II.

The doctrine of Doctor Tauler is the practice of divine union. This union, transcending human thoughts and hopes, is the secret of his life and the leading principle of his work. His sermons are full of instruction regarding this union.

His _Institutions_ also teach it. Some writers hostile to Tauler pretend to have found in his writings the foreshadowing of quietism. This mistake can be refuted in three ways: by the works of Tauler, which always affirm human activity to the most contemplative soul, thus clearly separating the doctrine of the quietists from that of the German thinker. Secondly, Bossuet, whom no one will suspect of any leaning toward quietism, says of Tauler: "He is one of the most solid and exact of the mystical theologians." Thirdly, Tauler himself predicted quietism in a remarkable monograph, blaming strongly all that Molinos, Madame de Guyon, and Fenelon afterward asserted.

A close study of the Alsatian doctor shows that he always gives to both internal and external activity all the reality and all the rights which they possess.

{426}

"If any one," says he, "ascends to such a height of contemplation as Saints Peter and Paul reached; and he perceives that a sick beggar needs his help to warm his soup, or for any other service, it would be much better for him to leave the repose of contemplation, and aid the poor man, instead of remaining in the sweetness of contemplative life." (_Institutions_, p. 195.)

Here is the plain truth and no illusion. And elsewhere he writes: "Men should not pay so much attention to what they do, as to what they are in themselves; for if the core of their heart be good, their acts will be so also without difficulty; and if their conscience be just and right, their works cannot be otherwise. Many make sanctity [to] consist in action; but action is not the chief element in it. Holiness must be judged in its principle as well as in its acts. In other words, we must be interiorly saints before we can perform exterior holy actions. No matter how good may be our works, they do not sanctify us as works. It is we, on the contrary, who make them meritorious, in virtue of inner sanctity which is their producing principle. It is in the bottom of the soul that we find the essence of a just man." (_Institutions_, p. 156.)

Here is the truth again. Collate those two passages, after having studied them separately, and you will find that they throw complete light on the nature and value of human acts.

The almost continual ecstatic state in which Tauler lived, never made him forget his smallest duties.

It has been often remarked that grace adapts itself to the natural qualities of the individual whom it sanctifies. This is as true of nations as of individuals. In Italy, asceticism has the color of the sun. Italian ascetics shout, burn with ardor, and seem full of exaggerated transports to the nations of cooler blood. The landscape of Italian asceticism presents you a burning sky, an ocean of fire, and a scorching earth. Sadness is generally wanting. In Spain, the hue is more sombre. The same ardor is there; but ardor tempered with jealousy. There is interior disquietude in Spanish mysticism, and even adoration in it examines itself as if suspicious of its truth. In Germany, profound gravity and stern austerity lead the soul into a horrible place. In Italy, images come crowding together, and divine love, instead of rejecting them, embraces them. The soul of the Italian saint holds garlands of flowers in his hands, offering them joyously to the blessed sacrament. Familiarity and adoration unite, like the two species of electricity before the thunder-clap. Familiarity, wedded to adoration, appeared in St. Francis of Assisi. The greatness of that strange man, who saw brothers and sisters in everything, and conversed with water, fire, the birds, and his monks, in the same tone and spirit, is not immediately manifest to superficial minds. Plain good nature veils his wonderful character. In Germany, those images which poetry presents to love are accepted with great precaution. Adoration is sober in thought and expression; and aspires to something sublime, whose form and name are intangible. German adoration is philosophical, meditative, broad, comprehensive, austere, silent, wrapped up in herself, and self-sufficing. She borrows only what is strictly necessary from persons and things. The world is a servant which she employs only with regret. She holds aloof from all creatures, and her words sound like concession. She says to no one, "My brother," or "My sister." If she had a brother. he would be silence. Her sister would be the mist which surrounds God.

{427}

Tauler is one of the most majestic representatives of Teutonic asceticism.

A disciple of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and of that layman of whom we have written, in the wake of those two great characters he follows, with eye and wing of eagle, into the region of translucent darkness. He does not flutter there, he _soars_; or, if he flies, his motion is so high and rapid, that it seems like the active repose of a sublime and fruitful immobility.

Tauler seems to desire obscurity. The remarkable effects of his preaching on his audience are less like thunder pealing in his language, than like the awful presence of the sacred cloud where the thunder is reposing.

Every man is a universe in himself. Unity and variety are the two terms of the antinomy, without which there is no life. But perfection consists in equilibrium between those terms. Such perfection is very rare. In general the antinomy of life is replaced by the contradictory, which is death. Man is divided between good and evil, always attempting an impossible reconciliation between them. Contradiction is a dead force which tries to serve two masters. An antinomy is a living force which, having chosen a master, and obeying but him, desires to serve him in a thousand different ways always useful. Nothing better displays the unity of a landscape than the variety of colors which it presents to the eye at the same time. The lights and shades, the undulations of the soil, and the accidents of sun, clouds, villages, forests, and spires, all are harmonized in the eye of the spectator; and the more numerous, varied, and unexpected are the details, the more does he experience delight and a certain dilation of mind and heart in the contemplation of their unity. If he takes away some of the circumstances, he mars the effect of the whole; for he cannot even destroy a shadow without diminishing the sunshine. What is true of a landscape is also true of a book or a man. But Tauler lost the balance between unity and variety, for he gave all to one and nothing to the other. Few individuals, even among the greatest saints, have been so ardent in the sentiment, love, pursuit, and conquest of unity. He seeks after it incessantly, and it haunts him. He never seems to look at the road he is travelling. He fixes his eyes solely on the goal ever present to his soul. He turns neither to the right nor the left. He knows not whether there be flowers or thorns on the borders of his pathway. Do not ask him to imitate St. Antony of Padua, and preach to the fishes of the streams. He minds neither fishes nor birds. He seems to regard creation as a stranger, of whom he had heard tell long ago, but whose remembrance is now but faintly glimmering in his mind.

His love of unity, his call to unity, his transports for it, always take the same shape, the same key and accent; and produce in the end a certain monotony, which is not a question of doctrine, but an affair of nature and temperament.

Tauler somewhere relates the history of a hermit, from whom a troublesome visitor begged something that was lying in the cell. The hermit went in to find the required object, but forgot at the threshold what was wanted, for the image of external things could not remain in his head. He went out, therefore, and asked the visitor what he sought. The visitor repeated his petition. {428} The hermit re-entered his cell, but again forgot the request; and was at last obliged to say to his guest: "Enter and find yourself what you seek, for I cannot keep the image of what you ask for sufficiently long stamped on my brain to do what you desire."

Tauler, in narrating this story, unintentionally describes his own character. In every one of his sermons, he chooses a text and a subject. This was required by circumstances and by his audience. But the moment he enters the cell of his contemplation, he forgets text and everything else, and mounts into the realms of sublimity where he loses himself in that supreme unity after which his heart is always aspiring. The moment he begins to fly, he forgets the course he must take. With one stroke of her wings, his intellect finds her love, and then soars in her natural element, with plumes unruffled. Far above modes and forms of earth, she stretches out her broad wings in the cerulean vault of her beloved repose. If any should then ask him about some ordinary detail, he would certainly answer like the recluse above mentioned: "Enter yourself, and find what you are inquiring after. I cannot keep the image of material or minor things long enough in my mind to fulfil your request."

Tauler is continually citing Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. In fact, these two great men are at home in the same latitudes. The sermons of Tauler are to the works of the Areopagite what a treatise of applied mathematics is to one on theoretical mathematics. Tauler, like St. Dionysius, dwells in the interior of the soul, that secret and deep abode, the name of which he is ever seeking without finding, and which he ends by calling ineffable as God himself.

"It is in this recess of the soul," he preaches, "that the divine word speaks. This is why it is written, 'In the midst of silence, a secret word was spoken to me.' Concentrate then, if thou canst, all thy powers; forget all those images with which thou hast filled thy soul. The more thou forgettest creatures, the more thou wilt become fit and ready to receive that mysterious word. Oh! if thou couldst of a sudden become ignorant of all things, even of thy own life, like St. Paul, when he said, 'Was I in the body or out of the body? I know not, God knows it.'" ... "Natural animation was suspended in him, and for this reason his body lost none of its powers during the three days which he passed without eating or drinking. The same happened to Moses when he fasted forty days on the mountain, without suffering from such long abstinence, finding himself as strong at the end as at the beginning."

The desire of Tauler that his hearers should become _Christian children_, ignorant or forgetful of everything in sublime ecstasy, shows plainly the nature of his charity. He wished for them absolute perfection, contemplative and active, transfiguration, transport, exactness, total accomplishment of truth, and the plenitude of all heavenly things. The atmosphere in which he lived favored his hopes and helped the efficacy of his teaching. He declares that in the monastery when a soul is suddenly called to some interior consideration, it can leave the choir in the midst of the exercises, and plunge itself unseen into the abyss of meditation to which God draws it. He also affirms that when friars pass several days in ecstasy, they have no reason to be disturbed at any irregularity of theirs which may result from such an accident, provided they obey the rule again, when they become masters of themselves. {429} Thus the prodigious transports of true asceticism are ever strengthening; while those of false mysticism enervate the soul. Hence it is that Tauler, though he is always speaking of ravishments, never loses the character of force, and of that austerity which is the sign of God and the test of true contemplation.

"Where then does God act without a medium? In the depths, in the essence of the soul? I cannot explain; for the faculties cannot apprehend a being without an image. They cannot, for instance, conceive a horse under the species of a man. It is precisely because all images come from without to the soul, that the mystery is hidden from it; and this is a great blessing. _Ignorance plunges the soul into admiration_. She seeks to comprehend what is taking place in her; she feels that there is something; but she knows not what it is. The moment we know the cause of anything, it has no longer any charm for us. We leave it to run after some other object; always thirsting for knowledge, and never finding the rest which we seek. This knowledge, full of ignorance and obscurity, fixes our attention on the divine operations within us. 'The mysterious and hidden word' of which Solomon writes, is working in our minds." (_Sermons_.)

Many men of genius, from the beginning of the world, have studied the human soul, and many are illustrious for the profundity of their psychological researches. Yet compared to the great mystical writers, those philosophers are mere children. Merely human psychology skims over the surface of the soul, only analyzing its relations to the interior world. They are ignorant of the phenomena which take place in the secret recesses of the mind. The great light, the incarnate Word, alone can throw its rays into those abysses. It is remarkable that those who study the soul for curiosity, merely to find out, and consecrate their life to such investigations, discover very little. While those who care nothing for simple science, but who act virtuously, obey and glorify the Lord, see all things properly. Instead of aiding vision to peer into the soul's _penetralia_, curiosity dims the light. _Simplicity_ is the best torch in those catacombs. _Simplicity_, commissioned by God, penetrates into the abysses of the soul, with the audacity of a child sent by its father.

The interior and extraordinary efforts by which Tauler rose to the height of contemplation, gave him, though he knew it not, an astounding knowledge of the resistance which man makes to man and to God; of our combats, defeats, and victories; and of those artifices by which we veil from ourselves our true situation during the battle. The rounds by which the soul ascends are counted, and yet the ladder of perfection has no summit.

The gospel, so merciful to sinners, vents all its wrath on the Scribes and Pharisees. All its charity is for external enemies; all its severity for interior enemies. Jesus Christ used the whip once in his life to show men in what direction his indignation was turned. We have Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery on the one hand; the money-changers of the Temple, the Scribes and Pharisees on the other. _There is a line of fire separating sinners from the accursed_. All Catholic doctrine, all ascetical tradition, is but the echo of Christ's mercy and Christ's anger. Tauler teaches like all the great doctors, in this respect.

He reprobates exterior practices which are devoid of charity, as the works of hell, most hateful to the Holy Spirit. The fixedness of his ideas gives a singular solemnity to his repetitions. On every page his hatred of works done without interior life shows itself. {430} Such works are his abomination. In all his meditations, prayers, experiences, and contemplations, he condemns them. "This doctrine," says he, "ought to be attentively meditated by those who torment and mortify their poor flesh, plucking out the bad roots which lie hidden around the core of man's heart. My brother, what has thy body done that thou shouldst scourge it in that fashion? Those men are fools who act as if they wanted to beat their heads against the wall. Extirpate thy vices and thy bad habits, instead of tormenting thyself as thou dost." ... "There are men in the cloister and in solitude whose soul and heart are always distracted by a multiplicity of external things. There are men, on the contrary, who in public places, in the midst of a market, and surrounded by countless distractions, know so well how to keep their heart and senses recollected, that nothing can trouble their interior peace or injure their soul. These deserve the name of religious far more than the former." (_Sermons_.)

