XI.

Thou wilt return, my Irish bird-- I, Colum, do foretell it thee. Would thou couldst speak as thou hast heard To all I love--O happy bird! At home in Eri soon to be!

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{59}

Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.

## Chapter VII.

Are there any souls who can read the gospels as they would a common history of an heroic being? Whose frames do not thrill at the sublime words the anointed Saviour uttered? Whose hearts do not glow with an unearthly warmth at the touching incidents which mark the divine footsteps? Who see in the miracles only a temporary relief from natural ailments? Who feel in the tremendous agony of the passion only the ordinary tide of human emotion in contemplating suffering? Such as these will not sympathize with Lotis, as she rose from the cleansing waters with one sole aspiration in her heart; one firm, unchangeable purpose in her will; one object of interest for her intellect; one single love to fill every affection she was conscious of. Long ago she had sought the truth, the light, the life, the way. She possessed them now; it remained for her to form herself upon the model, to think his thoughts, to act his deeds, to live in his sight, and be crucified in him; and all because she felt that here on earth it was the only life worth having, the only love worth loving. The perversion of the world had become to her the necessary result of its having forsaken God; and because it has forsaken God, and cannot recognize truth, it will ever persecute good; and they that live godly in Jesus Christ must necessarily suffer persecution--the persecution to which a blessing is promised. Day and night did Lotis meditate on the words of God; nor was it long ere she desired to bring them into action. After the example of the Christians of Jerusalem, she had placed her resources at the feet of the Bishop of Athens, and now she placed her services under his direction. But there was one thought that haunted her, and often she uttered one word in his presence; that word was Chione.

"And what do you think can be done for Chione, my child?" asked the good bishop one day.

"I do not know, father, (so let me call you, I beg;) I do not know; but I understand her struggle now, which I did not when I sat with her on the ruins; I see what she meant when she could not give up Magas, or the applause of the world. She dreaded slavery because she was not free in soul. Would I could win the interior freedom for her by wearing the exterior chain. Father, let me beg Chione's freedom, bodily freedom; hers is not a spirit to be coerced into discipline. Surveillance only exasperates her."

"I believe it, my child, when it is not of her own choosing. Remember, however, she obeys Magas."

"Because he flatters her, fosters her pride, and maintains her in her station; besides, she loves him, and a woman easily obeys where she loves."

"She has bound herself to follow Christ."

"But she does not feel free to do it. Perhaps, were exterior freedom granted to her, she might follow what she knows to be truth. I shall never forget her appearance in the ruins of Tiryns when first I accosted her. Chione has not lost her faith."

{60}

"Faith without works is dead," [Footnote 23] said the bishop; "for works are the expression of our love, of that divine charity without which we are nothing. [Footnote 24] Though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, we become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals."

[Footnote 23: James ii. 20.]

[Footnote 24: I Cor. xiii. I, 2.]

"Chione knows this," said Lotis; "she feels it intensely; it is this feeling which occasions the struggle which she says is destroying her."

"Well, she shall have her freedom, my daughter, though I doubt its effecting a good result. It is scarcely in the redemptive order. Our Lord cured those only whose souls were turned to him. [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 25: "And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief." Matt. xiii. 58.]

Men try to penetrate the secrets of matter, and call their guesses science. The action of mind they observe not, or they would see that it obeys laws as unfalteringly as the insensate stone. A soul perfectly united to God is endowed with power that seems supernatural to those who know not that 'soul' is of divine origin, and even in its primal attributes towers above matter. The action of such a soul on one open to its influences is miraculous, as all action of grace is; but it was once Adam's privilege by conferred gift at creation; it is now the Christian's right, purchased for him by Christ. The apostles, as you know, heal those whom their shadow falls upon, not of their own power, but by virtue of the Holy Spirit that dwells in them; but the power of God thus manifests itself only when the recipient has at least some degree of recipient power, obtained by grace also. Christ is silent before his unbelieving judges, works no miracle for Herod; yet he cannot exist without grace flowing from him; but grace falling on souls who will not receive it, but hardens them the more. [Footnote 26] This is why an apostate is ever harder to reconvert than one who has never received the faith; this is why we are forbidden to cast our pearls before swine; this is why I tremble for Chione. Remorse was busy at her heart when you left her. If she listens to the voice of God thus speaking within her, she may yet be a saint; if she rejects the proffered voice, I _fear_, I fear the effect of grace rejected in such a mind as hers; it will demonstrate itself with no ordinary power."

[Footnote 26: "And God hardened the heart of Pharao." Exodus x. 27.]

"At the words she heard at Ephesus she fainted away," said Lotis.

"Better," answered the bishop, "better had she thrown herself at the feet of the apostle, and said simply, 'I repent me of my sin.' Of what service to her was her remorse? It stopped her eloquence, paralyzed her tongue. She could no longer mystify her hearers by vain terms of an unintelligible philosophy of which she held the key in her hand, though she would not use it. From what you have told me, it was remorse, and not repentance, she felt."

"Oh! that she might be saved, though it were as by fire," fervently ejaculated Lotis.

The bishop looked at her face beaming with heavenly charity, and the spirit of prophecy awoke within him.

"Lotis," said he, "all Christians are more or less sureties for one another, and must bear each other's burdens, even as our Master became surety for each one of us, and bore our sins upon the cross. It is a fearful burden Chione has to endure, more especially for one of her disposition. 'Twill be, indeed, a saving as if by fire, when salvation comes to her. {61} Say, would you be willing to help her bear her burden? If the flames are kindled, and she shrinks from them, will you pass through them in her place?"

"To save her? Yes! Indeed I would! Father, I love Chione."

"Then offer yourself to God for her, my daughter, and strengthen yourself by prayer for the suffering you must look forward to. Chione will be granted to expiatory love."

......

## Chapter VIII.

"Now, my Chione, we will go to Athens."

"No, not to Athens, Magas; anywhere rather than to Athens; I beg of you not to take me to Athens."

"Why, what caprice is this? Where in all the world will you find yourself likely to be appreciated so well as at Athens? What audience more intelligent, more refined, more susceptible of sublime emotions? I love Athens; you know I do, and you may judge of the depth of my love for you, that, to ensure your freedom, I have kept from it so long; but now, no one has a claim upon you save myself; so we will go to Athens."

"I thought you had set your heart on going to Rome."

"That was only when I deemed Athens was out of the question. But my--my Chione, you are free; we may go anywhere. My estates are suffering from want of my presence; besides, I will settle some of the revenues on you. You must come to Athens with me."

It was very unwillingly that Chione acceded; but what could she do? Was she less a slave now than before? Sometimes she thought she was more so; for had she gone to the Lady Damaris, resumed the practice of her religion, which clung to her inner being, although outwardly she gave no sign of faith, she knew she would have been not only freed, but placed in a position to render her independent of Magas. And why did she not do this now--why? Her fame had preceded her to the city, and she resolved to prove worthy of the reputation she had acquired. Poetry, art, mythic types, and Christian dogmas, blended in euphonic union in the discourses she delivered, while her impassioned verse thrilled every heart; everywhere she was greeted as the modern Sappho, everywhere honored as the tenth muse; and at last the acclamations of her fellow-citizens called her to the very temple of the muses in which we were first introduced to her, there to receive the crown of music, eloquence, and poesy. How could she refuse? How could she renounce the world? ... The throng was immense; not only the _élite_ of Athens were there, but strangers came in crowds to hear the celebrated Leontium. The small temple had been somewhat injudiciously chosen, since not one half of the crowding throng could enter. The festival had been proposed as a private tribute of friendship from the most exalted citizens of Athens to their adorable muse; but Leontium (as her public name ran) was no longer a private person; it was found impossible to distance the crowds; and hastily a platform was erected outside the building in the sacred grove, that the public might be accommodated and have a chance of hearing their favorite sing the glories of Athens.

We will not attempt to describe the preparatory exercises; the beautiful intertwinings and graceful wreathings of the various myths represented on that day, when all the energies of the city seemed exhausted to impart glory to the classical allegories that were about to disappear from among mankind for ever. {62} There was an elegance, a chastity about the performance never witnessed before, and an influence was felt impending that belonged not to the types before them. To the superior taste of Magas and Chione some of this atmosphere of exaltation was doubtless due; yet the audience felt as if something more than this was around them; as if the divinities themselves were present, and insisting on receiving the homage that for so many ages had been presented as their right.

But now it was nearly over. The walls of Thebes had risen to the lyre of Amphion, while the slow but untiring Hours had followed to its soft music the glorious chariot of Apollo; and so artfully was all contrived that the spectators could not discover by what magic the stones were moved, or the figures representing the hours supported as they moved on the mists away.

Hermes, instructing Cadmus in the art of letters; Minerva, introducing the distaff into the household; and Ceres, teaching man to sow the corn; all these had followed with appropriate poetry and music, with many others of a similar description. And then, as if to heighten the effect by contrast, came a hush, a calm, a silence; the stage was covered with clouds; the incense rendered every object indistinct; low, melancholy tones uttered at intervals, kept expectation on the stretch; then suddenly a blast of trumpets seemed to clear away the mists; and the clouds receding, disclosed Aurora opening the gates of the morning to the music of the spheres, who then passed slowly out of sight as a far more lovely vision broke upon the spectators--Venus Urania, borne by the graces into the company of the muses, descending from the skies to greet the votaries who, garlanded and wreathed, were waiting to receive her in a burst of celestial song. The illusion was complete; the daughter of Coelus and of Light was on her first appearance greeted with a tumult of applause; and as in wavy, measured movements, encircled by the graces, she floated down to earth, scattering her bright inspirations in sparks of fire upon the muses who were kindling into enthusiasm at her approach, the whole assembly caught the melody as it rose from the inspired sisterhood:

Beautiful daughter of Coelus and Light, Coming in glory to gladden our sight. Vision of loveliness! star of the day! Grateful and glad is the homage we pay. All girt by the graces, thou comest to earth; With joy and with music we welcome thy birth. Oh! stay, thou sweet goddess, to brighten our life, To banish our sorrows, to still every strife. O Venus Urania! we call upon thee, Inspirer of gladness, of ecstasy!

The singers were the multitude; the sound of the voices of the muses, or those who personified them, was lost in the thrilling greeting which that multitude gave to their favorite--Chione.

Dressed in a dazzling robe spangled with gold, crowned with rays so artificially disposed that they seemed to emit light as she was descending, Chione came forward as the Venus Urania of the Temple.

The throng hushed as she raised her arm to speak; among the thousands there, scarce a sound was heard; the very breathing was suppressed, for fear one tone of that eloquent voice should be unheard. "My friends," she began.

Suddenly a low, piercing wail broke upon the throng, like the moan of a distressed spirit, so unearthly was the sound. Again it rang through the echoes, under ground, over head. Chione started, and the throng was awed. {63} Then, in the fearful silence, these words were heard. Distinctly they came forth, though uttered in a wild, unearthly cadence, as if they were spoken by one of another world:

Once for silver, now for gold, Is the Lord of glory sold! Woe, deep woe! Judas went to his own place; Nor shall time the sin efface. He must every joy forego! For ever, woe! [Footnote 27]

[Footnote 27: It is on record that, at the first preaching of the Gospel, numerous signs, sounds, and words were uttered in the pagan temples, at the times of worship, to the confusion of the multitudes therein assembled. I leave the fact as I found it, to the construction of my readers, each one for himself!]

Every heart was chilled; Chione paled and trembled. Magas sprang to her relief. "It is but a trick of your own devising; you are paid back in your own coin. Compose yourself, it is nothing." The crowd was too dense to allow a search to be made. There was a long pause, but at length Chione was called upon to proceed. Her theme was, "The Glory of Athens--of Athens, the Civilizer of the Nations."

The tremor which was still slightly apparent in the frame of the Venus Urania when led forward by Magas, (now habited as Apollo, that he might consistently bear a part in the scene, and watch over any demonstration that should again affect the goddess he worshipped with so intense a devotion,) gave an increased interest to her appearance; the look of appeal she seemed to cast over that mighty throng, as if to claim protection from some invisible enemy of her peace, imparted an additional tenderness to the sympathies of the audience. Chione regained her courage, as she inhaled the moral atmosphere that surrounded her; she forced back the unwelcome shades of thought that had been called from their tombs, where she intended them to lie buried for ever. She gazed around. The scene at the back of the stage had been changed. The citadel of Athens had been introduced, and hovering above it was Minerva, the tutelary divinity of the place. Chione was evidently surprised; perhaps again she suspected an interruption; but Magas whispered, "By my command," and she at length made a gesture, as if to begin. There was, however, a marked change in her inspiration; she was no longer the commanding genius of the temple. It was evident to all that she was under some irrepressible, some irresistible influence. Magas looked anxious; his whole soul was bound up in Chione's success. She was his pride, his glory, his Aspasia, his Sappho. Never yet had he known her to fail; and he watched her words as if his very life depended upon them. She commenced:

"Athenians, you have asked me to speak to you of the glory of our city. Behold it! Wisdom is watching over its citadel. The glorious Minerva, issuing from the head of the immortal father of gods and men, presides over the welfare of Athens--has ever presided over it! This is our crown, this our glory. The history of this our Athens, is unlike the history of any other city in the world; for it forms a chain of glory, a long-continued tissue of renown. Her history is, a web of varied dyes, introducing characters of every degree of virtue, talent, heroism, or nobility.

"Time was, Athenians, that this beautiful land, now covered with fertile fields and richly ornamented villas; now the splendid resort of intelligence, philosophy, and science--time was, that Athens, the enlightened, the refined, the artistic; Athens, whose works of beauty will supply all time with models; Athens, whose pathways throughout the whole region round, even to the Piraeus, are adorned with statues of her illustrious sons--the poets, painters, warriors, and statesmen she has produced; Athens, within whose citadel arises the Parthenon, which would itself be the wonder of the world, were not that wonder exhausted on beholding the gigantic statue of our tutelary-goddess which it contains; time was, that Athens was a drear and sandy waste, the resort of savages who knew not the use of fire--who were clothed in skins, and lived on roots and acorns. [Footnote 28] {64} But Minerva looked with complacency on the spot she had selected for the dwelling-place of her chosen people. She sent Theseus to Attica, to clear the land from the pirates that infested it; to enact laws, and teach the uncultured men to submit to righteous rule. It was first the law of force, though not unmixed; for men unused to government must be coerced until their powers of mind expand; until they feel what lawful government can effect; until they know that lawlessness is not true liberty. But not long was Athens ruled by one. Athenae, Queen, who loves this citadel, had other views. Her chosen city was to bear the glorious palm of an enlightened freedom.

"A deed unparalleled in the annals of nations occurred. Codrus, her king, inspired by that sublime divinity who hath care of Athens, devoted himself to destruction, that the favored city of Minerva might be saved. Codrus died! more sublime in his death than the loftiest monarch ever was in life. Who does not bow before the shade of Codrus? Who does not feel that, by his patriotism, his disinterestedness, his heroism, he laid the foundation of his country's greatness?

His death--our life!

"Bear with me; I must pause a moment here."

Music filled up that pause; but music so solemn, so grand, that the audience felt as if the spirit of the mighty dead were hovering over them. Chione resumed:

"To so great a hero, it was impossible to find a worthy successor! 'Man is not fit for irresponsible power. Too commonly he uses it but to give the reign to his own passions, while he represses in his subjects the development of those lofty qualities of soul which distinguish man from the brutes that scour our plains. No other king ever wielded the sceptre in Athens; for Minerva intended that a people should be formed, and not a single individual. She wished a body of men to rise to greatness, not a crowned monarch to acquire renown by the extirpation of millions.

"Athenae loved her children, and she gave them a law-giver whose first act relieved the poor of their burdens; released them from the oppression of the rich. Solon knew that the poor are the sinews of a nation; he knew too, that there is a point in which the crushing power of debt destroys the qualities that form the man, the free-man so dear to wisdom; and Athens shook off this oppression beneath his righteous sway. The laws of Solon shall be honored as long as rectitude itself is honored, because they recognize that principle of individual development which alone can form a great people. Particular modes of bringing out this principle may change, may pass into other modes; but the principle itself is eternal, it is worthy of Solon, worthy of the descendant of the immortal Codrus; it was a direct inspiration of that wisdom which has so unweariedly watched over the formation of the Athenian people.

{65}

"Such a principle was it to which we owe the sages and the heroes that adorn our annals. What heart does not thrill on hearing the name of Miltiades, of Themistocles, of Cimon, or Aristides? Who does not glow with rapture at beholding the works of Phidias, of Praxiteles, Apelles? Who can study with Anaxagoras, converse with Socrates, or speculate with Plato and Aristotle, nor feel the divine inspiration communicated to themselves? Who can read the annals of Xenophon and Thucydides, without feeling proud that he himself is a citizen of Athens; and which of us has not wept tears of ecstatic emotion at beholding a tragedy of Euripides or of Sophocles? What country in the world could ever boast of such a galaxy of celebrated names?

"Tell me not that these men were not all of Athenian origin. What if some few of them first saw the light in some other city than that of Athens. Not the less to Athens do they owe their genius and their fame; none the less from her did they receive their inspiration, their culture, and development. The influence of Athens is not limited to her own domain. Her great men live for ever to kindle thoughts of greatness throughout the world. Many far distant, both in time and space, will, to endless ages, love to muse with Pericles on the banks of the Ilissus, while he is planning those exquisite creations which have linked his name with all that is sublime and beautiful in human art. Many will rejoice with him as gently he sinks to rest, sustained by the sublime consciousness that, during the whole of his long career, he had never caused an Athenian to shed a tear.

"His career was for humanity, and in this he resembled Athens; for unlike the vulgar glory that crowns the conqueror's arms, the boast of Athens is that, although so many deeds of prowess attest the heroic valor of her children, yet never, never did she enter on an aggressive war for the mere sake of conquest, for the vain-glorious motive of adding by injustice another territory to her own. No, Athens has shed her benefits abroad; has made known to the nations all the virtues of the earth. She has proved herself capable of great acts, alike in war as in peace. Her genius is godlike, it is diffusive. The very site Minerva chose for her citadel betokens this destiny. Athens is compelled by circumstance to seek by peaceful commerce the corn necessary for her subsistence. The goddess gave her the honey of Hymettus, the Pentelic marble, and the silver mines of Laurion, that her eloquence might be sweet, her courage firm, and her commerce gainful; but she denied her corn, that corn which is the nutriment of the body, that, by fetching it from foreign lands, she might, in doing so, communicate to the world those sublime ideas which form the nobler nutriment of the soul.

"Thus is it that wisdom is the glory of Athens; it explains the history of the past; it affords a key to our present position.

"The mighty genius of force now bestrides the nations; it keeps down the surging emotions of half-savage men; itself, with its stoical insensibility to beauty, with its gladiatorial slaughters, betokening that it is hardly yet emerged from barbarism. Is this constrained calm to effect no purpose in the decrees of wisdom? Examine, and you will find that the glory of Athens is still increasing, even under a supposed subjection. [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: The Romans, out of reverence to letters, left to Athens a nominal freedom a long time after they had virtually subjugated her. It was not till the reign of Severus that her civilization was crushed. Chione is supposed to speak one hundred and fifty years before that period.]

{66}

"The nominal dependent refines and civilizes her conqueror. The wisdom of Athens, which, confined within its own narrow domain, could but have enlightened the inhabitants of a few cities, is now spreading over the entire earth; the words of its sages are instructing our haughty rulers; the myths of our poets are civilizing Rome. This, then, is the glory of Athens; and such glory must needs be eternal. Lands may change owners, and physical force give a momentary, a seeming nobility to a barbarian; but mind is immortal! the empire of ideas lasts for ever. Thus is Athens the civilizer of the nations.

"Sons of Athens! heirs of the philosophic ages! children of the poets! to you I need not explain how the beautiful devices which surround us are types of a higher knowledge--how many a glorious idea lies hidden under the name Minerva. The veiled Isis of Egypt, upon whose statue was inscribed, 'I am all that has been, all that shall be, and none among mortals has ever yet lifted my veil,' was, as you know, but another form of our loved Deity. Wisdom must preside at every institution designed to last. The precepts of Anaxagoras, the reveries of the divine Plato, alike instruct us in the eternity of ideas. Truth goes by different names upon this earth; it is represented by the nations under different myths, according to the conception men form of it. It requires a high intellect to contemplate truth in the abstract; to most minds it is simplified, endowed with power by being personified; hence our worship. Isis in Egypt, in Athens becomes Minerva; the veil, if not lifted, is at least rendered more transparent; and it may be that the time of its lifting is at hand. Portents of wondrous power are working in men's hearts; the principle of development evolved in Athens is becoming spread over the earth. Let us take courage. Athens is still at the head of civilization; it remains with her children that she so continue.

"Three words are awakened within my breast, [Footnote 30] While dwelling on Athena's story; Three words are a key unlocking the rest, Illustrating Attica's glory. These words proceed from no outward cause, Within us they write their immortal laws.

"Man was created all free, all free, Chains seen at his birth were never; Believe it, in spite of the enmity And folly of men put together. I fear not the slave who has broken his chain, 'Tis the Godlike resuming his own again.

"And Virtue is more than an empty call. It may guidance and practice be. Though man may stumble, and totter, and fall, He may strive for divinity. And what unto reason doth seem unreal. Full oft, to the child-like, doth Wisdom reveal.

"For a God _doth_ exist; and a Holy Will Is there still, though the human will palters; Over time, over space, the high thought floateth still. All glowing with life that ne'er falters; While all things move round in unceasing change, That spirit breathes peace through the heavenly range.

"Oh! guard well these words within every breast, For on them rests Attica's glory; Proclaim and observe them, with increasing zest, They're the keys of Athena's story. No man can e'er forfeit his inward worth. While wisdom within to these words giveth birth."

[Footnote 30: The German student will here recognize that this song is an imitation, or rather a translation adapted to the subject of Schiller's "Drei Worte neun' ich Euch, inhaltschwer." The infidelity of Chione, like that of modern times, does not hesitate to avail itself of truths learned from Christianity, when such truths can adorn their unsound philosophy; in fact, the truth that is in it, saves their theory; error cannot stand of itself.]

Chione ceased. She had not shone as she was wont to do; she felt conscious that in palliating paganism to please the audience, she was paltering with her own conscience. When she proposed first to speak her address, she had intended to give a synopsis of the philosophy and poetry of Greece, and to avoid mythology; but the words she had heard had embittered her spirit, rendered it defiant; and half-angrily, half-sarcastically, had she uttered the sentiments we have recorded. There was not, however, the mesmeric sympathy between her and the assembled crowd that was wont to produce electric bursts of enthusiasm, albeit they agreed with the sentiments expressed. Her own enthusiasm had been quelled before commencing; she could not then communicate what she did not possess. But it had been previously arranged that she was to be crowned; she had been invited there for that purpose; therefore the figure representing Minerva ceased to hover in the air, came forward, and, to very sweet music, placed the crown on Chione's head.

{67}

Beauty, crowned by Wisdom's hand, Reigns triumphant in the land. Her scented dower Is music linked to poesy, In tones of heavenly harmony, Attuned to earth's necessity by Eloquence, bright power!

The pause that succeeded was filled up with throwing of bouquets and shouts of congratulation. When a lull came, and Chione was about to give a parting salute to the spectators, these words came distinctly to her ear, though in so low a tone that they were inaudible to any but herself and those close to her:

Earth's crown of glory is a crown of thorns; Such the Saviour's head adorns, Who died for thee. Crowned with thorns, for thee he bled. On the cross his life-blood shed. All for thee!

Chione became very pale; she attempted to come forward, but fell back in the arms of her attendants; she had fainted.

--------

Translated From The French.

The Unity Of The Human Race.

This is one of a series of popular discourses given at the Imperial Asylum of Vincennes, France, by A. de Quatrefages, member of the Institute, and Professor of Natural Science. After some preliminary remarks to his audience, he proceeds to the question, What is man? "It is not difficult to perceive that man is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, neither a plant nor a stone. But is he an animal? Not likely, when we reflect upon all his attributes.

"None of you would like to be compared to those animals who feed on grass, to the hog who wallows in the mire, nor to the dog, in whom man has found the qualities of both friend and companion; nor further, to the horse, though he were as celebrated as the famous Gladiator.

"Man is not an animal. He is distinguished above the brute creation by numerous and important attributes. We have only to consider his intellectual capacity, the power of articulation, which gives to every people a special language, the capacity to write, which reproduces language; the aid of the fine arts, to explain and materialize the conceptions of his imagination. He is also distinguished above animals by two fundamental characters which belong solely to him. Man is the only organized and living being who has the abstract sentiment of both good and evil, the only being in whom there exists a moral sense, the only one who believes in a future state, and who recognizes the existence of beings superior to himself, having influence upon him for good or evil. It is this two-fold conviction which grasps and holds the great truths which are called religion.

{68}

"At a later period I will return to these two questions of morality and religion, not as a theologian, but as a naturalist. At present I limit myself to this fact, that man, however savage he may be, shows signs of morality and religion that are not found in any animal. Consequently, man is a being apart, separated from animals by two great distinctions which are his own, and also by his incontestable superiority. There the difference ceases. With regard to his body, man is nothing more or less than an animal. Apart from some differences of form and disposition, he is no more than equal to the superior animals that surround us. If we take for comparison those that assimilate to our general form, anatomy shows us that our organs are the same as theirs; we find in them muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, that is found in man himself. Physiology, in turn, has demonstrated that, in the body of man, the organs, the muscles, the nerves, have the same animal functions.

"This fact is indisputable, taken from a purely scientific and practical view. We cannot experiment upon man, but it is possible to do so upon animals. Human physiology employs the means to enlighten us upon our organic functions. Physicians have carried to the sick-bed the result of their investigations upon animal life. Anthropology also, we shall see, has derived useful lessons from beings who are essentially our inferiors. Anthropology should descend still lower than animals to enlighten us thoroughly. Vegetables are not animals any more than animals are men; but man, animals, and vegetables are linked together in the same living organization. By this only, they are distinguished from the minerals, which are neither the one nor the other, and by certain general facts known to all.

"All organized beings have a limited duration, all are created small and weak, all grow and become strong; during a part of their existence, all decrease in energy and vitality, sometimes also in size, then die. During life, all organized beings have need of nourishment. Before dying, all produce, either by a seed or by an egg, (I speak of species, not individuals,) which is true of the species that seem to come directly from a shoot, a layer, or a graft; all proceed from a grain, or an egg. Thus, all these great phenomena, common to all living organized beings, including man as well as plants, suppose a general law for their government. Science confirms this conclusion every day, which is not an invention of reasoning alone, but is regarded as an _experienced fact_. Further explanations are not necessary to show the magnificent result.

"How admirable, that man and the smallest insect, that the lord of the soil and the smallest plant, are attached one to the other, by the same links, and that the entire living creation forms together a perfect harmony!

"In this communion, and in certain phenomena of this accordance with certain laws, equally common, there results one consequence upon which I would not too strongly insist. Whatever may be the questions relating to man, that we have to examine whenever these touch upon any one of the phenomena that are common to all living organized beings, we must not only investigate animal life, but also vegetable life, if we would wish to find the truth.

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"When one of these questions is proposed, what can we truthfully urge in reply? We must examine man under the general laws that govern other living organized beings. If the investigation tends to make man an exception to these general laws, we shall know it is false. If you resolve the problem so as to include man in the general laws, you may be sure that you are scientific and correct. With these proofs, and these only, I proceed to the second question of anthropologists. Are there several species of men, or does there exist but one, comprising several races?

"Some explanations are necessary. Examine the designs before you, and you will discover the principal varieties exhibited in the human type. You have there individuals from all parts of the world; you see that they differ considerably in color, some in their hair, others in their size, or in their peculiar features. It behooves us to ascertain if the differences that present themselves in these human groups are those of _species_, or if they merely indicate the existence of _races_ belonging to the same species.

"In order to reply to this question, you must ascertain the true significance of the words _species_ and _race_. The result of the discussion depends upon these two words. Unhappily, they are often confounded and badly defined, and we become enveloped in mystery when we wish to consider them more closely. Let us then form a precise idea before entering into otherwise profitless details.

"None of you certainly confound the horse with the ass; though the horse may be no larger than the dogs of Newfoundland, or though the ass should attain the size of an ordinary horse--for example, the large asses of Poitou. You will immediately say they are different species. You will say the same if you place a dog and a wolf side by side.

"We call by the one name of dogs the different types, such as the spaniel, the greyhound, the lap-dog, the Newfoundland, the King Charles; and we are right. However, if we were to judge by the eyes only, and even after more minute observations, there is between the dogs I have named greater differences of color, proportion, and size, than between the horse and the ass. The latter have certainly more similarity between them than the types of dogs I have named.

"If I should place a black and a white water-spaniel side by side, you would call them both spaniels, though of a different color. When we examine vegetables, it is the same thing; a red and a white rose are equally roses; pears that are sold two for a penny, are the same species as those sold at twenty cents each.

"Without any doubt you have arrived at the exact conclusion of the naturalists; like them, you have resolved the questions of _species_ and _race_, which at first sight seemed, for the reasons I have given, more or less confused.

"These examples fully prove that popular observation and common sense are in many things fully as reliable as the investigations of science. Were such deductions generalized into scientific language, I feel sure there would be found few if any mistakes.

"These investigations prove that animals and vegetables vary within certain limits. The dog remains but a dog, whatever may be his general form, color, or his shape. The pear is but a pear, whatever may be its flavor or the color of its skin. It is from these facts that I am led to believe that variations can be transmitted through generations. The union of two spaniels produces spaniels, the union of two mastiffs produces mastiffs. {70} Thus, in a general manner, the result is, that beings of the same species can cease to resemble each other absolutely; moreover, take exteriorly different characters, without isolating or forming different species; as I have said, the _dog remains a dog_, whatever may be the modifications he presents. These are precisely the groups formed by individuals which we have spoken of as the remote primitive types of species that have formed distinct secondary groups, which naturalists call _races_.

"You will understand, then, what is meant in speaking of the races of beeves, horses, etc. We have domesticated but one kind of beeves, which have generated the Breton race, the great beeves of Uri, of such savage aspect, and also the gentle Durhams. We have but one kind of domestic horse, and this has given us the pony, as well as the enormous horses that are seen in the streets of London, commonly used by the brewers; finally, the several races of sheep, goats, etc., belong to one and the same species. I place this assemblage of proof vividly before you to avoid vagueness in your investigations, which would be attended with serious mistakes. I will now cite examples from the vegetable kingdom, which will be as familiar to you as the foregoing.

"Let us take the coffee-tree. Its history is quite interesting. The coffee-tree was originally from Africa. It has from time immemorial been cultivated in Abyssinia, on the borders of the Red Sea. It was not until toward the fifteenth century that the seed migrated from this sea and penetrated into Arabia, where it has been cultivated since that epoch. It is from there in

## particular that we get the famous Mocha. The use of coffee became

common immediately. From the east it was introduced into Europe at a later period, and it was at Marseilles that it was used for the first time in France.

"The first cup of coffee that was drank in Paris, was in the year 1667. A few grains were brought over by a French sailor called Thevenot. Two years after, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Porte, under Louis XIV., gave an entertainment to some friends of the king, where it was introduced, and the beverage pronounced delightful. The use of coffee, however, did not become general in France until the eighteenth century. You see, then, that coffee has not been very long in use. It was almost a century and a half before it became general among Europeans.

"During this time Europe became tributary to Arabia for this luxury. All the coffee that was used in Europe came from Arabia, and particularly from Mocha. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century the Dutch tried to import it to Batavia, one of their Indian colonies. They succeeded. From Batavia, some plants were sent to Holland, and planted in heated earth. This also proved a success.

