this great office in order, and not in confusion. The bishop is the supreme pastor of his diocese, and no priest, without his permission, can validly either hear confessions or give absolution. This principle of jurisdiction is one which does not seem to penetrate the heads of High-Church Episcopalians; but if they will reflect for a moment, they will see its absolute necessity to the existence of the church. Suppose that valid orders are alone required to the exercise of the priesthood, and the communion of the faithful, and what is to prevent any priest from going off at any time, and carrying with him all the essentials of the church? Then there would be as many churches as there are dissenting priests.

No intelligent man would form a society on such principles, and surely our Lord Jesus Christ did not do so foolish a thing as found a church containing in itself the very seeds of self-destruction. We have heard that an excommunicated priest, who bears, to his sorrow, the ineffaceable character of priesthood, is willing to hear confessions since his apostasy. But though he has valid orders, he is no more able to give absolution than his associate ministers who have never been ordained, because he has no jurisdiction from Christ. What do these "Fathers" among the Episcopalians pretend? Do they ask jurisdiction from their own bishops, who, having none, have none to give? Or do they profess to have the whole Catholic Church in their own persons? If so, history has seen nothing so strange in all its curious record of ecclesiastical devices.

It is then a sad thing for a man to confess his sins and go through the humiliation of opening his whole life to another; and then receive no pardon for the sins he so anxiously confesses. We beg the attention of such earnest hearts to this point, and say to them, "If you really wish to confess, why not go at once where there is no doubt that Christ has left the power of forgiveness?"

Secondly, there is danger in the way and manner in which we are told that the Episcopalian ministers hear confessions. They ought, for their own sake, and for the sake of their penitents, to adopt the rules and safeguards which the experience of the church has thrown around so important a work. It is not prudent to hear the confessions of ladies in the minister's private room. The presence of a plain cross, or crucifix, does not remove the objection. It is too much of a burden to expect a lady to go through with all this unnecessary trial, especially when she has the additional conviction that she is doing something which she would not wish the world to know, or which she would not be willing to tell her husband or friends. The Catholic Church has wisely provided that the priest shall sit where he need neither see nor distinguish the penitent, and this is a safe rule to be imitated. The same objection arises to the method, said to be in vogue at St. Alban's, where the minister sits in the chancel, and the penitent kneels at his back. If there be others in the church, there is too much exposure, and if the church is locked, there is too much privacy. The Episcopalian clergy who become confessors ought to erect confessionals in their churches, and sit there at given hours publicly and openly.

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We understand, also, that in some cases, at least, the penitent is obliged to write out his confession in full, and we consider this a dangerous and far too painful practice. We have been informed that Dr. Pusey wishes the general confessions which he hears to be written out carefully and left with him for his private study some days before the confession is made. We are certain that such a course has been sometimes imitated in this country, much to the disgust of ladies, who have even spoken to us of it. A sinner will do much, no doubt, in the fervor of penitence, but no such thing as this ought to be done. It is against the practice of the Catholic Church, and in violation of instinctive delicacy and propriety. No one is obliged to expose himself, even to obtain the pardon of sin.

Again, it is unfortunate for the Protestant clergy that they hear confession only by reason of their _personal_ influence over their penitents; that they do not understand the nature of the seal of secrecy; and that they have no fixed system by which to direct their penitents. The same results follow, as if a doctor should essay to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith a dentist.

Personal influence is, no doubt, an instrument of much good; but when it alone or principally governs the relations of confessor and penitent, serious dangers may be imminent. Most of those who go to confession in the Episcopal Church are led to this step by reason of their confidence in the individual to whom they go, and through the attraction of his piety or zeal. They would hardly go to any one else, and if he were to die or be removed, they would be left without a director. It is not so much the priest to whom they unburden their conscience, as the favorite preacher whose good qualities have made strong impressions upon them. This is not a healthy state of things, and leads to sentimentality, which is often mistaken for piety. In the Catholic Church, the habit of confession is as universal as prayer, and the priestly character overshadows the individual. Among Protestants the contrary is notoriously true, and this difficulty in the way of the Protestant confessor can hardly be removed until he shall have brought about in his communion the state of feeling which is second nature to Catholics. This he can never do. He may lead individuals to the church; he cannot convert the whole body with which he is identified.