Tauler goes farther. When those men who place God in external acts remain apparently virtuous, "the Lord," says he, "turns away from them. But when, in his mercy, he allows them to fall into grievous exterior faults, then he returns to them and offers them forgiveness." Tauler is always in the sky. He never stays long on earth. "God," says he, "can unite himself to the soul simply, immediately, _and without image_. He acts in the soul by an immediate operation; he operates in the depths of the mind where no image ever penetrates, and which are accessible only to him. But no creature can do this. God, the Father, begets his Son in the soul, not by means of an image, but by a process similar to the eternal generation. Do you want to know how divine generation takes place? God the Father knows himself, and comprehends himself perfectly. He sees down to the very source of his being; and contemplates himself, not by aid of an image, but in his own essence. Thus he engenders his Son in the unity of divine nature. In this manner also the Father produces him in the essence of the soul, and unites himself to her." (_Sermons_.)

All the discourses of Tauler end by a refrain. The chorus of his song is ever divine unity. Tauler is hardly a man; he is a voice speaking in the wilderness, calling men to descend into the depths of their souls. All his doctrine may be resumed in this word, to which we must give its etymological signification: _Adieu, à Dieu_. [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 99: The point of these words is untranslatable. The sense is _adieu_ to creatures; and turn to God--_à Dieu!_--[Translator's Note.]]

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New Publications.

History of Civilization in the Fifth Century. Translated, by permission, from the French of A. Frederick Ozanam, late Professor of Foreign Literature to the Faculty of Letters at Paris. By Ashley C. Glyn, B.A., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: W. H. Allen & Co. For sale by The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.

{431}

A work like this furnishes the best antidote to the poison contained in the writings of such sophists and falsifiers of history as Buckle and Draper. It substitutes genuine philosophy and history for the base metal of counterfeiters. It exhibits truthfully what Christianity--that is, the Catholic Church, which is concrete, real Christianity--has done in creating the civilization whose benefits we are now enjoying. The translator's preface furnishes so interesting a sketch of M. Ozanam's life and literary career, that we are sure of giving a great gratification to our readers by transferring the greater portion of it to our pages.

"A few words may be said as to the career of the author, Frederic Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in this country. He was born August 23d, 1813, at Milan, where his father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas, was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant, and it was to that city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained there a considerable reputation as a doctor, and died from the effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at Paris with great success, and was destined for the bar. He took a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among the students, and his published letters show how he became identified with the movement set on foot by Lacordaire and others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a leaning toward literary pursuits, and a distaste for the profession of the bar, to which he was destined; but he joined the bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professional chair of Commercial Law, which had just been established in that city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended, the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M. Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of jurisprudence to practising in the courts. But in the course of the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity for the cultivation of his favorite pursuit, the philosophy of history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his calling; in travelling, partly for the sake of health and pleasure, partly to gain information which might be woven into his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those who had taken an active part with him in upholding the interests of religion in France. He never entered upon active political life, though he offered himself upon a requisition of his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National Assembly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided liberal, in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great dislike of any alliance between the church and absolutism, and a conviction that religion and an enlightened democracy might flourish together. He wrote in the _Correspondant_, which embodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon by the _Univers_, which represented the more conservative party in church and state. His more important works were developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne; and his scheme was to embrace the history of civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire to the time of Dante. But failing health, although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when a mere boy; and the touching words in which he expressed his resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labors as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken health, he reached his native country only to die, September 8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a bright and useful career. He was lamented by troops of friends, old and young, rich and poor--the latter indeed being under especial obligations to his memory. His friend, M. Ampère, became his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription was quickly raised among those who had known and respected him at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed in nine volumes, comprising _La Civilisation au Cinquième Siècle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poëtes Franciscains, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Sièle_, and _Mélanges_, to which were added two volumes of his letters.

{432}

"The work which has now been translated forms the first two volumes of the above series, and was intended by the author as the opening of the grand historical treatise which he had designed. As it was delivered originally in the shape of lectures, and preserves that form in the French edition, it has been necessary, in order to preserve the continuity of the historical narrative, to alter the constructions occasionally, and to pass over a sentence here and there which refers solely to the audience of students to which the lectures were originally addressed."

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The Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library. First series of 12 volumes, pp. 144 each. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 1868.

This is the initial set of a New Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, now in preparation by the Catholic Publication Society. It contains 12 handsome volumes, put up in a neat paper box. The titles of the volumes in this, the first series, are as follows: _Madeleine, the Rosière;_ _The Crusade of the Children;_ _Tales of the Affections;_ _Adventures of Travel;_ _Truth and Trust;_ _Select Popular Tales;_ _The Rivals;_ _The Battle of Lepanto and The Relief of Vienna;_ _Scenes and Incidents at Sea;_ _The School-Boys and The Boy and the Man;_ _Beautiful Little Rose;_ and _Florestine, or Unexpected Joy_. From the above list it will be seen that the set comprises fiction, history, and adventures. This set of books has been selected with an eye to give our Catholic youth useful as well as entertaining reading. The illustrations are good, but might be better--however, they are a great improvement on the class of illustrations heretofore printed in our Catholic books. The type, paper, and binding are excellent. We hope these books will be extensively used as premiums in our schools, as well as find a place in every Catholic library in the country.

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Assemblee Generale Des Catholiques en Belgique. 27 Sept., 1867. Bruxelles: Devaux.

This large volume of 900 royal octavo pages, which has been just received from M. Ducpetiaux, of Brussels, is a complete record of the transactions of the late Catholic Congress of Malines. Among other things it contains the complete report of F. Hecker on the state of Catholicity in the United States, correctly translated into French. It is truly surprising to see what an immense amount of business can be transacted in one week, when all are intent upon doing the work in hand, and nothing else. Some of our legislators might learn a valuable lesson in this regard from this volume. The noisy and vulgar writers for the newspapers, and the other clamorous declaimers in speech and print, who are constantly repeating their hoarse outcry of ignorance and superstition against the Catholics of Europe, would be completely silenced and put to shame, if that were a possible thing, if the records of the Congress of Malines could be placed in the hands of all their intelligent readers. We may safely challenge the world to produce another similar volume, bearing so clear an impress of intelligence, good taste, patriotism, philanthropy, and religious zeal as this. Give us only a sufficient quantity of Catholicity like this, and we will renovate the earth.

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Received from Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:

_The Ghost_; a comedy in three acts. Taken from the French. Pp. 50. Price, 50 cents.

_The Banquet of Theodulus; or, The Reunion of the Different Christian Communions._ By the late Baron de Starck. New edition. Pp.204. Price, $1.

From H. M'Grath, Philadelphia: _White's Confutation of the Church of Englandism, and Correct Exposition of the Catholic Faith_. Translated from the Latin by E. W. O'Mahony. 1 vol., pp. 342. New Edition. Price, $1.25.

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"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, and will soon publish, the second series of the new _Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library_, and a new edition of _Moehler's Symbolism; Problems of the Age, Nellie Netterville_, and _A Sister's Story_ are now being printed, and will be ready in a short time.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. VII., No. 40.--July, 1868.

A Plea For Liberty Of Conscience.

Foreseeing that we shall be obliged, in this present article, to present some very unpalatable truths to a portion of our readers, we assure them in the outset that we do not wish unnecessarily to revive unpleasant recollections.

Facts are facts, however, history is history, and truth is truth; and so long as we do not cherish a malevolent spirit, or seek to embitter and envenom the minds of our fellow-men against each other, there is no reason why we should not have liberty to speak plainly, even about very ugly and very discreditable things. On the present occasion, we use this liberty in defence of the weak and defenceless against tyranny and oppression, in defence of the rights of conscience and religious freedom in the case of a considerable number of persons grossly disregarded and violated. The right which we undertake to defend is the right to embrace, profess, and practise the Catholic religion; and the wrong which we wish to contend against is the system of domestic and social tyranny by which this right is impeded. It may appear to some a very curious statement, yet we venture to make it boldly, that in every part of the world where the English race is dominant, Catholics have been engaged, ever since the era of Protestant ascendency, in a struggle for liberty of conscience against spiritual tyranny, either political, social, or both combined. We do not propose to go back to the period of penal laws, civil disabilities, and legal persecution in Great Britain and America, just at present. This is a chapter in history already tolerably well elucidated and likely to be still further commented upon in the future. We will let it pass, however, for the present, and confine our view to a more recent period, during which, theoretically speaking, in England Catholics have enjoyed full toleration, and in the United States equal liberty with other citizens.

Notwithstanding this theoretical liberty. Catholics have been exposed, as every one knows, to outbreaks of popular violence, in which their blood has been shed, their churches and other property burned and destroyed, and their religion made the object of denunciation, vituperation, and ridicule in a wholesale manner. {434} The primary cause of this state of things is to be found in the representation which Protestant preachers and writers have made of the Catholic religion. On this head we will content ourselves with quoting the language of a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Williamsburg, L. I., which we have just seen in a report of one of his sermons published in the _Brooklyn Times_ for March 17th, 1868:

"The duty of considering the question now submitted to us has required me to stand before shelves filled with volumes of antipapal literature, and to glance from page to page of its contents. The character of much of that literature is a shame and a scandal to the cause in which it is uttered. It is full of evil and uncharitable talk against Romanists and their clergy, and deformed with bad temper and bad logic and reckless assertion." A few sentences further on he designates a certain class of writers against the Catholic religion as the "scurrilous crew of antipopery-mongers, who make a trade of the prejudices and passions of the American public, feeding them with vituperation and invective."

This description applies to a class of writers in England and Ireland equally as well as to the class designated among ourselves. We pass over all that the general body of the Catholic clergy and people have had to suffer from the general prejudice against them created and excited by the calumnies and invectives of these writers and declaimers against their religion. We fix our attention upon one point only, what those persons have had and still have to suffer from this prejudice who have become Catholics from conviction and choice, or who have wished to do so, and would have done so, had they not been deterred by the violent opposition they have encountered.

In England, a little stream of reconversion began to set back to the ancient church during the cruel and despotic reign of Elizabeth, which continued to run during several succeeding reigns, but at last was either totally or almost dried up. Its source received a new supply through the influence of the French clergy who were refugees in England, and at length the current began to flow more fully and strongly than ever. Within the last twenty-five years the movement of return to Catholic unity has been steadily progressing, until it has become so considerable as to attract universal attention, and awaken general anxiety concerning its probable results. In the United States, a few rare and isolated instances of conversion occurred from time to time during the early part of the present century, which have become much more numerous within the past twenty-five years, from various causes which we need not specify. At present, there are probably fifty thousand converts within the fold of the Catholic Church of this Republic, a great many more who would gladly become Catholics if there were no sacrifices to be made in order to do so, and an indefinite number of persons who are more or less favorably predisposed toward the Catholic religion or

## partially convinced of its truth. From the first day on which

these strayed children of the holy Mother Church began to retrace their steps to her blessed fold to the present moment, there has been essentially the same story to tell of the disregard and violation of that liberty of conscience and right of religious freedom which Protestants have been so loudly proclaiming ever since they have had existence. {435} In the earlier period of this disastrous epoch, some have suffered a literal martyrdom, and all along, down to the present time, many others have endured a moral martyrdom which is perhaps harder to bear as well as more lingering in its agony. Very many have needed a virtue and constancy truly heroic or bordering on the heroic, in order to nerve themselves to the sacrifices and to push through the opposition which they have been forced to encounter as the condition of becoming members of the Catholic Church and following the voice of their reason and conscience.