"One of these plants was carried to Paris in 1710, and was placed in one of the beds of the Jardin des Plantes. It flourished, and supplied numberless plants. Toward 1720 or 1725, a French marine officer named Captain Destiaux, thought that, as Holland had cultivated coffee in Batavia, it could also be acclimated in the French colonies in the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment of embarking for Martinique he took three plants from the Jardin des Plantes, and carried them with him. The voyage was long and impeded by head-winds. Water becoming scarce, it became necessary to put the crew upon short rations. {71} Captain Destiaux, like the others, had but a small allowance for each day, and this he shared with his coffee-plants. Notwithstanding all his care, two of them died in their transit. One only arrived safe and sound at Martinique. Planted immediately, it prospered wonderfully, and from it have descended all the coffee-trees in the Antilles, and in South-America.

"Thirty years after, our western colonies exported millions of pounds each year. You see that the plant, starting from Africa, reached the east, the extremity of Asia, then America and the west. It has consequently made almost the tour of the world. In this long passage it has changed.

"Laying aside the plant that we are not familiar with, let us take merely the grain. It is not necessary to be a planter to distinguish its different qualities and their provinces. No one will confound the Mocha with the Bourbon, the Rio Janeiro with the Martinique. Each grain carries in its form, in its proportions and aroma, its extraction, so to speak.

"From whence came these changes? We cannot certainly explain the why or the wherefore, and follow rigorously the relation of cause and effect; but in taking these phenomena together, it is evident that these modifications result from the differences of temperature, climate, and cultivation.

"This example, taken from the vegetable kingdom, shows us that by transporting the same vegetable to different places, and subjecting it to different culture, _diverse races_ are obtained.

"Tea that was transported to South America several years since presents the same results.

"Now take an example from among the animals. You know that the turkey is a native of America. Its introduction into Europe is quite recent.

"In America the turkey is wild; and there, in the condition of its natural existence, it presents several characteristics which distinguish it from the domestic bird. The wild turkey is beautiful. Of a rich brown color, its plumage presents the reflections of blue, copper, and gold, making it truly a beautiful ornament. It was on account of its plumage that it was first brought to France. No one dreamed of eating it, and the first one that was served upon a table in France, was in the year 1570, and upon the occasion of the nuptials of King Charles IX.

"When found to be such a luxury, it was considered too good to be merely looked at, and it passed from the court to the farm-yard, from farm to farm, from east to west, from north to south. At this present time it is an article of commerce all over France.

"In going from farm to farm, and from country to country, this bird has sustained different conditions of existence, nourishment, and temperature, but never a continuation of its primitive condition that was natural to it in America. The result is, that it has changed, and at this present time the turkey in France bears no resemblance to its savage source. In general, it is smaller, and its rich plumage has undergone a marked change. Some are yellow, others white, some mixed with black, gray, and yellow. Almost all the localities devoted to raising the fowl have caused several new varieties, which have transformed them into _races_.

"To have thus changed their habits so as to lose resemblance to their first parents, are our French fowls any the less descendants of the wild turkeys of America? Are they less the brothers, or cousins, if you like the term better? Have they ceased to be of the _same species?_ Certainly not!

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"That which is characteristic of the turkey is also true of the rabbit. The wild rabbit lives around and about us, on our downs, and in our woods. It resembles our domestic rabbits but little. Among the latter you will see the large and the small, the smooth-haired and the silky; the black and the white, the yellow and the gray, and the mixed. In a word, this species comprises a great number of different races, all constituting one and the same kind with the wild races we see around us. From these facts, which I could multiply, we can deduce an important consequence to which I call your attention. A pair of rabbits left unmolested in a field, would, in a few years, people entire France with their descendants. We have seen how the single coffee-plant, carried by Captain Destiaux, has propagated all the plants now found in America.

"The wild turkeys and their domestic descendants, the wild rabbits and theirs, reduced to captivity, could then be considered by naturalists as all proving equally their descent from one primitive pair.

"This is the secret of species. Having always before our eyes numbers of single groups of animals or vegetables, for one reason or other we hardly consider them as descendants of one only primitive pair; we call what we see a _species_; if there are differences observable among these groups, they are _the races of this species_.

"Observe that, in my explanations, I have not given for a certainty the existence of one primitive source for rabbits and turkeys. I do not affirm the fact, as neither observation nor experience--the two guides we must follow in science--teaches anything in this regard. I simply say, all are as though descended from one only primitive pair.

"In summing up the question of _species_ _and_ race, it is not difficult to understand nor to believe, when we know the savage type, and have historical authority which permits us to attach to this type the groups, more or less different, according to their domestication. But when we are ignorant of the savage type, and in want of historical authority, the question becomes extremely difficult at first, because the differences we find in one and the other, and above all, in the different groups, could hardly be considered other than such as characterize different species.

"Happily, physiology comes then to our relief. We find in this science one of those grand and beautiful general laws, which holds and maintains the established order, and which we admire the more we study it. It is the law of _crossing_, which governs animals as well as vegetables, and is, consequently, applicable to man himself.

"We understand by the term _crossing_, all unions effected between animals belonging to different species or to two different races. The result of the unions obeying these laws is, that if the animals of _different species_ unite, in the majority of cases the union is barren.

"Thus, for example, it has been tried a million of times all over the world, to effect a union between rabbits and hares. It is said to have succeeded twice.

"Much doubt is cast upon this operation by the testimony of a man of undoubted talent, habituated to experiments, who believed these unions to be possible. Though availing himself of all possible means of proof, he was not more fortunate than his predecessors, Buffon and the brothers Geoffrey St. Hilaire. Thus, the rabbit and the hare, though presenting a great conformity in appearance, cannot reproduce. Such is the general result of crossing two different _species_.

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"In a few cases, the union between two different species may be fruitful, but the offspring cannot reproduce. For example, the union between a horse and an ass. The product of this union is the mule. All the mules in the world are the descendants of the ass and the mare. These animals are so numerous in Spain and South America that they are preferred to horses, on account of their great strength and powers of endurance. The genet, which is less desirable because it is not so robust, is the fruit of the inverse crossing of the horse and the female ass. The genet, no more than the mule, can reproduce. If one or the other is desired, of necessity recourse is had to the two _species_. In extremely rare cases, fecundity remains among some of their descendants, but it diminishes gradually from the second generation down to the third, fourth, and fifth. The same result is shown in the union of the canary bird. I could here accumulate a crowd of analogous details. Above all, two great general facts appear that comprehend all, and are the expression of the law; they are that, notwithstanding the accumulated observations of years, made from experiments on certain species, not a single example is known of an intermediate species being obtained by the _crossing_ of animals belonging to _two different species_.

"This general fact explains how order is maintained in the actual living creation. Were it otherwise, the animal and vegetable world would have been filled with intermediate groups, passing from one to the other insensibly, and in the confusion, it would be impossible for naturalists to recognize them. The general conclusion to draw from these precedents is, that infecundity is _the law of union between animals of different species_.

"Unions are always more fruitful when between two animals of the same race. Their descendants are as fruitful as the parents and the grandparents, where pains are taken to preserve the race pure, and to prevent strange blood from debasing it.

"When, on the contrary, a union is effected between two different races belonging to the same species, producing a _mongrel race_, the contrary takes place.

"There is no difficulty in obtaining a mongrel race--the result of a crossing of races; but the difficulty is when there is a pure race, and it is desirable to have it maintained, that great care is needed to prevent strange blood from changing it.

"Races crossed by mongrels--that is to say, by animals of the same species, but belonging to different races, multiply around us. There are the dogs in the streets, the cats of the alleys, the coach-horses; all beasts among whom the race is undecided in consequence of crossing indiscriminately, their characteristics becoming confounded.

"Far from endeavoring to obtain cross races, men who are occupied in raising stock, also bird-fanciers, know with what care they endeavor to preserve the purity of the races they keep. This is the general fact, and the result is, _that infecundity is the law of unions between animals belonging to different races_.

"This is the fundamental distinction between _species_ and _race_. This distinction ought to be the more known and considered, as it is borrowed from experience.

"When there are two animals, or two vegetables, of whom we are uncertain as to whether they are two distinct _species_, we have but to observe if their union is fruitful; and if this quality attaches to their descendants, we can then affirm that, despite the differences that separate them, _they are the races of the same species_. {74} If, on the contrary, their offspring diminishes in a remarkable manner at the end of several generations, we can then, without hesitation, declare them to belong to _distinct species_. In citing these examples, I have not overlooked the subject of my discourse, or the question at its commencement.

"In referring to the designs before our eyes, they show us that between the human groups the differences are marked enough, though to all appearance less considerable than they appeared at first. We do not know the types, or the primitive types, of the several groups.

"When we meet with one or several men presenting the characteristics of these types, and we cannot recognize them in spite of historical explanations, we are led to judge by our eyes. Without taking man himself into account, we cannot decide if these several differences that present themselves in the human family are those of _race_ or of _species_; if man can be considered as having had but one primitive source only, or if he should have been derived from several primitive sources.

"I have said before, and repeat again, man is an organized and living being. Under this head he obeys all the general laws to which are attached all organized and living beings; he obeys, consequently, the law of crossing. He must then apply this law to ascertain _if there is one or several species of men_. Take, for example, the two types farthest removed--those which seem more separated than the others by the greatest differences--namely, the white and the black.

"If these types really constitute _distinct species_, the union between these species should follow the proof that we have seen characterize the unions between animals, and vegetables, of different species. They should be unfruitful in the majority of cases, or nearly so. Fecundity should disappear at the end of a short period, and they could not form intermediate families between the negroes and the whites. If these are only _the races of one and the same species_, then unions, on the contrary, should be quite fruitful, and fecundity should be found among their descendants, and they should form intermediate races.

"These facts are decisive, and admit of no doubt.

"For three centuries the whites, _par excellence_, the Europeans, have achieved, so to say, the conquest of the world. They have gone everywhere. Everywhere they have found local races who have borne them no resemblance. Whenever they have crossed with them, these unions have been fruitful; more so than with those indigenous to themselves.

"Man, from the result of the institution of slavery--which happily has never stained the soil of France--has transported the negro everywhere; everywhere he has crossed with his slaves, and everywhere they have formed a population of mulattoes. Wherever the negro has crossed with local groups or families, there has arisen an intermediate race, who in character manifest their two-fold origin. The whites have finally crossed with the mongrels of all origins, and the result is, that in certain quarters of the globe--particularly in South America--there is an inextricable mixture of people, comparable, under the class, to the dogs in our streets and the cats of our alleys.

"The rapidity with which these mongrel races cross and multiply is really remarkable. It is scarcely three centuries--hardly twelve generations--since Europeans penetrated into different parts of the world. {75} It is estimated that already the number of mongrels resulting from the crossing of whites with natives, is a seventieth of the whole population of the globe. Experience is indisputable, if we even deny modern science, or at least, wish to make man an exception to all living and organized beings. We must admit that all men form but one species, composed of a certain number of different races; consequently, all men can only be considered as having descended from one primitive pair.

"We arrive at this conclusion in despite of all kinds of dogmatical, theological, philosophical, and metaphysical considerations. Observation and experience alone, applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in a word, science, conducts us to the conclusion, _there exists but one species of man._

"This result, I do not fear to say, is of great and serious importance; for it creates in our minds an idea of the universal fraternity of science and reason, the only schools that many persons recognize at this present time.

"I hope that my demonstrations will have convinced you; meanwhile, I am not ignorant, and you all know, that anthropologists differ. There are among my contemporaries a number of men, even of great merit, who believe in the plurality of the human species. You may possibly come into contact with them. Listen attentively, then, to the reasons they will urge to make you see with their eyes. You will find that their reasonings all tend to prove that there is too great a difference between the negro and the white for them to be of the same species. In reply, state that between the black and the white spaniel, the lap-dog and the mastiff, there exist greater differences than exist between the European and the African. Yet these animals are all dogs. They may argue, perhaps, that man, whatever may have been his characteristics, could not have generated both blacks and whites. Then ask why the wild turkey, whose origin, and that of its ancestors, we are acquainted with, and the wild rabbit, which we find everywhere, could have generated all our domestic races?

"We cannot, I repeat, explain perfectly the how and the wherefore; but what we know is, that the fact exists, and we shall find a general explanation in all states of existence--in all conditions of people.

"It is not, then, surprising that man presents, in the different groups, the differences herein depicted; man who trod the earth long before the turkey and the rabbit; man, who for centuries has existed upon the surface of the globe, submitting to the most diverse and opposite conditions of existence, multiplying again the causes of those modifications by his manners and habits, by his ways of living, by more or less care in his own preservation; man, finding himself in more marked and varied conditions than those sustained by the animals we have quoted. If anything surprises us, it is that the distinctions are not more considerable.

"In turn, ask the polygenists--as those _savans_ are called who believe in the multiplicity of the human species--how it is that when the white man locates in any country, from the antipodes, if you will, or from America or Polynesia--that if he unites with the natives, who differ the most completely from him, these unions are fruitful, and that, above all, there remains traces of this alliance in producing a mongrel race?

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"If you press the question more closely, you will find them denying the truth of species; by so doing, placing themselves in contradiction with all naturalists, botanists, or zoologists, without exception; consequently, with all the eminent minds who have followed in the wake of Buffon, Tournefort, Jussieu, Cuvier, and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who made the animal and vegetable kingdoms their study, without discussion, or dreaming of its connection with man. In agitating these doctrines, polygenists place themselves in opposition to the most firmly established science. You will hear them declare that man, above all, is an exception; that he is guided by laws peculiar to himself; and that arguments deduced from the study of animals and plants, are not applicable to him. Then reply that, in the name of all the natural sciences, they are certainly in error, and that it is an impossibility that a living and organized being can escape the laws of organization and of life, having a body fortified against the laws that govern inorganic matter; that man, to be living and organized, obeys, under this title, all general laws, and those of intersection like all the others. The conclusion that we have attained is, then, legitimate, and the nature of the arguments employed to combat them, is a proof the more in its favor.

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Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

A certain brother was praised in Abbot Antony's presence. He went to visit him, and tried to see whether he would bear mortification; and finding that he could not, he said to him: "Thou art like a house which is fair to the eye on the outside, but within hath been despoiled by robbers."

St. Synclitica said: "As a treasure which is exposed is quickly spent, so, also, is every virtue which is made public soon reduced to nothing. For as wax melteth before the face of the fire, even so doth the soul waste away with praises, and lose the firmness of virtue." Again, she said: "As it is impossible that the seed and shoot should exist at the same time, even so those who enjoy the glory of this world are unable to bear heavenly fruit."

A certain brother said to Abbot Pastor: "What shall I do, for when I sit in quiet I lose my spirits?" The old man replied, "Neither despise nor condemn any one, nor cast obloquy upon him, and God will give thee rest."

Abbot Antony said: "There are persons who wear away their bodies by fasting; but because they have not discretion, they are far distant from God."

A certain old man said: "If thou art ailing in body, do not lose thy spirit; for if the Lord God desireth thee to become sick, who art thou that thou shouldst be impatient under it? Doth he not provide for thee in all things? Canst thou live without him? Be patient, therefore, and beseech him to give what is expedient for thee, that is, to do whatsoever may be his will, and to sit in patience, eating thy bread in charity."

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Holy Week In Jerusalem.

The sacred offices of the Catholic Church, wherever celebrated, are admirably calculated to increase devotion, and render intelligible the different events of the ecclesiastical year. In every land the ceremonies of the great week which ends the season of Lent have deep interest to all the faithful, since they portray the chief events of redemption. These annual commemorations of the passion of Christ have, however, an added solemnity and power in the two great cities of religion, Rome and Jerusalem. In the first, the vicar of our Lord takes part in the holy rites; and, in the second, the whole service is more impressive than elsewhere; for the great events here occurred, and the remembrance of them is made, year by year, in closest proximity to the spot where they took place. It is hazarding little to say, that nowhere on earth does the office for holy week have the deep solemnity which marks it in Jerusalem, for the reason just given. While the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary are followed with great exactness, several things peculiar to the place have an interest which may render a description of them worthy of attention.

On the morning of Palm Sunday, 1866, the writer of this sketch went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to be present at the benediction of the palms by his excellency the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The palms, noble branches, seven feet in length, fresh and green, are brought every year from Gaza, a little city about eighteen miles distant. Tied in bundles of suitable size, they were placed within the most holy sepulchre, the patriarch being outside the sacred place until the time for sprinkling them with holy water and incensing, when he entered for that purpose. The benediction completed, the distribution of the palms took place, and the long procession began. Chanting the antiphons, the clergy and laity went twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then passed into the Latin chapel.

The solemn Mass, to be celebrated by the patriarch, was to begin immediately. The holy sepulchre, being about six feet square, is, of course, much too small for that purpose, and therefore a temporary altar of large size was promptly set up in front of the sacred tomb. While the attendants were preparing and decorating this, in compliance with an intimation given early in the morning, I went into the most holy sepulchre, and offered the Divine Sacrifice--it being the third time I had been privileged to say Mass in that holiest of places. To me it is one of the most memorable things in life, that this happiness should, at such a time, have been mine--that a simple priest could say Mass in "the new tomb of Joseph, which he had hewn out of the rock," while the patriarch was officiating outside the sacred place.

On Wednesday, the office of Tenebrae was said in the church. The patriarch was present and a large number of priests, friars, seminarians, and choir-boys, and many of the laity. The service was very solemn, and the music good. The priests were seated in front of the holy sepulchre, and the triangular candlestick was placed at the right hand of the door leading to the tomb. {78} The chanting of the Lamentations was most impressive; and when the words, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, _convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum!_" were uttered, it seemed that this plaintive entreaty even now could be addressed with fitness to the city that once was full of people, but is solitary, and made tributary to her enemies. There was a wild pathos and deep earnestness in the chant when the summons to turn to the Lord God was made, as if the singer knew that to-day there is need for the city to listen and obey. Jerusalem is in the power of the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; schismatic Christians outnumber the Catholics; the Jews know not the Lord their God; and the ways of Sion mourn. Would that the expostulation could be heard by all, that they might be perfectly united as a company of brethren, having the same faith and the same worship!

In the afternoon, the column of the flagellation of Christ was exposed for an hour, or two, by removing the iron grating from the front of it. As is well known, a portion of the column is in Rome, in the church of Saint Praxede. The fragment here is only about one foot high, and of the same diameter. It is kept in the Latin chapel, in a recess over an altar named after it, and cannot be seen during the year, as there is little light in the chapel, and that comes through a window high above and nearly over the altar. A popular devotion is to pray in front of the column, and then touch it with a rod, about twenty inches long, having a brass ferule or cap on the end; this ferule is kissed on the place which had touched the stone. It being impossible to reach the pillar by the hand through the grating, this method has been contrived to satisfy the devotion of those who are anxious to salute with reverence all the objects and places connected with the passion of our Lord. On Thursday, at five o'clock, we went down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as the office was to begin early. We waited nearly an hour, in a dismal morning, until it pleased the Turkish door-keeper to come and unlock the portals. While standing here, among other subjects for consideration, was the evident fact that Christians desiring to celebrate the divine office, in the holiest week of the year, and in the most sacred place on earth, were compelled to delay the fulfilment of their wishes until permission had been given by a Mohammedan. When we were admitted, the services were long, occupying five and a half hours. The holy oils were consecrated. At the end a procession was formed, and the blessed sacrament was carried twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then was placed in a repository which stood in the tomb where our Lord had lain centuries ago.

At one o'clock, the Mandatum, or ceremony of washing the feet of the pilgrims, was performed by his excellency the patriarch in front of the most holy sepulchre. He gave to each of the pilgrims a wooden cross, about seven inches long, roughly made, and having spaces under bits of pearl for relics from the stations of the Via Dolorosa. Of the many objects of interest brought home from the Holy Land, there is scarcely any one valued more than this, because of the time, place, and occasion when it was received.

The office of the Tenebrae began at three o'clock, as on the day before. Nothing can surpass in solemnity and deep impressiveness the chantings of the Lamentations in this place. {79} The profound desolation of the soul of the prophet as he uttered the sad words is fully expressed and realized; and the remembrance of the calamities which have so frequently befallen Jerusalem, and even now are her portion, gives bitterness to the insulting demand, "Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?"

On Good Friday the patriarch officiated again in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The passion was sung on Calvary by three chanters, one reciting the narrative by Saint John, another the words of our Lord, while the third sung the remainder. The voice of the priest who chanted the words of Jesus was gentle and sad, and so like what we may imagine to have been that of our Lord, as to become painful and oppressive. When the ejaculation, _consummatum est_, had been made, the first chanter went to the place where the cross had been set up on which Jesus died, and kneeling there, in a low voice uttered the words, _et inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum_.

The prayers were chanted in front of the altar of the crucifixion, which belongs to the Catholics, and is at the place properly called of the crucifixion, as being that where our Lord was nailed to the cross; it is to the right, and about twelve feet from the spot where the cross was set up. The unveiling of the cross, at the chant, "_Ecce lignum crucis_," was done here also; and, when the crucifix was laid on the pavement in front of the altar, it covered the stone which marks the locality where our Lord was fastened to the tree. The veneration of the cross at such a time and place was deeply impressive. After the patriarch, the priests, monks, and laity, having put off their shoes, came in their order, and kissed the feet of the image of the Redeemer.

Wishing to spend as much of Good Friday on Calvary as was possible, I returned to the church in the afternoon, and sat for a long time on the floor, leaning against the large square pillar, within ten feet of the spot where the great oblation was made. While there, I meditated and prayed as well as was possible under the circumstances. For many years the Catholics have had exclusive possession of the church during the last three days of holy week; and accordingly, when the faithful had been admitted, the doors were locked, and the sacred offices performed in peace, free from the annoyance of the crowd which generally fills the edifice. Today, however, on returning, I found the doors open, and every one allowed free access. Many who were not Catholics were now present, and among them were five or six English travellers who were out sight-seeing. Accompanied by their dragoman or interpreter, they came on Calvary, and looked around with idle curiosity. One of them, had he been alone, would probably have knelt down and prayed; but, being with his friends, he only bent one knee, and bowed his head a moment at the place where the cross had been set up. The others of the party, evidently, did not believe this to be the spot of the crucifixion. They were more attracted by the gold, silver, and diamonds on the image of the Blessed Virgin, on the little altar of the Dolors, than by anything else, and for some time admired the brilliancy of these as a candle was held near, and talked of them as the most interesting objects. One glance at the place where the Lord died was enough for them; and when they went away, it was a relief to find the chapel again occupied by those who came to worship. People who have no faith should not visit the Holy Land. {80} If they do, they derive little benefit themselves, and give great disedification to Christians of every name.

It was now toward the close of the day. Some persons, chiefly Greeks, were praying on Calvary, when a Turkish officer came up, and made signs for them to depart. Unwilling to do so, they remained for some time, when he summoned several soldiers who, with muskets, came up to enforce obedience to his commands. They walked slowly around the chapel, close to the wall; and then the people, seeing that they must go, quietly arose and descended. I have little doubt that the church was cleared in order to prepare for the solemn procession in the evening. Although the soldiers behaved with as much decorum as possible, it was a sad sight for Christians to find themselves driven from Calvary on Good Friday by Turks, and it was the bitterest thing experienced in Jerusalem.

There is always a company of soldiers on duty when any service of unusual interest takes place in the church. They are there by request of the French Consul, who is the representative of the European protector of the Holy Land, and are designed to preserve order and add to the display. Although the church covers a large area of ground, there are no spaces of great extent; and thus the presence of men to keep order is necessary. It is recorded with pleasure that, during a residence of two months in the holy city, I saw no act of incivility, nor even a rude look, on the part of the soldiers. The Greeks and Armenians, not to be excelled by Catholics, ask for the soldiers on occasion of their solemnities; and thus, the court of the church, and the edifice itself, are not unfrequently occupied by the military.

In the evening, the patriarch and clergy, with a crowd of laity, assemble in the church for the great procession which is made but on this day. The sacred building was filled to its utmost capacity; but, owing to the perfect arrangements made, the long service was gone through without the least irregularity or embarrassment. There were seven sermons on the passion, in as many different languages, by priests from the nations whose vernacular they spoke. The office began in the Latin chapel, and the first sermon, delivered with much fervor and pathos, was in Italian. When this had been concluded, the procession was formed. As it moved from one station to the next, verses of the Miserere were sung. One of the Franciscan brothers, carrying a large crucifix, led the procession, an acolyte being on either side of him. At the place of the division of the garments of Christ, the sermon was in Greek--at that of the mocking, in another Eastern language. When we had climbed the stairs of Calvary, and were at the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid on the ground, while the sermon in German was preached. Then the crucifix was taken from this place, where our Lord was once nailed to the wood, and carried to that where Christ died. The sermon at this place was in French, and was preached by the leader of the French caravan of pilgrims, a venerable ecclesiastic. When the discourse was finished, several priests came to take the body down from the cross. The crown of thorns was first removed, very slowly, and with great reverence. The nails were then tenderly drawn from the hands; and, as each was removed, the arm of the figure, having joints at the shoulders, was brought down to the side of the body. The feet were, in like manner, disengaged from the nail; a sheet passed under the arms, and the body lowered to the altar, and laid on fine linen. {81} Holding the corners of this cloth, four priests slowly carried the figure down the stairs to the stone of unction, where the patriarch strewed myrrh over it, and sprinkled rose-water. The sermon was now preached in Arabic by the Franciscan curate of the Church of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and was delivered in a most energetic manner. Of the seven sermons preached, it was probably the one understood by the largest number of those present. Finally, the body was carried to the most holy sepulchre, and laid in the same place where once reposed the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Here the sermon was in Spanish, in compliment to that nation of Catholic renown; and, when it had been finished, the procession went to the Latin chapel, whence it had started, and the service of the day was over.

It will be readily understood that the ceremony of taking down from the cross, and carrying the image of our Lord to the tomb, was intended to be a representation of the manner in which the deposition took place on the day of the earth's redemption. It was a most powerful sermon, reaching the heart through the sight. By it we were carried back eighteen hundred years. Standing on Calvary, we were looking on him whose arms were stretched out on the cross, as if, in his infinite love, he would embrace all mankind. We saw him dying that we might live, and dead that we might be ransomed from the grave. No word was spoken, as good Father Jucundino came with pincers to remove the crown of thorns, which he did in such a devout manner, as to make us feel that we were witnessing the great transaction itself. The power and impressiveness of the whole ceremony were such as to render the bystanders awestruck and faint. A scene like this it is impossible to forget, and neither pencil nor words could produce a similar result.

On Holy Saturday I prayed a long time in the sepulchre, where our Lord had lain, as on this day. To be on Calvary on Good Friday, and in the Tomb on Easter eve, had been the desire of my heart. With the realization of such a wish, any one should be content; for he has a privilege granted to but few whose homes are distant from the Holy Land. In the afternoon, the daily procession was made with solemnity, the patriarch and many priests and laymen being present. The pilgrims from Europe were also in the train.

Easter-day was the last of my sojourn in the holy city. Many priests wished to say Mass in the holy sepulchre, some of whom had not yet had that privilege. I said Mass on Calvary, for the last time, that day. During the day the shrines were visited, and the tomb was now indeed the place of the resurrection. "_Surrexit, non est hic._" Yes! the grave is empty, and death hath no more power over him who was once here but is risen and gone. We see the place where the Lord lay. His day of victory has come, and the triumph over death and hell is complete. The tears of the Christian are dried, and the joy of the Paschal time begins.

--------

{82}

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

## Chapter I.

The stream which divides the county of Dublin from that of Meath runs part of its course through a pretty, rock-strewn, furze-blossoming valley, crowned at its western end by the ruins of a castle, which, in the days of Cromwell, belonged to one of the great families of the Pale--the English-Irish, as they were usually called, in order to distinguish them from the Celtic race, in whose land they had cast their fortunes.

A narrow, winding path leads from the castle to the stream below, and down this there came, one cold January morning, in the year of the great Irish "transplantation," a young girl, wrapt in a hooded mantle of dark cloth, which, strong as it was, seemed barely sufficient to defend her from the heavy night fogs still rolling through the valley, hanging rock and bush and castle-turret in a fantastic drapery of clouds, and then falling back upon the earth in a mist as persistent, and quite as drenching, as an actual down-pour of rain could possibly have proved. Following the course of the zigzag stream, as, half-hidden in furze and bramble, it made its way eastward to the sea, a short ten minutes' walk brought her to a low hut, (it could hardly be called a house,) built against a jutting rock, which formed, in all probability, the back wall of the tenement. Here she paused, and after tapping lightly on the door, as a signal to its inmates, she turned, and throwing back the hood which had hitherto concealed her features, gazed sadly up and down the valley. In spite of the fog-mists and the cold, the spot was indeed lovely enough in itself to deserve an admiring glance, even from one already familiar with its beauty; but in those dark eyes, heavy, as it seemed, with unshed tears, there was far less of admiration than of the longing, wistful gaze of one who felt she was looking her last upon a scene she loved, and was trying, therefore, to imprint upon her memory even the minutest of its features. For a moment she suffered her eyes to wander thus, from the clear, bright stream flowing rapidly at her feet to the double line of fantastic, irregularly cut rocks which, crowned with patches of gorse and fern, shut out the valley from the world beyond as completely as if it had been meant to form a separate, kingdom in itself; and then at last, slowly, and as if by a strong and painful effort of the will, she glanced toward the spot where the castle stood, with its tall, square towers cut in sharp and strong relief against the gloomy background of the sky. A "firm and fearless-looking keep" it was, as the habitation of one who, come of an invading race, had to hold his own against all in-comers, had need to be; but while it rose boldly from a shoulder of out-jutting rock, like the guardian fortress of the glen, the little village which lay nestled at its foot, the mill which turned merrily to the music of its bright stream, the smooth terraces and dark woods immediately around it, the rich grazing lands, with their herds of cattle, which stretched far away as the eye could reach beyond, all seemed to indicate that its owner had been so long settled on the spot as to have learned at last to look upon it rather as his rightful inheritance than as a gift of conquest. {83} Castled keep and merry mill, trees and cattle and cultivated fields, the girl seemed to take all in, in that long, mournful gaze which she cast upon them; but the thoughts and regrets which they forced upon her, growing in bitterness as she dwelt upon them, became at last too strong for calm endurance, and throwing herself down upon her knees upon the cold, damp earth, she covered her face with both her hands, and burst into a passionate fit of weeping. Her sobs must have roused up the inmates of the hut; for almost immediately afterward the door was cautiously unclosed, and an ancient dame, with a large colored handkerchief covering her gray hairs, and tied under her chin, even as her descendants wear it to this hour, peeped out, with an evident resolve to see as much and be as little seen as possible in return, by the person who had, at that undue hour, disturbed her quiet slumbers. The moment, however, she discovered who it was that was weeping there, all thoughts of selfish fear seemed to vanish from her mind, and with a wild cry, in which love and grief and sympathy were mingled, as only an Irish cry can mix them, she flung her strong, bony arms around the girl, and exclaimed in Irish, a language with which--we may as well, once for all remark--the proud lords of the Pale were quite conversant, using it not only as a medium of communication with their Irish dependents, but by preference to English, in their familiar intercourse with each other. For this reason, while we endeavor to give the old lady's conversation verbatim, as far as idiom and ideas are concerned, we have ventured to omit all the mispronunciations and bad grammarisms which, whether on the stage or in a novel, are rightly or wrongly considered to be the one thing needed toward the true delineation of the Irish character, whatever the rank or education of the individual thus put on the

## scene may happen to be.

"O my darling, my darling!" cried the old woman, almost lifting the girl by main force from the ground; "my heart's blood, a-cushla machree! what are you doing down there upon the damp grass, (sure it will be the death of you, it will,) with the morning fog wrapping round you like a curtain? Is there anything wrong up there at the castle? or what is it all, at all, that brings you down here before the sun has had time to say 'Good-morrow' to the tree-tops?"