With the best intentions in the world, he does not and cannot understand the seal of secrecy which for ever closes the lips of the priest. He is disposed as a man of honor not to betray confidence, but experience teaches us that very few human secrets have been kept. He has not been taught the sacred nature of his obligation, nor the various ways by which he may expose his penitent, and as he has assumed an office to which his church did not call him, he stands or falls in human strength. No motive higher than that of honor binds him, and complicated as he is with the world, and generally with matrimonial relations, he really does not know how to act. The Catholic priest not only is bound by the fear of terrible sin, but is also aided by the system which surrounds him, in which he is trained and by that supernatural power which we know upholds the seven sacraments. He is not an individual resting upon his unaided powers, but the creature of his church, the agent and representative of a vast power which girdles the Christian world. Years of study and discipline have taught him the nature of his obligations, while he himself is as much bound to confess his sins as to hear the burden of other consciences. {378} What an anomaly, for a man who never confesses his own faults, to undertake to listen to the accusations of others! If they need the confessional, much more does he need it. Is it not Pharisaical to bind burdens upon others, which we touch not with one of our fingers?

Let men say what they will, we believe, and from experience we know, that God upholds the confessor in his difficult task; that he gives him superhuman wisdom; that within the tribunal of penance a divine shield is over him to protect him against the weakness of humanity, that he may walk unharmed where otherwise angels would fear to tread. Here we pity the poor and isolated Ritualist, going forth upon a dangerous sea, in a frail bark, with no trust but the strength of his own arm. Cast out by his own church, and refusing communion with the great Catholic heart, how long will he stand the fury of the storm?

Finally, how shall he direct his penitents, and by what system form their spiritual character? Moral theology is an extensive and subtle science. The infallible church has given clear decisions upon all essential points of fact and morals, and her doctors, by years of patient labor and centuries of experience, have matured the colossal system which has such mighty influence over the religious heart. But what is all this to the Protestant confessor? He cannot avail himself of this without confessing the authority of the church; and if he begins with such a confession, where must he conscientiously guide his penitents? If he deny this authority, and by his own fallible wisdom choose the principles of his morality, in what respect is his opinion worth more than that of the humblest layman? Can there be a more pitiable spectacle, than that of a Protestant minister with St. Liguori as his guide in leading the souls of others? His spiritual life is surely made up of contradictions which must vex and perplex his conscience if he be an honest man. And will he not unavoidably make grievous mistakes, in the use of tools without experience, in the details of a work for which he has had no preparation?

Moreover, there are often decisions which have to be made, and in these he must either be a despot, or he must make equivocal answers. If a Catholic accuses himself of unbelief or doubt, the reply is easy; for God's revelation is, according to our faith, in and through an unerring church. If the Protestant falls into a like danger, how shall he find direction, since for him there is no infallible church? Must he not go on his weary way of investigation, and is not, by his principles, doubt his normal state? If a Catholic doubts the truth of any decision of his church, he commits a sin against his own creed; but since the Episcopal communion openly disclaims infallibility, how shall the Episcopalian confessor tell his penitent not to doubt his church which herself tells him he ought to doubt her? Then it comes to this, that he will either make him no reply, or rule him with a rod of iron, and bind him by his inflexible _ipse dixit_. What has been the result, in more cases than one, of this arbitrary despotism in the hands of individuals who neither by their own church, nor by any other, have the right to direct souls? Loss of the moral sense, failure to discern the first inspirations of faith, and, sometimes, insanity. We draw from the testimony of facts. It is bad enough to be under a civil despot, but it is worse to be under a religious autocrat. {379} Then in the choice of penances we have heard of most frightful mistakes, where the good of the penitent was in no way consulted, but the vindication of the absolutism of the confessor. Think of a penance to blood for one lie, or for the great error of attending Mass in a Catholic Church. Think of penances which cover months and burden years with the chains of obligatory prayers and exercises. But all this is really nothing compared to the morbid and unhealthy religious life which they engender, in which slavish fear of God is the principal ingredient, where sighs and solemn faces, instead of cheerfulness and natural joyousness, are the exhibitions of their piety. To us, (and we have had occasion to know the interior of more than one,) they seem to be perpetually toiling up a steep ascent under the weight of heavy burdens from which it would be wrong to expect relief. Forced to confess their sins as if doing some stealthy action, they kill in their souls the bright light and, elasticity of spirit which the great Creator gave them. God is not a tyrant, but a merciful and beneficent father, whose smiles of love are ever around his children, and his priesthood are agents in the work of love to bring into even the erring heart the sunlight of a father's truth and mercy. The confessor is no minister of justice, but like his Master, the good Samaritan to bind up the wounds of the broken heart, to preach deliverance to the captive, and joy to the mourner.