Those whose memory goes back over the last twenty or twenty-five years, can recall the storm of indignation and obloquy evoked by the first remarkable conversions which took place as the sequel of the Catholicizing movement originating at Oxford. As a general rule, the converts in England, even though belonging to the highest classes in society, including the nobility, and well known for their exemplary moral character, found themselves ostracized from the circles in which they had been wont to move, shunned by their most intimate friends, in many instances excluded from intercourse wholly or in great measure with the members of their own families. Some persons of high rank were obliged to go abroad, in order to find the society of persons of their own class which they needed for themselves and their families. It was the same in our own country. A convert to the Catholic Church found himself treated as an individual who had abjured Christianity, engaged in a conspiracy against his country and the human race, or as if he had been detected in perjury or forging notes. Every one was speculating upon the motives and cause of his strange conduct, as they have been recently, in England upon the Rev. Mr. Speke's sudden disappearance and mysterious rambles. Insanity was the most frequent and the most charitable reason assigned for an act generally considered as utterly unreasonable and disreputable. Some were excluded from the bosoms of their own families; some were disinherited by those whose heirs of blood they would have been; and others, who were helpless, dependent persons, were thrown upon the world by near and rich relations, who had hitherto supported them, and would gladly have continued to do so had they consented to smother their consciences. Some have been thrown out of business and employment, reduced to straits in order to gain a living, or even to extreme poverty and suffering. We do not allude now to those Protestant clergymen with families who have resigned their benefices in the Church of England, or given up their salaried offices in the Protestant Churches of the United States. The sacrifices made by these individuals, although very great, were unavoidably necessary, and cannot be attributed to any injustice or illiberality in the Protestant community. But we refer to those cases where persons have been deserted and abandoned by those on whose previous good-will, patronage, or custom they had been dependent for the means of gaining their living, for no other reason than the simple fact of their becoming Catholics. We may add to these more serious matters the infinitude of petty grievances and annoyances to which many persons are subjected by their relatives and friends. Their religion is attacked and ridiculed, without regard to the proprieties of polite intercourse, as if a Catholic were out of the category of persons whose convictions and sentiments are entitled to respect. {436} Obstacles are placed in the way of their fulfilling the duties of their religion. Their children are enticed to eat meat on days of abstinence, to attend Protestant churches, to read anticatholic books, to shun the society of Catholics, without regard to the conscience of the child or the authority of the parent. Every possible influence is brought to bear upon them to make them feel that their religion places them at a social disadvantage, and that Protestantism is more genteel and respectable. In short, if we try to imagine the state of things which converts to Christianity had to struggle with in Rome and the gentile world after the laws had ceased to persecute, but before the Christian religion had ceased to be a despised and unpopular religion, we shall have a very good counterpart of the present condition of Catholic converts in England and the United States.

The trials and difficulties of those who are on the way to the Catholic Church are even greater than those which have to be encountered afterward. Not to speak of the interior trials which are necessarily involved in the process of conversion, even for those who are perfectly free and independent, or even placed under influences which facilitate the transition to Catholicity, there are exterior difficulties in the case of most persons of the gravest and most distressing nature. Besides the opposition of relatives and friends, in the shape of argument, entreaty, expostulation, sorrowful disapprobation, which is the more painful and the harder to be overcome the more kind and affectionate it is in manner and spirit, the dread of wounding and grieving those who are dearest and most respected, disappointing their hopes and incurring their displeasure, there is often to be encountered the might of spiritual tyranny, the violence of a parent's or husband's despotic will, and, in short, a _persecution_ worse to be borne than would be a summary trial and execution. Unhappily, these trials are often too great for the courage of those who have received the inward vocation to the Catholic faith, and who are required to undergo so much if they would follow it. Some are afraid of losing caste, some of being turned out of doors, some of losing their livelihood; others are afraid of encountering the anger and reproaches of their friends, or the scorn and calumny of the world, or the loss of popularity. There are those who are deterred by their dainty and fastidious dislike of mingling with the poor, and who cannot bring themselves to go to a church which is humble or mean in its appearance, to receive the sacraments from a priest of unpolished exterior. But these last have themselves only to blame, although we may commiserate their weakness, and lay the chief blame of it on the false maxims prevalent in the community at large.

It would be easy to cite numerous instances in illustration of all that we have just said upon this subject, from personal knowledge or the testimony of others; and if it were possible for the complete history of the conversions to the Catholic Church which have occurred during the last quarter of a century to be written and published, it would be, for the most part, only an extensive commentary upon the statements we have made. Even then the saddest part of the story must remain untold, unless all those who have been deterred from obeying the voice of conscience could be induced to publish their confessions to the world, and those who have died in perplexity and distress for the want of those sacraments which their own cowardice or the refusal of their friends prevented them from receiving, could come back from the grave to add their testimony to that of the living.

{437}

The writer of these pages was acquainted with a gentleman of eminent position in the world, who was for a long time a Catholic at heart, and who on his death-bed desired to see a priest with whom he was intimately acquainted, that he might receive the last sacraments from his hands. This priest, who was a man of the greatest dignity of character and universally venerated in the community, called at the house several times, was politely received, but never permitted to see the dying man. When the poor old man perceived his last hour drawing near, he called his faithful Irish nurse to his bedside, as the only true friend to whom he could open his grief, and confided to her the sorrow that was darkening his dying moments. He told her that he desired to see a priest, to make his confession and to receive the last sacraments, but that his request was denied, so that he had given up all hope of his salvation, and believed himself doomed to die in despair. The good girl comforted and soothed him, assured him that he need not distrust the mercy of God, and explained to him that in his case a perfect contrition for his sins would suffice for their full remission. He begged of her to teach him how to make the acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition, to recite prayers by his side, and to help him to prepare for death. She did so, and through her holy ministrations his soul was tranquillized, so that he died in peace.

The writer was once sent for by a man of unusual intelligence and plain, respectable standing, who was in reduced circumstances, and dying of a slow consumption. He learned from the lips of this man that he had been for some time perfectly convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion, and was satisfied that it was his duty to be received into the church. Nevertheless, it was impossible to persuade him to act on his convictions, because he was sure that the assistance of certain societies, upon which his family depended, would be withdrawn. He hoped to recover, and promised that, if he did, he would profess his faith openly; but we never heard anything more from him, and have never heard the conclusion of his sad history.

It is but a few months since a young widow lady, a convert, was turned out of house and home, not very far from our own city, after the decease of her father, with whom she had been residing, by her own brother, for the sole reason that he did not wish to live in the same house with a papist. We will not multiply instances; but they will rise up in abundance before the memories of many who will read these pages; and if a recording angel could take down what will be remembered, thought, and felt by all whose eyes will peruse these lines, they would be transformed from a brief and tame summary into a whole volume of living and pathetic interest far surpassing the most thrilling tales of fiction; Tears will be shed, sad memories will throng upon many minds, many hearts will ache, we are assured, over the words we are writing in perfect calmness and composure, and without any direct intention of awakening emotion. Some will think of trials past, some of trials present, and others will recall to mind their own weakness and timidity in the hour when they were tried and found wanting. {438} There are many others, however, and will be many more hereafter, to whom this plea for the liberty of conscience will be, as we cordially trust, not merely a subject of personal interest, but also a practical help in surmounting their difficulties. We allude to those who are now turning or who will hereafter turn their faces wistfully toward the Catholic Church, but have first to overcome the obstacles we have described above before they can enter its portal. For this class of persons we have the most profound sentiment of pity and sympathy. The rich and independent, the able-minded and able-bodied, who can take care of themselves, men who can assert their own rights, and those generous youths to whom a glorious career is open in the priesthood, do not claim our sympathy, for they do not need it. But we pity the helpless and dependent; those who struggle with poverty and live on the bounty of others, delicate, gentle women, and all the weak, feeble children of God who would fain follow their conscience if they were let alone and not interfered with, but who shrink back appalled when it is a question of nerving themselves to meet opposition and push their way through trials. It seems to us that there is something hard and cruel beyond all other forms of tyranny in that usurped, unjust despotism which is exercised over these tender consciences. What can be a more odious or flagrant violation of all right and justice than to attempt to crush a conscience by force, to quell it by threats, to wear it out by opposition, to stifle it by fear, or to lure it by selfish, temporal interests? All will answer this question alike, and admit, at least in theory, the wrong that lies in the attempt of any person to violate the rights of any other person's conscience. The only point really open to discussion is, What constitutes a violation of just and rightful liberty of conscience? The question respecting the right or expediency of enforcing obedience to the dictates of conscience and the fulfilment of certain moral obligations is quite a different one, though closely related to the antecedent question. We cannot, in arguing with non-Catholics on these points, assume the truth of Catholic principles, or urge any consideration which necessarily presupposes the Catholic religion to be the true one. Of course, in the last analysis, we must come back upon the fundamental principle that the law of God is supreme and must be obeyed at all hazards, let come what will. No matter what human laws, what private interests, what dreadful penalties, may stand in the way, God must be obeyed, conscience must be followed, duty must be done. The authority of the state must be braved, human affections must be disregarded, life must be sacrificed, when loyalty to the truth and to the will of God requires it. Those who reject the authority of the Catholic Church, however, do not admit that the Catholic law is the law of God; and we must therefore either make our sole issue with them on this precise point of the truth of the Catholic doctrine, which is the same thing as a declaration of perpetual war, or we must find some middle term common to both, upon which the peace of social relations can be settled and the mutual rights and liberties of conscience be secured. We are obliged, therefore, to waive all claim of right and liberty to practise the Catholic religion, which is based on its positive truth, so far as this argument is concerned, and to present only such claims as a fair-minded person, whether Protestant, Jew, or infidel, may admit as just and reasonable, without changing in the least his own particular opinions. {439} It is not to be expected that all our arguments will be equally applicable to every class of persons, whatever their religious opinions may be; but we will endeavor to furnish at least one or two for each of the principal classes into which the non-Catholic community is divided. If some of our Catholic readers are offended by our seeming to take a tone too apologetic and defensive, we beg them to remember that the early Christian apologists were not ashamed to do the like. They vindicated the Christians of their own time from such accusations as worshipping an ass's head and drinking the blood of infants. It is painful and humiliating to be obliged to vindicate ourselves from gross calumnies; but it is an act of charity toward those who are deceived by these calumnies, and still more toward these helpless and defenceless persons who must suffer from them.

We begin on the lowest possible ground by affirming that a person in becoming a Catholic commits no offence against the laws of morality or against the civil and social laws commonly recognized among non-Catholics. There is no treason against society, no offence against domestic rights, no repudiation of any moral duties or obligations, nothing to make a person a bad citizen, a bad neighbor, a bad husband, wife, or child. There is no disobedience against any lawful external authority which has any right to inflict any penalties affecting a person's social or civil rights. There is no reason, therefore, why a person who embraces the Catholic religion should be treated by his acquaintances or society in general as a criminal, and made to suffer in his social and domestic relations. In our heterogeneous society, everything is tolerated which is not _contra bonos mores_. That which strikes at the order and peace of the natural relations binding us together in society cannot be tolerated even on the pretext of liberty of conscience or opinion. Therefore, Mormonism has no rights under our laws, and ought not to be tolerated, and Mohammedanism could not be tolerated. If the Catholic Church were really what it has been represented to be by many, it could not claim liberty or even toleration in non-Catholic states. But it is not what its enemies have represented it to be. A person who becomes a consistent Catholic will be a good citizen and respect the laws. He will be faithful to his social and domestic duties, and strictly observant of all moral obligations. It is not the spirit of the Catholic religion to introduce discord or trouble into families or societies, or to interfere with any just and lawful rights. The only annoyance which can arise will be the annoyance which persons wishing to violate the natural laws will meet with from the conscientious observance of morality by the Catholic party. Suppose a Catholic lady wishes to go to Mass, to confession, to devote a part of her time to meditation or charitable works? Does that necessarily interfere with the perfect fulfilment of all her duties toward her family and society? Is it any greater liberty than that which women generally expect to be conceded to them, and which they take at any rate, whether it is granted with a good or a bad grace? Let the question be decided by the actual conduct of those who have become Catholics in their relations with others who are not of their faith, and we are not afraid of the judgment which candid and fair judges will render. Certainly, then, they ought to enjoy the same liberty which is conceded to those who profess any other form of religion not contrary to the received standard of good morals, and to those who profess none at all. {440} Those who profess the latitudinarian opinion that all religions are alike, and who claim unbounded liberty of opinion for all, ought to be the first to give to Catholics the full benefit of this privilege.