"O Grannie, Grannie!" sobbed the girl, "have you not heard? do you not know already? It was to say good-by--I could not go without it. Grannie! I never shall see you again--perhaps never."

Pity, and love, and sympathy, all beaming a moment before upon the face of the old hag, changed as instantaneously as if by magic, into an expression of wild hatred, worthy the features of a conquered savage.

"It is true, then!" she cried; "it is true what I heard last night! what I heard--but wouldn't believe, Miss Nellie--if you were not here to the fore to say it to me yourself! It is true that they are for robbing the old master of his own; and that them murdering Cromwellians--my black curse on every mother's son of them--"

But before she could bring her denunciation to its due conclusion, the girl had put her hand across her mouth, and, with terror written on every feature of her face, exclaimed:

{84}

"Hush, Grannie, hush? For Christ and his sweet Mother's sake, keep quiet! Remember such words have cost many an honest man his life ere now, and God alone can tell who may or may not be within hearing at this moment."

She caught the old woman by the arm as she spoke, dragging rather than leading her into the interior of the cottage. Once there, however, and with the door carefully closed behind her, she made no scruple of yielding to the anguish which old Grannie's lamentations had rather sharpened than allayed, and sitting down upon a low settle, suffered her tears to flow in silence. Grannie squatted herself down on the ground at her feet, and swaying her body backward and forward after the fashion of her people, broke out once more into vociferous lamentations over the fallen fortunes of her darling.

"Ochone! ochone! that the young May morning of my darling's life (which ought to be as bright as God's dear skies above us) should be clouded over this way like a black November's! Woe is me! woe is me! that I should have lived to see the day when the old stock is to be rooted out as if it was a worthless weed for the sake of a set of beggarly rapscallions, who have only come to Ireland, may be, because their own land (my heavy curse on it, for the heavy hand it has ever and always laid on us!) wasn't big enough to hold their wickedness."

It was in perfect unconsciousness and good faith that old Grannie thus spoke of Nellie and her family as of the old stock of the country--a favorite expression to this day among people of her class in Ireland.

The English descendants of Ireland's first invaders had, in fact, as years rolled by, and even while proudly asserting their own claims as Englishmen, so thoroughly identified themselves both by intermarriages and the adoption of language, dress, and manners with the Celtic natives of the soil that the latter, ever ready, too ready for their own interest perhaps, to be won by kindness, had ended by transferring to them the clannish feeling once given to their own rulers, and fought in the days we speak of under the standard of a De Burgh or a Fitzgerald as heartily and bitterly against Cromwell's soldiers as if an O'Neil or a MacMurrough had led them to the combat. To Nellie Netterville, therefore, the sympathy and indignation of old Grannie seemed quite as much a matter of course as if the blue blood coursing through her veins had been derived from a Celtic chieftain instead of from an old Norman baron of the days of King Henry. Nellie was, moreover, connected with the old woman by a tie which in those days was as strong, and even stronger, than that of race; for the English of the Pale had adopted in its most comprehensive sense the Irish system of fosterage, and Grannie having acted as foster-mother to Nellie's father, was, to all intents and purposes, as devoted to the person of his daughter as if she had been in very deed a grandchild of her own.

But natural as such sympathy might have seemed, and soothing as no doubt it was to her wounded feelings, it was yet clothed in such dangerous language that it had an effect upon Nellie the very opposite of that which, under any other circumstances, it might have been expected to produce. It recalled her to the necessity of self-possession, and conscious that she must command her own feelings if she hoped to control those of her warm-hearted dependent, she deliberately wiped the tears from her eyes, and rose from the settle on which she had flung herself only a few minutes before, in an uncontrolled agony of grief. {85} When she felt that she had thoroughly mastered her own emotion, she drew old Grannie toward her, made her sit down on the stool she herself had just vacated, and kneeling down beside her, said in a tone of command which contrasted, oddly yet prettily enough, with the child-like attitude assumed for the purpose of giving it:

"You must not say such things. Grannie. I forbid it! Now and for ever I forbid it! You must not say such things. They can neither help us nor save us sorrow, and they might cost your life, old woman, if any evil-designing person heard them."

"My life! my life!" cried old Grannie passionately. "And tell me, acushla, what is the value of my life to me, if all that made it pleasant to my heart is to be taken from me? Haven't I seen your father, whom I nursed at this breast until (God pardon me!) I loved him as well or better than them that were sent to me for my own portion? haven't I seen him brought back here for a bloody burial in the very flower of his days? and didn't I lead the keening over him at the self-same moment that I knew my own poor boy was laying stiff and stark on the battle-field, where he had fallen (as well became him) in the defence of his own master? And now you come and tell me that you--you who are all that is left me in the wide world; you who have been the very pulse of my heart ever since you were in the cradle--that you and the old lord are to be driven out of your own kingdom, and sent, God only knows where, into banishment--(him an old man of seventy, and you a slip of a girl that was only yesterday, so to speak, in your nurse's arms)--and you would have me keep quiet, would you? You'd have me belie the thought of my heart with a smiling face? and all for the sake of a little longer life, forsooth! Troth, a-lannah, I have had a good taste of that same life already, and it's not so sweet I found it, that I would go as far as the river to fetch another sup of it. Not so sweet--not so sweet," moaned the old woman, rocking herself backward and forward in time to the inflection of her voice, "not so sweet for the lone widow woman, with barely a roof above her head, and not a chick or child (when you are out of it) for comfort or for coaxing!"

Grannie had poured forth this harangue with all the eloquent volubility of her Irish heart and tongue, and though Nellie had made more than one effort for the purpose, she had hitherto found it quite impossible to check her. Want of breath, however, silenced her at last, and then her foster-child took advantage of the lull in the storm to say:

"Dear old Grannie, do not talk so sadly. I will love and think of you every day, even in that far-off west to which we are exiled. And I forgot to say, moreover, that my dear mother is to remain here for some months longer, and will be ready (as she ever is) to give help and comfort to all that need it, and to you, of course, dear Grannie, more than to all the rest--you whom she looks, upon almost as the mother of her dead husband."

"Ready to give help? Ay, that in troth she is," quoth Grannie, "God bless her for a sweet and gentle soul, that never did aught but what was good and kind to any one ever since she came among us, and that will be eighteen years come Christmas twelvemonth. Ochone! but them were merry times, a-lannah! long before you were born or thought of. {86} God pity you that you have burst into blossom in such weary days as these are!"

"Merry times? I suppose they were," said Nellie good-naturedly, trying to lead poor Grannie's thoughts back to the good old times when she was young and happy. "Tell me about it now, dear Grannie, (my mother's coming home, I mean,) that I may amuse myself by thinking it all over again, when I am far away in the lone west, and no good old Grannie to go and have a gossip with when I am tired of my own company."

"Why, you see, Miss Nellie, and you mustn't be offended if I say it," said Grannie, eagerly seizing on this new turn given to her ideas; "we weren't too well pleased at first to hear that the young master was to be wedded in foreign parts, and some of us were even bold enough to ask if there weren't girls fair enough, ay, and good enough too, for that matter, for him in Ireland, that he must needs bring a Saxon to reign over us! However, when the old lord up yonder at the castle, came down and told us how she had sent him word, that for all she had the misfortune to be English born, she meant, once she was married in Ireland, to be more Irish than the Irish themselves, then, I promise you, every vein in our hearts warmed toward her; and on the day of her coming home, there wasn't, if you'll believe me, a man, woman, or child, within ten miles of Netterville, who didn't go out to meet her, until, what with the shouting and the hustling, she began to think, (the creature,) as she has often told me since, that it was going to massacre her, may be, that we were; for sure, until the day she first saw the young master, it was nothing but tales upon tales she had heard of how the wild Irish were worse than the savages themselves, and how murder and robbery were as common and as little thought of with us as daisies in the springtime. Any way, if she thought that for a moment, she didn't think it long; for when she faced round upon us at the castle-gates, standing between her husband and her father-in-law, (the old lord himself,) we gave her a cheer that might have been heard from this to Tredagh, if the wind had set that way; and though she didn't then understand the '_Cead-mille-failthe_ to your ladyship!' that we were shouting in our Irish, she was cute enough, at all events, to guess by our eyes and faces what our tongues were saying. And that wasn't all," continued Grannie, growing more and more garrulous as she warmed to her theme; "that wasn't all neither; for when the people were so tired they could shout no more, and quiet was restored, she whispered something to the young master; and what do you think he did, my dear, but led her right down to the place where me and my son (his own foster-brother, that's gone, God rest him!) were standing in the crowd, and she put out her pretty white hand and said, (it was the first and last time that ever I liked the sound of the English,) 'It is you, then, that was my husband's foster-mother, isn't it?' And says I, in her own tongue, for I had picked up English enough at the castle for that, 'Please your ladyship, I am, and this is the boy,' says I, pulling my own boy forward--for he was shy like, and had stepped a little backward when she came near--'this is the boy that slept with Master Gerald' (that was the master, you know, honey) 'on my breast.'"

{87}

"'Well, then,' said she, giving one hand to me and the other to my boy, 'remember it is with my foster-brother I mean to lead out the dancing to-night;' and troth, my pet, she was as good as her word, and not a soul would she dance with, for all the fine lords and gentlemen who had come to the wedding, until she had footed it for a good half-hour at least with my Andie, Ah! them were times indeed, my jewel," the old crone querulously wound up her chronicle by saying. "And to think that I should have lived to see the day when the young master's father and the master's child are to be hunted out of their own by a Cromwellian upstart with his 'buddagh Sassenachs,' (Saxon clowns,) like so many bloodhounds at his heels, to ride over us roughshod."

So far the young girl had "seriously inclined her ear" to listen,

## partly to soothe old Grannie's grief by suffering it to flow

over, and partly, perhaps, because her own mind, exhausted by present sufferings, found some unconscious relief in letting itself be carried back to those bright days when the sun of worldly prosperity still lighted up her home. The instant, however, that the old woman began, with all the ferocity of a half-tamed nature, to pour out denunciations on the foes who had wrought her ruin, she checked the dangerous indulgence of her feelings by saying:

"Hush, dear Grannie, and listen to me. My mother is to stay here until May, (so much grace they have seen fit to do us,) in order that she may collect our stock and gather such of our people together as may choose to follow us into exile."

"Then, may be, she'll take me," cried old Grannie suddenly, her withered face lightening up into an expression of hope and joy that was touching to behold. "May be she'll take me, a-lannah!"

Nellie Netterville eyed Grannie wistfully. Nothing, in fact, would she have better liked than to have taken that old relic of happier days with her to her exile; but old, decrepid, bowed down by grief as well as years, as Grannie was, it would have been folly, even more than cruelty, to have suffered her to offer herself for Connaught transplantation. It would have been, however, but a thankless office to have explained this in as many words; so Nellie only said: "When the time comes, dear old woman, when the time comes, it will be soon enough to talk about it then--that is to say, if you are still able and willing for the venture."

"Willing enough at all events, God knows," said Grannie earnestly. "But why not go at once with you, my darling? The mistress _is the mistress_ surely; but blood is thicker than water, and aren't you the child of the man that I suckled on this bosom? Why not go at once with you?"

"I think it is too late in the year for you--too cold--too wretched; and besides, we are only to take one servant with us, and of course it must be a man," said Nellie, not even feeling a temptation to smile at the blind zeal which prompted Grannie to offer herself, with her sixty years and her rheumatic limbs, to the unprofitable post of bower-maiden in the wilderness. "It would not do to alter our arrangements now," she continued gently; "but when spring comes, we will see what can be done; and in the mean time, you must go as often as you can to the castle, to cheer my dear mother with a little chat. Promise me that you will, dear Grannie, for she will be sad enough and lonely enough, I promise you, this poor mother, and nothing will help her so much in her desolation as to talk with you of those dear absent ones, who well she knows are almost as precious to you as they can be to herself. And now I must begone--I must indeed! {88} I could not go in peace without seeing you once more, and so I stole out while all the rest of the world were sleeping; but now the sun is high in the heavens, and they will be looking for me at the castle. Good-by, dear Grannie, good-by!"

Sobbing as if her heart would break, Nellie flung her arms round the old woman's neck; but Grannie, with a wild cry of mingled grief and love, slipt through her embraces and flung herself at her feet. Nellie raised her gently, placed her once more upon the settle, and not daring to trust herself to another word, walked straight out of the cottage, and closed the door behind her.

## Chapter II.

The sun had by this time nearly penetrated through the heavy fog, which had hung since early dawn like a vail over the valley; and just as Nellie reached the foot of the path leading straight up to the castle, it fairly broke through every obstacle, and cast a gleam of wintry sunshine on her face. That face, once seen, was not one easily to be forgotten. The features were almost, and yet not quite, classic in their beauty, gaining in expression what they lost in regularity; and the frequent mingling, by intermarriages, of Celtic blood with that of her old Norman race, had given Nellie that most especial characteristic of Irish beauty--hair black and glossy as the raven's wing, with eyes blue as the dark, double violet, and looking even bluer and darker than they were by nature through the abundance of the long, silken lashes, the same color as her hair, which fringed them. She carried her small, beautifully-formed head with the grace and spirit of a young antelope, and there was something of firmness even in the elastic lightness of her movements, which gave an idea of energy and decision not naturally to be looked for in one so young and girlish, both as to form and feature. Her tight-fitting robe of dark and strong material, though evidently merely adopted for the convenience of travelling, rather set off than detracted from the beauty of her form; and over it hung that long, loose mantle of blue cloth which seems, time out of mind, to have been a favorite garment with the Irish. It was fastened at the throat by a brooch of gold, curious and valuable even then for its evident antiquity; and with its broad, graceful folds falling to her feet, and its hood drawn forward over her head, and throwing her sweet, sad face somewhat into shadow, gave her at that moment, as the sun shone down upon her, the very look and expression of a Mater Dolorosa.

Ten minutes' rapid walking up a path, which looked more like an irregular staircase cut through rock and turf-mould than a way worn gradually by the pressure of men's feet, brought her to the platform upon which the castle stood.

Moated and circumvallated toward the south and west, which were easy of access from the flat lands beyond, Netterville was comparatively defenceless on the side from whence Nellie now approached it; its builders and inhabitants having evidently considered the deep stream and valley which lay beneath as a sufficient protection against their enemies.

The great gate stood looking eastward, and Nellie could see from the spot where she halted that all the preparations for her approaching journey were already almost completed. A couple of sorry-looking nags, (garrans, the Irish would have called them,) one with a pillion firmly fixed behind the saddle, were being led slowly up and down in readiness for their riders. {89} Little sorrowful groups of the Irish dependents of the family stood here and there upon the terraces, waiting (faithful to the last as they ever were in those days) to give one parting glance and one sorrowful, long farewell to their deposed chieftain and his heiress; and a little further off, like hawks hovering around their prey, might be seen a band of those iron-handed, iron-hearted men in whose favor the transplantation of the present owners of the soil had been decreed, and who had been set there, half to watch and half to enforce departure, should anything like evasion or resistance be attempted. Something very like an angry frown clouded Nellie's brow as she caught sight of these men for whose benefit she was being robbed of her inheritance; but, unwilling to indulge such evil feelings, she suffered her gaze to pass quietly beyond them until it rested once more on the streamlet and valley as they stretched eastward toward the sea. Just then some one tapped her on the shoulder, and, turning sharply round, Nellie found herself confronted by a woman not many years older, probably, than herself, but with a face upon which, beautiful as it was, the early indulgence of wild passions had stamped a look of premature decay.

"What would you with me?" said Nellie, surprised at the familiarity of the salutation, and not in the least recognizing the person who had been guilty of it. "I know you not. What do you want with me?"

"Oh! little or nothing," said the other, in a harsh and taunting voice; "little or nothing, my fair young mistress--heiress, that has been, of the house of Netterville--only I thought that, may be, you could say if the old mistress will be after going with you into exile. _They_ told me she was," she added, with a gesture toward the soldiers; "and yet, as far as I can see, only one of the garrans has a pillion to its back. But, may be, she'll be for going later--"

"I have already said," Nellie coldly answered, for she neither liked the matter nor the manner of the woman's speech--"I have already said that I know you not, and, in all likelihood, neither does my mother. Why, therefore, do you ask the question?"

"Because I _hope_ it!" said the woman, with such a look of hatred on her face that Nellie involuntarily recoiled a step--"because I hope it; and then perhaps, when she is houseless and hungry herself, she will remember that cold December night when she drove me from her door, to sleep, for all that she cared, under the shelter of the whin-bushes in the valley."

"If my mother, good and gentle as she is to all, ever acted as you say she did, undoubtedly she had wise and sufficient reasons for it," Nellie coldly answered.

"Undoubtedly--good and sufficient reasons had she, and so, for that matter, had I too, when I put my heavy curse upon her and all her breed," retorted the girl, with a coarse and taunting laugh. "And see how it has come to work," she added wildly--"see how it has come to work! Ay, ay--she'll mind it when it is too late, I doubt not; and will think twice before she lets loose her Saxon pride to flout a poor body for only asking a night's shelter under her roof. Roof! she'll soon have no roof for herself, I guess; but if ever she has one again, she'll think better of it, I doubt not."

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"She will think next time just what she thought last time--that, so long as you lead the life you lead at present, you would not, though you were a princess, be fitting company for the lowest scullion in her kitchen."

Thus spoke a grave, sweet voice (not Nellie's) close at the woman's elbow. She started, as if a wasp had stung her, and turned toward the speaker.

A tall lady, dressed in widow's weeds, with a pale face and eyes weary, it almost seemed, with sorrow, had approached quietly from behind, and overhearing the girl's defiant speech, saved Nellie the trouble of an answer by that firm yet most womanly response. Then passing to the front, she put her arm round Nellie's waist, as if to protect her from the very presence of the other, and drew her away, saying:

"Come along, my daughter; the morning wears apace, and these long delays do but embitter partings. Your grandfather is already waiting. Remember, Nellie," she added in a faltering voice, "that he, with his seventy years, will be almost as dependent upon your strength and energy as you can be on his. He is my dead husband's father, and therefore, after a long and bitter struggle with my own heart, I have devoted you, my own and only treasure, to be his best support and help and comfort in the long and unseasonable journey to which the cruelty of our conquerors has compelled him. I trust--I trust in God and his sweet Mother that I shall see no cause later to repent me of this decision!"

Nellie drew a little closer to her mother, and a strange firmness of expression passed over her young face as she answered quietly:

"My own unselfish mother, doubt not that I will be all--son and daughter both in one--to him; and fear not, I do beseech you, for our safety. What though he has seen his seventy winters, and I but barely seventeen! We are strong and healthy, both of us; and with clean consciences (which is more than our foes can boast of) and good wits, I doubt not we shall reach our destination safely. Destination!" she repeated bitterly--"ay, destination; for home, in any sense of the word, it never can be to us."

"Say not so, my Nellie--say not so," said her mother gently. "Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you, however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, _my_ heart, at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!"

As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome features, exclaimed aloud:

"The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not make you rue it!"

Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading directly to the river.

As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates, a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a petted follower, said hurriedly:

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"My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears.

Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be called in Ireland--major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all in his own proper person.

"True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his communication--"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."

"Faix, madam, and it was just that same that I was thinking to myself awhile ago," cried Hamish eagerly. "Sure, who has a better right to go with Mistress Nellie than her own foster-brother? And am not I strong enough, and more than willing enough to fight for her--ay, and to die for her too, if any of them black-browed hypocrites should dare for to cast their evil eyes upon her or the old master?"

"Strong enough and brave enough undoubtedly you are," said Nellie, speaking before her mother could reply, "and true-hearted more than enough, my dear foster-brother, are you; but, if only for that very reason, you must stay here to help and comfort my dear mother. Bethink you, Hamish, hers is, in truth, the hardest lot of any. We shall have but to endure the weariness of long travel; she will have to contend with the insolence of men in high places--yes, and perhaps even to dispute with them, day by day, and hour by hour, for that which is her rightful due and ours. This is man's work, not woman's; and a man, moreover, quick-witted and fearing no one. Will you not be that man, Hamish, to stand by her against the tyrant and oppressor, and to act for her whenever and wherever it may be impossible for her to act for herself?"

Hamish would have answered with a fervor equal to her own, but Mistress Netterville prevented him by saying, with a mingling of grief and impatience in her manner:

"It is in vain to talk to you, Nellie! You have all your grandfather's stiff-necked notions on this subject. Nevertheless it would have been far more to my real contentment if he and you had yielded to my wishes, seeing that there is many a one still left among our dependents to whom, on a pinch, I could entrust the care both of cattle and of household gear, and but one (and that is Hamish) to whom willingly I would confide my child."

"Now, may Heaven bless you for that very word, madam," cried Hamish eagerly and gratefully; and then turning to Nellie, he went on: "See now, Mistress Nellie, see now, when her ladyship herself has said it--surely you would never think of going contrary to her wishes!"

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"Listen to me, Hamish," said Nellie, putting her hand on his shoulder and standing still, so that her mother unconsciously moved on without her. "Ever since that weary day when the sheriff came here to inform us of our fate, I have had a strange, uncomfortable foreboding that my mother will soon find herself in even a worse plight than ours. A woman, as she will be, alone and friendless--foemen all around her--foemen domiciled even in her household--foemen, the worst and cruelest of any, with prayer on their lips and hypocrisy in their hearts, and a strong sword at their hips, ready to smite and slay, as they themselves express it, all who oppose that wicked lusting for wealth and power which they so blindly mistake for the promptings of a good spirit! With us, once we have obtained our certificate from the commissioners at Loughrea, it will be far otherwise. Each step we take in our wild journey westward will, if, alas! it leads us further from our friends, set, likewise, a safer distance between us and our oppressors. Promise me, therefore, to ask no more to follow us who go to peace and safety, but to abide quietly here, where alone a real danger threatens. Promise me even more than this, my foster-brother--promise to stay with her so long as ever she may need you; and should aught of evil happen to her, which may God avert! promise to let me know at once, that I may instantly return and take a daughter's proper place beside her. Promise me this, Hamish--nay, said _I promise!_--Hamish, you must swear it!"

"I swear it! by the Mother of Heaven and her blessed Child, I swear it!" said Hamish fervently; for he saw at once that there was much probability in Nellie's view of the subject, though, in his overweening anxiety for the daughter, he had hitherto overlooked the chances of danger to the mother. "But, Christ save us!" he added suddenly, as some wild notes of preparation reached his experienced ear; "Christ save us, if the old women are not going to keen for your departure as if it were a burial!"

"Oh! do not let them--do not let them; bid them stop if they would not break our hearts!" cried Nellie, rushing on to overtake her mother, while Hamish, in obedience to her wishes, struck right across the terrace toward a distant group of women, among whom, judging by their excited looks and gestures, he knew that he should find the keeners. Long, however, ere he could reach them, a wild cry of lamentation, taken up and prolonged until every man, woman, and child within ear-shot had lent their voices to swell the chorus, made him feel that he was too late; and turning to ascertain the cause of this sudden outburst, he saw that Lord Netterville had come forth from the castle, and was standing at the open gates. A fine, soldierly-looking man he was, counting over seventy years, yet in appearance not much more than sixty, and as he stood there, pale and bare-headed, in the presence of his people, a shout of such mingled love and sympathy, grief and execration rent the air, that some of the Cromwellian soldiers made an involuntary step forward, and handled their muskets in expectation of an attack.

"Tell them to stop!" cried the old man, throwing up his arms like one who could bear his agony no longer. "For God's sake, tell them to stop! Let them wait, at least," he added, half bitterly, half sorrowfully, "until, like the dead, I am out of hearing."

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There was no need for Hamish to become the interpreter of his wishes. That sudden cry of a man's irrepressible anguish had reached the hearts of all who heard it, and a silence fell upon the crowd--a silence more expressive of real sympathy than their wildest lamentations could have been.

The old lord bowed, and tried to speak his thanks, but the words died upon his lips, and he turned abruptly to take leave of his daughter-in-law. She knelt to receive his blessing. He laid his hand upon her head, and then, making an effort to command his voice, said tenderly:

"Fare thee well, my best and dearest! It is the way of these canting times to be for ever quoting Scripture, and for once I will follow fashion. May Heaven bless and keep thee, daughter; for a very Ruth hast thou been to me in my old age; yea, and better than seven sons in this the day of my poverty and sorrow!"

He stooped to kiss her brow and to help her to rise, and as he did so, he added in a whisper, meant only for the lady's ear:

"Forgive me. Mary, if I once more allude to that subject we have so much discussed already. Are you still in the mind to send Nellie with me? Think better of it, I entreat you. The daughter's place should ever, to my poor thinking, be beside her mother!"

"I _have_ thought," she answered, "and I _have_ decided. If Nellie is my child, she is your grandchild as well; and the duty which her father is no longer here to tender, it must be her pride and joy to offer you in his stead. Moreover, my good lord," she added, in a still lower tone, "the matter hath another aspect. Nellie will be safer with you! This place and all it contains is even now at the mercy of a lawless soldiery, and therefore it is no place for her. Too well I feel that even I, her mother, am powerless to protect her."

Lord Netterville cast a wistful glance on the fair face of his young granddaughter, and said reluctantly:

"It may be that you are right, sweet Moll, as you ever are. Come, then, if so it must be, give us our good-speed, and let us hasten on our way."

He once more pressed her affectionately in his arms, then walked straight up to his horse, and leaped almost without assistance to the saddle. But his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly pale, and as he shook his reins and settled himself in his seat, it was evident to Hamish, who was holding his stirrup for him, that he was struggling with all his might and main to bear himself with a haughty semblance of indifference before the English soldiery. After he was seated to his satisfaction, he ventured a half glance around his people, and lifted his beaver to salute them. But the effort was almost too much; the big tears gathered in his eyes, and his hand shook so violently that he could not replace his hat, which, escaping from his feeble grasp, rolled under his horse's feet. Half a dozen children darted forward to recover it, but Hamish had already picked it up and given it to his master, who instantly put it on his head, saying, in a tone of affected indifference:

"Pest on these trembling fingers which so libel the stout heart within. This comes of wine and wassail, Hamish. Drink thou water all thy life, good youth, if thou wouldst match a sturdy heart with a steady hand, when thy seventy years and odd are on you."

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"Faix, my lord, will I or nill I," said Hamish, trying to fall in with the old man's humor by speaking lightly; "will I or nill I, it seems only too likely that water will be the best part of my wine for some time to come; leastways," he added in a lower voice, "leastways till your honor comes back to your own again, and broaches us a good cask of wine to celebrate the day."

"Back again! back again!" repeated Lord Netterville, shaking his head with a mixture of grief and impatience impossible to describe. "I tell thee, Hamish, that men never come back again when they carry seventy years with them to exile. But where is my granddaughter? Bid her come forth at once, for it's ill lingering here with this weeping crowd around us, and yonder pestilent group of fanatics marking out every mother's son among them, doubtless, for future vengeance."

Mrs. Netterville heard this impatient cry for her only child, and flung her arms for one last passionate embrace round Nellie's neck. Then, firm and unfaltering to the end, she led her to Hamish, who lifted her as reverently as if she had been an empress (as indeed she was in his thoughts) to the pillion behind her grandfather.

Lord Netterville barely waited until she was comfortably settled, ere he stooped to kiss once more his daughter-in-law's uplifted brow, after which, waving his hands toward the weeping people, he dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, and rode swiftly forward.

Then, as if moved by one common impulse, every man, woman, and child in presence there, fell down upon their knees, mingling prayers and blessings, and howls and imprecations, as only an Irish or an Italian crowd can do; and yet obedient to the last to the wishes of their departing chief, it was not until he was well-nigh out of sight that they broke out into that wild, wailing keen, with which they were known to accompany their loved ones to the grave. But the wind was less considerate, and as it unluckily set that way, it bore one or two of the long, sad notes to him in whose honor they were chanted. As they fell upon the old exile's ears, the stoical calmness which he had hitherto maintained forsook him utterly; the reins fell from his hands, he bowed his head till his white locks mingled with his horse's mane, and, "lifting up his voice," he wept as sadly and unrestrainedly as a woman.

To Be Continued.

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The Church Review and Victor Cousin. [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: _The American Quarterly Church Review_. New York: N. S. Richardson. January, 1868. Art. ii., "O. A. Brownson as a Philosopher. Victor Cousin and his Philosophy. _Catholic World_."]

The article in the _Church Review_ promises an estimate of the character of Dr. O. A. Brownson as a philosopher; but what it says has really no relation to that gentleman, and is simply an attempt, not very successful, nor very brilliant indeed, to vindicate M. Cousin's philosophy from the unfavorable judgment we pronounced on it, in the magazine of last June. Dr. Brownson is not the editor, nor one of the editors, of _The Catholic World_; the article in question was signed by no name, was impersonal, and the _Review_ has no authority for charging its authorship to any one but ourselves, or for holding any but ourselves responsible for its merits or demerits. When the name of a writer is signed to an article, he should be held answerable for its contents; but when it is not, the magazine in which it appears is alone responsible. According to this rule, we hold the _Church Review_ answerable for its "rasping" article against ours.

The main purpose of the reviewer seems to be to prove that we wrote in nearly entire ignorance of M. Cousin's philosophy, and to vindicate it from the very grave charges we urged against it. As to our ignorance, as well as his knowledge, that must speak for itself; but we can say sincerely that we should be most happy to be proved to have been in the wrong, and to see Cousin's philosophy cleared from the charge of being unscientific, rationalistic, pantheistic, or repugnant to Christianity and the church. One great name would be erased from the list of our adversaries, and their number would be so much lessened. We should count it a great service to the cause which is so dear to us, if the _Church Review_ could succeed in proving that the errors we laid to his charge are founded only in our ignorance or philosophical ineptness, and that his system is entirely free from them. But though it talks largely against us, assumes a high tone, and makes strong assertions and bold denials, we cannot discover that it has effected anything, except the exhibition of itself in an unenviable light. It has told us nothing of Cousin or his philosophy not to be found in our article, and has not in a single instance convicted us of ignorance, malice, misstatement, misrepresentation, or even inexactness. This we shall proceed now to show, briefly as we can, but at greater length, perhaps, than its crude statements are worth.

The principal charges against us are: 1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophy eclecticism; 2. We wrongly denied scepticism to be a system of philosophy; 3. Showed our ignorance of Cousin's doctrine in saying it remained in psychology, never attained to the objective, or rose to ontology; 4. Misstated his doctrine of substance and cause; 5. Falsely denied that he admits a nexus between the creative substance and the created existence; 6. Falsely asserted that he holds creation to be necessary; 7. Wrongly and ignorantly accused him of Pantheism; 8. Asserted that he had but little knowledge of Catholic theology; 9. Accused him of denying the necessity of language to thought.

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In preferring these charges against M. Cousin's philosophy, we have shown our ignorance of his real doctrine, our contempt for his express declarations, and our philosophical incapacity, and the reviewer thinks one may search in vain through any number of magazine articles of equal length, for one more full of errors and fallacies than ours. This is bad, and, if true, not at all to our credit. We shall not say as much of his article, for that would not be courteous, and instead of saying it, prefer to let him prove it. We objected that M. Cousin assuming that to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, can never, on his system, establish such reality; the reviewer, p. 541, gravely asserts that we ourselves hold, that to the operations of reason no objective reality is necessary, and can never be established! This is charming. But are these charges true? We propose to take them up _seriatim_, and examine the reviewer's proofs.