In what we have said, we make no accusations against the good intentions of these Protestant confessors, for whom we especially pray. We believe that they mean well, and that they hope to sanctify their people by borrowing fruit from the garden of the church, and transplanting it where it cannot and will not grow. And as their only friends--for in their own communion they have few friends--we warn them of the risk they run, and of the dangers to which they expose their penitents. It is a fearful responsibility for them, for which they must answer alone, and in which no church will shield them. Some will, through their incapacity, lose their hold upon all religion, and either live without hope or die without consolation. Others will shut their eyes to the plainest deductions of reason, and having eyes, will see not, having ears, will hear not. Many through divine grace, and the honest heart which pursues principles to their legitimate results, will find their way to that one faith where all things are in harmony, where the aspirations of the soul are met with a full answer, and the needs of the heart are filled from God's own fulness. O children of men! how foolish it is to enter upon the province of God, and by human hands to make a religion, when the all-merciful Father, who alone knoweth our frame, has made one for us, which in its completeness answereth to every want of our being.

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Sketches Drawn From The Life Of St. Paula, By The Abbe Lagrange, Vicar-general Of Orleans.

In Three Chapters.

## Chapter I.

"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable Paula."

It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to record her mother's virtues.

Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels, St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for. Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus; she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."

Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century, the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have been his direct ancestor.

St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula, excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium, besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."

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A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family were Christians, although a portion of them still remained pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God and of Jupiter under the same roof.

Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths, porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in the capital of the empire.

Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory which should henceforth invest the Holy See.

At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious orders throughout the universe.

The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to be one of the marvels of the age.

We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature, establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.

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Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged especially to the days when persecution made these observances most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St. Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays down his crown there, and bends the knee."

There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the martyrs.

In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was Toxotius.

He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of AEneas:

"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo." _Virgil's AEneid._

Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.

Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool, according to custom, her brow covered with the _flammcum_, Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand, Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward, her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.

The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in after-years to the joy of Paula.

Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment, giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was brilliant.

As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning _rectitude_ or _rule_, she was a gentle child, modest, reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina. {383} She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.

Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded into her litter, it would have seemed to her a _fire_.

"_Et solis calor incendium,_" etc., etc. _Epist. ad Pammachium_.

In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a chosen circle of friends.

In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and respected as a woman of great dignity of character and irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the Roman women--that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the gentlest and the most benevolent of women--to little children, to plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her countenance most charming.

It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright hopes for the future.

She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child, who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.

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This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of all Rome."

We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls, is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of earth--to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this, how vain is earthly happiness.

It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history of her soul.

Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted. From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her heart.

There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two ways lay open before her--the world on one side, God on the other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to seek for consolation in this resolution.

After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us, "the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial perfumes, when he has been taken from her."

Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is the key to the whole life of Paula.

The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled to show light conduct beneath the veil. {385} There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the peril was great.

The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius, who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding graces of their supernatural life.

In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest. Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire. Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother, "I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."

Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.

Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works. She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome by their austerities and penances.

There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which Marcella was so bright an example. {386} To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an austere and good life.

This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women, and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella, and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of those who did most for Christianity and for the development of Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he composed a most touching epitaph.

Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow, to seek a more perfect life.

In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven; and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a higher flight toward God.

Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the self-indulgence of her former worldly life. {387} These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband, Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one, pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.

Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never," says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."

It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina in the island of Cyprus.

It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops, who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such visitors!

Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St. Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east, which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.

History has preserved few details of this council of the year 382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the fourth century. He stands alone in his strength--different from St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose, the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern, his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!

Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St. Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.

{388}

Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say, when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet, that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."

After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks, sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.

He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.

Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine, among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later, with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.

This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.

"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry had already found assistance before hers."

{389}

This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan families.

To Be Continued.

----------------

Bound With Paul.

The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to the prison. "'_O caro Duca mio_,' is there an inscription over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and will not let it go."

Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For education had emphasized the difference which nature had pronounced between these two--a difference which William Blake has defined in a word: the man looked _with_ his eyes, the woman looked _through_ hers.

Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied. The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them--an Acheron, in which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached, unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives. Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain, their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.

"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm. "Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty; his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name, and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors. When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his, Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it, he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called the church some ugly name or other, then he knew that it was a sin for him to listen. {390} I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe. But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."

The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she said.

At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers. The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold, whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors, each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell. The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar against which it rested--a dogged hand. "You think that the dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.

The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."

"No!"

"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."

The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by him.

The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall, thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and rather small. {391} Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so good, he would not have been so bad.

This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid, the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes fixed--locked, rather than lost in thought.

He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for her to speak.

After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the decision must be the same in both cases."

He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a church than a barnacle is a ship."

"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go. You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."

She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was unmoved.

"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."

This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened, and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.