With those who are more strongly attached to their own form of religion and hold it to be the only true one, the case is somewhat more difficult. Such persons may say that a person brought up in what they call the true, Evangelical, reformed faith, or in the pure, apostolical, Protestant Episcopal Church, especially if he has been a communicant, and most of all if he has been a minister, is an apostate from his faith as a Christian, a renouncer of his baptism, and therefore a criminal before God and the church, if he, to use their language, becomes a Romanist. Let it be so. When argument and persuasion have been tried and have failed, let the church pronounce her spiritual censures on the disobedient member. We cannot complain of that. Let him be canonically deposed if he is a minister. We cannot complain of that, either. But is there any reason why our Evangelical or High-Church friends should think it necessary or expedient to proceed any further? Suppose they do regard the person in question as a delinquent and as an unfortunate dupe of error and delusion. Will our Evangelical friends affirm the principle that none but the elect are entitled to the rights and privileges arising out of natural and social relations? Will our High-Church friends affirm the same, substituting for the elect, consistent members of their own communion? If not, we cannot see why they may not allow Catholics the same indulgence which they concede to sinners, heretics, and infidels. We put them the plain question, whether they have any right to interfere with the conscience and the religion of another, or to use any kind of coercion or persecution against any one, whatever may be the relation in which he stands toward them. Some of them may perhaps deny that a well-instructed member of that which they deem to be the true church can become a Catholic conscientiously and sincerely. But suppose it is so. Where is the authority to compel him to fulfil his conscientious obligations of a purely spiritual nature? We are not now speaking of young children who have not attained to years of full discretion, over whom parents certainly have an authority which must be respected. But, apart from this exception, what authority can be claimed for enforcing any religious obligation by any other means than an appeal to the conscience itself? If there are any who really think there is a right of excommunication in their church which extends so far as to exclude a person from his privileges as a member of society, and to reduce him to the state of one who is _vitandus_, or an outcast to be shunned by all, we only desire that they will act out their doctrine impartially and universally. Is it not, at least, _inexpedient_ to appeal to it in the present state of society, while no kind of disability is contracted by those who profess the principles of Bishop Colenso or Herbert Spencer?

The case may be supposed of persons, influenced by no ill feeling at all, who would desire to withdraw from all intimacy with relatives or acquaintances who have joined the Catholic Church, on the ground that their conversation and influence may be dangerous to young persons in the family. Such a motive as this we can respect, for we can and must respect fidelity to conscience, even when it is an erroneous conscience which is followed. {441} Moreover, no one is bound to keep up any intimate relations which transcend the bounds of ordinary courtesy with any persons outside the immediate family circle, unless it is agreeable to himself to do so. But what is to be said of those who, on a plea of conscience, sunder the closest bonds of nature, or threaten to do so? We can easily understand that a Jew, a Puritan, an old-fashioned Lutheran, a Presbyterian, or an English Churchman might be so thoroughly absorbed in his religion, and so intense in his attachment to it, that the conversion of a wife or child to the Catholic Church would be a far worse blow to his affections, and a more blighting disappointment to his hopes, than would be the sudden death of either one, however tenderly loved. An intelligent Jewish gentleman once told the writer of this article that he was deterred from receiving Christian baptism by the fear of causing the death of his aged father; and this is not an unusual instance either among the descendants of the ancient Pharisees or the adherents of the "straitest sects" of Protestant Christians. In such cases, where no softening of the temper and no modification of the mental condition takes place, there is no room for argument. The word of our Lord must be fulfilled--that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. One who has to choose between submission to the will of another and the disruption of the most sacred human ties, must choose the latter when the former involves the violation of a certain and known law of God. There is, therefore, no other course open to a Catholic in such a case except the one of professing and practising the Catholic religion openly, without regard to consequences. If they are excluded from their homes and abandoned by their friends, they must try to bear it patiently. We would scorn to appeal to the mere sentiment of human pity or to the maxims of indifferentism, in arguing with any man who should say that his religious principles require him to banish a wife, a son, or a daughter out of his house. It is our opinion, however, that in most instances, after persons have had time for cool reflection, they will not deliberately affirm that their religious principles do require these harsh measures. No one will pretend that they require or authorize any kind of tyrannical or vexatious persecution, or an abandonment of those who have a natural claim to protection to poverty and suffering. We are disposed to think that prejudice, passion, wounded pride, and similar causes have a great deal to do with the line of conduct alluded to. And one good reason for thinking so is the fact that so many firm and consistent Protestants, and even bishops or other clergymen of standing, have acted differently, and have treated Catholic converts even of their own families with kindness and courtesy. We have supposed hitherto that we were arguing with a person who would not admit that a convert from the religion he himself professes can be sincere and conscientious. It is impossible, however, to sustain such a position on any ground which the majority of intelligent non-Catholics will admit to be reasonable; for it can be sustained only by one of three arguments. First, that the illumination of the Holy Spirit gives to the individual reason an infallible certainty of the truth of some one form of anticatholic belief. Or, second, that some such form is at least made morally certain by rational evidence of such a kind as to exclude all probability that the Catholic religion may be true. {442} Or, third, that some certain and unerring authority, to which one is bound to submit his private judgment, exists in one of the several communions calling itself the true church of God. The first argument cannot be brought into the forum of discussion, because there is no certain, external test by which it can be proved that such an illumination exists, or by whom among various claimants it is possessed. The second is refuted by the simple fact that so many intelligent and learned persons are convinced by the Catholic arguments. The third is refuted by the fact that no one of the churches claims infallibility. High-Churchmen claim a teaching authority for their communion, but it is not claimed by their church itself in any such sense as to exclude the right and duty of testing its claims and doctrines by private judgment on the Scriptures. Those who make the claim of authority in behalf of this church do not pretend that it is more than a portion of the universal church, and therefore, by the very claim they put forth, directly suggest and provoke an examination of the question what the universal church really teaches. The most learned and eminent theologians among them distinctly assert that the doctrines of the Church of England must be interpreted in conformity with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Will any reasonable person, then, pretend that one may not examine all the evidence that can be adduced to prove what that teaching is; or that he may not conscientiously and sincerely adopt the conclusion that this teaching is really identical with the doctrine of the Roman Church? We may cite here the judgment of Dr. Johnson, who was a staunch Episcopalian, upon this point. Boswell relates it in these words: "Sir William Scott informs me that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who is converted from Protestantism to popery may be sincere. He parts with nothing: he is only superadding to what he already had. But a convert from popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as anything he retains; there is so much _laceration of mind_ in such a conversion that it can hardly be sincere and lasting.'" [Footnote 100]

[Footnote 100: Boswell's _Johnson_. Edit, Bait., Bond, 1856, p. 168]

In truth, every form of dogmatic and positive Protestantism presents its lines of fracture from the great mass of Christendom so conspicuously to the eye, that it is absurd to pretend that its relation to that mass is not a thing to be examined and judged of by every one who is capable of judging for himself, that is, by every one who is responsible to his conscience and to God for his belief upon those doctrines affirmed by the Catholic Church and denied by his own detached body. An old-fashioned, strict Israelite can make a far more plausible claim for authority over the conscience in behalf of the synagogue, than any Protestant can make for his church. The Jewish hierarchy had once authority from God, and has only been superseded by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ. We cannot argue with him, therefore, that a Jew who renounces Judaism violates no obligation of conscience toward a lawful authority, except by adducing the evidence that Jesus is the Messias foretold by the prophets. Upon his own premises he must regard such a person as an apostate and a rebel. The only reason which could have any weight with him, why he should continue to show the same kindness to a member of his family who had been baptized as before, would be, that it is better to leave such a case to the judgment of God, and refrain from an exercise of severity which could do no good, but rather aggravate the difficulty. {443} The majority of Jews at present are, however, rationalists. They place the essence of religion in mere Theism and natural morality, regarding the peculiarities of Judaism as accidentals. On their own ground, therefore, they can have no excuse for obtruding any claim of Judaism over the reason, conscience, or private judgment of any of their number. Take away a divinely appointed, infallible authority, and in all matters of purely religious belief and practice each individual is in possession of full liberty, for the right use of which he is responsible only to God. Moreover, in matters of positive, dogmatic doctrine, the majority of non-Catholics acknowledge that only probability is attainable. Logic and good sense have brought them to this conclusion as contained in the premises with which they started. But in questions of probability and matters of opinion, persons of equal sincerity and conscientiousness may differ. We are certain that this will be admitted as an axiom by our non-Catholic readers. But if this be so, those who profess to be convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrines ought to be regarded as sincere and conscientious, which we think most of our non-Catholic friends will also admit. Every one must see, then, how contrary to every right and honorable principle it is to attempt to act on the minds of those who desire to become Catholics by any other means than argument and persuasion. How dangerous, how unjust, how mean it is to strive to terrify or wheedle them into a forced acquiescence in the will of others through human and worldly motives! It would be almost an insult to our readers to argue this point gravely. Those who follow the principles of Demas in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and are in favor of religion only when she walks in silver slippers, will not publicly avow and defend any such base maxims, or maintain seriously that their great objection to the Catholic religion is, that it is not sufficiently genteel. Even the _New York Herald_ flouts scornfully the religion of velvet cushions, which makes the elect to consist solely of the _élite_ of society.

But at last we come at what is the real _gravamen_ of the complaint against Catholics on the part of those who are disposed to be fair and kindly. It is not that we hold certain doctrines as opinions, or adopt certain modes of worship as suited to our taste. This could be allowed without difficulty as our undoubted right, provided we would admit that the Catholic Church is only the best and most perfect among several forms of religion. But we maintain its exclusive truth and legitimacy, and proclaim it to be the only way of salvation. It is unpleasant for one to have his wife, or children, or near friends, look upon him as a person excluded from communion with them in spiritual things and out of the way of salvation. Very true! But what does this prove? It proves that the ideal of society is only actualized in religious unity. It makes no difference what your ideal is, whether it is something purely natural, or, under some form, supernatural. There must be unity either in some negative or some positive form. That is, there must be something to give those who are closely connected on the earth the same idea of the tendency and end of this earthly life, and of the future life which is to succeed it. Yet we find that society is not in this ideal state among us. It is impossible for Catholics to sacrifice their convictions and violate the dictates of their conscience, for the sake of a unity which they believe to be chimerical. {444} We believe that it is only the Catholic religion which can bring society to its ideal perfection, and therefore we shall, for this reason, as well as for higher ones, do all in our power to make it universal. Probably our Evangelical friends await the millennium, and other classes of the religious community await the universal triumph of some kind of church of the future, while the sceptics look for a millennium of science and common sense. Meanwhile, it is probable that some time must elapse before any such epoch shall arrive, and we must live together in all manner of political and social relations. It is only by a jealous regard for the personal religious liberty of every individual that we can live together in peace and harmony. Is it not, then, better that, if we cannot immediately heal all the wounds of society, we should at least alleviate them as much as possible, awaiting a more radical cure at a future time?

We have already, in a former article, expressed our views upon this point sufficiently, so that we need not dwell upon it any longer at present. Happily, these are the views which are practically carried out in a great number of cases, and are gaining ground more and more. The state of things we have described is becoming ameliorated even in England, but much more in our own country. If the just, honorable, and rational temper of the best class of non-Catholic Americans toward the Catholic religion and its members were universal, and all persons disposed to become Catholics were treated with the same delicate respect for their liberty of conscience which some have experienced, there would be no occasion for this reclamation in behalf of that liberty. Those of our readers who can class themselves under this category may understand, therefore, that with them we have no controversy; but are combating an enemy as hostile to their own domestic and social peace and well-being as to our own.

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Benediction.

"We go so far, and with so much trouble, to obtain the blessings of certain holy persons, and of the holy father the pope; yet here is the Lord of saints, and the God of whom Pius IX. is only the vicegerent, and we cannot intermit our socialities or forego our ease to receive his blessing!" E. A. S.

The Invitation.

The balmy May is breathing on the air, The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west. Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest: One doth invite thee to his house all fair; One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there. Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prest So oft thy own; not any ruler blest. Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share. Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move; No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whom The race reveres: a better friend would prove His love; a greater asks thee to his home. Within the tabernacle of his love, The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?

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{445}

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

## CHAPTER IX.

To this proposition Nellie joyfully assented, and he led the way accordingly up a rocky path winding westward toward the cliffs. Once or twice he turned as if to give her aid, but Nellie skipped like a young kid from rock to rock, exulting in her independence; and, finding that she declined assistance, he went on in silence until they reached a point among the cliffs, high enough to give them a full sea view toward the west.