1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. To this the reviewer replies:

"'Eclecticism can never be a philosophy;' making, among other arguments, the pertinent inquiry: 'How, if you know not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, are you, in studying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and which of error?'

"We beg his pardon, but M. Cousin never called his philosophical system Eclecticism. In the introduction to the _Vrai, Beau, et Bien_, he writes:

"'One word as to an opinion too much accredited. Some persons persist in representing eclecticism as the doctrine to which they would attach my name. I declare, then, that eclecticism is, undoubtedly, very dear to me, for it is in my eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but the fire which supplies this light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most important and useful applications of the philosophy I profess, but it is not its principle. My true doctrine, my true flag, is spiritualism; that philosophy, as stable as it is generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the gospel spread abroad in the world, and which Descartes placed under the severe forms of modern thought'

"And the principles of this philosophy supply the touchstone with which to try 'those several systems, and to determine which is the part of truth and which of error.' Eclecticism, in Cousin's view of it, as one might have discovered who had 'studied his works with some care,' is something more than a blind syncretism, destitute of principles, or a fumbling among conflicting systems to pick out such theories as please us."

If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism, why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it, that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism--all systems mingled together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4. Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32]

[Footnote 32: See _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. 39-42.]

Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer, quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it was the principle of his system. We said:

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"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold; but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the philosopher. _M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as the real and original method of constructing philosophy_. The name was therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard." (_Catholic World_, p. 335.)

Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that we criticised it as such.

2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object, and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive, "What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?

The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his reply:

"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its _raison d'être_, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne, Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure negation.'" (P. 533.)

That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher, we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind. That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable. It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking up the defence of scepticism.

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3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system, his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not _profess_ to rise to ontology by induction from his psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here reproduce a passage from our own article.

"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God, and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from this psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction, attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do not pretend, but that he _professes_ to recognize them and distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.

"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only _ens necessarium et reale_, and in failing to assert them in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories." (_Catholic World_, PP. 335, 336.)

The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness, which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess, replies to us in this manner:

"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will, reflection, and personality are as yet absent'--this 'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive mode of reason'--is objective to the whole subject in every _possible_ sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the objective, and a revelation of it.

"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal, but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, _as Kant maintained with regard to the categories_.' 'The scepticism of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were, deprived of all subjectivity--where the reason shows itself almost entirely impersonal.

{99}

"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling, willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is completely foreign to us--if an act of the reason is spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal--what is there that can be more objective to the subject?

"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in every _possible_ sense. For we are not to forget the conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that it should cease to make its appearance in a particular subject--in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal, does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness, is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34] Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)

[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]

[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]

We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof against us, what is in question--the very thing that he is to prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well, and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought, clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective, but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He holds that reason has two modes of activity--the one personal, the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer "degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's philosophical writings.

But what is this reason which operates in these two modes, impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him a brute, unless you identify man with God. {100} If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as Cousin certainly does say--for he makes it our faculty and only faculty of intelligence--then you make it subjective, since nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best only to the will and the personality--what Cousin calls _le moi_. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article, "a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal reason and the personal by the difference between _seeing_ and _looking_, _hearing_ and _listening_, which corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between what he calls simple _perception_ and _apperception_. In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but look, not only perceive, but apperceive.

Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind, irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.

We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:

"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the _Christian Examiner_ told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject." (_Catholic World_, p. 338.)

We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.

{101}

"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate. Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from any touch of subjectivity. _Of course, his ontological conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and, of course, this credibility can never be established in a logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly established_. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an assumption.

"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real existence of the objects they dealt with; _nor did they, when the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls, dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective reality was necessary_.'

"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the very idea of obligation implies _something outside of them_, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be, that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact. The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is logically undemonstrable--of what is superior, because anterior to reasoning. We cannot _prove_ to the understanding truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)

This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other basis for science than the credibility or faith in the trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a circle without making the slightest advance.

The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous _cogito, ergo sum_, I think, therefore, I exist, that man can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for its own operation. {102} In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought, there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his barbarous dialect, _le moi et le non-moi_; but he is careful to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.

The _cogito, ergo sum_ is, of course, worthless as an argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices, or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say, the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life, and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and

## active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and

cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable _Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme._ The object being independent of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist _a parte rei_, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise, therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think? What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he knows, and what he knows.

The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises from thus placing the question of method before the question of principles, as we showed in our former article. No such difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the question of principles--which are given, not found, or obtained by the action of the subject without them--and follows the method they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be established.

The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be established _in a logical way_, but maintains that there is no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an unconquerable _belief_ that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but its validity is precisely the matter in question. {103} How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science. How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these very beliefs?

The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not, found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the article criticising us?

The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says, "All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment, and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his essays, _Du Fait de Conscience_ and _Du Premier et du dernier Fait de Conscience_. [Footnote 35] Though even in these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without perceiving it. But we hasten on.

[Footnote 35: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. pp. 248, 256.]

4. We are accused of misstating Cousin's doctrine of substance and cause. Here is our statement and the reviewer's charge:

"'M. Cousin,' continues _The Catholic World_, 'professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two--substance and cause; but as he in fact identifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance _only in so much_ [the italics are ours] as it is cause, and cause to be cause _only in so much_ as it is substance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance, which you may call, indifferently, substance or cause. But, though every substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it _may be something more_ than a cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it may be admitted that he recognized two categories.'

"What is exactly meant by these two contradictory statements it is not easy to guess; but let Cousin speak for himself: [Footnote 36]

[Footnote 36: VI. Lecture, Course of 1818, on the Absolute.]

"'Previous to Leibnitz, these two ideas seemed separated in modern philosophy by an impassable barrier. He, the first to sound the nature of the idea of substance, brought it back to the notion of force. This was the foundation of all his philosophy, and of what afterward became the Monadology. ... But has Leibnitz, in identifying the notion of substance with that of cause, presented it with justness? Certainly, substance is revealed to us by cause; for, suppress all exercise of the cause and force which is in ourselves, and we do not exist to ourselves. It is, then, the idea of cause which introduces into the mind the idea of substance. But is substance nothing more than cause which manifests it? .... The causative power is the essential attribute of substance; it is not substance itself. In a word, it has seemed to us surer to hold to these two primitive notions; distinct, though inseparably united; one, which is the sign and manifestation of the other, this, which is the root and foundation of that.'

{104}

"One would think this sufficiently explicit for all who are not afflicted with the blindness that will not see." (P. 539.)

We see no self-contradiction in our statement, and no contradiction of M. Cousin. We maintain that M. Cousin really, though probably not intentionally or consciously, reduces the categories of Kant and Aristotle to the single category of substance, and prove it by the words italicized by the reviewer, which are our translation of Cousin's own words. Cousin says, in his own language, in a well-known passage in the first preface of his _Fragments Philosophiques_, "Le Dieu de la conscience n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire, rélegué pardelà la création sur le trône desert d'une éternité silencieuse, et d'une existence absolue qui ressemble au néant même de l'existence: c'est un Dieu à la fois vrai et réel, à la fois substance et cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, _n'étant substance qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance_, c'est-à-dire, étant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, éternité et temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilité et totalité, principe, fin, et milieu, au sommet de l'être et à son plus humble degré, infini et fini, tout ensemble, triple enfin, c'est-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité. En effet, _si Dieu n'est pas tout il n'est rien._" [Footnote 37] This passage justifies our first statement, because Cousin calls God substance, the one, absolute substance, besides which there is no substance. But as our purpose, at the moment, was not so much to show that Cousin made substance and cause identical, as it was to show that he made substance a necessary cause, we allowed, for reasons which he himself gives in the passage cited by the reviewer from his course of 1818 on the Absolute, that he might be said to distinguish them, and to have reduced the categories to two, instead of one only, as he professes to have done. But the reviewer hardly needs to be told that, when it is assumed that substance is cause only on condition of causing, that is, causing from the necessity of its own being, the effect is not substantially distinguishable from the substance causing, and is only a mode or affection of the causative substance itself, or, at best, a phenomenon.

[Footnote 37: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. p. 76.]

5. Accepting substance and cause as two categories, we contend that Cousin requires a third; namely, the creative act of the causative substance, and contingent existences, as asserted in the ideal formula. _Ens creat existentias_. To this the reviewer cites, from Cousin, the following passage in reply:

"In the fifth lecture of the course of 1828, M. Cousin says:

"'The two terms of this so comprehensive formula do not constitute a dualism, in which the first term is on one side and the second on the other, without any other connection between them than that of being perceived at the same time by the intelligence; so far from this, the tie which binds them is essential. It is a connection of _generation_ which draws the second from the first, and constantly carries it back to it, and which, with the two terms, constitutes the _three_ integrant elements of intelligence. ... Withdraw this relation which binds variety to unity, and you destroy the necessary bond of the two terms of every proposition. These three terms, distinct, but inseparable, constitute at once a triplicity and an indivisible unity. ... Carried into Theodicy, the theory I have explained to you is nothing less than the very foundation of Christianity. The Christians' God is at once triple and one, and the animadversions which rise against the doctrine I teach ought to ascend to the Christian Trinity.'" (P. 540.)

{105}

We said in our article, "Under the head of substances he (Cousin) ranges all that is substantial or that pertains to real and necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal or the effects of the causative action of substance. He says he understands, by substance, the universal and absolute substance, the real and necessary being of the theologians; and by phenomena, not mere modes or appearances of substance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena only in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or produced by the causative action of substance. [Footnote 38] If this has any real meaning, he should recognize three categories as in the ideal formula, _Ens creat existentias_, that is, Being, existences, or creatures, and the creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and contingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to the Creator."

[Footnote 38: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. xix. xx.]

The passage cited by the reviewer from Cousin is brought forward, we suppose, to show that it does recognize this third category; but if so, what becomes of the formal statement that he has reduced the categories to _two_, substance and cause, or, as he sometimes says, substance or being and phenomenon? Besides, the passage cited does not recognize the third term or category of the formula. It asserts not the _creative_ act of being as the _nexus_ between substance and phenomenon, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the relative, etc.; but _generation_, which is a very different thing, for the generated is consubstantial with the generator.

6. We were arguing against Cousin's doctrine, that God, being intrinsically active, or, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, _actus purissimus_, most pure act, must therefore necessarily create or produce exteriorly. In prosecuting the argument, we anticipated an objection which, perhaps, some might be disposed to bring from Leibnitz's definition of substance, as a _vis activa_, and endeavored to show that, even accepting that definition, it would make nothing in favor of the doctrine we were refuting, and which Cousin undeniably maintains. We say, "The doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must, from intrinsic necessity, cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an active force, a _vis activa_, but we do not recollect that he anywhere pretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis activa_, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially active, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, most pure act; ... but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad extra_, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own divine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his infinite being, for he is complete in himself, is in himself the plenitude of being, and always and everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity. Creation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not necessary to the perfection of his activity, adds nothing to him, as it can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being, without conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad extra_."

{106}

The reviewer says, sneeringly, "This is the most remarkable passage in this remarkable article." He comments on it in this manner:

"Thus appearing to accept the now exploded Leibnitzian theory, which Cousin has combated both in its original form, and as maintained by De Biran, our critic tries to escape from it by this subtle distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair. He enlarges upon it. God, according to him, is indeed _vis activa_ in the most eminent degree, but this does not imply that he must act _ad extra_, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite being. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him but as infinitely and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance without conceiving him to be necessarily creating, or

## acting _ad extra_. M. Cousin, he says, evidently confounds

the interior acts of the divine being with his exterior or creative acts.

"We have no wish to deny that he does make such a confusion. To one who holds that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, and that such reality can never be established,' this kind of subjective activity of the will, which seems so nearly to resemble passivity--these pure acts, or volitions, which never pass out of the sphere of the will into causation--may be satisfactory; but to one who believes that God is not a scholastic abstraction--to one who worships the 'living God' of the Scriptures--it will sound like a pitiful jugglery with words thinly veiling a lamentable confusion of ideas. God is a person, and he acts as a person. The divine will is no otherwise conceivable by us than as of the same nature as man's will; it differs from it only in the mode of its operation--for with him this is always immediate, and no deliberation or choice is possible--and it is as absurd to speak of the activity of his will, the eminently active force, never extending 'out of the circle of his own infinite being,' as it would be to call a man eminently an active person whose activity was all merely purpose or volition, never passing into the creative act _ad extra_, or out of the circle of his own finite being.

"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be _in re_ is greater than to be _in intellectu_, then has the creature man, according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator _essentially and necessarily_ has. For his will is by nature causative, creative, productive _ad extra_, and it is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine consciousness without realizing themselves _ad extra_!" (Pp. 540, 541.)

We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act _ad intra_, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act _ad extra_, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary, universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The Episcopalian journals were right in calling the _Church Review's_ criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.

In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in his introduction to the _Posthumous Works of Maine de Biran_, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is worth.

[Footnote 39: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. p. xxi.]

{107}

We admit that in some sense God may be a _vis activa_, but we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the _potentia nuda_ of the schoolmen, and means that God is _in actu_ most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential, in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his

## activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the

fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself; and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect

## activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but

himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act _ad extra_, that is, create existences distinct from himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be otherwise than three persons in one God, if, _per impossibile_, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession _ad intra_, or _ad extra?_ Is the distinction of three persons a distinction _from_ God, or a distinction _in_ God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that "between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction _from_ God, you deny the divine unity--assert three Gods; if you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself, not a living God.

The action of God _ad intra_ is necessary, proceeds from the fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action of God _ad extra_, or creation, proceed from the necessity of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation, everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity? Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted the expression. Be it so. {108} But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action _ad intra_ and action _ad extra_, his very assertion that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation, destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)

[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine, that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation can be only an evolution or development of himself, and consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]

_Metaphysical_ necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537, means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by _metaphysical_, the reviewer means _moral_; then God is under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative _cannot but create._" Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative, is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while asserting that God is infinitely and essentially _active_ in his own being, we denied that he is essentially _creative_. He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin against our criticisms.

7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.

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Cousin's pantheism follows necessarily from two doctrines that he, from first to last, maintains. First, there is only one substance. Second, Creation is necessary. He says in the _Avertissement_ to the third edition of his _Philosophical Fragments_ that he only in rare passages speaks of substance as one, and one only, and when he does so, he uses the word, not in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of Plato, of the most illustrious doctors of the church, and of the Holy Scripture in that sublime word, I AM that I AM; that is, in the sense of eternal, necessary, and self-existent Being. But this is not the case. The passages in which he asserts there is and can be only one substance, are not rare, but frequent, and to understand it in any of these passages in any but its ordinary sense, would make him write nonsense. He repeats a hundred times that there is, and can be, only one substance, and says, expressly, that substance is one or there is no substance, and that relative substances contradict and destroy the very idea of substance. He is talking, he says in his defence, of absolute substance. Be it so; interpret him accordingly. "Besides the one only absolute substance, there is and can be no substance, that is, no other one only absolute substance." Think you M. Cousin writes in that fashion? But we fully discussed this matter in our former article, and as the reviewer discreetly refrains from even attempting to show that we unjustly accused him of maintaining that there is and can be but one substance, we need not attempt any additional proof. The second doctrine, that creation is necessary, the reviewer concedes and asserts, "In Cousin, as we have attempted to explain, creation is not only possible, but NECESSARY," repeating Cousin's own words.

"As to Cousin's pantheism, if any one is disposed to believe that the systems of Spinoza and of Cousin have anything in common, we can only recommend to him a diligent study of both writers, freedom from prejudice, and a distrust of his own hastily formed opinions. It is too large a question to enter upon here, but we would like to ask the critic how he reconciles the two philosophers on the great question he last considered--the creation. In Spinoza, there is no creation. The universe is only the various modes and attributes of substance, subsisting with it from eternity in a necessary relation. In Cousin, creation, as we have attempted to explain, is 'not only possible but necessary.' The relation between the universe and the supreme Substance is not a necessary relation of substance and attribute, but a contingent relation of cause and effect, produced by a creative fiat." (P. 545.)

A necessitated creation is no proper creation at all. And Cousin denies that God does or can create from nothing; says God creates out of his own fulness, that the stuff of creation is his own substance, and time and again resolves what he calls creation into evolution or development, and makes the relation between the infinite and the finite, as we have seen, not that of _creation_, but that of _generation_, which is only development or explication. He also denies that individuals are substances, and says they have their substance in the one absolute substance. Let the reviewer read the preface to the first edition of the _Fragments_, reproduced without change in subsequent editions, and he will find enough more passages to the same effect, two at least in which he asserts that finite substances, not being able to exist in themselves without something beyond themselves, are very much like phenomena; and his very pretension is, that he has reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two, substance or being, and phenomenon.

Now, the essential principle of pantheism is the assertion of one only substance and the denial of all finite substances. {110} It is not necessary, in order to be a pantheist, to maintain that the apparent universe is an eternal mode or attribute of the one only substance, as Spinoza does; for pantheism may even assert the creation of modes and phenomena, which are perishable; its essence is in the assertion of one only substance, which is the ground or reality of all things, as Cousin maintains, and in denying the creation of finite substances, that can act or operate as second causes. Cousin, in his doctrine, does not escape pantheism, and we repeat, that he is as decided a pantheist as was Spinoza, though not precisely of the same school.

The reviewer says, p. 544, "We proceed to another specimen of the critic's accuracy; 'M. Cousin says pantheism is the divinization of nature, taken in its totality as God, But this is sheer atheism.'" Are we wrong? Here is what Cousin says in his own language: "Le panthéism est _proprement_ la divinisation du tout, le grand tout donné comme Dieu, l'universe Dieu de la plupart de mes adversaires, de Saint-Simon, par example. C'est au fond un veritable athéisme." [Footnote 41] If he elsewhere gives a different definition, that is the reviewer's affair, not ours. We never pretended that Cousin never contradicts himself, or undertook to reconcile him with himself; but the reviewer should not be over-hasty in charging inaccuracy, misrepresentation, or ignorance where none is evident. He may be caught himself. The reviewer stares at us for saying Cousin's "exposition of the Alexandrian philosophy is a marvel of misapprehension." Can the reviewer say it is not? Has he studied that philosophy? We repeat, it is a marvel of misapprehension, both of Christian theology and of that philosophy itself. The Neoplatonists were pantheists and emanationists, and Cousin says the creation they asserted was a creation proper. Let that suffice to save us from the scathing lash of the reviewer.

[Footnote 41: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. 18, 19.]

8. We said, in our article, "It was a great misfortune for M. Cousin that what little he knew of Catholic theology, caught up, apparently, at second hand, served only to mislead him. The great controversies on Catholic dogmas have enlightened the darkest passages of psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic theologian on a vantage-ground of which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him your Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Hegels, and Cousins dwindle into pigmies." The reviewer replies to this:

"This is something new indeed, and we think the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, whom Cousin understood so intimately, and for whom he had so sincere an admiration, would be the last to claim an exclusive vantage-ground from their knowledge of the controversies on Catholic dogma. For these men, alike of the Oratory and of Port Royal, were Cartesians, and their faith was interwoven with their philosophy; it was not in opposition to it. And they knew that that philosophy was based upon a thorough understanding of the great 'controversies on Catholic dogma,' which had been carried on in the schools by laymen as well as by ecclesiastics.

"But who is the Romish theologian the critic refers to, and how is it he makes so little use of his 'vantage-ground'? Since Descartes brought modern philosophy into being by its final secularization, we do not recollect any theologian so eminent that all the great men he has named dwindle into pigmies before him. Unless, indeed, this should take place from their being so far out of the worthy man's sight and comprehension, as to be 'dwarfed by the distance,' as Coleridge says." (Pp. 546, 547.)

{111}

We referred to no _Romish_ theologian in particular; but if the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose _Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin_ prove his immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him. Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings; moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians, Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the Jesuits--men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed only by their humility and sanctity?

But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here, probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case. Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He says God is triple. _"Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité."_ Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?

Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason, and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with that theology?

In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian, not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason, and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity and the church.

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9. The reviewer says:

"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language, that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)

If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism--we should say intellectism, or noeticism--which he professed, that it assumed that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that, though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition, that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is very different from the medium of doing it.

Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant, because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective, but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the simple, direct apprehension of the _intelligible_, as well as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to his heart's content.

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But we have already dwelt too long on this attempt at criticism on us in the _Church Review_--a _Review_ from which, considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected, if not much profound philosophy or any very rigid logic, at least the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to say that we have been disappointed. It sets out with a promise to discuss the character of Dr. Brownson as a philosopher, and confines itself to a criticism on an article in our magazine without the slightest allusion to a single one of that gentleman's avowed writings. Even supposing, which the _Review_ has no authority for supposing, that Dr. Brownson wrote the article on Cousin, that article was entitled to be treated gravely and respectfully; for no man in this country can speak with more authority on Cousin's philosophy, for no one in this country has had more intimate relations with the author, or was accounted by him a more trust worthy expositor of his system.

As to the reviewer's own philosophical speculations, which he now and then obtrudes, we have, for the most part, passed them over in silence, for they have not seemed to us to have the stuff to bear refuting. The writer evidently has no occasion to pride himself on his aptitude for philosophical studies, and is very far from understanding either the merits or defects of such a man as Victor Cousin, in every respect so immeasurably above him. We regret that he should have undertaken the defence of the great French philosopher, for he had little qualification for the task. He has provoked us to render more glaring the objectionable features of Cousin's philosophy than we wished. If he sends us a rejoinder, we shall be obliged to render them still more glaring, and to sustain our statements by citation of passages from his works, book and page marked, so express, so explicit, and so numerous, as to render it impossible for the most sceptical to doubt the justice of our criticism.

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The Tears Of Jesus.

"And Martha said: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again. ... And Mary saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... And Jesus wept."

DISCIPLE.

"Kind Lord, Dost Martha's love prefer? Cheer Mary's heavy heart likewise, And say to her, Thy brother once again shall rise.

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"Why fall those voiceless tears In sad reply To her, as if thine ears Heard not her cry?

"What opens sorrow's deep abyss At Mary's word? When Martha spoke, no grief like this Thy spirit stirred."

MASTER.

"My child, Remember what I said to her-- The elder of the twain, When she, the busy minister, Of Mary did complain.

"Know, they who choose the better part And love but me alone. Ask only that my loving heart Shall make their griefs mine own.

"To Martha is the promise given That Lazarus shall rise from sleep; But Mary is the bride of heaven-- With her shall not the bridegroom weep?"

DISCIPLE.

"Kind Lord, When breaks my heart in agony, Dost ever shed a tear with _me_?"

MASTER.

"My Child, Wilt all things else for me resign? Wilt others' love for mine forego Wilt find thy joy alone in me? Then will I count thy griefs as mine. And with thy tears my tears shall flow In loving sympathy."

---------

{115}

Sister Simplicia.

"What a wet, disagreeable day it is! If papa hadn't bought the tickets last evening, I don't believe I should have come out to-day, even for the sake of hearing Ristori in Marie Antoinette. She can't do better than she does in Mary Stuart, and I already wish ourselves back in your cosy little library again; besides, I haven't half finished looking at those curious old illuminated books of your father's, and, as we go home to-morrow, I fear I shan't have time, for papa has an invitation for us all this evening."

So spoke Anita Hartridge as she and Mary Kenton took their places in the Broadway stage on their way to a matinee at the French Theatre. Anita's father was a Baltimore merchant. He was often in the city buying goods, but this was the first time he had brought his daughter with him. The two girls were warm friends. They had been educated together, and it was not yet a year since they had bidden adieu to the convent walls, the one to thread, motherless, the gay mazes of Baltimore society; the other to come home as a household angel to the father and mother, who were already beginning to grow old. It has been a happy week, a week all too soon coming to an end; and Mary Kenton sits thinking sadly, so wrapped in her reveries that she does not even raise her eyes when the stage stops to take in more passengers.

She is thinking of Anita, of her beauty and brilliancy, her quick, flashing, Southern gayety, and yet deep, true, sympathetic heart; and she wonders what will become of her friend, with no mother to restrain her impulsiveness and a father who thinks only of gratifying her lightest wish. How gladly she would share with her her own mother's tender care; and if she could but be taken from this whirl of amusement for a short time; but no; they return to-morrow. Well, here they are at Union Square, and Anita is speaking softly.

"Mary, did you ever see so beautiful a face? No, not opposite; over there in the corner next the door--that younger Sister of Mercy. She looks like Elizabeth of Hungary. I have been watching her all this time, and she has never looked up once. She seems inspired. Do you believe any one _can_ be so happy as she looks, I mean any one who leads so self-denying a life?"

But there is no time to reply. They leave the omnibus and are soon entranced under the magic power of the great tragedian.

"I wish I were Ristori," said Anita, as they left the theatre. "To have her power and to be admired as she is admired; oh! that were grand. That were a life worth living. What is it to live as we do--to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day again--no grand purpose; and when we die, have the world go on just the same as before? Such lives are not worth living. I wish I could be great as Madame de Staël, or beautiful as Madame Recamier."

"'O world! so few the years we live, Would that the life that thou dost give Were life indeed!'"

repeated Mary slowly; "and yet, there are other lives that I had rather take for my model than any of these."

{116}

"Yes, I know, Mary. You would take rather the life of some saint, St. Elizabeth herself, perhaps; you are always so good and gentle; and Sister Agnes used to say that she knew you would come back to her some time as a sister yourself. But I am not at all so; I love the world, and society, and amusement, and am only dissatisfied because I am neither so brilliant nor beautiful as I should like to be. I feel that your ideal is the better one, but I have not strength of character enough to live anything but a gay, butterfly life. You know my favorite song is, 'I'd be a butterfly,' and indeed I do wish for beauty more than anything else in the world. And yet, after all, that face that I saw under the plain black bonnet was of a heavenly beauty that I cannot forget. Page's copy of the _Madonna della Seggiola_ that we admired so much yesterday is scarcely more beautiful."

"And her life has been as beautiful as her face, they say. But there is our stage. Let us hurry a little; mother will be waiting dinner for us already."

A low rap at Mrs. Kenton's door. It is the hour after dinner, and Dr. Kenton and Mr. Hartridge are in the library, alternately discussing business and their meerschaums. There are two hours yet before the ladies need dress for the evening. Mrs. Kenton is sitting in her large chair before the grate, and the girls come in quietly and draw up two low ottomans at her feet. The gas is not yet lighted, and the twilight throws long, deep shadows from the curtains and the quaint, old-fashioned high bedposts.

"Mother, we have seen Sister Simplicia to-day. Anita very much wishes to hear her history, and you have never told it to me yet. It is just the night to tell a story, just such a night as we read of, 'without, the snow falling thick and fast, but within a bright fire throwing its cheerful light around the room and lighting up the countenance of the narrator,'" said Mary, smiling.

"I imagine the fire you are quoting about was of hickory logs in a great, wide fireplace; and this is only a city grate," said her mother in the same tone; and then more seriously, "but I will tell you the story, since you wish it, and all the more readily as I was thinking of her at the moment you entered.

"Eight years ago Rose Harding was the belle of our circle. I loved her as I would have loved a little sister of my own, had I been blessed with one. She was the younger sister of my dearest friend; and when Rachel died, she left Rose half in my care, for their mother was dead and the father only too indulgent. But Rose was not easily spoiled, and looking back now at this distance, I think that I have never known another that was her equal. Mr. Harding was wealthy, and she had all that heart could wish. Of course she was much sought after and much loved; but few were made unhappy through her, for she was far too generous and too conscientious to be a coquette; and when one evening she came to me, blushing and trembling, and told me that Willis Courtney loved her--"

"Willis Courtney, the son of papa's old partner?" asked Anita.

"You have seen him?"

"Yes; he was my ideal when I was still a very little girl. But then I was sent away to be educated, and never saw him afterward."

"He was worthy of Rose, though very different. How proud he was of her! I loved to watch them together. He was so gentle and thoughtful of every little attention, and she trusted and honored him so fully. It seemed there never could be a brighter future in store for any than for these two, and surely there never could be any more deserving of the choicest blessings of earth. {117} Mr. Harding was happy in his child's happiness, and Willis only waited a visit from his father to give him the glad surprise. Mr. Courtney was at that time the senior partner in your father's firm, Anita! Willis was in the second year of his law studies, and in less than a year he could look forward to establishing a home; for his father was growing old, and had told him often that he only wished to see him happily settled in life before he died. And so the weeks passed in happiness, and tomorrow Mr. Courtney should come. I shall never forget how anxiously Rose awaited this coming--expectant, hopeful, timid. 'Willis says his father is a stern man. I shall be so afraid of him. Perhaps he will not approve of me'--with a half-frightened laugh; 'I do so want him to like me. Willis honors him so, and yet says he always stood in awe of him. _Do_ you think he will like me? I wish to-morrow were past, I dread it so; and yet Willis says he is sure to love me, and that he will be so glad to have a daughter.'

"And Willis was at the depot, impatient to see his father again, and still more impatient to have the crowning seal of approval set upon his choice.

"At length the shrill whistle of the distant train, a few anxious glances through the darkness, and the bright red light of the engine glides past slowly. Why is it that this red glare, shining as it passes, seems to throw a sort of supernatural glare over the platform and the waiting figures? A strange, weird feeling comes over him. Is it himself standing there, or is he, too, only some phantom of his own imagination? In a moment he lives over his whole past life in one comprehensive flash, as people who are drowning are said to do. But the train has stopped, and there is his father's bald head among the crowd of rushing passengers. Willis passes his hand quickly over his forehead, as if to brush away the illusion, and advances to meet him.

"It is a glad meeting. Mr. Courtney looks at his son, and, as he looks, the benignant smile on his face broadens and deepens. It is something to have delved in the counting-house all these years, and bent his shoulders over the dull ledgers, that these shoulders may have no need to bend, and that this intellect shall have the means of making the best of itself; and, as he walks beside him to the waiting carriage, he says in his heart, 'There is none equal to _my_ son.'

"And now they sit in their parlor at the '---- House,' and the bottle of old port is almost emptied, for Mr. Courtney is fond of good wine. The waiter has arranged the fire, and brought in a fresh bottle, and father and son are alone.

"'And now, Willis, who is she, this divinest of her sex; and when am I to see her?'

"'To-morrow, or this evening if you prefer. Mr. Harding is almost an invalid, and so spends his evenings at home, and Rose seldom leaves him.'

"'_Harding!_ What Harding is this? You always spoke of her as "Rose," and I never thought to ask her family name,' said Mr. Courtney, in ill-suppressed anxiety.

"'Thomas Harding, formerly of New-Orleans. Why, father, what is it; are you ill? What can I do for you?' said Willis, rising from his chair quickly, as Mr. Courtney arose and staggered toward the mantle piece. He stood there, resting his folded arms on it, with his head so buried in them that the son could see nothing of his face. {118} John Courtney was not a man to be approached easily. Whatever the joys or sorrows of his life might have been, his son was as ignorant of them as the stranger who met him just an hour ago. So Willis stood now at a little distance, not feeling sufficient freedom to approach, and anxiously awaiting some word or movement that should give him permission to speak. But none such came, and, after a few moments, Mr. Courtney raised his head, saying, 'A glass of wine, Willis. I felt a little faint a moment ago. Travelling is tiresome work for an old man.' And Willis filled the glass silently; for there was a look in the white face that chilled, while it awed him--a look of determination, and yet of indecision at the same time.