"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said. "You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own thoughts and say your own prayers."

As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth open. But at length he spoke.

"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition--obedience in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."

He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.

{392}

Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings, her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition; it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated, and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place, and too precious to be willingly relinquished,

"The days must seem long to you," she said.

She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be drunkard, and this put a stop to it."

As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes began to kindle.

"Have you a family?" the lady asked.

He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked down again. "There's Larry," he said.

"And who is Larry?"

The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And, indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am," he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then, and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't. Shame never touched one of us at home."

"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string. For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a tether."

"He must have been a great care," she said.

"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.

"No."

"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist. Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best, as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her know the next day. {393} That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would. And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man, whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."

The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its rock.

"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came here," he said.

"Who is Mary?"

"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.

"You hear from them?"

"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will send me the money."

The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."

He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see, ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."

"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."

"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly, his eyes beginning again to kindle.

"What do you mean?"

He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.

Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."

"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy; but by and by I got reconciled. {394} You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening. The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me, and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight. It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart, that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"

"How probable that would sound if it were related as having happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of the speaker.

"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at highway robbery. How did it happen?"

Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself, she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her. Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict concluded, giving a short laugh.

{395}

"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."

"I shall not go," he replied.

She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old way?" the speaker had asked.

"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Those _bizarre_, uncompromising virtues of the antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not offend against _les bienséances_, though all the saints should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your _moutons_, and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"

To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.

A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison, and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened it, and called Dougherty.

Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.

"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."

"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."

"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.

"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.

"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.

"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."

"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."

Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.

Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service. {396} At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesome _protégé_ of hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.

Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.

The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.

"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the deputy.

"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"

Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.

The moans became fainter.

"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your grit, and that is enough."

"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.

"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.

"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.

"No, madam; he has fainted."

They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair by the open window.

"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr. Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.

"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't it?"

"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's sleeve.

He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with difficulty.

"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"

He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon the cross will strengthen me."

"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.

"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor advice from me. Go your own way."

Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.

"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he likes."

"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a free man."

Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till he gets shut up in a place like this."

"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you have suffered teach you to resist temptation."

{397}

The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.

"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't believe you would be dishonest when sober."

The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.

The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.

But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck, wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed how he had been consumed inwardly.

It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine, and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned, there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor, and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one forgot it was but a whisper.

{398}

"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently. "I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."

A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.

"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to choose."

He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.

Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"

"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"

"You want me to write to him?"

"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously in the lady's face.

"I won't forget," she said.

He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked Larry best."

The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."

"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives to all."

The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man. Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent, who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.

"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.

The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich! It is for him to pity us."

She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor. "Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I hate to disturb a man who is dying."

The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much more. How does his brother appear?"

"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should have become quiet."

{399}

"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.

The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and very well dressed."

The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be admitted without delay."

She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine; and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."

"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow morning if he behaves himself."

Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you, ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."

"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to you?"

He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand--a note which, in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated her to take up to his brother.

"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward her.

"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.

Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he asked tremulously.

"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."

Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note, looked at the man who lay there dying before her.

He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.

She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for me, going to prison for my crime."

The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't know what he was writing!"

She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on hers, a deathly pallor in his face.

"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.

"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.

He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do, and have just about finished?"

It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.

"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand. I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."

{400}

He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his strength.

"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a spoonful of cordial.

But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here. He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides, Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not guilty;' and it was true."

She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them, then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.

He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You promise?"

"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did you know it?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow morning."

"Yes!"

Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet, breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises with an iron grasp.

That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a love that was entirely human?

"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God. Perhaps you loved your brother too well."

"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."

"Do not be too sure," she said.

"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how; and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman; and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I would scorn to do?"

"Are you not afraid of presumption?"

"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."

"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.

"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.

While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the dawn. {401} As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer, lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.

"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in chains? I would rather have been Peter!"

----------

Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.

The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.

Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed, whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.

This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial. Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in praises, _Laudate, pueri!_ The Virgin, who was herself a mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is enriched by one more subject--_Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave, Domina angelorum!_ The funeral mass for little children is only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for those _blessed_ beings, _Venite, benedicti Patris_. Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service, and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations. She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.

{402}

But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds their graves.

Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone, among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants, whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans _columbaria_, I found several little busts in marble, representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns, containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the mourners.

Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they were called, _sine nomine manes_, and their sepulchre closed without hope and without glory. The position of children in heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the

## action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription:

"To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years, who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"! [Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded-- _saltavit et placuit_. See, then, what society made of this child--a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her, "Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a child--_Custodiens parvulos Dominus_.

[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]