The Atlantic lay beneath them, rolling in its mighty volume of deep waters, and dashing them against the cliffs below with the strength and calmness of a sleepy giant. Nellie had often seen the _sea_, that narrow strip of water, namely, which separated her own birth-home from the birth-place of her kindred; but of the mighty ocean, with its thousand voices coming up from the deep caves below, its murmurings and whisperings, its infinite variety of tints and aspects, its lights and shadows, its clear green depths and crystal purity, such as no smaller sheet of water can ever boast of, she had never even dreamed before; and as her eye roamed over the smooth expanse until it reached that uttermost point where sea and sky seem to blend together, a sense of vastness and power fell upon her soul which almost oppressed her. For a few minutes Roger watched her as she stood there in hushed and breathless admiration, but just as the silence was beginning to be oppressive he broke in by saying, softly, "Yes, yes! it is all bright, and smooth, and shining now; but I have stood here on an autumn evening, and watched it when it was black and swollen, brimful beneath the coming storm--when the wind seemed almost a living power--a thing to be seen as well as felt--as it swept over that mighty mass of waters, mingling its hoarse voice with theirs, and forcing on their waves, as a general forces on his troops, until it dashed them in a very frenzy of fruitless valor against the beetling cliffs beneath us. And, in truth, I almost prefer it in those moods," he added, like one thinking his own thoughts aloud; "for then it looks simply like what it is, a huge monster ever greedy for its prey, whereas, now, in this lazy sunshine, it seems to me nothing more or less than a great smiling treachery, wooing its victims toward it, only that it may afterward the more thoroughly engulf them."

"It is a great, beautiful terror, even as it is to-day," said Nellie breathlessly. "What a height we are above it! It makes me giddy only to look down?"

"Do not look, then," said Roger anxiously, "but rather turn inward toward yonder isle, which is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water. There are cliffs upon that island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that, when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'--the enchanted isle, the 'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single day. {446} Few, as you may well suppose, are the favored mortals who have ever reached it, and fewer still, if any, who have ever come back to tell the tale of their adventures."

"It is a pretty legend," said Nellie, straining her eyes over the ocean as earnestly as though she seriously expected to discover the fairy island of which he spoke floating on its bosom. "Have you ever really seen anything like land in that direction?"

"If you choose, we can go some of these days on a voyage of discovery," said Roger, smiling at her seriousness; "only, if we do find 'Hy-Brysail,' I warn you that we shall have to stay there. Such is the law by which adventurers to its shores are bound. It does not seem a hard law either, does it? Would you object to it. Mistress Netterville?' to be young and beautiful for ever! Sorrow forgotten as if it had never been, beneath the spells of that magic land!"

Nellie drew a long breath, and her blue eyes grew well-nigh black with suppressed feeling as she looked westward toward the ocean. But she did not answer.

"Well," he said, finding she would not speak, "will you try the adventure with me, or do you still prefer earth and its passing showers to this land of eternal sunshine?"

Nellie sighed--it almost seemed as if she were making a real choice; and when he playfully repeated, "Have you decided? which shall it be--this old kingdom of Grana Uaille or Tir-na-n'oge?" she quite seriously replied:

"Not Tir-na-n'oge, certainly; though a year ago, perhaps, I might have chosen otherwise. But youth and its sunshine is not real happiness, after all, although sometimes it looks very like it; and even if it were, there is something to me in a life of happiness, simple and unalloyed, less noble, and less like the choice of a soul predestined to eternity, than in one of sorrow bravely borne."

"Sorrow has done its work well for you, at all events," said Roger, moved to a higher feeling of reverence than, two minutes before, he would have thought it possible to have entertained for a creature so young and still so childish."

"Woe to the soul upon which it does it not, once that soul has been delivered to its guidance," Nellie answered softly, and almost as it were beneath her breath.

Roger gazed upon her silently. It seemed as if she were changing beneath his very eyes from a bright, impulsive child into a woman of deep and earnest feeling--a woman in every fibre of her fine, strong nature--and yet still in the untried freshness of her sixteen years as innocent and confiding as a child.

"Then you prefer a happiness which would bring with it the zest of contrast?" he added, as if to prove her further.

"I would prefer, at all events, a happiness founded upon duty," she answered gravely; and then, as if half-ashamed of her own earnestness, she asked him lightly:

"Is it not strange to find these floating traditions of a paradise of peace and plenty among a people so completely bereft of both as these poor creatures, by their very condition as a conquered race, must necessarily be?"

"For that very reason!" he answered quickly; "for that very reason! Men despised as savages and treated as wild beasts, will either brood over schemes of real vengeance or soothe themselves with dreams of unreal bliss. {447} Is it wonderful, therefore, that these poor people, with their dreamy and imaginative natures, should sometimes look wistfully over the broad ocean, and fancy they see a land where (if once only it could be reached) flowers, and joy, and eternal sunshine, would console them for the misery endured among these barren rocks, in which they have been forced by their enemies to seek--I was going to say, a home--it would have been far more correct to have said--a prison?"

"Nay, but now it is you that are unjust," said Nellie, smiling--"unjust to this fair land you live in. The kingdom of Grana Uaille can in no sense of the word be called a prison; and even were it ten times less beautiful than it is, to me it would still remain the one bright memory left me to look back to in this great year of sorrow."

Roger turned quickly round, but Nellie met his eye with such a look of frank candor and unconsciousness as to the possibility of any hidden meaning being attachable to her words, that he felt tacitly rebuked beneath it, and merely said:

"Ay; but, Mistress Netterville, I was talking of a home."

"Home!" said Nellie softly--"home, after all, is but the place where the heart garners up its treasures. These were almost the last words my dear mother said to me, and now I feel their truth; for if she were but once more at my side, the barrenest island in Clew Bay would become to me, I think, at once as home-like almost and dear as Netterville itself."

Again Roger seemed on the point of saying _something_, but again he checked himself and was silent.

Nellie saw the flush upon his brow, and interpreted it her own way.

"You are not angry. Colonel O'More," she said, with the simplicity of a child; "surely you do not fancy, because I spoke of Netterville, that I am ungrateful for the kindness which has made this island like a second home to me."

"No, indeed," he answered, with a smile so bright that it must have reassured her even if he had not said a word in answer. "No, indeed. I was, or at all events I _am_, only thinking how I can best persuade you and Lord Netterville to consider this island as your home, even in the absence of its lawful owner."

"Absence," said Nellie; "are you going then, and wherefore?"

"Wherefore?" said O'More quickly. "I marvel that you cannot guess. Because, Mistress Netterville, though I live upon this island, and though its inhabitants acknowledge me as their chieftain, it is yet a sorry fact that I am poor, poorer in proportion than the poorest of the number; an outlaw besides, with every man's hand and sword against me, and nothing but the traditions of past greatness to soothe, or, which much oftener is the case, to add bitterness to the meanness of my present station."

"Why call it meanness?" said Nellie, flashing up. "You have fought and lost for your king and country, as we all have fought and lost; and your enemies may take your lands indeed, but they cannot rob you of the glory of the cause for which you have contended, nor can they make you other than you are, a descendant of brave old Grana Uaille and the inheritor of her kingdom."

"Kingdom!" said Roger, with a little bitter laugh. "Turn your eyes inland, Mistress Netterville, and look from the northern point of Clew Bay southward toward the spot where Croagh Patrick casts its shade upon the bright waters. {448} That was the old kingdom of Grana Uaille, and my inheritance upon the day that I was born. My earliest recollections therefore are connected with this wild land, and every rock and cave in its fair winding coast-line was as familiar to me in my childish days as the toys in their nursery are to more tenderly nurtured children. But they sent me at last to Spain for that education which would have been denied me here, and I only came back (while still a mere raw boy) to fight under the banner of my kinsman, I will not trouble you with a history of that war; you know it, alas, too well already! But when Preston took refuge in Galway, and the other chiefs of the confederation dispersed in different directions, I made the best of my way hither, hoping, amid the wilds and fastnesses of my own country, to be permitted to remain at peace. Rumors reached me on the way of the great scheme of the transplantation, and of the numbers flocking from the eastern counties to usurp, against their will, the possessions of their poorer brethren in the west. Soon after that, came tidings that the enemy had reserved the coast-line for themselves, then that they had swarmed over into some of the Clew Bay islands, and then, at last, that they had taken possession of and fortified Carrig-a-hooly, the old castle of Grana and the spot where I was born. Still I pressed unhesitatingly forward; for I remembered the 'Rath,' and knowing that it was, or used to be, almost a ruin, I hoped it would have escaped them, and that I might find there a refuge and concealment for the moment. Mistress Netterville, you can guess at the result. I went as you went, and found as you found, that it was occupied already. Major Hewitson--"

"What of Major Hewitson?" a voice asked impatiently at his elbow. Roger turned, and found himself face to face with Henrietta, who had glided so quietly up the mountain path that neither he nor Nellie had an idea of her presence until she announced it by this question.

Remembering her kindness of the day before, Nellie's first impulse had been to greet her eagerly; her next was to retreat a step behind O'More, with an uncomfortable though only half acknowledged consciousness that she herself would be considered by Henrietta as one too many in the coming conversation. There was, in truth, a flush on the young lady's brow and a sparkle in her eye, by no means inviting to familiarity, and without seeming conscious even of Nellie's presence, she repeated the question angrily to O'More:

"What of Major Hewitson? What of the owner of yonder castle?"

Roger looked at her steadily, then removing his cap, and speaking in his most courtly tones, he answered quietly:

"Nothing, Mistress Hewitson, nothing at least, unfit to be said in the presence of his daughter."

"That won't do!" cried Henrietta passionately, "that won't do. I heard his name as I came up, and I will know what you were saying of him."

Roger laughed a bright, merry laugh, which Nellie thought no ill-humor could have resisted, and he answered frankly:

"Nay, for that matter. Mistress Hewitson, if you insist upon it, you are quite welcome to hear not only all that I did say, but all likewise that I was about to say on the subject of your father. I had just observed to Mistress Netterville (whose person you seem somehow to have forgotten since yesterday) that I found Major Hewitson in possession of my last refuge on the mainland, and I was going to add that, as he had thus made _his_ fortune at my expense, I trusted he would not endeavor to prevent me seeking mine, where in these days Irishmen most often find them, under the golden flag of Spain."

{449}

Spain! Nellie's heart leaped up suddenly, and then grew very still. This, then, was the meaning of that word "absence" which had already startled and, even against her will, disturbed her. This was his meaning. He was about to leave Ireland for ever, and make a home for himself in his mother's land. Nellie's heart leaped up, and then grew very still!

When she returned to a consciousness of the outward world around her, Henrietta was saying eagerly:

"Do not wait to know what he may think upon the subject; but go at once. Remember you are an outlaw, and that an outlaw is one whom the law permits to be hunted like a wild beast, and slain whenever or however he may be taken."

"And this, then, is the fate which your worthy father is preparing for me?" Roger asked in a tone of bantering politeness, which, considering the circumstances and Henrietta's evident excitement, Nellie could not help thinking almost unkind. "It is thus, like a wild beast, as you rightly term it, that he is about to set upon me and slay me unawares."

"I do not say it! I do not know it!" said Henrietta, almost sobbing. "I only say--only know that there are fresh troops of soldiers coming in to-day; that there have been for at least a week past prayer-meetings and preachings and waitings on the Lord, things which all portend a coming danger, and one that probably will point toward you. Colonel O'More, be merciful; take my warning for what it may be worth, and ask no further questions. Remember, that if I think not with my father in these matters, I am still, at all events, his daughter. And now I must begone, for with all my skill at the oar, and little Paudeen's to boot, I shall have hard work to get back in time for the mid-day meal, and the long and weary homily by which it is seasoned and made pleasant to unbelievers like myself."

Henrietta turned as if to depart, but yet she did not. She seemed to be struggling hard with some hidden feeling, and at last, with an effort so violent that it was visible, at least to Roger's eyes, she flung her arms round Nellie's neck.

"I know nothing of you but your name, young mistress," she said in a smothered voice; "but I know, at least, that I and mine have wrought you a great injustice. That injustice unhappily I have no power to repair; but yet, if ever you have need of any help that I can give, and will come and ask me for it, believe me, instead of heaping coals of fire on my head, you will be giving me the only real happiness I can feel, so long as I know that, by my residence in these lands, I am usurping the rights of others."

Henrietta almost flung Nellie from, her as she finished speaking, and then, without another word, either to her or Roger, she took the down path of the cliff, and was out of sight in a moment.

The two whom she left behind her continued silent, until they saw the "corragh," or small boat, in which she had come, and which had been waiting for her beneath the cliffs, gliding once more out into the open bay; then they also turned their steps homeward, and Roger, with no small dash of enthusiasm in his manner, exclaimed:

{450}

"Brave girl! would you believe it, this is the second time she has given me notice of a snare? only the first time," he added, with perhaps some intuitive guess at the sort of questioning that might be going on in Nellie's mind, "only the first time it was by Paudeen, who sails her boat, and who, she well knows, may be trusted in all that regards the safety of his chieftain. But what is the old white-haired gospeller up to now, I wonder? I own I am fairly puzzled!"