"It seemed as if a cold, misty atmosphere had suddenly entered the room; and the two men spent the remainder of the evening in a vain effort to sustain a conversation upon all manner of general subjects, which the son seemed always to succeed in shaping till it just approached the subject in which alone he was then interested, and the father always to turn it off just in time to prevent its touching. At length Willis arose, saying:

"'But your journey has tired you very much, father. I will go now, that you may have a long night's rest.'

"'Yes, yes. I am no longer so young as I was once.'

"But after his son had gone, he forgot his weariness, and spent the night in walking up and down the length of the parlor, and drinking wine, as the waiter said in the morning, 'like a high-bred gentleman;' and when the morning came, the look of indecision had passed away, and the determination alone remained.

"And Willis passed the long hours of darkness in a nightmare of undefined dread, half asleep, but yet entirely conscious of all around; a state that confused imagination and reality, till the most frightful dreams became impressed with all the power of real events--so real that only the morning, with the unchanged, familiar face of the servant could make him feel certain that they were all waking dreams, and that he had not lived a horrible year. But the cold water, and the cheerful breakfast-table, and all the invigorating morning influences served to restore him; and he laughed at the absurd fancies, and went around to his father's hotel, wondering that he should have felt so discouraged and uncomfortable in his presence last evening, and mentally resolving to let no such chill come over their intercourse this morning.

"As he stepped into the hall, he noticed the well-known baggage, with the initials, 'J. C.,' and said to the waiter:

"'What carelessness is this? You have never carried up my father's baggage.'

"'As soon as you had gone last evening,' said the waiter, 'I went up to his door, sir, and asked if I should send it up then; but he said, "No," as he should leave early in the morning, sir.'

"Willis hurried up and found the old man at breakfast, or rather sitting there beside it, for he had evidently eaten nothing, although he said he had finished.

"'Why, father! your baggage--'

"'Yes, yes, a telegram. Must return immediately; and now sit down a moment. There is half an hour yet before going to the train. When do you finish your studies?'

"'In two months.'

{119}

"'So I thought--so I thought. There is no hurry about your beginning to practise, and I need your assistance in my business just at present. There are some speculations in the West that must be attended to. There is money in them, but I can't trust Stephens to go alone, and I want to send you with him. I shall make all arrangements for you to start at the end of two months.'

"'But, father--Rose?'

"'Time enough. There's nothing will test your affections like a little absence. Besides, you aren't either of you old enough to know what you want yet. If in two years you both feel as you do now, why, then we'll see about matters; and you know your means don't depend on your practice; besides, you'll get along better in that for seeing something of the world before you commence. I'm getting to be an old man, Willis, and need my son's help a little now. Surely he won't make any objections to doing what I desire?'

"Filial respect and affection was a strong trait in Willis Courtney's character. Disobedience to the father whom he had always feared, and to whom he was really so much indebted, was a thing of which he had never thought before, and thought of now only to put away the idea as one unworthy of him; and Rose, who loved her own father devotedly, respected him the more for his duty to his; and so it came about that when the two months had passed, he went to California with Stephens, the head clerk of the firm, and Rose had only the long, tender letters; and Mr. Harding, who had never been dissatisfied while Willis was here, grew suddenly restless, and longed to travel.

"'As long as Rose was so happy, I was contented here,' he said, 'but now she is often sad, and I think a little change will be good for both of us. I have travelled too much in my life to be satisfied to settle down in one spot and remain there. I must see Italy once again before I die.'

"And so their passage was taken, and one morning we stood on the deck of an English steamer to bid them 'God speed;' and after we had come on shore again, stood long watching the ship till it was far down the bay.

"At first Rose wrote long, cheerful, descriptive letters. A summer at a German watering-place had almost entirely restored Mr. Harding's health, and in the early autumn they began their tour, intending to visit Vienna, and, passing directly from there to Venice, make a short stay in two or three cities of Northern Italy, and then go on to Rome to spend the winter.

"Letters came seldom now--it was at the beginning of our civil war--and when they came, there was no longer any mention of Willis, nor of glad anticipations of return; and later, in a letter dated at Brescia, she wrote: 'I am in the city of Angela da Brescia. How was it possible for her to be what she was? I cannot understand it. To rise up out of the shadow of a great grief, and to go forth cheerfully into the world and work to do good and make others happy. It needs more than human will. God alone can give the strength to do this, and yet if he does it sometimes, as he did for her, why not always?'

"And still there was no mention of any personal grief; but the whole tone of her letter was sad, and I felt that something more than a mere transient annoyance had occurred to thus destroy her accustomed cheerfulness.

{120}

"At first, the genial climate and the revival of old associations--for he had spent several winters there in his youth--had seemed to give Mr. Harding a new life, and almost a second youth, while they visited the familiar places, and he pointed out to his daughter the glorious relics of past architecture and the grand works of the old masters; but it was only for a time, and when we heard again, his strength was failing rapidly. At Rome they had met an old friend who was staying there with his wife, so they joined company, and planned their return together for the ensuing summer.

"And all this time we had only heard of Willis Courtney that he had, without returning home, joined the Union army as a private, and that his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, was very much displeased; and, in addition, that he had sold out his interest in the business, some said in order to retire and enjoy his wealth, others, to avoid a financial crisis which he imagined to be impending.

"In May came another letter from Rose. The time of their return was uncertain; her father was feeble, and wished neither to leave the mild climate, nor to risk the danger of a voyage, till he should be stronger. And in reply to some question of mine--'I have heard no word from Willis Courtney this winter, and even last autumn his letters had changed and were no longer like him. But I cannot write of this. I do not understand it all. ... I have spent almost the entire day in St. Peter's. I do this often. It is God's grandest monument on earth, and I never feel so near him as here. I never truly felt the love of holiness before; but here, under the influence of the inimitable grandeur of his church, and in the presence of his earthly representative, I can almost shut out the vanities of the world, and bow before God alone, worshipping him in supreme love and reverence. I love the beautiful rites of the church. Ah! how gladly I would lie down beneath the shadow of her walls, and sleep the last sleep--or if that may not be, take the vows which should make me the bride of heaven alone, and shut out for ever the coldness and deceptions of the world. But my poor father needs me so much, and is so entirely dependent upon me, that I cannot leave him while he lives. He is fearfully changed, and has grown so much older within the last two months that you would scarcely recognize him now. I hope he may soon be better, and am sure he must be, for he is always so cheerful.'

"But this was not to be, and after lingering a few weeks longer, he died amid the scenes he had loved so well, having first exacted a promise from Rose that she would return to New York with Mr. and Mrs. Rowland.

"They had a pleasant voyage, good weather and a smooth sea, and the vessel glided along, making every day her full number of knots, and making glad the hearts of the passengers, who were returning to home and friends.

"Mr. and Mrs. Rowland spent much of the time on deck, and Rose sat near them, always with a book lying open on her lap; to the careless observer she appeared to be reading, but those who, after a few days, began to notice the sad face, noticed, too, that the leaves of the book were never turned and that her glance rested always on the sea. These were days of rest. The slow rolling of the waves lent her an artificial calmness. The events of the last few months had stunned her, and this was the transition state before reaction. A sort of veil seemed to have been cast between her vision and the past, and the future seemed a blank, a desert that she had no wish to explore, and before which she shut her eyes. {121} She seemed to be falling into that dreamy melancholy which so often precedes insanity, and Mrs. Rowland watched her anxiously, and Mr. Rowland made every exertion to distract her attention, making every little excuse to get her to walk on deck, and to notice some peculiar cloud or singular fish. And so the days passed till they were within two days of New York; then the pilot came on board, and they began to realize, for the first time, that they were almost home. He brought the last papers, three days old now, and the hitherto quiet passengers were all excitement, gathered here and there in little groups eagerly discussing the news he had brought, for those were times full of interest, and this news was the defeat at Bull Run.

"Mr. Rowland had put a paper into Rose's hands, and as she read, she became first interested; then the quick blood mounted to her face, and Mr. Rowland remarked:

"'You have not yet forgotten that you are an American, Miss Harding.'

"She replied quickly and continued reading. Presently the paper dropped from her hands; her face became deadly pale, and she leaned heavily against the rail for support. Mr. Rowland took up the paper and searched the page she had been reading; but in vain; he saw nothing that should have startled her, and so turned away, thinking he had been mistaken, thus leaving her alone to accustom herself to the reality of what she had read.

"What she had read? It was only a name, and that the name of a common soldier.

"In looking over the list of the names of those found dead on the battle-field of Bull Run, she had found that of Willis Courtney.

"The next day they reached Sandy Hook. But it was already evening, and they were obliged to anchor over night, and defer running up to the city till the next morning. There were many impatient at this detention, but none more so than Rose Harding. What has come over her? her kind friends asked each other in vain; but she was no longer indifferent, and her face expressed a cheerful determination. It was a conviction of duty, and a resolution to fulfil it. All the night after the news, she had lain awake and pictured to herself the horrors of lying wounded on the battle-field, and of dying alone in the cold and darkness. She had loved Willis Courtney with the full depths of a first matured affection, and she loved him now, despite the indifference and coldness with which he had rewarded that love. And now he was dead, and whatever had come between them on earth had passed away; and, strange as it seemed to her, she felt that he had come back to her, and that they were nearer together than they had ever been. But he was dead, and he had died in a noble cause, and she felt ashamed of her own selfish grief, that had shut out the world and its cares and sorrows. The old words came ringing in her ears:

'The noblest place for man to die, Is where he dies for man.'

"Had he not died nobly? And then she contrasted her own life with his. What had _she_ done to make any of God's creatures better or happier! 'Nothing! nothing!' Then came bitter regrets, and accusations against her destiny. Why had she not been permitted to be near him in the last struggle? Had not her own pride been perhaps somewhat to blame? He had suffered alone.

"Then suddenly he seemed to stand beside her, and pointing upward, to repeat to her those words of Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'

{122}

"It was a revelation. What God had done for Angela da Brescia, he had done for her. Darkness had passed away, and in its place was light, and the warmth of renewed life. 'Unto the least of these.' Willis was gone. On earth she could do nothing more for him; but there were others, others who were laying down their lives as nobly and in the same cause; for these she could work; and whatever she could do 'unto the least,' she should be doing for _him_ and for _Christ_.

"It was no mere momentary enthusiasm. She came home to join the devoted band of the Sisters of Mercy, and among these she was one of the bravest and truest. No duties were too arduous and no dangers too great, for this child of luxury to encounter. Herself, and the great wealth which she had inherited from her father, she consecrated to the service of God. Like the noble Paula of old, who went forth from pagan Rome to assemble around her a community of sisters in Palestine, 'she was piteous to them that were sick, and comforted them, and served them right humbly,' and 'laid the pillows aright' with a tender hand; and many a poor soldier thanked her for his life, and many more blessed with dying lips the name of her who had robbed the grim messenger of his terrors, and shown the light of God's love gilding the horizon of the valley of the shadow of death.

"And when the war was ended, she came back to New York, to continue, in another field, her labors of love. Here she visited hospitals and prisons, carrying the promises of the Father's forgiveness to the repentant, and words of comfort and consolation to those who were sick and weary of life.

"One morning, about a year ago, as she was visiting prisoners in company with an older sister, she noticed in the Tombs a new prisoner, who attracted her attention by his dignified bearing, and evident reluctance to speak to any of his companions; and as he turned, and she caught a view of his profile, she was startled with a feeling that it was familiar to her; and yet she had surely never seen the man. But he seemed glad to talk of religion; and when she left, she gave him a pocket Bible to read until she should next visit the prison. But all that day the face seemed to haunt her. It came between her and her prayers; it visited her dreams in the night, and hung over her like an incubus that would not away at her entreaties; and she found herself looking forward to her next visit with a mixed feeling of anxiety and curiosity. When at last she went again, the old man recognized her, and asked suddenly, in a trembling voice:

"'Are you Rose Harding?'

"'I am Sister Simplicia. I _was_ Rose Harding,' she replied, shocked at the suddenness and eagerness of the question.

"He looked at her wonderingly, and then said:

"'Are you happy? But what use to ask. Your face and voice show it. See here,' he added, and handed her back the open Bible. It was one that Willis had given her years ago, and on the fly-leaf to which the man now opened was written--

'Rose Harding. From Willis Courtney.'

{123}

"This was the one relic she had kept of her past life. She had fastened those leaves together with thin white wafers, so that the names should be invisible, and had felt still that _his_

## book must be especially blessed, and so had given it often to

prisoners to read. She had intended to destroy everything that should remind her of Rose Harding; but these names, written in his hand, she could not destroy, but had thought to hide them even from herself.

"And this man had torn them open. It was as if he had committed a sacrilege; as if he had opened the grave of the dead; for were these not buried long ago?

"But he was speaking hurriedly:

"'I am John Courtney. I have something to tell you; something that has hunted me down for years, and driven me here at last.' And she listened.

"He had been her father's confidential clerk years ago in New Orleans. In an evil moment, he had allowed himself to take a small sum from the drawer; for his salary, large though it was, was not sufficient to meet the expenses of a young man who loved gay company, drank much and gambled more. It was not discovered, and so he had helped himself again, and Mr. Harding, who was scarcely older than himself, and had absolute confidence in him, had still made no discovery; but when it became time to balance the yearly accounts, he knew it could be concealed no longer, and so one night he took enough more to pay travelling expenses, and to help him in starting into some business for himself, and left on a night-boat for the North. He remained secreted in St. Louis till he had discovered through the papers that Mr. Harding had no intention of prosecuting him; then, after having adopted the precaution of changing his appearance as much as possible, and his name from James Rellerton to John Courtney, had come to Baltimore and gone into business, in which he had prospered, and had married into one of the first families in the place. His wife had died while Willis was yet a child, and he had centered his pride and affection upon this only boy. For his sake he had worked untiringly, and had showered his wealth upon him, that he might never know the temptation that had overcome his father. But from making any acknowledgment to Mr. Harding his pride shrunk. He had, indeed, sent back the money he had taken, but to see Mr. Harding he had felt to be impossible. James Rellerton was dead, and John Courtney must stand without reproach before the world, and no man living must know that there was any connection between the two.

"But when Willis had spoken the name of Thomas Harding as that of the father of his affianced bride, it seemed that retribution, from being so long delayed, had come upon him with double harshness, as the interest of a debt that has run long is sometimes greater than the principal itself. Should he destroy the happiness of the son for whom he would have given his life, or run the risk of being recognized by Mr. Harding?

"He could do neither; and besides, would Mr. Harding allow his daughter to marry the son of James Rellerton?

"Then he had resolved to separate them, and let time and events decide the future means to be employed. It had been a double game. If Willis had been instructed to watch Stephens, Stephens had been no less definitely instructed to watch Willis; and when, after six months, he had reported that the correspondence between him and Rose was undiminished, he had received instructions that he must 'see to it that it should cease gradually;' and so the letters had been intercepted, a few times changed, and then no longer sent in any form. The father had said:

{124}

"'My son will blame her, and his pride will prevent his suffering.'

"But when did pride prevent suffering? It may prevent the showing of any sign, and it did here; but Willis had been one of the first volunteers, and then he had fallen; and the old man had been left desolate with a double crime upon his conscience. He had no object in attending to business and making money now, so had sold his interest, and tried to find in travel that alleviation from thought which could alone make life endurable. But he could not leave himself--the one thing he desired to leave--and an attraction beyond his control had brought him back to New Orleans. Here the necessity for excitement had again led him into the old temptation of gambling. But he was not always successful; and when the Mississippi was again open, he had travelled on the boats, at first with better success, but at last had become too well known, and in looking for a new field, had fallen in with a band of counterfeiters, and so had come to New York in their employ.

"And this was the end of it all.

"At first Rose had listened with an intense loathing for the man. Had he not wronged her father, and blighted her own youth, and even chased his own son to his death; and was he not a counterfeiter and a gambler; an outcast before God and man?

"Then, as she turned her glance, it fell upon her cross, and it brought back the scene on Calvary and the face of Him who had prayed 'Father, forgive them.' Then she looked again at the old man, and, trembling with emotion, he cast himself on the floor at her feet, crying:

"'Merciful sister, pray for me!'

"And the peace of God came back to her, as she clasped her hands, and raising to heaven her eyes filled with the tears of a gentle pity, prayed aloud:

"'O Jesus! be merciful; and deal with me even as I deal with this repentant man.'

"The Bible of his son first, and the labors of the appointed ministers of God afterward, brought him again under the benediction of the church. But she it was who stood beside him in the last struggle, and closed the eyes with more tenderness than a daughter; for hers was that holy love, born of heaven and earth, which dwells only in the consecrated heart."

......

Mrs. Kenton had finished. The long shadows had grown longer and mingled together, till it had become only darkness; and then the moon had arisen and was shining with a pale light through the masses of heavy clouds. They arose silently and went each to her own room. But for Anita Hartridge this night was the turning-point in life. The "butterfly" was such no longer, and in its place grew up the noble woman.

Did Sister Simplicia, as she knelt at her prayers that night, know the work she had done for her Master that day?

---------

{125}

The Merit Of Good Works

In a recent article we endeavored to explain the catholic doctrine, that good works as well as faith are an essential condition of justification. This implies, of course, that good works are meritorious, and that eternal life is due to them as a recompense. We wish to elucidate this point a little more fully, and to show what is the nature of that merit which is ascribed to good works proceeding from the principle of faith informed by charity.

In the widest sense of the word, merit signifies any kind of excellence or worthiness. In this sense, a picture is said to have merit; and purely physical or intellectual perfections, which are merely natural gifts, are said to merit admiration and praise. In the strict sense of the word, merit signifies the quality by which certain free, voluntary acts entitle the person who performs them to an adequate recompense. It is in this sense that merit is ascribed to the good works of a just man. These works are said by Catholic theologians to deserve eternal life by a merit of condignity and a title of justice.

What is meant by merit of condignity? It means that there is an equality of dignity or intrinsic worth and value between the work performed and the recompense bestowed. This is easily understood in regard to merely human affairs. It is not easy to understand, however, how a creature can deserve the reward of eternal life from the Creator. Good works, however excellent they may be in the finite order, and as measured by a human standard, appear to be totally incommensurate with the infinite, and therefore wanting in all condignity with an infinite recompense. So far as the mere physical entity of the works is concerned, this is really so. The gift of a cup of cold water to a person suffering from thirst, the recital of a few prayers, a trivial act of self-denial, evidently bear no proportion to eternal beatitude. Neither does a life like that of St. Paul, filled with labors, or a long course of penance and prayer like that of St. Romuald, or a martyrdom like that of St. Polycarp. The mere extent or duration of the labor or suffering, considered as something endured for the sake of God, is nothing in comparison with the crown of immortal life. The condignity of good works is not derived from an equality or proportion between their physical extent and duration and the physical extent and duration of the recompense. It is derived from an equality in kind between the interior principle from which good works proceed, and the interior principle of beatitude. The interior principle of good works is charity; not a merely natural charity, but a supernatural, a divine charity, produced by the Holy Spirit. Good works proceed from a supernatural principle, and are performed by a concurrence of the human will with the divine Spirit. They have, therefore, a superhuman, divine quality, and are elevated to the supernatural order, the same order to which eternal beatitude belongs. They are, therefore, equal to it in dignity in this sense, that they are equally supernatural. {126} The principle of divine charity in the soul is, moreover, the germ of the eternal life itself, which is promised as the reward of the acts which proceed from charity. The life of grace is the life of glory begun, and the life of glory is the life of grace consummated. The germ is equal in grade and quality with the tree which it produces, though not equal in extent and perfection. In the same manner, a little act, like that of giving a cup of water to another for the love of God, although trivial in itself, contains a principle which is capable of uniting the soul to God for all eternity. It is the principle of divine love, making the soul like to God, imitating on a small scale those acts of the love of God toward men which are the most stupendous, and therefore, making the soul worthy to be loved by God with a love of complacency similar in kind to that love which he has toward himself.

Again, the value and merit of services rendered by one person to another are estimated, not alone by the substance of the services rendered, but by the quality of the person who renders them. An article of small utility or cost is sometimes more valued as a token of affection from a dear friend, or as a sign of esteem and honor from a person of high rank, than a large sum of money would be which had been accumulated by the industry of a servant. The good works of a just man fall under this category. They are estimated according to the quality and rank of the person who performs them. The just man is the friend of God, and the services he renders to God are valued accordingly, not as so much work done, but as tokens of love and fidelity. As a friend of God, the just man is a person of high rank in the scale of being. He is a "partaker of the divine nature," as St. Peter distinctly affirms. His human nature is exalted and sublimated to a certain similitude with the nature of God; and the acts which proceed from it have a corresponding dignity and elevation, proportioned to their end, which is eternal life, or the consummation of the union between human nature and the divine nature in eternal beatitude. The just man is the adopted son of God the Father, through his union with God the Son incarnate. This adoption into a participation with Jesus Christ in his sonship reflects the dignity and excellence of the person of Christ upon his person and upon all his works. As a member of Christ and a son of God, his person and his works are superior to the whole natural order, and, therefore, there is nothing which has the relation of condignity toward them except the supernatural order itself.

It is evident, therefore, that regenerate nature has condignity with the state of glory, and that the good works which proceed from it have condignity with degrees of splendor in this state of glory. Regenerate nature bears the image of God, aspires after union with God, is fitted to find its beatitude in the vision of God, is made apt and worthy to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. It demands, therefore, as its last complement, the _lumen gloriae_ which enables it to see God face to face. The personal love of the soul to God as its friend and Father, and the personal love of God to the soul as his friend and son, require that they should have mutual vision of each other and live together. This living with God is eternal life, which is, therefore, the only fitting recompense for the love of God exercised by the just man upon earth.

{127}

Theologians do not, however, regard the title in strict justice to a supernatural reward, or the ratio of condign merit, as consisting solely in the condignity of the meritorious works themselves. They place it partially in the promise of God, or the decree of his providence which he has promulgated, in which special rewards are assigned as the recompense of good works performed in the state of grace. Therefore, they say, the reward of eternal life is due in strict justice, not by an obligation arising _per se_ from the act of the creature, but by an obligation of the Creator to himself to fulfil his own word. They say that God may require, by virtue of his sovereign dominion, any amount of service from the creature as his simple due, without giving him any reward for it; that he may even annihilate him if he pleases, and, moreover, that the holy acts of the blessed in heaven, although they have a perfect condignity with supernatural rewards, do not receive any. Therefore, they say, a creature cannot merit a reward from God according to rigorous justice, but only according to a rule of justice derived from the free determination and promise of God. Scotus and some others even hold that the condignity of meritorious works with the promised reward is altogether extrinsic, and denotes merely that they are conformed to the standard or rule which is laid down by the divine law. It is, therefore, only required in strictness by the definition of the church, that one should confess that the good works of the just man entitle him to a supernatural reward by virtue of a promise which God has given. Those who are so extremely frightened at the sound of the phrase, "merit of condignity," as applied to men, can adopt the opinion of Scotus if they please. For our own part, we prefer the other and more common doctrine of condignity which we have already explained. We do not apprehend any danger to the glory of the Almighty from the exaltation of his own works, or any diminution of the merits of Christ from the glorification of his saints. On the contrary, the power and glory of God are magnified the more, the more like to himself the creature is shown to be which he has created. "God is admirable in his saints;" and, the more excellent their works are, the greater is the praise and homage which accrues to him from these works which are offered up to him as acts of worship. The only error to be feared is the attributing of something to the creature which he derives from himself, as having self-existent, independent being. To attribute to angel or man as much good as is in a withered leaf, is equivalent to a total denial of God, if this good is not referred to God as first cause. But to attribute to created nature all possible good, even to the degree of hypostatic union with the divine nature, does not detract in the slightest degree from the truth that God alone is good in himself, if the good of the creature is referred to him as its source and author. No doubt all right to existence, to immortality, to felicity of any kind, is derived from God, and is originally a free gift to the creature from him. But the right is a real right, of which the creature has just possession when God has given it to him, one which may be an inalienable right in certain circumstances, that is, a right which God cannot, in consistency with his own attributes, withdraw. When God creates a rational nature, in which he has implanted the desire and expectation of immortal existence and felicity, he implicitly promises immortality and felicity. We do not like to hear it said that he can annihilate such a creature or withhold from it the felicity after which it naturally aspires, unless it be as a just punishment for sin. {128} So, when God creates man anew in the supernatural order, by giving him the grace of regeneration, he gives him an implicit promise of eternal beatitude. It is very true that he can exact from him any amount of service he pleases, as a debt that is due to his sovereign majesty; yet he cannot justly withhold from him final beatitude, unless he forfeits it by his own fault. The special reward annexed to every good work is undoubtedly due only by virtue of the explicit promise which God has made, to reward every such good work by an increase of grace and glory. It is also true that God does confer some degrees of glory on the just out of pure liberality and beyond the degree of merit. Moreover, the period of merit is limited by the decree of God to this life, because it is fitting that the creature should increase and progress, during his probation, toward the full measure of his perfection, and should afterward remain in that perfection when he has arrived at his term. We think, therefore, that we have made it plain enough that good works have a merit of condignity in relation to eternal life, and nevertheless derive this merit from the promise and appointment of God, subject to such conditions as he has seen fit, in his sovereign wisdom and liberality, to establish.

The doctrine we have laid down detracts in no way from the merits of Christ. Christ alone has the principle of merit in his own person as an original source. He alone has merited of condignity grace to be bestowed on others. His merits alone are the cause of the remission of sins, and the bestowal of regenerating, sanctifying, saving grace. His merits merits of the saints as the head is superior to the inferior members of the body. His incarnation, life, and death are, in a word, the radical meritorious cause of human salvation from the beginning to the end; and, in their own proper sphere or order of causation, are entirely alone. Christ is the only mediator of redemption and salvation between God and man, in whom the Father is reconciling the world to himself. His acts alone are referable to no principle higher or more ultimate than his own personality. All merely human grace, sanctity, or merit is, therefore, to be referred to him as its chief author, and to merely human subjects only as recipients or secondary and concurrent causes. It is easy to understand, therefore, what is meant by presenting the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints before God as a motive for bestowing grace. The saints have not merited anything over and above that which Christ has merited, nor have they merited, by a merit of condignity, even the application of the merits of Christ to others. Through their personal merits, they have obtained a kind of right of friendship to ask in a specially efficacious manner for graces and favors to be conferred on those for whom they intercede. Their mediation and merits are, therefore, only efficacious by way of impetration and prayer, and not by virtue of a right which they have obtained by a title of justice. This is what is meant by merit of congruity, which denotes a certain fitness in a person to obtain from God the favors for which he asks. This merit of congruity is all that is ascribed to the Blessed Virgin or the saints, as a groundwork of their intervening power, by any Catholic theologian. It is the same in kind with that which the just on earth possess, by virtue of which they obtain, through their prayers, blessings and graces for other persons. It is easy to see, therefore, how completely the Catholic doctrine is misunderstood by those who imagine that it either places man in the room of Christ, as his own Saviour, or substitutes the mediation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints for the mediation of Christ.

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{129}

Full Of Grace.

Flowers in the fields, and odors on the air, The spring-time everywhere; Music of singing birds and rippling rills, Soft breezes from the hills; So broke the sweetest season, long ago, Far from this death-cold snow. In that blest land which smiles to every eye, Most favored from on high; And in one town whose sheltering mountains stand Broad breast-plates of the land; So fair a spring-time sure was never seen, Since Eden's walks were green.

A sudden glory flashed upon the air, A face unearthly fair; A beauty given but to those alone The nearest to the throne; The great archangels who upon their hair The seven planets wear. Lightly as diamonds--such the form that now, With brilliant eyes and brow. Paused by the humble dwellings of the poor. Entered the humblest door, Veiling his awful beauty, far too bright, With wide wings, strong and white.

Within the dwelling where his flight was stayed A kneeling woman prayed. The angel bowed before that holy face, And hailed her "Full of Grace." No other title, not the kingly name Which David's line can claim; Not highest rank, though unto her was given Queenship of earth and heaven; Not as that one who gave life to the dead, Bruising the serpent's head; Not even as mother of the Sacrificed, The world-redeeming Christ.

This thought might be a sermon, while yet we, Heirs of eternity, Walk this brief, sin-surrounded tract of life. Wage this short, sharpest strife, Which must be passed and won before the rest. The triumph of the blessed. And when the hour supreme of fate shall come, And at our promised home We wait in breathless and expectant dread Between the quick and dead, Then may the angel warders of the place Welcome us, "Full of Grace."

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{130}

Translated From L'Economiste Belge.

How Our History Will Be Told In The Year 3000.

In those days--our latest posterity _loquitur_--the people were not entirely freed from the savage instincts of their ancestors, the anthropophagi, those ferocious contemporaries of the deluge and such great inundations of the world. True, they did not still eat their enemies, nor break their skulls with clubs; they did not pierce their bodies with arrows of bone and flint; but they did the work more delicately, entirely according to the rules of art, with the precision of a surgeon who cuts off a limb, or the coolness of a butcher who bleeds a sheep. By dint of inventions, calculations, and trials of every kind, they fabricated, at last, most ingenious tools, very convenient and very simple, and which they handled with equal dexterity. They were not instruments of natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, or mathematics; our fathers possessed, it is true, objects of this kind, but they did not think it proper to put them in the hands of the people. Their thermometers, microscopes, telescopes, and electrical machines remained in the shade of libraries or the cabinets of the learned. The people were ignorant of their names and uses, while they well understood the management of the tools of which I speak. So you will suppose these were very useful articles, as they were so generally employed in every clime and nation, and their object to moralize and instruct mankind, as governments consented to their gratuitous distribution among their subjects--went farther, even, and imposed their use. But alas! no; they were only tools of death and carnage, worthy to figure among the arms and instruments of torture of preceding ages; for while some shot off bullets, others threw to enormous distances balls of brass and steel, that made holes in human walls, burnt up towns, and sunk ships.

{131}

The men of this time were called _"civilized"!_ Strange to say, they had abolished torture, and wished to do away with the pain of death. The scaffold horrified them, and the sight of the gallows gave them a vertigo! They had journals and books filled with beautiful phrases in honor of peace and civilization. But they did not comprehend the sense of aphorisms which they repeated incessantly and inscribed everywhere, on the fronts of their temples, and the first page of their constitutions.

Their age to them was the age of light, and they seemed ready to burst with pride when they considered their enormous riches, the fame of their arts, and the extent of their sciences. And, in appearance, one might have believed them wise, and as good as the beings who inhabit the more favored planets of our solar system. They had noble aspirations and a generous ardor.