"We are not, I trust, the cause of this fresh trouble to you?" said Nellie timidly.

"Oh! no. I think not; for your sake I trust not," he answered thoughtfully. "It seemed to me to be altogether personal to myself; for if it had been about the priest, I think she would have said so."

"The priest! where is he?" Nellie asked. "I did not even know that there was one upon the island."

"Not upon this island, but on another, as you shall see to-morrow if you choose to make one of his Sunday congregation. But yonder is your grandfather watching for you: had we not better go and join him?"

Nellie assented, and quickening her pace almost to a run, she was in her grandfather's arms ere Roger, who came on more leisurely, had time to join them.

Lord Netterville gazed lovingly into Nellie's face, and smiled as he saw the bright color which exercise had called into her pale cheeks. Then he turned courteously toward his host. Perhaps he had some vague idea in his old head that the fate of his grandchild was to be henceforth, in some way or other, connected with that of Roger; perhaps he was not himself aware of the significance of his action; but this at all events is certain, that, instead of relinquishing Nellie's hand, he kept it tightly in his own, and when the young chieftain approached to greet him, laid it silently in that of Roger.

There was enough in the action itself, and still more in the way in which it was done, to send the blood scarlet to Nellie's brow, and she struggled to release her hand. For one moment, however, Roger held it, gently but firmly, he even made a movement as if he were about to raise it to his lips; instead of doing so, however, he dropped it quietly, and said in a low voice:

"Not now, not yet; but when you are once more at your mother's side, will you permit me to remind you of this moment, and to ask for the treasure which I now relinquish, at the hands of her who is your only lawful guardian?"

## Chapter X.

Early the next morning, Nellie found herself gliding over the waters of Clew Bay in one of the native corraghs of the country, under the protection of her host. He was captain and crew all in one, and she was his only passenger; for it had been decided on the previous evening that Lord Netterville was not in a fit state to endure the fatigue of such a voyage, and with old Nora to look after his creature comforts, and Maida to guard him in his lonely fortress, Roger assured his granddaughter that she need have no scruple in leaving him during the two or three hours required for their enterprise. And Nellie had readily obeyed; for, if the truth must be told, she had begun to rely implicitly upon his judgment, and to submit to it as unquestioningly as if she had been a child. {451} The little shyness produced by Lord Netterville's thoughtless

## action of the day before had entirely worn off, partly because

she herself had striven _womanfully_ against the feeling, but chiefly because Roger, thoroughly comprehending how needful it was to her comfort that, during her residence in his lonely kingdom, she should be entirely at her ease in his society, had adopted, as if by instinct, precisely the affectionate, brotherly sort of manner which was of all others the best calculated to produce this result. Nellie therefore gave herself up without a thought to the pleasant novelty of a brotherly sort of petting and protection which seemed to call for nothing more than quiet acceptance on her part, and she listened to Roger with the keen and unsated interest of a child as he told her the names, one after another, of many of the clustered islands and rugged rocklets, glittering like jewels in the deep bosom of the bay, almost always contriving to add some little legend or stray scrap of history, which gave each for the moment an especial, and (if the expression may be allowed toward inanimate objects) an almost personal interest in her eyes. At last he turned her attention toward the mainland, pointing out the graceful windings of Clew's varied shore, its wave-worn caverns and rocky arches, its cliffs with their mantles of many-colored lichens which made them look at that distance as if nature had stained them into an imitation of most curiously-colored marble; and beyond these again, its broad tracts of uncultivated bog-land, purple with heath in autumn, but now yellow with gorse or dark with waving fern, its hills rising one above another in lonely, savage grandeur, with Croagh Patrick, the monarch of them all, standing up on the south side of the bay, and looking down in haughty, cold indifference upon its waters as they flowed beneath him. Nellie followed his eye and finger eagerly as he pointed out each individual feature in the scene before her; but observing that he lingered for a moment on Croagh Patrick, she turned toward him for explanation.

"It is Croagh Patrick," he said; then perceiving that she was not much the wiser for the information, he added in some surprise, "Do you not know the legend, that it was from the cone of yonder hill St. Patrick pronounced the curse which banished all venomous hurtful things from Ireland? Had the saint lived in these days," Roger added, in that undertone which Nellie had by this time discovered to be natural to him in moments of deep feeling, "it is not, I think, against toads and snakes that he would have directed his miracle-working powers, but against the men who, coming to a land which is not their own, make war in God's name against God's creatures, hunting them down with horn and hound, and snaring and slaying them with as little compunction as they would have snared or slain a wolf."

"Would he then have expelled me also?" asked Nellie, with a wicked smile. "You know that I, too, (and more's the pity!) have blood of the hated Saxon in my veins."

"Certainly not," said Roger promptly, "with your blue-black eyes and blue-black hair, he would without a doubt (saint and prophet though he was) have been deluded into believing you a Celt."

"And so I am almost," said Nellie, with childish eagerness; "only consider, Colonel O'More, we have been in the country almost three hundred years, and in all that time, until my dear father's marriage with my mother, (who is unfortunately an Englishwoman,) it has been the boast and tradition of our race that its sons and daughters have never wedded save with the sons and daughters of their adopted land."

{452}

"Remember, then, that it will be for you to renew the tradition," said Roger suddenly, and without reflection. He repented himself bitterly a moment afterward, as he caught a glimpse of the flush upon Nellie's half-averted face, and in order to undo the evil which he had done he added hastily, "Yonder is our destination, that bare, black rock jutting out from the mainland far into the deep waters."

"It is not then an island?" said Nellie a little disappointed. "I fancied you said yesterday that it was one."

"Perhaps I did, for it juts out so far and so boldly into deep water that, from many parts of the bay, it looks almost like an island. You cannot see the hermitage from this, but yonder is the church, perched right upon the cliffs above."

"Perched!" repeated Nellie, with a sort of shudder. "I should hardly say even that it _was perched_, for to me it looks as if it were actually toppling over."

"And so it is," said Roger; "the tower is out of the perpendicular already, and I never hear a winter storm without picturing it to myself as going (as go most certainly it will some day) crash over the cliff. It is safe enough, however, in this calm weather," he added, for he saw that Nellie was beginning to look nervous, "or I never should have thought of it as a refuge for its present occupant, though, for that matter, it was but a choice of evils, his life being in jeopardy whichever way he turned."

"Is he then especially obnoxious?" Nellie asked; "or is it only that, like all our other priests, he is forced to do his mission secretly?"

"Especially obnoxious? I should think, indeed he was," said Roger; "for he was chaplain to the brave old bishop whom they hanged at the siege of Clonmel, and was present at his death. How he managed to escape himself, has always been a marvel to me; but escape he did, and came hither for a refuge. I stowed him away in the ruined hermitage overhead, with a few other poor fellows who are outlawed like myself, and in greater danger, and his presence has never been even suspected by the enemy; so that he might, if he had been so minded, have escaped long ago by sea. But when he found us here, without sacraments or sacrifice, (for our priests have been long since driven into banishment,) he elected to remain, and now, at the peril of his life, he does duty as a parish priest among us."

"Brave priest! brave priest!" cried Nellie, clapping her hands. "He must feel very near to heaven, I think, engaged in such a mission, and living like a real hermit up there on that barren rock."

"And so in fact he is; or at least he lives in a real hermit's cell," said Roger. "It was built in the time of Grana Uaille by a holy man, in whose memory the rock is sometimes called 'the hermit,' though more generally known as 'the chieftain's rock.'"

"But why the change of names?" asked Nellie.

"Because," he answered, with the least possible shade of bitterness in his manner, "because, as often happens in this wicked world, persons who have been made heroes in the eyes of men are made more account of than those who are heroes only in the sight of God. This hermit had lived here for many years in peace and quiet, when the chief of a tribe of Creaghts, at enmity with Grana Uaille, having been beaten by her in a battle, took refuge with him among these rocks.' {453} The hermit hid him in the church, which, being an acknowledged sanctuary, even Grana Uaille, stout and unscrupulous as she was in most things, did not dare invade in order to drag him from its shelter. But she swore--our good old Grana could swear upon occasion as lustily as her rival sovereign your own Queen Bess--Grana swore that neither the sanctity of his hermit friend or of his place of refuge should avail him aught, and that, sooner or later, she would starve him into submission. She landed accordingly with her men, and surrounded church and hermitage upon the land side, that toward the sea being left unguarded and unwatched because, owing to the height and steepness of the cliff itself, and the position of the church tower, built almost immediately upon its edge, there seemed no human possibility of evasion that way. The chief, however, and his hermit proved too many for her after all; for by dint of working day and night, they succeeded, before their store of provisions was entirely exhausted, in cutting through the floor and outer wall of the church, and so making a passage which gave them instant access to the cliffs outside. This was by no means so difficult a task as at first sight it seems; for the floor of the building is only hardened earth, and its walls a mere mixture of mud and rubble, the very tower itself being only partially built of stone. I have often, when a boy, crept through the aperture, but it is nearly filled up with rubbish now, and almost, or I think quite forgotten among the people, who have been using the church for the last twenty years as a storehouse for peat and driftwood for their winter firing. Useful enough, however, the poor chieftain found it; for one fine moonlight night he walked quietly through it into the open air, swung himself down the cliffs as unconcernedly as if he had been merely searching for puffins' nests, and finally escaped in a boat left there by his friends for that very purpose. Next day, the hermit threw the church gates open, and sent word to Queen Grana that her intended victim had escaped her. You may imagine what a rage the virago chieftainess was in at finding herself thus outwitted; but I have not time to tell you now, for here we are close into shore, and it is time to think of landing."

Roger had lowered the sail while speaking, and he now began sculling the boat round a low sandy point which hid the harbor from their view. While he was occupied in this manner, Nellie, chancing to turn her head in the direction of Clare Island, perceived another corragh fast following in their track, and rowed by a boy, who was evidently working might and main in order to overtake them. She mentioned the matter to Roger, who instantly ceased his toil, and turned round to reconnoitre.

"It is Paudeen," he said at once. What, in Heaven's name, has sent him to us here?"

The boy saw that he was observed, and without stopping a moment in his onward course, made signs to them to await his coming.

Roger did as he was desired; and in a few minutes more the two corraghs were lying together side by side, and so close that their respective occupants could have conversed easily in a whisper.

"What is it, Paudeen?" asked O'More; "have you any message for me, or is there anything the matter that you have followed us so far?"

{454}

"It's Mistress Hewitson who is wanting to see you," said the boy. "She was prevented leaving as soon as she intended, and she sent me on before to ask you not to quit the island until she had spoken to you. You were gone, however, before I could get there; so, guessing well enough where you would most likely be upon Sunday morning, I followed you down here."

"But if you came straight from the mainland, how is it that I did not meet you in the way?" asked O'More suddenly, a strange suspicion of even Paudeen's simple faith passing rapidly through his mind.

"Because I didn't come from it at all, at all," the boy answered curtly. "It is yonder they're staying now," he added, pointing to Achill Island; "and they do say in the house that Clare Isle will be the next to follow."

"And is it to tell me this that Mistress Hewitson is about to honor me with a visit?" Roger answered bitterly. "The formality, methinks, was hardly needed, considering all that her father has robbed me of already."

"Sorrow know, I know what she will be wanting; but this at all events I know for certain, that it is for nothing but what is good and kind," said Paudeen; adding immediately afterward in a musing tone, "though how _she_ can be what she _is_, considering the black blood that is running in her veins, it needs greater wits than I can boast of to be able to discover."

"Well, well," said Roger, "I believe you are about right there, Paudeen. So now go back at once, and say to Mistress Hewitson that she shall be obeyed, and that I will return to Clare Island in time to receive her at the landing-place."

"Let me go back also," said Nellie, in a smothered voice. "If I and my grandfather have brought this danger to your door, it is only just that we should share it with you."

"Share it. Mistress Netterville? Nay, but you would double it!" cried O'More vehemently. "In the face of anything like real, present danger, I should infallibly lose my life in anxiety for yours. In point of fact, however, he added, seeing that she still looked distressed and anxious; in point of fact, the danger (whatever it is) cannot be immediate, since it is evident that Mistress Hewitson expects by her intended visit to give me such information as may enable me to evade it. Possibly she has heard further details concerning those plans of the old man, her father, at which yesterday she obscurely hinted. It may even be, as Paudeen seems to think, that they intend to put an English garrison on the island, and she may hope to soften matters for us by giving me this previous notice. Any way, I entreat you not to be over anxious; for though I acknowledge that we live in perilous times and places, yet still, and if only for that very reason, it behoves us to keep our common sense intact, and not to allow it to be scared by every passing cloud that seems to threaten us with storm."