In the penumbra in which they were plunged, a confused mass of whirling and exasperated workers was alone distinguishable, hungry, indefatigable, running up and down, like busy ants seeking their subsistence. The ear heard only a deafening and monotonous noise, like the buzzing of a hive. But in spite of shocks and hurts, inevitable from such a clamorous multitude, order and harmony seemed about being established, when suddenly the same beings who until then had appeared so laborious and

## active, were seized with a sort of rage, and set violently upon

each other. The red light of incendiarism and the thundering brightness of battle thus demonstrated to the astonished gaze of philanthropists and thinkers, that vices, sanguinary passions, and brutal instincts, always alive and always indomitable, were only hidden in shade, and awaiting the favorable moment to break their bonds and annihilate civilization. By the artificial and slightly tarnished light of their sciences, philosophers had gathered round them men of policy and amiability, civilized and peaceable, distinguished by good manners, and saying pretty things about fraternity and progress; but the light that broke upon them, the evidence that disenchanted them in this shock of nations, showed them only coarse and ignorant crowds, capable of committing, in their folly and cruelty, every crime and every infamy. They had believed that the type of their epoch was the man of business, industrial or negotiating, the sharp worker, armed for competition, and prepared for the incessant struggles of production; and behold! suddenly this personage quits the scene, transforming himself into a fantastical being, clothed in brilliant colors, his head ornamented with cock's feathers, his step stiffened, his manners brusque, and his voice short and sonorous. At the first boom of the cannon, the rolling of the drum, or the sound of a warlike march, millions of men, clothed in red, like the common hangman, marched out of the shade, furnished with instruments suitable for bleeding, scorching, disembowelling, crushing, burning, and stopping the breath of their neighbors. And perhaps you think these men were the refuse of society; that they came from low haunts and prisons; had neither heart nor intelligence; that they were given up to public execration. You never were more mistaken. Each one of these auxiliaries of death was considered healthy in mind and body, vigorous and intelligent, honest and disciplined. {132} To exercise his trade suitably, he was obliged to possess a crowd of precious qualities, know perfectly how to behave himself, be honorable, and of unimpeachable integrity!

As to the great generals, they were wise men, and men of the world. They were expected to study mathematics, as it specially teaches order and harmony; history, which proves that violence and force have never established anything; and many other sciences, which one would have imagined capable of directing their thoughts from their impious career, and rendering them pacific and humane.

Toward 1866 a great invention agitated the world. You are ready to believe it was some means of aerial locomotion, or some process for utilizing central heat, or placing our planet in communication with the neighboring ones of Mars and Venus. Alas! no. Such discoveries were not yet ripe; and besides, men of this age had other preoccupations. A small province of the north of Germany, with an erudite and philosophical people, had the honor of giving to the world the celebrated _needle-gun_. Tired of thinking, they relinquished their ideal, to move heavily and noisily under the sun of reality, and set about acting; but instead of inventing a philosophy, they considered a new engine of destruction more creditable, and having tried it with the most magnificent results, they offered to the public the instrument which was entirely to change the map of Europe, break the equilibrium of power, and annihilate all international right. After having laid low several millions of men on the field of battle, this comparatively insignificant people on the borders of the Spree, who until then had won more academical laurels than cannons, and more truths than promises, began to comprehend that they could play a splendid _rôle_, and exercise a preponderating influence in Europe. Formerly they had invented an absolute philosophy; now they invented and practised an absolute policy. And this was the union of the German people, the triumph of Prussian institutions, the decay of the Latin and rise of the Germanic races, and many other changes which only absolute power can effect. These little people on the borders of the Spree awoke to a new life, and determined to take all and absorb all; they threatened Holland; coveted Alsace; were disposed to swallow up Bavaria, the grand-duchy of Baden, and Würtemberg. Other nations were troubled, and justly; for the power of the Germans seemed to them very much like absolutism. So each of them, in great haste, began to perfect their own instruments of death with the faint hope, too, that they might very soon make use of them. Old France, tired of conquests and interior struggles, wished only to rest. Having disturbed the tranquillity of Europe so often, she had come to that age when repose is the chief good; so she feigned ignorance of the insolent aspect and gestures of defiance of her young rival; but unhappily a few judicious men, and many more of an intriguing nature, fools and ambitious ones, were at the head of affairs. These loved war as a golden egg, and birds of prey, we know, derive their sustenance from a field of battle. Some already dreamed of wading through blood to conquer an epaulette, others that they gained millions in supplies, and became great dignitaries in the empire. {133} So they went about repeating that their country was degraded, reduced to a second rank; that Germanic insolence must be chastised, and the glorious tricolor planted on the left shore of the Rhine. The journals commented on their words, and the rustic in his hut, the laborer at his forge, and the financier in his counting-house dreamed with terror of the dawning evil. Certain politicians, meditating on the situation and the march of events, declared war inevitable, necessary, providential, and alone able to reëstablish the influence of the country and the _prestige_ of the government. So they burst out in eloquent discourses in favor of military armaments, while on their side strategists, inventors, and administrators set to work, believing they were the foundation of the future prosperity of their country.

Their theory was very simple. The power of a nation, they said, depended on the number of men capable of bearing arms, and on the quantity and quality of the engines of destruction that they possessed. That is, our country must be powerful in order to be rich, prosperous, and free. _Ergo_, let us increase to every extent the effectiveness of our troops and fabricate without parsimony such arms as are unparalleled in Europe. Weak patriots and economists, the _Sancho Panzas_ of these _Don Quizotte_ politics, murmured a little, but they found themselves obliged to be silent and bow their heads under the taunts and reproaches with which they were loaded. "Utopists," cried the inventors, "you say our machines are not useful; but look down there in the direction of Sadowa and Custozza, and tell us afterward if we have not rapidly and economically fabricated smoke and glory. Ask the surgeons, and they will describe to you the gaping wounds, the deep rents they can produce; [Footnote 42] ask statesmen, and they will tell you the services they render to the ambitious, and the good livings they secure thereby." "Miserable citizens! men without energy and honor," cry they to others, "you lazily prefer well-being to glory, and the success of your personal enterprises to that of the national glory; but let the hour of danger come, and we will make you walk at the point of the bayonet, notwithstanding your cries and menaces." ... And people who cared nothing for truth, and judged by appearances, echoed the cry, and called them utopists, hollow dreamers, theorists, and, after all, cowardly and egotistical.

[Footnote 42: _At Strasbourg the effects of the Chassepot gun have just been certified by experiments on a corpse hung at a distance of fifteen yards. The experiments were made by M. Sarazin, and corroborated by the medical faculty. We will hear the good doctor in his own words: "I am far from exaggerating," said he modestly, "the practical value of my experiences, and I well know the desiderata, easier to distinguish than resolve, that they present from the point of view in which the effect of the Chassepot gun is produced according to distance and on the living being. However, everywhere I have drawn the following conclusions:

"At a short distance, and on a corpse the projectiles have not deviated in their course.

"1. The diameter of the orifice, as it enters, is the same as that of the projectile.

"2. The diameter of the orifice, as it goes out, is enormous, seven to thirteen times larger than that of the ball.

"3. The arteries and veins are cut transversely, drawn back and gaping. The muscles are torn and reduced to the consistency of pulp.

"4. The bones are shattered to a considerable extent, and out of all proportion to the shock of the projectile.

"To sum up, the effects present a remarkable intensity, and it is well to note that, after having traversed the corpse, the projectile pierced two planks, each an inch thick, and buried itself deeply in the wall."_]

So soon as such a river of ink flowed from the desks of the journalists, dragging in its course these insults and injuries, the workmen commenced their labors. They made rifled cannon of steel; hammered coats of mail for their men-of-war; pointed their sword-blades with steel and iron; made bullets, balls, bombs, and howitzers, heaped up in their arsenals great quantities of powder. {134} And one bright day the government announced with pride to the country that it owned 9173 brass cannons, 2774 howitzer cannons, of the same material, 3210 bronze mortars, 3924 small bronze howitzers, 1615 cast-iron cannons, 1220 howitzers, 20,000 carriages for ordnance, 10,000 covered wagons, 4,933,688 filled cannon-balls, 3,630,738 howitzer-balls, 18,778,549 iron bullets, 351,107,574 ball-cartouches, 1,712,693 percussion guns, 817,413 guns of flint, 10,263,986 pounds of powder--in short, enough to exterminate the entire globe. Admirable litany, which the good citizens were to recite mentally every time they thought of the future of their country! Yet profound politicians said it was not enough, and the great statesmen were not at all satisfied. "We must have," said they, "some terrible invention that will strike our enemies with terror. We would like a machine that would mow them down like the scythe of the reaper in the harvest, with movement so regular and continued that it would be impossible for one to escape."

They did speak of a new apparatus, ornamented by its inventor with the pretty name of the grape-gun, and which could send off, twice a minute, a shower of fifty balls. But public opinion demanded something better, and the mortified death-seekers recommenced their labors.

In those days philanthropists and politicians tried to think of the best means of establishing peace an Europe. So they met in a town of Switzerland, on the borders of a beautiful lake, and in presence of grand and lovely scenery--a place which ought to have inspired them with high and holy resolutions. But, unfortunately, they brought with them the bellicose thoughts of their own countries; and so they concluded the only way to promote peace was to destroy all bad and weak governments, abolish abuses, upset society, and so unite all peoples. One might have suggested that a state of peace could alone have produced such harmony; but they did not so closely consider the question.

They were so-called democrats, and they sincerely believed the aurora of justice would shine in the future on the field of battle, and brighten the smoking ruins of its former society. ...

But let us pardon our ancestors: they were more ignorant than wicked. Peace to their ashes! which, mingling now with the elements, circulate in the universe.

Since their time, the globe has many times recommenced its eternal evolutions; the sun has gone out of its orbit, and carried with it the planets into the depths of space; science has become the principal work of human existence, and order is established everywhere; and we, the latest comers on the earth, live happily, because we are free--free, because we are united--united, because we are members of the same family, and children of the same God.

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{135}

Plan For A Country Church.

At the request of several bishops and clergymen, we intend to publish from time to time in this magazine, architectural plans suitable for churches of moderate size and costliness. There are many churches of this kind, especially in small country places, required by the wants of the people, where an architect cannot be found, and where the materials, furniture, and other necessary parts or appendages of the sacred edifice must be of the cheapest possible kind. Generally speaking, churches of this sort are built and furnished without any regard to beauty or rubrical propriety. It is, however, just as cheap and easy to make them attractive, neat, and strictly ecclesiastical in their style and proportions as the contrary, if only proper plans and directions can be obtained. These we purpose to furnish after various styles of architecture, and suitable to the different exigencies and tastes of different places and persons. In so doing, we hope to supply a want that has long been felt, and to assist a great number of priests who are laboriously engaged in the meritorious but difficult task of building churches with but limited means for carrying out their plans.

Description.

The design which we have engraved in this number will give accommodation to two hundred and fifty persons seated, the area of the floor of the church being 41 x 25 feet in the clear, with a sanctuary of 12 x 16 feet, a sacristy 12 x 15 feet, and a porch to the front of the church sheltering the door against exposure. The confessional is placed in such a position that the comfort of the priest as well as the convenience of the people may be secured.

The church should be framed with good, stout sills 8x12 inch section, resting on a substantial wall of rubble masonry, where stone can be obtained, or of brick where this material becomes necessary, which wall should be carried deep enough to be unaffected by the frosts of winter, and raised one foot at least above the earth, a wall of rubble or brick being built along the centre to bear the joists of the floor. The joists should be (3 x 10) framed into the sills so that the top of the floor, when finished, may be twenty-eight inches, above the earth, giving four steps to the church, the floor of the sanctuary and sacristy being one step higher, and both on a level. The corner-posts should be 8 X 8 pine timber, and four intermediate posts of 4 x 8. under each principal of the roof. The plate on the top should be 4 x 8, and carried round the whole building except where the chancel intervenes, and care should be taken that all the scarfs of this piece of timber should be carefully made. The posts should all be braced with 4x6 pieces, and the walls studded with 4x4, so that, should it be deemed necessary, in particular localities, to render the building less susceptible to the changes of temperature, the inner space may be filled.

The roof should be framed as high as shown on the elevation, with a slope of 60° with the horizon, in order to obtain greater height to the interior and greater strength to the truss, with a collar about midway of the height, but not lower, and curved braces, resting on hammer beams projecting from the side-walls at the height of the plate, and a curved brace underneath this beam, bringing the strain of the truss as low as possible on the side-walls, but not incommoding the congregation.

{136}

[Image: Front Exterior image of church building.]

Elevation

{137}

[Image: Floor plan of church building.]

{138}

This simple roof should be framed of the best seasoned timber, 4x6 inches scantling, and should be dressed neatly, and, wherever desired, may be moulded and have chamfered edges, and the spandrels filled with two-inch tracery.

In the sanctuary should this more especially be done to mark the distinction of this part of the church. The principals of the roof should be 10 ft. 3 in. apart from the centres, with rafters of 2 x 8 laid across the same 2 ft. 6 in. apart, and the plank covering to be laid neatly with narrow tongued and grooved boards where it may not be desired to plaster the under side of the rafters; in case it may be thought advisable to plaster the ceiling, the plaster should be colored a light blue. The chancel arch should be struck with a curve from the same centre as the roof-braces, with the edges of the jambs and soffit chamfered and moulded.

The walls plastered up to the plate and floated with two coats and finished a light, pleasing, and warm color. If means sufficient warranted, a good cornice neatly moulded should finish the side-walls and break against the principals of the roof, and may be of wood or run in plaster.

A label moulding should be run around each door and window, and in the sanctuary should be enriched whenever possible.

The window over the altar should be two lights wide or more, filled with good geometrical tracery, like that in the front of the pattern shown, the side-windows having pointed heads to the frames and sashes enclosed in segmental heads on the inside. All the windows should be glazed with plain diamond quarry glass of a warm color, and where it may be possible, the chancel window should have enriched borders and the tracery filled with appropriate symbols.

The front of the chapel has been shown covered with shingles, the timbers showing the framing prominently, and should be dressed and the angles chamfered in the manner indicated; the corner-post that carries the bell-cot should be made in one length, and the bell-cot sheltered by a roof of considerable projection and surmounted by a cross, which feature may not inappropriately be transferred to the gable of the chapel at the option of the priest. In structures like the one presented, it is a simpler and at the same time better arrangement to allow the eaves of the roof to project and to dispense with the gutter, the earth below being protected by flagging, or a properly graded gravelled slope. The chimney shown on the plan should be placed in the position marked, to render the draught more equable; in general, all other details of the church, such as pews, and a gallery if needed, and the doors, must be made to accord with the style of the building, and the painting should be the natural color of the wood, stained, unless it be sought to grain the roof or color in bright colors.

In presenting these directions for the builder, many details and features are omitted which can only be supplied by specifications.

This building can be executed for the sum of $3150, the work being plain but substantial, in accordance with the description.

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Miscellany.

We learn with much regret that on the 12th of February the printing establishment of the Abbé Migne, at Mont Rouge, in the southern suburb of Paris, was totally destroyed by fire. No

## particulars of the occurrence have yet been given. The

enterprise, conducted with extraordinary vigor and ability by the abbé, was unique in the history of publishing. It was founded for the purpose of supplying books for the Catholic clergy of France and the whole world. Nearly two thousand volumes, in large imperial octavo, comprising the whole of the Greek and Latin fathers of the church, and writers on theology and ecclesiastical history, were edited, published, and kept constantly in print, employing a staff of several hundred persons, including literary men, printers, binders, etc.--_London Publishers' Circular._

----

_Amaurosis from Tobacco-Smoking._--Mr. Hutchinson has reported thirty-seven cases of amaurosis, of which he says thirty-one were among tobacco-smokers. Mr. Hutchinson concludes:

1. Amongst men, this peculiar form of amaurosis (primary white atrophy of the optic nerve) is rarely met, except among smokers.

2. Most of its subjects have been heavy smokers--half an ounce to an ounce a day.

3. It is not associated with any other + affection of the nervous system.

4. Amongst the measures of treatment, the prohibition of tobacco ranks first in importance.

5. The circumstantial evidence tending to connect the affection with the habit of tobacco-smoking is sufficient to warrant further inquiry into the matter on the part of the profession.--_Popular Science Review._

----

_The New Laboratory at the Sorbonne._--This magnificent establishment, which is to be devoted to the pursuit of chemical investigation, seems to provide for the student's wants on even a more liberal scale than its celebrated rival at Berlin. Besides the various rooms for researches in chemistry, _pur et simple_, there are numberless apartments exclusively intended for investigation in optics, electricity, mechanics, and so forth. Motive-power is provided for by a steam-engine of great force, which is connected by means of bands with wheels in the several laboratories. Again, besides the ordinary pipes carrying coal-gas, there will be a series of pipes supplying oxygen from retorts kept constantly at work. Indeed, altogether the new laboratory will be a species of Elysium for the chemical investigator.

----

_The Bessemer Steel Spectrum._--Father Secchi, who lately presented to the French Academy his fine memoir on the Stellar Spectra, compared the spectra of certain yellow stars with the spectrum produced in the Bessemer "converter" at a certain stage of the process of manufacture. The employment of the spectroscope in the preparation of this steel was begun a couple of years since; but the comparison of the Bessemer spectrum with the spectrum of the fixed stars has not, so far as we can remember, been made before. The Bessemer spectrum is best seen when the iron is completely decarbonized; it contains a great number of very fine lines, and approaches closely to the spectrum of _a_ Ononis and _a_ Herculis. The resemblance, no doubt, is due to the fact that the Bessemer flame proceeds from a great number of burning metals. The greatest importance attaches to the analogy pointed out by Father Secchi. Father Secchi suggests that beginners could not do better than practise on the Bessemer flame before turning the spectroscope on the stars. Difficult an instrument to conduct investigations with as the spectroscope undoubtedly is, the difficulty almost becomes perplexity when the student tries to examine stellar spectra.

----

{140}

New Publications.

Count Lucanor; or, The Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio. Written by the Prince Don Juan, A.D. 1335-1347. First done into English, from the Spanish, by James York, Doctor of Medicine, 1868: Basil Montague Pickering, Piccadilly, in the City of Westminster. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street, New-York.

Mr. Pickering seems to revel in literary oddities. His book on the _Pilgrim's Progress_ was quaint enough, and this volume is scarcely behind it in any of its queer qualities. A more totally _foreign_ book we do not remember ever seeing. In style, idiom, turn of thought, everything, it is remote, _toto caelo_, from all the ideas and criteria of English and modern criticism. Its publication strikes us as being a remarkably bold stroke; we cannot imagine for what class of readers it could have been intended. The only market we could conceive of for such a work in this country, would be a class of Mr. George Ticknor's, if he were to have one, in Spanish archaeology. In Spanish, and as Spanish, we should think it would prove most interesting; even though the translation is intensely Iberian, both in structure and thought.

The "Fifty Pleasant Stories" are very simple as to the machinery, so to speak, of the telling of them. "Count Lucanor" throughout the book asks advice of his friend Patronio, stating his case, and being responded to with a story. Who Count Lucanor may have been is a mystery for ever. The book shows him to posterity only as a Spanish gentleman of apparent consequence, whose forte, as poor Artemus Ward would say, seems to have been to fall into difficulties and ask advice of Patronio. This gentleman appears as a sort of Don Abraham Lincoln, or Señor Tom Corwin, rather. Every question instantly and irresistibly reminds him of "a little story, you know," etc., etc. This is all of their history. What the end of a man must have been who answered every question with an anecdote, we can only shudderingly decline to conjecture. Whether the gallant Count Lucanor sportively ran him through the body after one story too many some roystering day; whether he went mad when the stories gave out, or whether death interrupted him in a sage narrative, with his sapient hand button-holing the count's doublet, it is not said.

There is a world of dry, old-world, dusty, aged pithiness about the stories. They are generally very fairly to the point, and often full of the peculiar patness so characteristic of Sancho Panza. The most remarkable thing about the book, though, is the really large number of apparent originals it contains. In it are gems of all manner of precepts and principles that others have amplified into poetry, and tragedy, and novels, and almost everything. Still, we cannot call this more than a seeming originality, because directly alongside of a tale we are surprised to trace in Shakespeare, or La Fontaine, (a principal debtor to Count Lucanor,) or some other admired author, we are as likely to find some story so aged, so thread-bare, so worn and torn and sapless with the use of centuries, that one is tempted to refer it back to the year 1. Several of the tales are taken from the _Arabian Nights_, and Don Juan Manuel generally modernized them (?) to suit the enlightened Castilian and anti-Moorish tastes of A.D. 1335, The old, old story of Alnaschar, for instance, is dished up as "What happened to a Woman called Pruhana," and the note to the story quietly goes on to the original original, (skipping old Alnaschar with a word as a mere junior copy,) namely, "the fifth part of the _Pantcha Pantra_," which, all will be charmed to learn, is entitled "Aparickchita Kariteva," which latter an Irish friend translates, "Much good may it do ye," and our annotator "Inconsiderate Conduct." {141} We will not quote the intensely thrilling narrative of this Hindoo classic, but content ourselves with assuring our readers, on our honor as a Brahmin, that the point is identically the same.

One of the best examples of the characteristic aptness of the

## book is Chapter vii.--"The Invisible Cloth." Count Lucanor's

quandary is all of a man who offered the count great advantages if he would trust absolutely in him and in no one else. Three impostors (we condense the good Patronio mercilessly) come to a king as weavers of a peculiar cloth that no man but a legitimate son of his father could see; to any one with even a secret taint upon his authenticity it was utterly invisible. The king, delighted with this test of so interesting and gossipable a matter, shuts them up in his palace to make the cloth, furnishing them rich raw material of all sorts. After some days the king is invited alone to see the wonderful woof. King-like, the king sends his chamberlain first. The chamberlain, trembling for his pedigree, opens his mind's eye, sees the cloth distinctly, and returns full of its praises. The king goes next, can't see it either, is terrified for his title to his throne, and decides to see it also; does see it, and admires it extravagantly. Finding it still rather puzzling, he sends his Superintendent Kennedy (_alguacil_) to work up the case. This functionary, likewise failing to see it, and fearing supersedure by the senior inspector of police, makes up his mind that the king's eyes are good enough for him, and, through them, sees it too. Next a councillor goes to report, and, like a true councilman as he is, honors his father and mother by seeing it in the same light as the powers that be. Finally, for some one of the three hundred and sixty-five extraordinary feast-days of Spain, the king orders a suit of the invisible cloth, doesn't dare not to see it, and rides forth among his leal subjects in a costume strikingly like that famous fatigue uniform of the Georgia cavalry, that we used to hear so much of during the war. His people generally, out of respect to their parents, submit to the optical illusion, till, finally, a Spanish citizen of African descent, "having (says Patronio--not we) nothing to lose, came to him and said: 'Sire, to me it matters not whose son I am; therefore, I tell you that you are riding without any clothes.'" The result is a general opening of eyes, a sudden change of tailors, it is hoped, by the king, and the disappearance of the weavers with the rich raw material. Moral (slightly condensed from one page of Patronio)--"Don't Trust."

"James York, Doctor of Medicine," has wasted valuable medical time in translating this, with a good deal of fidelity to the spirit of the Spanish. His style really does render much of its quaintness; as much, perhaps, as today's English will hold in solution. He is also very fairly fortunate with certain small mottoes, or couplets, which close each story, prefaced thus, with slight variations: "And Don Juan, (another utterly mystical character, who does nothing but what follows,) also seeing that it was a good example, wrote it in this book, and made these lines, which say as follows:

'Who counsels thee to secrecy with friends, Seeks to entrap thee for his own base ends.'" (Chapter vii., above given.)'

The notes appended to each story are as odd, many of them, as the stories. Generally, they are little more than notes of admiration, but often brief _excursuses_, showing quite a varied range of reading, and full of all manner of reconditeness. These would seem to be mainly Mr. York's, and they do him credit in spite of their ludicrously high praise now and then.

In the mechanical execution of the volume, Mr. Pickering, we observe, cleaves to his chosen model, the Aldine press, and so gives us in great perfection that accurate and studious-looking print which we all feel we ought to like, and which none of us do like. For our own part, we frankly own our preference for the short _s_, and all the modern improvements. {142} Still, one must bear in mind a thing very obvious in all this line of publications, that it is expressly to meet and foster a kind of taste almost unknown in this country, and that the publisher is evidently carrying out with consistency and energy a peculiar policy of his own, whose success must at last be the test of its own merit.

The general American reader will find this a thoroughly curious book; the lover of cheap learning, a perfect treasure-house of rather uncommon commonplaces; and the Spanish scholar, "a genuine, if rugged, piece of ore from that rich mine of early Spanish literature which yet lies hidden and unwrought."

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Peter Claver: A Sketch of his Life and Labors in behalf of the African Slave. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.

This little book is a brief compendium of the life of a great saint, who was the apostle of the negro slaves in South America. Its publication is very timely, as it shows to the philanthropists of New-England and of the country at large, who interest themselves so much in behalf of the African race, what Catholic charity has done and can do in their behalf. We recommend it to their attention. The Catholic religion, and it alone, can really and completely meet the wants of this much-to-be-compassionated portion of mankind. The striking vignette of this little volume, representing St. Peter Claver supporting the head of a dying negro, who holds a crucifix clasped to his dusky bosom, is an expressive emblem of this truth. It would be an excellent thing if our philanthropists, in Congress and out of Congress, would get a copy of this very suggestive photograph framed and hung up in some place where they are accustomed to say their prayers.

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The Book of Moses; or, The Pentateuch in its Authorship, Credibility, AND Civilization. By the Rev. W. Smith, Ph.D. Volume I. London: Longman, Green & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, New York.

Dr. Smith has given us in this volume the first instalment of an extensive work on the Pentateuch. The authorship alone is treated of in this portion of the work. Dr. Smith happily combines orthodoxy of doctrine with a scientific spirit. He has evidently studied Egyptology, geology, comparative philology, and other sciences bearing on sacred science. He has also made himself familiar with Jewish and Protestant, as well as Catholic commentators. From a cursory examination, we are inclined to judge that his great and useful task has been thus far very well and thoroughly performed, and to expect that it will be completed in a satisfactory manner. The volume is brought out in the best style of English typographical art, with fac-similes of ancient pictures and inscriptions, which add much to its value. We recommend it to all students of the Holy Scriptures as one of the most valuable aids to their researches which has yet been published in the English language.

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Life of St. Catharine of Sienna. By Doctor Caterinus Senensis. Translated by the Rev. John Fen, in 1609, and Reëdited, with a Preface, by Very Rev. Father Aylward. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1868.

This biography is a charming one, translated in the inimitable English idiom of the 17th century. Father Aylward has very successfully imitated the antiquated style in his valuable preface. The biography leaves nothing to be desired as a history of the private, interior life of the saint, though her wonderful public career is but slightly touched upon. The sketch of it in Father Aylward's preface induces us to wish that he would add to the history of Saint Catharine's private life by Caterinus, an equally complete history of her public life, with translations of her letters, from his own graceful and devout pen, which would furnish the English public with one of the best and most valuable biographies of a truly great and heroic woman to be found in any language.

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{143}

Prayer the Key of Salvation. By Michael Müller, C.S.S.R. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1868.

This book is an expansion of the excellent work of St. Alphonsus Liguori on Prayer. The object of it seems to be, to explain the saint's doctrine and illustrate it by examples, so as to bring it more within the comprehension of the mass of the people. But we are sorry to be obliged to say that the execution of the work does not come up to the idea. Without commenting on the matter, which is, in general, very good, we are compelled to say that the style is faulty in the extreme; the sentences are mostly un-English in their construction, and sometimes so long and involved that they are hard to understand. It also abounds in grammatical errors. In short, it is a pity it was not first thoroughly overlooked and revised by a competent hand before being allowed to go to press. However much we may desire to commend this book, we cannot in conscience do so, so long as it continues in its present dress.

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La Reforme en Italie, les Precurseurs: Discours Historiques de César Cantu. Traduits de l'Italien par Aniset Digard et Edmond Martin. Paris: Adrien le Clere, 29 Rue Cassette. 1867.

Caesar Cantu is the author of the best universal history extant, and of other historical works of the first class. He has undertaken the task of crushing the destructive pseudo-reformers of Italy under the weight of his massive historical erudition. The first volume of the present work, which is the only one yet published, brings down the subject to the 16th century, and will be followed by three others. The author is a sound and orthodox Catholic, yet, as a layman and as a historian, his work has not the distinctively professional style and spirit which are usually found in the works of ecclesiastical authors. He is fearless and free in speaking the historical truth, even when it is discreditable to ecclesiastical rulers and requires the exposure of scandals and abuses in the church. His spirit is calm and impartial, and the theological and ascetical elements are carefully eliminated. He has gone back to the very origin of Christianity, in order to trace the course of events from their beginning, and has traced the outlines of the constitution of historical Christianity. Church principles and dogmas are, however, exhibited in a purely historical method, and as essential portions of the history of facts and events. Such a writer is terrible to parties whose opinions and schemes cannot bear the light of history. The whole class of pseudo-reformers, whether semi-Christian or openly infidel, are of this sort. Cantu sweeps them off the track of history by the force and weight of his erudition, as a locomotive tosses the stray cows on the track of a railway, with broken legs, to linger and die in the meadows at each side of it. It is only Catholic truth, either in the supernatural or the natural order, which can bear investigation, or survive the crucial test of history. The so-called Reformation retains its hold on the respect of the world only through ignorance. When history is better and more generally known, it will be universally admitted that it was not only a great crime, but a great blunder, a _faux pas_ in human progress.

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The Infant Bridal, and other Poems. By Aubrey De Vere. London: MacMillan & Co.

We are glad to see this book, rather for the memories than the novelties it brings us. Almost all its contents have been published in the author's other volumes, and there is nothing in this to alter the opinions, either good or ill, that we took occasion to express in a former review of them at large. The most remarkable about the book is the selection of the republished pieces. {144} It only verifies anew the observation that authors, no more than we of the world, have the giftie to see themselves as others see them. Some of the best poems are there, and some of the worst. _The Infant Bridal_ and _The Search for Proserpine_ are perhaps the very two poorest of all the author's longer productions. Still, perhaps the many faults we fancy we see in the tact of the compilation, only come to this--that we ourselves would have compiled differently, and possibly worse.

But we meet, all over these elegant tinted pages, lines and beauties that we fondly remember loving of old--fine blank verse, wonderful descriptions, delicious idyls. These latter, by the way, are equally remarkable and unremarked. They are from the same fount with Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. We cannot resist giving one extract, from _Glance_, p. 64:

"Come forth, dear maid, the day is calm and cool, And bright though sunless. Like a long green scarf, The tall pines, crowning yon gray promontory, In distant ether hang, and cut the sea. But lovers better love the dell, for there Each is the other's world. How indolently The tops of those pale poplars, bending, sway Over the violet-braided river brim! Whence comes this motion? for no wind is heard, And the long grasses move not, nor the reeds. Here we will sit, and watch the rushes lean Like locks, along the leaden-colored stream Far off; and thou, O child, shall talk to me Of Naiads and their loves."

One more sample of the contents of this volume, and we have said all there is to say. It is an unusual vein for De Vere, but one in which, like Tennyson, he engages never lightly and always with telling success. It is the close of _A Farewell to Naples_, p. 255:

"From her whom genius never yet inspired. Or virtue raised, or pulse heroic fired; From her who, in the grand historic page. Maintains one barren blank from age to age; From her, with insect life and insect buzz. Who, evermore unresting, nothing does; From her who, with the future and the past, No commerce holds--no structure rears to last. From streets where spies and jesters, side by side. Range the rank markets and their gains divide; Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost. And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast; Where passion, from affection's bond cut loose, Revels in orgies of its own abuse; And appetite, from passion's portals thrust. Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust; Where vice her mask disdains, where fraud is loud. And naught but wisdom dumb, and justice cowed; Lastly, from her who planted here unawed, 'Mid heaven-topped hills and waters bright and broad, From these but nerves more swift to err has gained And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned; And, girt not less with ruin, lives to show That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe-- We part; forth issuing through her closing gate. With unreverting faces, not ingrate."

Cannot this book speak better for itself than our good word?

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Folks and Fairies. Stories for little children. By Lucy Randall Comfort. With engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1868.

Judging, not, however, from perusal, but from hearsay, we think the pleasure of Mrs. Comfort's juvenile readers would be increased if she had given them more "Folks" and less "Fairies." On the same high authority we also protest against some of the engravings, for example, "Otho returning home," as illustrations of the text.

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Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:

Mozart. A Biographical Romance. From the German of Heribert Ran. By E. R. Sill, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 323.

Easy French Reading: Being selections of historical tales and anecdotes, arranged with copious foot-notes, containing translations of the principal words, a progressive development of the form of the verb, designations of the use of prepositions and particles, and the idioms of the language. By Professor Edward T. Fisher. To which is appended a brief French grammar. By C. J. Delille. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232.

From Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:

A Catechism of the Vows. For the use of persons consecrated to God in the religious state. By the Rev. Father Peter Cotel, S.J.

From Samuel R. Wells, New York:

Oratory, Sacred and Secular: or, The Extemporaneous Speaker. With sketches of the most eminent speakers of all ages. By William Pittenger, author of Daring and Suffering. Introduction by Hon. John A. Bingham, and appendix containing a Chairman's Guide for conducting public meetings according to the best parliamentary models, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 220.

Life in the West; or, Stories of the Mississippi Valley. By N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor of the New York Tribune, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360.

From Lee & Shepard, Boston:

Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales. A story of Travel and Adventure. By Oliver Optic, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 336.

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{145}

The Catholic World.

Vol. VII., No. 38.--May, 1868.

Tennyson In His Catholic Aspects.

For a poet eminently modern and English in his modes of thought, Tennyson is singularly free from the spirit of controversy. His native land is distracted by religious feuds, yet he who has been called "the recognized exponent of all the deeper thinkings of his age," takes no active part in them, and seldom drops a line that bespeaks the school of theology to which he belongs. At long intervals, indeed, devout breathings escape him. Once now and then he extracts a block of dogma from the deep quarry within, and fixes it in an abiding place. He never scatters doubts wantonly; he is always on the side of faith, though not perfect and Catholic faith. He alludes to Christian doctrines as postulates. For his purpose they need no proof. It would be idle to prove anything if they were not true. They are the life of the soul, and the vitality of verse.

"Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the press,"

he cries; but he adds this apostrophe likewise:

"Fly happy with _the mission of the cross_."

_The Golden Year._

He looks for the resurrection of the body, and bids the dry dust of his friend (Spedding) "lie still, _secure of change_." (_Lines to J. S._) When the spirit quits its earthly frame, he follows it straight into the unseen world and the presence of its Creator and God. He points to "the grand old gardener and his wife" in "yon blue heavens," smiling at the claims of long descent, (_Lady Clara Vere de Vere;_) and he speeds the soul of the expiring May Queen toward the blessed home of just souls and true, there to wait a little while for her mother and Effie:

"To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast-- Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

_The May Queen_.

Intensely as he loves nature, Tennyson is no Pantheist. Though like the wild Indian, he "sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind," he does not therefore confound matter with its Maker, nor lose sight of the personality of the Being whom he adores. He is no disciple of fate or chance, but recognizes in all human affairs the working of a divine and retributive providence, whose final judgment of good and evil is foreshadowed and begun during our mortal life. {146} To His presence and promptitude in reply to prayer, he refers more than once in pathetic and pointed language. He tells us how Enoch Arden, when cast away on a desert island, heard in his dream "the pealing of his parish bells," and

"Though he knew not wherefore, started up Shuddering, and when the beauteous, hateful isle Returned upon him, had not his poor heart Spoken with that, which, being everywhere. Lets none who speak with Him seem all alone, Surely the man had _died of solitude_."

_Enoch Arden._

It would not be difficult for those who are acquainted with Tennyson's earlier history, to discover the church of which he is a member, and the section of it whose views he adopts. _In Memoriam_ takes us into the interior of his father's parsonage, to the Christmas hearth decorated with laurel, and the old pastimes in the hall; to the witch-elms and towering sycamore, whose shadows his Arthur had often found so fair; to the lawn where they read the Tuscan poets together; and the banquet in the neighboring summer woods. We almost hear the songs that then pealed from knoll to knoll, while the happy tenants of the presbytery lingered on the dry grass till bats went round in fragrant skies, and the white kine glimmered, couching at ease, and the trees laid their dark arms about the field. "The merry, merry bells of Yule," with their silver chime, are referred to more than once in Tennyson's poems. They seem to be ever ringing in his ears. They controlled him, he says, in his boyhood, and they bring him sorrow touched with joy.

It is in singing of Arthur Hallam that the poet's faith in the immortality of the soul is brought out with beautiful clearness. The bitterness of his grief draws him to the "comfort clasped in truth revealed," and he looks forward with hope to the day when he shall arrive at last at the blessed goal, and He who died in Holy Land shall reach out the shining hand to him and his lost friend, and take them "as a single soul." (_In Memoriam_, lxxxiii.)

From the verses addressed to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, (January, 1854.) we learn that one of Tennyson's children claims that gentleman as his godfather, and we gather from it and other poems, what all the Laureate's friends know, that his sympathies are with the _Broad Church_, of which Mr. Maurice, Kingsley, Temple, the Bishop of London, and Dr. Stanley are distinguished leaders. It is one of the peculiarities of this school to moderate the torments of the lost and to deny that they are eternal, to hope that good will in some way be the final goal of ill, and that every winter will at last change to spring. It cannot be disputed that this teaching is at variance with Catholic doctrine; but it is one which Tennyson puts forward with singular modesty, describing himself as

"An infant crying in the night; An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a cry."

_In Memoriam_, liii.

The _Broad Church_, as its name implies, professes large and liberal views. Not wishing to be tried by too strict a standard itself, it repudiates all harsh judgments on others. Accordingly, we find in Tennyson few allusions to errors, real or supposed, in the creed of others. He regards as sacred whatever links the soul to a divine truth. He has many friends who are Catholics, and we have heard that he has expressed sincere anxiety to publish nothing relative to the Catholic religion calculated to give offence to its followers. {147} There are few lines in his volumes which grate on the most pious ear, and no devout breathings in which we do not cordially join. It is in one of his earlier poems, and only in sport, that he makes the Talking Oak tell of--

"Old summers, when the monk was fat, And, issuing shorn and sleek, Would twist his girdle tight, and pat The girls upon the cheek, Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's pence, And numbered bead, and shrift. Bluff Harry broke into the spence, And turned the cowls adrift."

In conning his verse, therefore, the Catholic mind is at ease; it lights on no charges to be repelled, and (so far as we know, after long and close study of every line he has published) no mistakes regarding our faith which require to be rectified. There are those who imagine that in _St. Simeon Stylites_, he has wilfully misrepresented the character of a Catholic saint; but we venture to entertain a more lenient opinion, and shall endeavor presently to justify it. It is in a tone of irony, such as we must admire, that he describes the "heated pulpiteer in chapel, not preaching simple Christ to simple men," but fulminating "against the scarlet woman and her creed," and swinging his arms violently, as if he held the apocalyptic millstone, while he predicts the speedy casting of great Babylon into the sea. (_Sea Dreams_.) Nor are there wanting points of contact between Tennyson's ideas on religious matters and some of those dwelt on by Catholic divines. Thus he, like Dr. Newman, finds the arguments for the existence of God drawn from the power and wisdom discoverable in the works of nature, cold and inconclusive in comparison with that one which arises from the voice of conscience and the feelings of the heart. The cxxiiid section of _In Memoriam_ runs singularly parallel with this beautiful passage in the _Apologia_, (p. 377:)

"Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist or a polytheist, when I looked into the world. ... I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society; but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice."

The arguments adduced by infidels, in support of their unbelief, have never been rebutted in verse more cleverly than by Tennyson. His blade flashes like lightning, and severs with as fine a stroke as Saladin's scimitar. _The Two Voices_ may be cited in proof, and also the following passages in the matchless elegy on Arthur Hallam:

The Fates not blind, (_In Memoriam_) iii.

Life shall live for evermore. (_In Memoriam_) xxxiv.

If Death were death, love would not be true love, (_In Memoriam_) xxxv.

Individuality defies the tomb, (_In Memoriam_) xlvi.

Immortality, (_In Memoriam_) liv. lv.

Doubt issuing in belief. (_In Memoriam_) xcv.

Knowledge without wisdom. (_In Memoriam_) cxiii.

Progress, (_In Memoriam_) cxvii.

We are not all matter. (_In Memoriam_) cxix.

The course of human things, (_In Memoriam_) cxxvii

These verses are no doubt the record of a mental conflict carried on during some years of the author's earlier life--a battle between materialism and spiritualism, between faith and unbelief, reason and sense. The _Two Voices_ is philosophy singing, as _In Memoriam_ is philosophy in tears. The _English Cyclopaedia_ well calls the last poem "wonderful," and adds: "In no language, probably, is there another series of elegies so deep, so metaphysical, so imaginative, so musical, and showing such impassioned, abnormal, and solemnizing affection for the dead."

But it is now time to point to those passages in which Tennyson may be said to have, more particularly, Catholic aspects. Be they few or many, they are worth noticing, even though they prove nothing but that a Protestant poet of the highest order has such aspects, intense, striking, and lovely in no ordinary degree. {148} Every true poet is in a certain sense a divine creation, and nothing but a celestial spark could ignite a Wordsworth, a Longfellow, or an Emerson. It has ever been the delight of the ancient church and her writers to discover portions of her truth among those who are separated from her visible pale. Far from grudging them these precious fragments, she only wishes they were less scanty, and would willingly add to them till they reached the full measure of the deposit of the faith. It would be easy to make out a complete cycle of her doctrine in faith and morals from the poems of Protestant and Mohammedan authors, but it would be only by combining extracts from many who, in matters of belief, differ widely from each other. In looking through the Laureate's volumes for traces of the church's teaching, we are in a special manner struck by his treatment of the invocation of the departed. With what deep feeling does he invite the friend, who is the subject of his immortal elegy, to be near him when his light is low, when pain is at its height, when life is fading away. (_In Memoriam_, xlix.) It reminds us of good Dr. Johnson's prayer for the "attention and ministration" of his lost wife, as Boswell has given it us. Can any Catholic express more fully than the Laureate the frame of mind becoming those who desire that the departed should still be near them at their side? (_In Memoriam,_ 1.)

"How pure at heart and _sound in head_, _With what divine affections bold_. Should be the man whose thoughts would hold An hour's communion with the dead.

"In vain shall thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say, My spirit is at peace with all.

"They haunt the silence of the breast, Imaginations calm and fair, The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest.

"But when the heart is full of din, _And doubt beside the portal waits_. They can but listen at the gates. And hear the household jar within."

_In Memoriam_, xciii.

"If I can," says the dying May Queen in _New Year's Eve_--

"If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place; Though you'll not see me, mother, _I shall look upon your face_; Though I cannot speak a word, _I shall hearken what you say_, _And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away._"

It is not, therefore, in a vague and dreamy way, but with the full force of the understanding, that Tennyson invokes the spirits in their place of rest. It is not merely as a poet, but as a Christian, that he exclaims:

"Oh! therefore, from thy sightless range, With gods in unconjectured bliss. Oh from the distance of the abyss Of tenfold, complicated change,

"Descend, and touch, and enter: hear The wish too strong for words to name; That in the blindness of the frame My ghost may feel that thine is near."

_In Memoriam_, xcii.

We say "as a Christian;" for we warmly repudiate the harsh interpretation which is often put on his words addressed to the Son of God:

"Thou _seemest_ human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood thou."

"See," it is said, "this is the most you can get from your favorite about Christ--that he _seems_ divine. It is an appearance, a semblance only." Now, this reasoning is most unfair. The remainder of the verse implies his godhead--

"Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, _to make them thine._"

The verses which follow are a prayer to Christ, imploring from him light and aid, wisdom and forgiveness. (Prefatory lines to _In Memoriam_) {149} In fact, it is evident from other parts of Tennyson's elegy, that he does not use the word _seem_ in the sense of appearing to be what a thing is _not_, but in the sense of its appearing to be _what it is_. Thus, in the fifth stanza, below the lines just quoted, we have--

"Forgive what _seemed_ my sin in me; What _seemed_ my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord! to thee."

So again, _In Memoriam_, xxxiii.,

"O thou that after toil and storm, May'st _seem_ to have reached a purer air;"

where "_seem_ to have reached" is equivalent to "thou who _hast_ reached," with that delicate shade of difference only which belongs to Greek rather than to English diction. Thus the verb [Greek text] is repeatedly used in the New Testament as an expletive, not meaningless to the ear, though adding no distinct idea which can be expressed in a single word, [Greek text], (St. Matt. iii. 9,) means to all intents, simply, "Say not in yourselves," and [Greek text] (Gal. ii. 9) means, "who were really the pillars they seemed to be." Such passages, it is true, prove nothing as to Tennyson's use of the word _seem_, but they do illustrate it. The perfect godhead of Christ is brought out fully in the sermon preached by Averill in _Aylmer's Field_. "The Lord from heaven, born of a village girl, carpenter's son," is there styled in the prophet's words, "Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God."

When the Laureate prays that his very worth may be forgiven, he employs the language of deep humility which meets us so constantly in the writings of Catholic saints. It reminds us of their prayers to the Father of Lights that the best they have ever done may be pardoned, that their tears may be washed, their myrrh incensed, their spikenard's scent perfumed, and their breathings after God fumigated. It is no shallow view that he takes of repentance when he makes Queen Guinevere ask:

"What is true repentance but in thought-- Not e'en in inmost thought to think again The sins that made the past so pleasant to us?"

_Idylls of the King._

He has been accused of making St. Simeon Stylites a self-righteous saint. That he makes him ambitious of saintdom is true, but this hope which he "will not cease to grasp," is fostered by no sense of his own merits, but, on the contrary, springs from the deepest possible conviction of his unworthiness. He describes himself as

"The basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils mad with blasphemy."

He proclaims from his pillar, his "high nest of penance,"

"That Pontius and Iscariot by _his_ side Showed like fair seraphs."

He details, indeed, in language strikingly intense, his sufferings, prayers, and penances; but he disclaims all praise on account of them, and ascribes all his patience to the divine bounty. He does not breathe or "whisper any murmur of complaint," while he tells how his teeth

"Would chatter with the cold, and all his beard Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon;"

how his "thighs were rotted with the dew;" and how

"For many weeks about his loins he wore The rope that haled the buckets from the well. Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;"

yet the climax of it all is, "Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin."

The Catholic aspects in _St. Agnes' Eve_ and _Sir Galahad_, are no less marked than those of _St. Simeon Stylites_. {150} As a devout breathing of a dying nun, the first of these poems is touching and exquisite. The snows lie deep on the convent-roof, and the shadows of its towers "slant down the snowy sward," while she prays and says:

"As these white robes are soiled and dark. To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee; So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be."

All heaven bursts its "starry floors," the gates roll back, the heavenly Bridegroom waits to welcome and purify the sister's departing soul. The vision dilates. It is mysteriously vague--mysteriously distinct:

"The sabbaths of eternity. One sabbath deep and wide-- A light upon the shining sea-- The Bridegroom with his bride!"

There is in such verse an indescribably Catholic tone. It is like the heavenly music of faith, which pervades the _Paradise_ of Dante, and which (in spite of the lax lives of the authors) runs through the "Sacred Songs" of Moore, and the _Epistle of Eloisa_, and _The Dying Christian's Address to his Soul_, by Pope. But if Tennyson has proved equal to portraying a Catholic saint, he has also depicted most graphically a Catholic knight of romance. Sir Galahad, one of the ornaments of King Arthur's court, (_Idylls of the King_., p. 213,) whose

"strength is as the strength of ten, Because his heart is pure,"

goes in quest of the Sangreal--the sacred wine. He hears the noise of hymns amid the dark stems of the forest, sees in vision the snowy altar-cloth with swinging censers and "silver vessels sparkling clean." He sails, in magic barks, on "lonely mountain meres," and catches glimpses of angels with folded feet "in stoles of white," bearing the holy grail.

"Ah! blessed vision! _blood of God!_ My spirit beats her mortal bars. As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-light mingles with the stars. ... So pass I hostel, hall, and grange. By bridge and ford, by park and pale. All armed I ride, whate'er betide. Until I find the holy grail."

_Poems_, p. 336.

A Catholic aspect may sometimes be observed in a single word. "And so thou lean on our fair father Christ," (_Idylls, Guinevere_, p. 254,) may perhaps sound strange to some ears, and is familiar to Catholics only. "He alone is our inward life," says Dr. Newman, speaking of Christ; "He not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) _semper gignit_; he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called, _as in nature so in grace, our real Father_." (_Letter to Dr. Pusey_, p. 89.) Hence, in the Litany of the Holy Name we say, "Jesu, _Pater_ futuri seculi," and "Jesu, _Pater_ pauperum."

The Catholic who well understands his own faith will always be very scrupulous about disturbing that of others. If there is anything abhorrent to him, "it is the scattering doubt and unsettling consciences without necessity." (_Newman's Apologia_, p. 344.) There is a well-known poem in _In Memoriam_, (xxxiii.,) which admirably illustrates this feeling. We quote but one verse, as the reader's memory will no doubt supply the rest.

"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious ways."

The theory and practice of the wisest Catholics conform to the spirit and letter of this injunction. Their devotional life, too, is perfectly reflected in Tennyson whenever he writes of prayer. {151} There is a depth of feeling in his expressions on this subject which reaches to the fact that prayer is the truest religion--that it is the link which unites man more closely to his Creator than any outward acts, any meditations, any professed creed, and is the spring and current of religious life.

"Evermore _Prayer_ from a living source within the will, And beating up through all the bitter world, Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, Kept him a living soul"

_Enoch Arden_, p. 44.

"Thrice blest _whose lives are faithful prayers_. Whose loves in higher love endure: What souls possess themselves so pure? Or is there blessedness like theirs?"

_In Memoriam_, xxxii.

Thus again, in the _Morte d'Arthur_, which was a forecast of _The Idylls of the King_, we are reminded of the efficacy of prayer in language worthy of being put into a Catholic's lips:

"Pray for my soul. _More things are wrought by prayer_ _Than this world dreams of_. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats. That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? _For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God._"

In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a reference to the coöperation of human will with divine grace, which equals the precision of a Catholic theologian:

"Full seldom _does_ a man repent, or _use_ _Both grace and will_ to pick the vicious quitch _Of blood and custom_ wholly out of him. And make all clean, and plant himself afresh."

_Idylls of the King_, p. 93.

In the same poem we find lines of a distinctly Catholic tone on the repentant queen's entering a convent, and on a knight who had long been the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:

"So let me, _if you do not shudder at me_, Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you; Wear black and white, and be a nun like you; Fast with your fasts, _not feasting with your feasts_; Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys. _Bid not rejoicing_; mingle with your rites; Pray and be prayed for; _lie before your shrines_; Do each low office of your holy house; Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in his eyes Who ransomed us, and haler, too, than I; And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own; And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer The sombre close of that voluptuous day Which wrought the ruin of my lord the king."

_Idylls of the King_, p. 260.

The hermitage is thus described:

"There lived a knight Not far from Camelot, now for forty years A hermit, _who had prayed, labored, and prayed_. And ever laboring had scooped himself In the white rock a chapel and a hall On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave. And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry."

_Idylls of the King_, p. 168.

Among Tennyson's earlier poems, the picture of Isabel, "the perfect wife," with her "_hate of gossip parlance, and of sway_," her

"locks not wide dispread. Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity;"

and

"Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"

_Poems_, pp. 7, 8,

is worthy of a Catholic matron. The description of St. Stephen, in _The Two Voices_, has all the depth and pathos of the poet's happiest mood; and, though neither it, nor some other passages which have been quoted, contain anything distinctively Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity, it is strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are drawing attention:

"I cannot hide that some have striven, _Achieving calm_, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with heaven; Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam. And did not dream it was a dream; But heard, by secret transport led, E'en in the charnels of the dead, The murmur of the fountain-head-- Which did accomplish their desire, Bore and forbore, and did not tire; Like Stephen, an unquenched fire, He heeded not reviling tones. Nor sold his heart to idle moans. Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones; But looking upward, full of grace. He prayed, and from a happy place God's glory smote him on the face."

_Poems_, p. 299.

{152}

We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more. We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency, but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor: "Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so produced _a blossom of Catholicism_." (_French Revolution_, vol. i. 10.)

But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist--a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in the _Idylls of the King_, and, considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one.

[Footnote 43: See his _Mansas_, and Life, by Toland, p. 17.]

King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally eloquent and edifying. (_Idylls of the King_.)

The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great name--not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well-meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of the _Iliad_ promises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for the _Divina Commedia_. The attempts he has made at _Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics_, and _Galliambics_ in English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar. (_Boädicea_, etc., in _Enoch Arden and other Poems_.) As he does not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her marvellous results. {153} Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the _National Review_, when speaking on this subject--"day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes the _Edinburgh Review_, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say."

O degli altri poeti onore e lume, Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]

[Footnote 44: _L Inferno_, i. 82.]

During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of language also are original, and though he owes much to the early dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of nature is intense, and his observation of her works is microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as "decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (_The Flower. Enoch Arden_, etc., p. 152.) A concordance to _In Memoriam_ has been published, and the several editions of the Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart. They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson, the fire of Dryden, the imagery of Shakespeare, the simplicity of Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any single writer." Perhaps not. {154} But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty of _Ulysses_; the classical beauty of _Tithonus_ and the _Princess_; the luxuriant eloquence of _Locksley Hall_; the deep lyrical flow of _The Letters_ and _The Voyage_; the _'cute_ drollery of the _Northern Farmer_; the idyllic sweetness of _OEnone_; the grandeur of _Morte d'Arthur_; the touching simplicity of _Enoch Arden_; the power and pathos of _Aylmer's Field_; the perfect minstrelsy of the _Rivulet_, and the songs, _O Swallow, Swallow_, and _Tears, Idle Tears_; and the sharps and trebles of the _Brook_, more musical than Mendelssohn.

Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the religious character of his poetry.

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Poland

When, fixed in righteous wrath, a nation's eye Torments some crowned tormentor with just hate. Nor threat nor flattery can that gaze abate; Unshriven the unatoning years go by; For as that starry archer in the sky Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late The syren sings, and folly weds with fate, Even so that constellated destiny Which keeps fire-vigil in a night-black heaven, Upon the countenance of the doomed looks forth Consentient with a nation's gaze on earth: To the twinned powers a single gaze is given; The earthly fate reveals the fate on high-- A brazen serpent raised, that says, not "live," but "die."

Aubrey de Vere.

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{155}

Professor Draper's Books. [Footnote 45]

[Footnote 45: 1. _Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man_. By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.

2. _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_. By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628

3. _Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America_. By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.

4. _History of the American Civil War_. By the same. In three volumes. Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]

Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe, a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was, when first published, up to the level of the science to which it is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws; or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle; but the recognition seems to be only a verbal concession, made to the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it, that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations of matter.

It is due to Professor Draper to say, that in this respect he only sins in common with the great body of modern physiologists. Physiology--indeed, all the inductive sciences--have been for a long time cast in a materialistic mould, and men of firm faith, and sincere and ardent piety, are materialists, and, therefore, atheists, the moment they enter the field of physical science, and deny in their science what they resolutely affirm and would die for in their faith. Hence the quarrel between the theologians and the _savans_. The _savans_ have not reconciled their so-called science with the great theological truths, whether of reason or revelation, which only the fool doubts, or in his heart denies. This proves that our physicists have made far less progress in the sciences than they are in the habit of boasting. That cannot be true in physiology which is false in theology; and a physiology that denies all reality but matter, or finds no place in it for God and the human soul, is no true physiological science. The physiologist has far less evidence of the existence of matter than I have of the existence of spirit; and it is only by spirit that the material is apprehensible, or can be shown to exist. Matter only mimics or imitates spirit. {156} The continual changes that take place from time to time in physiology show--we say it with all deference to physiologists--that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress. We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance, the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may throw new light on the science--may enable us to see clearer its reach, and understand better its application, but cannot change or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor, the patient research, and the nice observation that has collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert, notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be created; and created it will not be till physiologists have learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free-will and necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper's work is an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is the _forma corporis_, its informing, its vital principle, and pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole life and action of the human body, from the first instant of conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as an animal, and afterward as united to an immaterial soul. It is body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human life. There is no moment after conception when the wilful destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life.

As we said on a former occasion, or at least implied, man, though the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below him, form no scientific basis of human physiology, for like is not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action that escapes the most powerful microscope, and the most subtile chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity, and, when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds, it may even be useful, and help us to a better understanding of our own bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction, because between man and all animals there is the difference of species. {157} Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative philology; for, however diverse may be the dialects compared, there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order, a true scientific character. Physiological inductions, resting on the comparative study of different individuals, or different races or families of men, may also be truly scientific; for all these individuals, and all these races or families belong to one and the same species. But the comparative physiology that compares men and animals, gives only analogies, not science.

We do not undervalue science; on the contrary, what we complain of is, that our physiologists do not give us science; they give us facts, theories, or hypotheses. Facts are not science till referred to the principles that explain them, and these principles themselves are not science till integrated in the principles of that high and universal science called theology, and which is really the science of the sciences. The men who pass for _savans_, and are the hierophants and lawgivers of the age, sin not by their science, but by their want of science. Their ideal of science is too low and grovelling. Science is vastly more than they conceive it; is higher, deeper, broader than they look; and the best of them are, as Newton said of himself, mere boys picking up shells on the shores of the great ocean of truth. They, at best, remain in the vestibule of the temple of science; they have not entered the penetralia and knelt before the altar. We find no fault with Professor Draper's science, where science he has; we only complain of him for attempting to palm off upon us his ignorance for science, and accepting, and laboring to make us accept as science what is really no science. Yet he is not worse than others of his class.

The second work named in our list is the professor's attempt to extend the principles of his human physiology to the human race at large, and to apply them specially to the intellectual development of Europe; the third is an attempt to apply them to the civil policy of America, and the fourth is an attempt to get a counter-proof of his theories in the history of our late civil war. Through the four works we detect one and the same purpose, one and the same doctrine, of which the principal _data_ are presented in his work on human physiology, which is cast in a purely materialistic mould. They are all written to show that all philosophy, all religion, all morality, and all history are to be physiologically explained, that is, by fixed, inflexible, and irreversible natural laws. He admits, in words, that man has free-will, but denies that it influences events or anything in the life and conduct of men. He also admits, and claims credit for admitting, a Supreme Being, as if there could be subordinate beings, or any being but one who declares himself I AM THAT AM; but a living and ever-present God, Creator, and upholder of the universe, finds no recognition in his physiological system. His God, like the gods of the old Epicureans, has nothing to do, but, as Dr. Evarist de Gypendole, in his _Ointment for the Bite of the Black Serpent_, happily expresses it, to "sleep all night and to doze all day." He is a superfluity in science, like the immaterial soul in the author's _Human Physiology_. All things, in Professor Draper's system, originate, proceed from, and terminate in, natural development, with a most superb contempt for the _ratio sufficiens_ of Leibnitz, and the first and final cause of the theologians and philosophers. {158} The only God his system recognizes is natural law, the law of the generation and death of phenomena, and distinguishable from nature only as the _natura naturans_ is distinguishable from the _natura naturata_ of Spinoza. His system is, therefore, notwithstanding his concessions to the Christian prejudices which still linger with the unscientific, a system of pure naturalism, and differs in no important respect from the _Religion Positive_ of M. Augusta Comte.

The Duke of Argyle, in his _Reign of Law_, which we reviewed last February, a man well versed in the modern sciences, sought, while asserting the universal reign of law, to escape this system of pure naturalism, by defining law to be "will enforcing itself with power," or making what are called the laws of nature the direct action of the divine Will. But this asserted activity only for the divine Being, therefore denied second causes, and bound not only nature, but the human will fast in fate, or rather, absorbed man and nature in God; for man and nature do and can exist only in so far as active, or in some sense causative. The passive does not exist, and to place all activity in God alone is to deny the creation of active existences or second causes, which is the very essence of pantheism. Professor Draper and the positivists, whom he follows, reverse the shield, and absorb not man and nature in God, but both God and man in nature. John and James are not Peter, but Peter is James and John. There is no real difference between pantheism and atheism; both are absurd, but the absurdity of atheism is more easily detected by the common mind than the absurdity of pantheism. The one loses God by losing unity. and the other by losing diversity, or everything distinguishable from God. The God of the atheist is not, and the God of the pantheist is as if he were not, and it makes no practical difference whether you say God is all or all is God.

To undertake a critical review of these several works would exceed both our space and our patience, and, moreover, were a task that does not seem to be called for. Professor Draper, we believe, ranks high among his scientific brethren. He writes in a clear, easy, graceful, and pleasing style, but we have found nothing new or profound in his works. His theories are almost as old as the hills, and even older, if the hills are no older than he pretends. His work on the Intellectual Development of Europe, is in substance, taken from the positivists, and the positivist philosophy is only a reproduction, with no scientific advance on that of the old physiologers or hylozoists, as Cudworth calls them. He agrees perfectly with the positivists in the recognition of three ages or epochs, we should rather say stages, in human development; the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positivist. In the theological age, man is in his intellectual infancy, is filled with sentiments of fear and wonder; ignorant of natural causes and effects, of the natural laws themselves, he sees the supernatural in every event that surpasses his understanding or experience, and bows before a God in every natural force superior to his own. It is the age of ignorance, wonder, credulity, and superstition. In the second the intellect has been, to a certain extent, developed, and the gross fetichism of the first age disappears, and men no longer worship the visible apis, but the invisible apis, the spiritual or metaphysical apis; not the bull, but, as the North American Indian says, "the manitou of bulls;" and instead of worshipping the visible objects of the universe, as the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean and rivers, groves and fountains, storms and tempests, as did polytheism in the outset, they worship certain metaphysical abstractions into which they have refined them, and which they finally generalize into one grand abstraction, which they call Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, Theus, Deus, or God, and thus assert the Hebrew and Christian monotheism. {159} In the third and last age there is no longer fetichism, polytheism, or monotheism; men no longer divinize nature, or their own abstractions, no longer believe in the supernatural or the metaphysical or anything supposed to be supramundane, but reject whatever is not sensible, material, positive as the object of positive science.

The professor develops this system with less science than its inventor or reviver, M. Auguste Comte and his European disciples; but as well as he could be expected to do it, in respectable English. He takes it as the basis of his _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_, and attempts to reconcile with it all the known and unknown facts of that development. We make no quotations to prove that we state the professor's doctrine correctly, for no one who has read him, with any attention, will question our statement; and, indeed, we might find it difficult to quote passages which clearly and expressly confirm it, for it is a grave complaint against him, as against nearly all writers of his school, that they do not deal in clear and express statements of doctrine. Had Professor Draper put forth what is evidently his doctrine in clear, simple, and distinct propositions, so that his doctrine could at once be seen and understood, his works, instead of going through several editions, and being commended in reviews and journals, as scientific, learned, and profound, would have fallen dead from the press, or been received with a universal burst of public indignation; for they attack everything dear to the heart of the Christian, the philosopher, and the citizen. Nothing worse is to be found in the old French Encyclopedists, in the _Système de la Nature_ of D'Holbach, or in _l'Homme-Plant_, and _l'Homme-Machine_ of Lamettrie. His doctrine is nothing in the world but pure materialism and atheism, and we do not believe the American people are as yet prepared to deny either God, or creation and Providence. The success of these authors is in their vagueness, in their refusal to reduce their doctrine to distinct propositions, in hinting, rather than stating it, and in pretending to speak always in the name of science, thus: "Science shows this," or "Science shows that;" when, if they knew anything of the matter, they would know that science does no such thing. Then, how can you accuse Professor Draper of atheism or materialism; for does he not expressly declare his belief, as a man of science, in the existence of the Supreme Being, and in an immaterial and immortal soul? What Dr. Draper believes or disbelieves, is his affair, not ours; we only assert that the doctrine he defends in his professedly scientific books, from beginning to end, is purely physiological, and has no God or soul in it. As a man. Dr. Draper may believe much; as an author, he is a materialist and an atheist, beyond all dispute: if he knows it, little can be said for his honesty; if he does not know it, little can be said for his science, or his competency to write on the intellectual development of Europe, or of any other quarter of the globe.