After such words as these, Nellie felt there was nothing for it but to land the moment the boat reached shore, and Roger helped her out with a sort of graceful tenderness, which seemed tacitly to ask forgiveness for the constraint he had been compelled to put upon her inclinations.

Then he pointed to a scarcely discernible path among the brushwood, and said hastily:

"That path will take you straight to the church. If any one ask you any questions, the watchword is, 'God, our Lady, and Roger O'More.' Farewell! Get as near the altar as you can; tell them not to wait for me, but I will be back in time to fetch you."

{455}

He waited one moment, to make sure that she understood him, then pushed the boat out into deep water, and without even venturing to look back, pursued his way diligently homeward.

The breeze had died away, so that he would, he knew, be infinitely longer in returning to Clare Island than he had been in coming from it. As he passed Paudeen, he had half a mind to hail him, but reflecting that he would probably lose more time by the stoppage than he could gain by the boy's assistance, he changed his mind and went on his way alone. It was hot and weary work, but he put all his strength and will to it, and did it in a shorter time than he had expected. Not, however, before his presence was apparently sorely needed; for just as he neared the harbor, the deep, angry bay of the wolf-dog Maida reached his ear. This was followed by a woman's voice, endeavoring probably to soothe the dog, and this again by a long, shrill whistle which came like a cry for aid across the waters. Thus urged, O'More pulled with redoubled energy, and next moment was in the harbor. A corragh, ownerless and empty, was lying loose beside the pier, and a few yards from the landing-place he saw a girl standing motionless as a statue, one hand raised in an attitude of defence, confronting Maida, who, with head erect and bristling hair, seemed to bid her advance further at her peril. Had she attempted to retreat, had she shown even a shadow of timidity or of yielding, the dog would undoubtedly have torn her into pieces; but, with wonderful nerve and courage, she had so far stood her ground, and, rebuked by her stillness and unyielding attitude, Maida, up to that moment, had fortunately contented her sense of duty by keeping a close watch upon her proceedings. Horrified at the sight, and dreading lest Maida might mistake even the sound of his voice for a signal of attack, Roger hastily leaped on shore. Henrietta heard him, and without even daring to turn her head in his direction, whispered softly:

"Call off your dog--for God's dear sake, call her off at once!"

Roger made no reply, (for, in fact, he did not dare to speak,) but he made one bound forward and placed himself between her and her foe. Maida instantly abandoned her threatening look to greet her master, and for one half-moment he employed himself in caressing and calming down her fury. Then he turned eagerly to Henrietta:

"How is this. Mistress Hewitson? For God's sake, speak! The dog has not injured you, I trust?"

Henrietta did not at first reply. She was as white as ashes, and her eyes glittered with a strange mingling of courage and of desperate fear. "Send away the dog," she cried at last; "send away the dog. I cannot bear to see her," and then burst into tears.

Roger said one word, and Maida instantly flew toward the castle. He was about to follow in the same direction in order to procure some water, but the girl caught him by the arm, and held him so that he could not move.

"Calm yourself, I entreat you," he said, fancying she was still under the influence of terror. "No wonder that even your high courage has given way. Let me call Nora. She will help you to compose yourself."

"Call no one," Henrietta gasped.

"Call no one; but tell me, is there not a priest and some other outlaws in hiding on the chieftain's rock?"

{456}

"What then?" he asked, the blood suddenly rushing to his heart as he thought of Nellie.

"What then?" she repeated fiercely; "because, (oh! that I had known it but an hour ago,) because death is there, and treachery and woe! But whither are you going?" she cried, following him as he broke suddenly from her grasp, and began to retrace his way toward the pier.

"Whither? whither?" he answered, like one speaking in his sleep. "There, of course. Where else? My God, that I should have left Nellie there!"

"The girl!" cried Henrietta; "and you have been there already, and have had time to row all this way back? My God, then it will be too late to save her. The church must be in flames ere now."

O'More made no reply, but leaped at once into the boat. "What do you want?" he asked, almost savagely, as Henrietta followed him. "What do you want here--you, the child of her assassin?"

"I want to save her, and, still more, to save my father, if I can, from this most fearful guilt," she answered promptly. Roger made no further opposition. Once fairly out of harbor, he rowed with all the energy of despair, and Henrietta helped him nobly. They were obliged to trust entirely to their oars, and the delay was maddening. Roger never cast a single glance toward the spot where all his soul was centred, but Henrietta could not resist a look once or twice in that direction.

Suddenly she cried out.

"What is it?" he asked nervously; "what is it?"

"They have fired the church," she said, in smothered tones. "There is a cloud of smoke; and now--my God!--a jet of flame going through it to the sky!"

He made no reply, but he bent to the oar until the bead-drops of mingled agony and toil stood thick upon his brow.

"God help them! They must be trying to escape," she muttered yet again, as something like a shot or two of musketry reached her ear.

Faster he rowed, and faster. The boat leaped like a living thing along the waters. They were close to the cliff at last. Overhead, the sky was hidden by a canopy of heavy smoke, with here and there a streak of fire flashing like forked lightning athwart it. Underneath, the water lay black as ink, in the reflection of the clouded heavens, as the boat rushed through it. One more effort, and they were in the cove--another, and they were flung high and dry upon the beach. Roger jumped out without a word. Was he in time? or was he not? His whole soul was engrossed in that fearful question.

"What are you going to do?" asked Henrietta, uncertain as to what her own share in the enterprise was to be. He had been searching in the bottom of the boat for something; but he looked up then with a kindling eye, and said:

"Will you be true to the end?"

"So help me God, I will!" she answered in that quiet tone which tells all the more of steady courage that it has no touch of bluster in it. He had found what he wanted now--a cutlass and a coil of rope--and answered rapidly:

"Take the boat out of this, then, and wait beneath the cliffs. Wait till I come, or until yonder tower falls, as fall it must, and soon. After that, you may go home in peace. Yes, peace! For happen what may, your soul, at any rate, will be guiltless of this day's murder."

He shoved the boat back into deep water as he finished speaking, and then, without even looking back to see if Henrietta followed his directions, strode rapidly up the cliffs.

{457}

## Chapter XI.

Happily unconscious of the peril by which her own life was so speedily to be placed in jeopardy, Nellie stood for a few minutes after Roger left her, watching his progress through the water, and speculating anxiously enough upon the nature of the summons which had been delivered to him by Paudeen. In spite of his apparent coolness, there had been something in the way in which he had almost forced her to leave him--something in the haste with which he had given her his last directions--something (if it must be confessed) in the very fact of his having rushed off without even a parting word or look, which made her suspect the danger to be more real and immediate than he wished her to suppose it. And now, as she watched him bending to the oar as if his very life depended on his speed, suspicion seemed all at once to grow up into certainty, and she bitterly regretted the shyness which had prevented her insisting on returning with him to the island. Regrets, however, were now in vain, and remembering that, if she delayed much longer, she would in all probability be too late for Mass, and so lose the only object for which she had remained behind, she turned her face resolutely toward the path pointed out by Roger. It was less a path indeed than a mere narrow space left by the natural receding of the rocks and loose boulders, which lay scattered about in all directions. Such as it was, it led Nellie in a zigzag fashion upward toward the cliffs, turning and twisting so suddenly and so often, that she could hardly ever see more than a yard or two before her, while the boulders on either side, being generally higher than her head, and the intervals between them filled up with tall heather and scrubby brushwood, she might as well, for all that she could have seen beyond, have been walking between a couple of stone walls. The congregation had in all probability already reached the church, or else they were coming to it by another path; for not the sound of a voice or of a footstep either before or behind her could she hear, though she paused occasionally to listen. Once indeed, but only once, at a sudden opening among the boulders, she fancied she saw something like the glistening of a spear in the brushwood underneath, and a minute or two afterward the air seemed tremulous with a low sighing sound, as if some one were whispering within a few yards of her ear. Nevertheless, when she paused again in some trepidation to reconnoitre, everything seemed so lonely and so still around her, that she was obliged to confess that her imagination must have been playing her sad tricks. The light which she had seen was, in all probability, a mere effect of sunshine on some of the more polished rocks, while the sough and sigh of the waters, as they lapped quietly on the beach below, might easily have assumed, in that distance and in the calm summer air, the semblance of a human whisper. Once she had satisfied herself upon this point, she resolved not to be frightened from her purpose by any nervous fancies; and stimulating her courage by the reflection that, if an enemy really were lurking near, her best chance of safety would be the church, in which her countrymen and women were already gathered, she toiled steadily upward until she reached the platform upon which it was erected. {458} A sudden turn in the path brought her face to face with it almost before she fancied that she was near, and she only comprehended how heartily she had been frightened on the way, by the sense of relief which this discovery imparted. It was a low, mean-looking edifice enough, with the hermit's cell built aslant against the wall, and forming in fact a kind of porch, through which alone it could be entered. From the moment it first came in sight, the path had narrowed gradually until there was barely room at last for the passing of a single person, and while it appeared to Nellie to descend, the rocks on either side rose higher, slanting even somewhat over, so as partially to impede the light. From this circumstance she was led to fancy that both cell and church had been built originally below what was now the present surface of the land, a fact which, joined to its desolate, ruinous condition, might easily have pointed it out to Roger as a fitting place for the concealment of his friends. The low door of the porch was closed and fastened upon the inside, so that she was obliged, very reluctantly, to knock on it for admittance. A moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?"

"For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.

"Enter, then, in the name of God," the voice replied; and a strong hand being put forth, she was drawn within the building as easily and unresistingly as if she had been a child, and the door was again closed behind her. The cell into which she had been thus unceremoniously introduced was very dark, and she could only just perceive that the person who had played the part of porter was a tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and therefore, she concluded, one of the outlaws, of whose residence in the building Roger had informed her.

"You have been long a-coming," said the man. "Why is not the chieftain with you?"

"How do you know that he brought me hither?" asked Nellie, startled by the knowledge he seemed to have of her proceedings.

"We keep a good look-out seaward upon Sunday mornings," he answered significantly. "Why did he go back?"

"A message--summons from the island," said Nellie; not well knowing how much or how little it would be prudent to communicate. "It was nothing of any consequence, I believe; and he said you were not to wait. He will probably be here before all is over."

"Good," said the man; "then follow me." He went on as he spoke, Nellie stumbling as well as she could after him in the dark, until they reached the thick matting of dried grass which separated the church from the porch outside. Here the descent became so sudden that she would inevitably have been precipitated face foremost into the midst of the congregation, if her conductor had not caught her by the arm in time to prevent this catastrophe, and landed her safely on the other side. The interior of the building, as Nellie saw it in that dim light, had a much nearer resemblance to a ruinous barn than to a place of Christian worship. As Roger had already told her, it had been so long dismantled and forgotten as a church that the people had come to look upon it simply as a storehouse for their winter firing, a fact amply attested by the piles of drift and brushwood which rose in all directions, blocking up the narrow windows, and forming a gigantic stack against the wall behind the altar. {459} This latter was of stone, facing the door by which she had just entered, and so placed that there was a considerable distance between it and the wall beyond.

In this desolate-looking building about twenty or thirty people were assembled, most of them women and young girls, with a sprinkling of old men and half-a-dozen younger ones, in whom Nellie fancied she recognized the outlawed soldiers of the royal army. Two or three of these last stole a curious glance upon her, as she moved onward toward the altar; but the greater part of the congregation were so absorbed in earnest and loudly-uttered prayer, that they seemed absolutely unconscious of the entrance of a stranger. Passing quietly, so as not to disturb them in their devotions, Nellie made her way to a spot from whence she had a full view of the priest as he sat, a little on one side, engaged in hearing the confessions of those who presented themselves for that purpose. He was in truth a hero in Nellie's eyes--the best of all heroes--a Christian hero. He had stood by that brave old bishop who had gone to death for an act of patriotism which, in the old heroic days of Rome, would have set him as a demigod upon pagan altars. Quiet and self-possessed, he had knelt, amid the thunders of the battle-field, to hear the confessions of the wounded soldiers. He had plunged into the fell atmospheres of plague and fever, braving death in its worst and most loathsome forms in the exercise of his ministerial functions. He had buried the dead--he had consoled the widow and orphan, made such by the reckless cruelty of man; and now, when he had exhausted all the more heroic forms of service to his Lord, he had come hither, like that Lord himself--like the good Shepherd of the Gospel--to gather up the young lambs into his arms, and to comfort a conquered and stricken people; to pour the consolations of religion upon hearts wrung and disconsolate in human sorrow; to preach of heaven to men forsaken of the earth, and to teach them, houseless and hapless as they were, to lift up those eyes and hands, which had been lifted in vain to their brother man for mercy, higher and higher still, even to that Almighty Father to whose paternal heart the life of the very least of his little ones was of such unspeakable and unthought-of value that not a hair might fall from one of their heads without his express permission. Thoughts like these passed rapidly through Nellie's mind as she watched the old man bending reverently and compassionately to receive, in the exercise of his ministerial functions, each new tale of sin or sorrow which, one after another, the poor people round him came to pour into his sympathizing ear.

We have called him "old," for his hair was white and his face was ploughed into many wrinkles; yet Nellie could not help suspecting that the look of wearied, patient age upon his features was less the effect of years, than of the toil and suffering by which those years had been utilized and made fruitful in the service of his Master. Altogether she felt drawn toward him by a feeling of reverent admiration, which would probably have found vent in words, if he had not been so completely occupied in his ministerial duties as to make it simply impossible to interrupt him. For in a congregation deprived, as this had been, of a pastor for many months, there was of course much to be done ere the commencement of the Sunday service. {460} There were confessions to be heard, and infants to be baptized, and more than one young couple--who had patiently awaited the coming of a lawful minister for the reception of that sacrament--to be united in holy wedlock. At last, however, all this was over, and Nellie had just made up her mind to go and speak to him in her turn, when, to her infinite annoyance, he rose from his place and commenced robing himself at the altar. Kneeling down again, therefore, she endeavored to withdraw her thoughts from all outward things, in order to fix them entirely upon the coming service. In spite, however, of her most earnest efforts, she felt nervous and unhappy at the prolonged absence of O'More, and she could not help envying the people round her, as with all the natural fervor of the Celtic temperament, they abandoned themselves to prayer; prostrating, groaning, beating their breasts, and praying up aloud with as much naive indifference to the vicinity of their neighbor, as if each individual in presence there imagined that he and his God were the sole occupants of the church. Poor Nellie could obtain no such blest absorption from her cares. Her eyes would glance toward the door for the coming of Roger, and her ears would listen for his footsteps; once or twice, indeed, she felt quite certain that she heard him moving quietly behind the screen of matting, which shut in the church from the porch outside, and became, in consequence, nervously anxious to see him lift it and take his promised place beside her. He never came, however, yet the sounds continued, accompanied at times by a slight waving of the screen, as if a hand had accidentally touched it; and this occurred so often that Nellie began at last to be seriously alarmed. She thought of Paudeen's mysterious message to his chieftain, and her own half extinguished fancy of having seen a spear among the brushwood recurred vividly to her mind. What if she had seen rightly, after all? What if an enemy were really lurking in the neighborhood; or, worse still, crouching behind that terrible screen, ready to massacre the congregation as they passed through it to the open air after service? The thought was too terrible for solitary endurance, and she was just about to lessen the burden by imparting it to her nearest neighbor, when she found herself forestalled by a heavy, stifling cloud of smoke, which rolled suddenly through the church and roused every creature present to a sense of coming danger. There was a rustle and a stir, and then they all stood up, men and women and little children, gazing with wild eyes and whitened faces on each other, uncertain of the "how or from whence" of the threatened peril.

The priest alone seemed to pay no attention to the circumstance; nevertheless he felt and comprehended far better than they did the nature of the fate awaiting them, and hurried on to the conclusion of the Mass, which was by this time, fortunately, well-nigh over.

He had hardly finished the communion prayer before the heat and suffocation had become unbearable. In an agony of terror, the people made a rush to the gates, and tore down the screen of matting which separated the church from the porch beyond.

Then arose a wild cry of despair, filling the church from floor to ceiling--the cry of human beings caught in a snare from whence, except by a cruel death, there was no escaping. The porch was already a blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof, with fagots burning in all the fury that pitch and tar, and other combustibles flung liberally among them, were calculated to produce. {461} These, then, were the sounds which had disturbed Nellie during Mass. The enemy had profited by the rapt devotion of these poor people to build up, unheard and unsuspected, their death-pile in the porch, after which doughty deed they had retired, closing the gates behind them, and trusting the rest to the terrible nature of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.

To attempt a passage through that sea of fire in its first wild fury would have been instant death; and amid the cries of women and children, many of whom were well-nigh trampled to death beneath the feet of their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed backward.

Then came another horror. An unhappy girl, one of the foremost of the throng, in her eagerness to escape, had rushed so far into the porch that her garments caught fire, and, mad with pain and fear, she flung herself face downward upon a heap of driftwood near her. It was all that was needed to complete the work of destruction. The wood, dry and combustible as tinder, ignited instantly, and in two minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain some of the men, with the priest at their head, leaped on it in a wild effort to trample it out before it could spread further. As fast as it was stifled in one place it broke out in another, the subtle element gliding along the walls and seizing upon stack after stack of wood with an ease and speed that mocked at all their efforts to extinguish it. No words can paint the horrors of the scene that followed! Heavy volumes of black smoke, ever and anon rolling upward from some new spot upon which the fire had fastened, at times shut out the light of day, and made the darkness almost palpable to the senses. Fire, bright and angry, flashing at first here and there at intervals, like forked lightning, through the gloom; then coming thicker and quicker, as it grew with what it fed on, hurrying and leaping in its exultant fury, licking up and devouring with hungry tongues all that opposed its progress--now spreading itself in sheets of molten flame, now contracting into red, hissing streams, bearing a terrible resemblance to fiery serpents, but never for a moment slackening in its work of woe, winding hither and thither, and in and out, and fastening with all the malice and tenacity of a conscious creature upon everything combustible within its reach, until the very rafters overhead were wreathed in flame--and underneath that awful canopy the panting, shrieking crowd, struggling in that sulphurous atmosphere of smoke and fire, rushing backward and forward, they knew not whither, in search of a safety they knew too well they could never find; for even while obeying the animal instinct to fly from danger, there was not a creature there who did not feel to the very inmost marrow of his being, that unless a miracle were interposed to save him, he was doomed then and there to die.

Nellie was the only person in the church, perhaps, with the sole exception of the pastor, who made no vain effort at escaping. Driven by the swaying of the others, after their first rush to the door, backward toward the altar, she had remained there quietly ever since, praying, or trying to pray, and shutting eyes and ears as much as might be to the terrible sights and sounds around her. Accident had, in fact, brought her to the only spot in the building where safety was for the moment feasible.

{462}

The altar was built, as we have already said, of stone, and being placed at some distance from any of the walls, the space in front, though stifling from heat and smoke, was clear of fire, and consequently of immediate danger.

Hither, therefore, the priest, who, having done all that man could do toward the stifling of the flames, now felt that another and a higher duty--the duty of his priestly office--must needs be exercised, endeavored to collect his flock, and hither, at his bidding, one by one they came, every hope of rescue extinguished in their bosoms, and scorched, and bruised, and half-suffocated as they were, lay down at his feet to die. There was no loud shrieking now--the silence of utter exhaustion had fallen upon them all, and only a low wail of pain broke now and then from the white, parched lips of some poor dying creature, as if in human expostulation with the sputtering and hissing of the flames that scorched him. Once, and only once, a less fitting sound was heard--a curse, deep but loud, on the foe that had so ruthlessly contrived their ruin.

It reached the ear of the priest as he stood before the altar, sometimes praying up aloud, sometimes with look and voice endeavoring to calm his people, waiting and watching with wise, heroic patience for the precise moment when, all hopes of human life abandoned, he might lead them to thoughts of that which is eternal.

But that muttered curse seemed to rouse another and a different spirit in his bosom, and filled with holy and apostolic anger, he turned at once upon the man who spoke it.

"Sinner!" he cried, "be silent! Dare you to go to God with a curse upon your lips? What if he curse you in return? What if he plunge you, for that very word, from this fire, which will pass with time, into that which is eternal and endures for ever? O my children, my children!" cried the good old man, opening wide his arms, as if he would fain have embraced his weeping flock and sheltered them all from pain and sorrow on his paternal bosom, "see you not, indeed, that you must die!--with foes outside, with devouring flames within, all hope of life is simple folly. Die you must. So man decrees; but God, more merciful, still leaves a choice--not as to death, but as to the spirit in which you meet it. You may die angry and reviling, as the blaspheming thief, or you may die (O blessed thought!) as Jesus died--peace in your hearts and a prayer for your very foes upon your lips. Have pity on yourselves, my children; have pity on me, who, as your pastor, will have to answer for your souls, as for my own, to God--and choose with Jesus. Put aside all rancor from your hearts. Remember that what our foes have done to us, we, each in our measure, have done by our sins to Jesus. Pray for them as he did. Weep, as he did for _your_ sins (not _his_) upon the cross, and kneel at once, that while there yet is time I may give you, in his name and by his power, that pardon which will send you safe and hopeful to the judgment-seat of God."

Clear, calm, and quiet, amid the confusion round him, rose the voice of that good shepherd, sent hither, as it seemed, for no other purpose than to perish with his flock; and like a message of mercy from on high his words fell upon their failing hearts. They obeyed him to the letter. Hushed was every murmur, stifled every cry of pain, and, prostrate on their faces, they waited with solemn silence the word which they knew would follow. And it was said at last. {463} With streaming eyes, and hands uplifted toward that heaven to which he and his poor children all were speeding, the priest pronounced that _Ego te absolvo_, which speaking to each individual soul as if meant for it alone, yet brought pardon, peace, and healing to them all. Something like a low "Amen," something like a thrill of relief from overladen bosoms, followed; and then, almost at the same instant, came a loud cry from the outside of the church--a crashing of doors--a rush--a struggle--a scattering of brands from the half-burned-out fagots in the porch--and, blackened with smoke and scorched with fire, O'More leaped like an apparition into the midst of the people. A shout almost of triumph greeted his appearance, for they felt as if he _must_ have brought safety with him. It seemed, in fact, as if only by a miracle he could have been there at all. Unarmed as he was, he had rushed through the English soldiers, and they, having all along imagined him to be in the church with their less noble victims, were taken so completely by surprise that they suffered him to pass at first almost without a blow. By the time they had recovered themselves, their leaders had staid their hands. It was better for all their purposes that he should rush to death of his own accord than that they should have any ostensible share in the business. No further opposition, therefore, being offered to his progress he easily undid the gates, which were only slightly barricaded on the outside, and having cleared the porch at the risk of instant suffocation to himself, he now stood calling upon Nellie, and vainly endeavoring to discover her in the blinding atmosphere of smoke around him. She was still where she had been from the beginning--at the foot of the altar, faint and half-dead with heat and fear. But the sound of his voice seemed to call her back to life, and, with a cry like a frightened child, she half-rose from her recumbent posture. Faint as was that cry, he heard it, and catching a glimpse of her white face, rushed toward her. In another moment he had her in his arms, wrapped carefully in his heavy cloak, and shouting to all to follow and keep close, he rushed behind the altar.

Half an hour before this had been the hottest and most dangerous position in the church, but O'More had well calculated his chances. The real danger now was from the roof, which, having been burning for some time, might fall at any moment. Below, the fire, having rapidly exhausted the light material upon which it had fed its fury, was gradually dying out, and boldly scattering the fagots upon either side as he moved on, Roger made his way good to the only spot in the building from whence escape was possible. Here the floor sank considerably below the general surface, and dashing down a heap of brushwood which still lay smouldering near, he lay bare an aperture effected in the wall itself, and going right through it to the cliffs beyond.

Through this he passed at once, carrying Nellie as easily as if she had been a baby, and landing her safely on the other side. The people saw, and with a wild cry of hope rushed forward. Even as they did so the roof began to totter. They knew it, and maddened by the near approach of death, pressed one upon another, blocking up the way and destroying every chance of safety by their wild efforts to attain it.

{464}

In the midst of this confusion, a shower as of red-hot fire poured down from the yielding rafters. Then came another cry (oh! so different from the last)--a cry of grief and terror mingled--then a crashing sound and a heavy fall--and then a silence more terrible even than that cry of terror--a ghastly, death-like silence, only broken by the hissing and crackling of the flames above, and the deep sough of the sea below--and all was over.

To Be Continued.

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Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.

Science And Faith.

Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion, By M. Guizot.

Conclusion.