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But to return to the theory the professor borrows from the positivists. As the professor excludes from his physiology the idea of creation, we cannot easily understand how he determines what is the infancy of the human race, or when the human race was in its infancy. If the race had no beginning, if, like Topsy, "it didn't come, but grow'd," it had no infancy; if it had a beginning, and you assume its earliest stage was that of infancy, then it is necessary to know which stage is the earliest, and what man really was in that stage. Hence, chronology becomes all-important, and, as the author's science rejects all received chronology, and speaks of changes and events which took place millions and millions of ages ago, and of which there remains no record but that chronicled in the rocks; but, as in that record exact dates are not given, chronology, with him, whether of the earth or of man, must be very uncertain, and it seems to us that it must be very difficult for science to determine, with much precision, when the race was, or what it was, in its infancy. Thus he says:

"In the intellectual infancy of the savage state, man transfers to nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that everything he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. The tendency is _necessarily_ to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and, therefore, worthy of his veneration." (_Intellect. Devel_. p. 2.)

We beg the professor's pardon, but he has only imperfectly learned his lesson. In this which he regards as the age of fetich worship, and the first stage of human development, he includes ideas and conceptions which belong to the second, or metaphysical age of his masters. But let this pass for the present. The author evidently assumes that the savage state is the intellectual infancy of the race. But how knows he that it is not the intellectual old age and decrepitude of the race? The author, while he holds, or appears to hold, like the positivists, to the continuous progress of the race, does not hold to the continuous progress of any given nation.

"A national type," he says, (ch. xi.,) "pursues its way physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of the individual represented by infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death respectively."

How, then, say scientifically that your fetich age, or the age of superstition, the theological age of the positivists, instead being the infancy of the nation, is not its last stage next preceding death? How determine physiologically or scientifically that the savage is the infant man and not the worn-out man? Then how determine that the superstition of which you have so much to say, and which, with you, means religion, revelation, the church, everything that claims to be, or that asserts, anything supernatural, is not characteristic of the last stage of human development, and not of the first?

Our modern physiologists and anti-Christian speculators seem all to take it for granted that the savage gives us the type of the primitive man. We refuted this absurd notion in our essay on _Faith and the Sciences_. There are no known historical facts to support it. Consult the record chronicled in the rocks, as read by geologists. What does it prove? {161} Why, in the lowest and most ancient strata in which human remains are found, along with those of extinct species of animals, you find that the men of that epoch used stone implements, and were ignorant of metals or unable to work them, and, therefore, must have been savages. That is, the men who lived then, and in that locality. Be it so. But does this prove that there did not, contemporary with them, in other localities or in other quarters of the globe, live and flourish nations in the full vigor of the manhood of the race, having all the arts and implements of civilized life? Did the savages of New England, when first discovered, understand working in iron, and used they not stone axes, and stone knives, many of which we have ourselves picked up? And was it the same with Europeans? From the rudeness and uncivilized condition of a people in one locality, you can conclude nothing as to the primitive condition of the race.

The infancy of the race, if there is any justice in the analogy assumed, is the age of growth, of progress; but nothing is less progressive, or more strictly stationary, in a moral and intellectual sense, than the savage state. Since history began, there is not only no instance on record of a savage tribe rising by indigenous effort to civilization, but none of a purely savage tribe having ever, even by foreign assistance, become a civilized nation. The Greeks in the earliest historical or semi-historical times, were not savages, and we have no evidence that they ever were. The Homeric poems were never the product of a savage people, or of a people just emerging from the savage state into civilization, and they are a proof that the Greeks, as a people, had juster ideas of religion, and were less superstitious in the age of Homer than in the age of St. Paul. The Germans are a civilized people, and if they were first revealed to us as what the Greeks and Romans called _barbarians_, they were never, as far as known, savages. We all know how exceedingly difficult it is to civilize our North American Indians. Individuals now and then take up the elements of our civilization, but rarely, if they are of pure Indian blood. They recoil before the advance of civilization. The native Mexicans and Peruvians have, indeed, received some elements of Christian civilization along with the Christian faith and worship; but they were not, on the discovery of this continent, pure savages, but had many of the elements of a civilized people, and that they were of the same race with the savages that roamed our northern forests, is not yet proved. The historical probabilities are not on the side of the hypothesis of the modern progressivists, but are on the side of the contrary doctrine, that the savage state belongs to the old age of the race--is not that from which man rises, but that into which he falls.

Nor is there any historical evidence that superstition is older than religion, that men begin in the counterfeit and proceed to the genuine,--in the false, and proceed by way of development to the true. They do not abuse a thing before having it. Superstition presupposes religion, as falsehood presupposes truth; for falsehood being unable to stand by itself, it is only by the aid of truth that it can be asserted. "Fear made the gods," sings Lucretius; but it can make none where belief in the gods, does not already exist. Men may transfer their own sentiments and passions to the divinity; but they must believe that the divinity exists before they can do it. {162} They must believe that God is, before they can hear him in the wind, see him in the sun and stars, or dread him in the storm and the earthquake. It is not from dread of the strange, the powerful, or the vast, that men develop the idea of God, the spiritual, the supernatural; the dread presupposes the presence and activity of the idea. Men, again, who, like the professor's man in the infancy of the savage state, are able to conceive of spirit and to distinguish between the outward manifestation and the indwelling spirit, are not fetich worshippers, and for them the fetich is no longer a god, but if retained at all, it is as a sign or symbol of the invisible, Fetichism is the grossest form of superstition, and obtains only among tribes fallen into the grossest ignorance, that lie at the lowest round of the scale of human beings; not among tribes in whom intelligence is commencing, but in whom it is well-nigh extinguished.

Monotheism is older than polytheism, for polytheism, as the author himself seems to hold, grows out of pantheism, and pantheism evidently grows out of theism, out of the loss or perversion of the idea of creation, or of the relation between the creator and the creature, or cause and effect, and is and can be found only among a people who have once believed in one God, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. Moreover, the earliest forms of the heathen superstitions are, so far as historical evidence goes, the least gross, the least corrupt. The religion of the early Romans was pure in comparison with what it subsequently became, especially after the Etruscan domination or influence. The Homeric poems show a religion less corrupt than that defended by Aristophanes. The earliest of the Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, are free from the grosser superstitions of the latest, and were written, the author very justly thinks, before those grosser forms were introduced. This is very remarkable, if we are to assume that the grossest forms of superstition are the earliest! But we have with Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, no books that are of earlier date than the books of Moses, at least none that can be proved to have been written earlier; and in the books of Moses, in whatever light or character we take them, there is shown a religion older than any of the heathen mythologies, and absolutely free from every form of superstition, what is called the patriarchal religion, and which is substantially the Jewish and Christian religion. The earliest notices we have of idolatries and superstitions are taken from these books, the oldest extant, at least none older are known. If these books are regarded as historical documents, then what we Christians hold to be the true religion has obtained with a portion of the race from the creation of man, and, for a long series of years, from the creation to Nimrod, the mighty hunter or conqueror, was the only religion known; and your fetichisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, idolatries, and superstitions, which you note among the heathen, instead of being the religion of the infancy of the race, are, comparatively speaking, only recent innovations. If their authenticity as historical documents be denied, they still, since their antiquity is undeniable, prove the patriarchal religion obtained at an earlier date than it can be proved that any of the heathen mythologies existed. It is certain, then, that the patriarchal, we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the various religions or superstitions of the world have been developed.

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But we may go still farther. The attempt to explain the origin and course of religion by the study of the various heathen mythologies, and idolatries, and superstitions, is as absurd as to attempt to determine the origin and course of the Christian religion by the study of the thousand and one sects that have broken off from the church, and set up to be churches themselves. They can teach us nothing except the gradual deterioration of religious thought, and the development and growth of superstition or irreligion among those separated from the central religious life of the race. In the ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies, on which the author dwells with so much emphasis, we trace no gradual purification of the religious idea, but its continual corruption and debasement. As the sects all presuppose the Christian church, and could neither exist nor be intelligible without her, so those various heathen mythologies presuppose the patriarchal religion, are unintelligible without it, and could not have originated or exist without it. The professor having studied these mythologies in the darkness of no-religion, understands nothing of them, and finds no sense in them--as little sense as a man ignorant of Catholicity would find in the creeds, confessions, and religious observances of the several Protestant sects; but if he had studied them in the light of the patriarchal religion, which they mutilate, corrupt, or travesty, he might have understood them, and have traced with a steady hand their origin and course, and their relation to the intellectual development of the race.

We have no space to enter at length into the question here suggested. In all the civilized heathen nations, the gods are divided into two classes, the Dii Majores and the Dii Minores. The Dii Majores are only the result of a false effort to explain the mysterious dogma of the Trinity, and the perversion of the Christian doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost. The type from which these mythologies depart, not which they realize, is undeniably the mystery of the Trinity asserted, more or less explicitly, by the patriarchal religion; and hence, we find them all, from the burning South to the frozen North, from the East to the West, from the Old World to the New, asserting, in some form, in the Divinity the sacred and mysterious Triad. The Dii Minores are a corruption or perversion of the Catholic doctrine of saints and angels, or that doctrine is the type which has been perverted or corrupted, by substituting heroes for saints, and the angels that fell for the angels that stood, and taking these for gods instead of creatures. The enemies of Christianity have sufficiently proved that the common type of both is given in the patriarchal religion, hoping thereby to get a conclusive argument against Christianity; but they have forgotten to state that, while the one conforms to the type, the other departs from it, perverts or corrupts it, and that the one that conforms is prior in date to the one that corrupts, perverts or departs from it. No man can study the patriarchal religion without seeing at a glance that it is the various forms of heathenism that are the corrupt forms, as no man can study both Catholicity and Protestantism without seeing that Protestantism is the corruption, or perversion--sometimes even the travesty of Catholicity. {164} The same conclusion is warranted alike by Indian and Egyptian gloom and Greek gayety. The gloom speaks for itself. The gayety is that of despair--the gayety that says: "Come, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Through all heathendom you hear the wail, sometimes loud and stormy, sometimes low and melodious, over some great and irreparable loss, over a broken and unrealized ideal, just as you do in the modern sectarian and unbelieving world.

But why is it that the professor and others, when seeking to give the origin and course of religion, as related to the intellectual development of the race, pass by the patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian religion, and fasten on the religions or superstitions of the Gentiles? It is their art, which consists in adroitly avoiding all direct attacks on the faith of Christendom, and confining themselves in their dissertations on the natural history of the pagan superstitions, to establishing principles which alike undermine both them and Christianity. It is evident to every intelligent reader of Professor Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_, that he means the principles he asserts shall be applied to Christianity as well as to Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology, and he gives many broad hints to that effect. What then? Is he not giving the history of the intellectual development of Europe? Can one give the history of that development without taking notice of religion? If, in giving the natural history of religion, showing whence and how it originates, what have been its developments, its course, its modifications, changes, decay, and death, by the influence of natural causes, science establishes principles which overthrow all religions, and render preposterous all claims of man to have received a supernatural revelation, to be in communion with the Invisible, or to be under any other providence than that of the fixed, invariable, and irresistible laws of nature, or purely physiological laws, whose fault is it? Would you condemn science, or subordinate it to the needs of a crafty and unscrupulous priesthood, fearful of losing their influence, and having the human mind emancipated from their despotism? That is, you lay down certain false principles, repudiated by reason and common sense, and which all real science rejects with contempt, call these false principles science, and when we protest, you cry out with all your lungs, aided by all the simpletons of the age, that we are hostile to science, would prevent free scientific investigation, restrain free manly thought, and would keep the people from getting a glimpse of the truth that would emancipate them, and place them on the same line with the baboon or the gorilla! A wonderful thing, is this modern science; and always places, whatever it asserts or denies, its adepts in the right, as against the theologians and the anointed priests of God!

The mystery is not difficult to explain. The physiologists, of course, are good Sadducees, and really, unless going through a churchyard after dark, or caught in a storm at sea, and in danger of shipwreck, believe in neither angel nor spirit. They wish to reduce all events, all phenomena, intellectual, moral, and religious, to fixed, invariable, inflexible, irreversible, and necessary laws of nature. They exclude in doctrine, if not in words, the supernatural, creation, providence, and all contingency. Every thing in man and in the universe is generated or developed by physiological or natural laws, and follows them in all their variations and changes. {165} Religion, then, must be a natural production, generated by man, in conjunction with nature, and modified, changed, or destroyed, according to the physical causes to which he is subjected in time and place. This is partially true, or, at least, not manifestly false in all respects of the various pagan superstitions, and many facts may be cited that seem to prove it; but it is manifestly not true of the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian religion, and the only way to make it appear true, is to not distinguish that religion from the others, to include all religions in one and the same category, and conclude that what they prove to be partially true of a part, is and must be true of the whole. That this is fair or logical, is not a matter that the physiologists, who, where they detect an analogy, conclude identity, trouble themselves at all about; besides, nothing in their view is illogical or unfair that tends to discredit priests and theologians. Very likely, also, such is their disdain or contempt of religion, that they really do not know that there is any radical difference between Christianity and Gentooism. We have never encountered a physiologist, in the sense we use the term here, that is, one who maintains that all in the history of man and the universe proceeds from nature alone, who had much knowledge of Christian theology, or knowledge enough to be aware that in substance it is not identical with the pagan superstitions. Their ignorance of our religion is sublime.

We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the professor means by the infancy of the savage state the infancy of the race; we are not sure, after all, that this is precisely his thought, or that he means anything more than the infancy of a particular nation or family of nations is the savage state. He, however, sums up his doctrine in his table of contents, chapter i., of his _Intellectual Development_, in the proposition: "Individual man is an emblem of communities, nations, and universal humanity. They exhibit epochs of life like his, and like him are under the control of physical conditions, and therefore of law;" that is, physical or physiological law, for "human physiology" is only a special department of universal physiology, as we have already indicated. It would seem from this that the author makes the savage state, as we have supposed, correspond, in the race, in universal humanity, as well as in communities, to the epoch of infancy in the individual. But does he mean to teach that the race itself has its epoch of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death? He can, perhaps, in a loose sense, predicate these several epochs of nations and of political or civil communities; but how can he predicate them all of the race? "Individuals die, humanity survives," says Seneca; and are we to understand that the professor means to assert that the race is born like the individual, passes through childhood, youth, manhood, to old age, and then dies? Who knows what he means?

But suppose that he has not settled in his own mind his meaning on this point, as is most likely the case; that he has not asked himself whether man on the earth has a beginning or an end, and that he regards the race as a natural evolution, revolving always in the same circle, and takes, therefore, the infancy he speaks of as the infancy of a nation or a given community. Then his doctrine is, that the earliest stage of every civilized nation or community is the savage state, that the ancestors of the civilized in every age are savages, and that all civilization has been developed under the control of physical conditions from the savage state. {166} The germ of all civilization then must be in the savage, and civilization then must be evolved from the savage as the chicken from the egg, or the egg from the sperm. But of this there is no evidence; for, as we have seen, there is no nation known that has sprung from exclusively savage ancestors, no known instance of a savage people developing, if we may so speak, into a civilized people. The theory rests on no historical or scientific basis, and is perfectly gratuitous. In the savage state we detect reminiscences of a past civilization, not the germs of a future civilization, or if germs--germs that are dead, and that never do or can germinate. There are degrees of civilization; people may be more or less civilized; but we have no evidence, historical or scientific, of a time when there was no civilized people extant. There are civilized nations now, and contemporary with them are various savage tribes, and the same may be said of every epoch since history began. The civilized nations whose origin we know have all sprung from races more or less civilized, never from purely savage tribes. The physiologists overlook history, and mistake the evening twilight for the dawn.

But pass over this. Let us come to the doctrine for which the professor writes his book, namely, individuals, communities, nations, universal humanity, are under the control of physical conditions, therefore of physical law, or law in the sense of the physiologists or the physicists. If this means anything, it means that the religion, the morality, the intellectual development, the growth and decay, the littleness and the grandeur of men and nations depend solely on physical causes, not at all on moral causes--a doctrine not true throughout even in human physiology, and supported by no facts, except in a very restricted degree, when applied to nations and communities. In the corporeal phenomena of the individual the soul counts for much, and in morbid physiology the moral often counts for more than the physical; perhaps it always does, for we know from revelation that the morbidity of nature is the penalty or effect of man's transgression. It is proved to be false as applied to nations and communities by the fact that the Christian religion, which is substantially that of the ancient patriarchs, is, at least as far as science can go, older than any of the false religions, has maintained itself the same in all essential respects, unvaried and invariable, in every variety of physical change, and in every diversity of physical condition, and absolutely unaffected by any natural causes whatever.

The chief physical conditions on which the professor relies are climate and geographical position. Yet what we hold to be the true religion, the primitive religion of mankind, has prevailed in all climates, and been found the same in all geographical positions. Nay, even the false pagan religions have varied only in their accidents with climatic and geographical positions. We find them in substance the same in India, Central Asia, on the banks of the Danube, in the heart of Europe, in the ancient Scania, the Northern Isles, in Mexico and Peru. The substance of Greek and Roman or Etrurian mythology is the same with that of India and Egypt. M. Rénan tells us that the monotheism so firmly held by the Arabic branch of the Semitic family, is due to the vast deserts over which the Arab tribes wander, which suggest the ideas of unity and universality; and yet for centuries before Mohammed, these same Arabs, wandering over the same deserts, were polytheists and idolaters; and not from contemplating those deserts, but by recalling the primitive traditions of mankind, preserved by Jews and Christians, did the founder of Islamism attain to the monotheism of the Koran. The professor is misled by taking, in the heathen mythology he has studied, the poetic imagery and embellishments, which indeed vary according to the natural aspects, objects, and productions of the locality, for their substance, thought, or doctrine. {167} The poetic illustrations, imagery, and embellishments of Judaism are all oriental; but the Jew in all climates and in all geographical positions holds one and the same religious faith even to this day; and his only real difference from us is, that he is still looking for a Christ to come, while we believe the Christ he is looking for has come, and is the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified at Jerusalem, under Pontius Pilate.

We know the author contends that there has been from the beginning a radical difference between the Christianity of the East and that of the West; but we know that such is not and never has been the fact. The great Eastern fathers and theologians are held in as high honor in Western Christendom as they ever were in Eastern Christendom. Nearly all the great councils that defined the dogmas held by the Catholic Church throughout the whole world were held in the East. The Greeks were more speculative and more addicted to philosophical subtleties and refinements than the Latins, and therefore more liable to originate heresies; but nowhere was heresy more vigorously combated, or the one faith of the universal church more ably, more intelligently, or more fervently defended than in the East, before the Emperors and the Bishop of Constantinople drew the Eastern Church, or the larger part of it, into schism. But the united Greek Church, the real Eastern Church, the church of St. Athanasius, of the Basils, and the Gregories, is one in spirit, one in faith, one in communion with the Church of the West.

The author gravely tells us that Christianity had three primitive forms, the Judaical, which has ended; the Gnostic, which has also ended; the African, which still continues. But he has no authority for what he says. Some Jewish observances were retained for a time by Christians of Jewish origin, till the synagogue could be buried with honor; but there never was a Jewish form of Christianity, except among heretics, different from the Christianity still held by the church. There are some phrases in the Gospel of St. John, and in the Epistles of St. Paul that have been thought to be directed against the gnostics; and Clemens of Alexandria writes a work in which he uses the terms _gnosis_, knowledge, and _gnostic_, a man possessing knowledge or spiritual science, in a good sense; but, we suspect, with a design of rescuing these from the bad sense in which they were beginning to be used, as some of our European friends are trying to do with the terms _liberal_ and _liberalist_. Nevertheless, what Clemens defends under these terms is held by Catholics to-day in the same sense in which he defends it. There never was an African form of Christianity distinct from the Christianity either of Europe or Asia. The two great theologians of Africa are St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, both probably of Roman, or, at least, of Italian extraction. {168} The doctrine which St. Cyprian is said to have maintained on baptism administered by heretics, the only matter on which he differed from Rome, has never been, and is not now, the doctrine of the church. St. Augustine was converted in Milan, and had St. Ambrose, a Roman, for his master, and differed from the theologians either of the East or the West only in the unmatched ability and science with which he defended the faith common to all. He may have had some peculiar notions on some points, but if so, these have never been received as Catholic doctrine.

The professor might as well assert the distinction, asserted in Germany a few years since, which attracted some attention at the time, but now forgotten, between the Petrine gospel, the Pauline gospel, and the Joannine gospel, as the distinction of the three primitive forms of Christianity which he asserts. We were told by some learned German, we forget his name, that Peter, Paul, and John represent three different phases or successive forms of Christianity. The Petrine gospel represents religion, based on authority; the Pauline, religion as based on intelligence; and the Joannine, religion as based on love. The first was the so-called Catholic or Roman Church. The reformation made an end of that, and ushered in the Pauline form, or Protestantism, the religion of the intellect. Philosophy, science. Biblical criticism, and exegesis, the growth of liberal ideas, and the development of the sentiments and affections of the heart, have made an end of Protestantism, and are ushering in the Joannine gospel, the religion of love, which is never to be superseded or to pass away. The advocate of this theory had got beyond authority and intelligence, whether he had attained to the religion of love or not; yet the theory was only the revival of the well-known heresy of the Eternal Evangel of the thirteenth century. So hard is it to invent a new heresy. It were a waste of words to attempt to show that this theory has not the slightest foundation in fact. Paul and John assert authority as strenuously as Peter; Peter and John give as free scope to the intellect as Paul; and Peter and Paul agree with John in regard to love or charity. There is nothing in the Gospel or Epistles of John to surpass the burning love revealed, we might almost say concealed, so unostentatious is it, by the inflamed Epistles of Paul. As for Protestantism, silence best becomes it, when there is speech of intelligence, so remarkable is it for its illogical and unintellectual character. Protestants have their share of native intellect, and the ordinary degree of intelligence on many subjects; but in the science of theology, the basis of all the sciences, and without which there is, and can be, no real science, they have never yet excelled.

Nor did the reformation put an end to the so-called Petrine gospel, the religion of authority, the church founded on Peter, prince of the apostles. It may be that Protestantism is losing what little intellectual character it once had, and developing in a vague philanthropy, a watery sentimentality, or a blind fanaticism, sometimes called Methodism, sometimes Evangelicalism; but Peter still teaches and governs in his successor. The Catholic Church has survived the attacks of the reformation and the later revolution, as she survived the attacks of the persecuting Jews and pagans, and the power and craft of civil tyrants who sought to destroy or to enslave her, and is to-day the only religion that advances by personal conviction and conversion. {169} Mohammedanism can no longer propagate itself even by the sword; the various pagan superstitions have reached their limits, and are recoiling on themselves; and Protestantism has gained no accession of territory or numbers since the death of Luther, except by colonization and the natural increase of the population then Protestant. The Catholic Church is not only a living religion, but the only living religion, the only religion that does, or can, command the homage of science, reason, free thought, and the uncorrupted affections of the heart. The Catholic religion is at once light, freedom, and love--the religion of authority, of the intellect, and of the heart, embracing in its indissoluble unity Peter, Paul, and John.

The professor's work on the intellectual development of Europe proves that religion in some form has constituted a chief element in that development. It always has been, and still is, the chief element in the life of communities and nations, the spring and centre of intellectual activity and progress. Even the works before us revolve around it, or owe their existence to their relation to it, and would have no intelligible purpose without it. The author has written them to divest religion of its supernatural character, to reduce it to a physiological law, and to prove that it originates in the ignorance of men and nations, and depends solely on physical conditions, chiefly on climate and geographical position. But in this patriarchal, Jewish, Christian religion there is something, and that of no slight influence on the life of individuals and nations, on universal humanity, that flatly contradicts him, that is essentially one and the same from first to last, superior to climate and geographical position, unaffected by natural causes, independent of physical conditions, and in no sense subject to physiological laws. This suffices to refute his theory, and that of the positivists, of whom he is a distinguished disciple; for it proves the uniform presence and

## activity in the life and development of men and nations, ever

since history began, of a power, a being, or cause above nature and independent of nature, and therefore supernatural.

The theory that the rise, growth, decay, and death of nations depend on physical conditions alone, chiefly on climate and geographical position, seems to us attended with some grave difficulties. Have the climate and geographical positions of India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, essentially changed from what they were at the epoch of their greatness? Did not all the great and renowned nations of antiquity rise, grow, prosper, decline, and die, in substantially the same physical conditions, under the same climate, and in the same geographical position? Like causes produce like effects. How could the same physical causes cause alike the rise and growth, and the decay and death of one and the same people, in one and the same climate, and in one and the same geographical position? Do you say, climate and even physical geography change with the lapse of time? Be it so. Be it as the author maintains, that formerly there was no variation of climate on this continent, from the equator to either pole; but was there for Rome any appreciable change in the climate and geography from the time of the third Punic war to that of Honorius, or even of Augustulus, the last of the Emperors? Or what change in the physical conditions of the nation was there when it was falling from what there was when it was rising?

{170}

Nations, like individuals, have, according to the professor, their infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death. But why do nations grow old and die? The individual grows old and dies, because his interior physical machinery wears out, and because he must die in order to attain the end for which he lives. But why should this be the case with nations? They have no future life to which death is the passage. The nation does not rise or fall with the individuals that found it. One generation of individuals passes away, and another comes, but the nation survives; and why, if not destroyed by external violence, should it not continue to survive and thrive to the end of time? There are no physical causes, no known physiological laws, that prevent it. Why was not Rome as able to withstand the barbarians, or to drive them back from her frontiers, in the fourth century, as she was in the first? Why was England so much weaker under the Stuarts than she had been under the Tudors, or was again under the Protector? Or why have we seen her so grand under Pitt and Wellington, and so little and feeble under Palmerston and Lord Russell? Can you explain this by a change of climate and geographical position, or any change in the physical conditions of the nation, that is, any physical changes not due to moral causes?

We see in several of the States of the Union a decrease, a relative, if not a positive decrease, of the native population, and the physical man actually degenerating, and to an extent that should alarm the statesman and the patriot. Do you explain this fact by the change in the climate and the geographical position? The geographical position remains unchanged, and if the climate has changed at all, it has been by way of amelioration. Do you attribute it to a change in the physical condition of the country? Not at all. There is no mystery as to the matter, and though the effects may be physical or physiological, the causes are well known to be moral, and chief among them is the immoral influence of the doctrine the professor and his brother physiologists are doing their best to diffuse among the people. The cause is in the loss of religious faith, in the lack of moral and religious instruction, in the spread of naturalism, and the rejection of supernatural grace--without which the natural cannot be sustained in its integrity--in the growth of luxury, and the assertion of material goods or sensible pleasures, as the end and aim of life. There is always something morally wrong where prizes need to be offered to induce the young to marry, and to induce the married to suffer their children to be born and reared.

So, also, do we know the secret of the rise, prosperity, decline, and death of the renowned nations of antiquity. The Romans owed the empire of the world to their temperance, prudence, fortitude, and respect for religious principle, all of them moral causes; and they owed their decline and fall to the loss of these virtues, to their moral corruption. The same may be said of all the ancient nations. Their religion, pure, or comparatively pure, in the origin, becomes gradually corrupt, degenerates into a corrupt and corrupting superstition, which hangs as a frightful nightmare on the breasts of the people, destroying their moral life and vigor. {171} To this follows, with a class, scepticism, the denial of God or the gods, an Epicurean morality, and the worship of the senses; the loss of all public spirit--public as well as private virtue, and the nation falls of its own internal moral imbecility and rottenness, as our own nation, not yet a century old, is in a fair way of doing, and most assuredly will do, if the atheistic philosophy and morality of the physiologists or positivists become much more widely diffused than they are. The church will be as unable, with all her supernatural truth, grace, life, and strength, to save it, as she was to save the ancient Graeco-Roman Empire, for to save it would require a resurrection of the dead.

The common sense of mankind, in all ages of the world, has uniformly attributed the downfall of nations, states, and empires, to moral causes, not to physiological laws, climatic influences, or geographical position. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people. This is alike the voice of inspiration and of universal experience. The traveller who visits the sites of nations renowned in story, now buried in ruins, of cities once thronged with a teeming population, the marts of the world, in which were heard, from morning till night--till far into night--the din of industry, and marks the solitude that now reigns there; the barren waste that has succeeded to once fruitful fields and vineyards, and observes the poor shepherd that feeds a petty flock on the scanty pasturage, or the armed robber that watches for a victim to plunder, receives a far less vivid impression of the dependence of nations on physical causes and conditions, than of the influence of the moral world on the natural, and reads in legible characters the meaning of that fearful penalty which God pronounced, when he said to the man: "And the earth for thy sake shall be cursed." The physical changes that have come over Assyria, Syria, Lybia, Egypt, and Palestine, are the effects of the moral deterioration of man, not the cause of that deterioration.

The professor, after dilating almost eloquently, and as a sage, on the changeability, the transitoriness, the evanescent nature of all the visible forms of things, says: "If from visible forms we turn to directing law, how vast the difference! We pass from the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditional, to the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled. It is of law I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of vanishing forms, I am to vindicate the imperishability, the majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds in his social march in obedience to it," (_Ibid_. p, 16.) This sounds well; but, unhappily, he has told us that communities and nations, like individuals, are under the control of physical conditions, and _therefore_ of law. If _therefore_ of law, then under the law of physical conditions, and consequently of a physical or physiological law. He dwells on the grandeur of this conception, and challenges for it our deepest admiration. But we see not much to admire in a purely physical law manifesting itself in ceaseless instability, metamorphosis, and death. Will the author forgive us, if we hint that he possibly does not very well understand himself, or know precisely what it is that he says? Hear him. "I am to lead my reader, perhaps in a reluctant path, from the outward phantasmagorial illusions which surround us and so ostentatiously obtrude themselves on our attention, to something that lies in silence and strength behind. {172} I am to draw his thoughts from the tangible to the invisible, from the limited to the universal, from the changeable to the invariable, from the transitory to the eternal; from the expedients and volitions so largely _amusing_ in the life of man, to the predestined and resistless issuing of law from the fiat of God." (_Ibid_. p. 16, 17.) Very respectable rhetoric, but what does it mean? If it means anything, it means that the visible universe is unreal, an illusion, a phantasmagoria; that nothing is real, stable, permanent, but law, which lies in silence and strength behind the phantasmagoria, and that this law producing the illusion, dazzling us with mere sense-shows, is identically God, from whose fiat the phantasmagorial world issues. Is not this grand? is it not sublime? The scientific professor forgets that he may find readers, who can perceive through his rhetoric that he makes law or God the reality of things, instead of their creator or maker, simply their _causa essentialis_, the _causa immanens_ of Spinoza, and therefore asserts nothing but a very vulgar form of pantheism, material pantheism, indistinguishable from naked atheism; for his doctrine recognizes only the material, the sensible, and by law he can mean only a physiological law like that by which the liver secretes bile, the blood circulates through the heart, seeds germinate, or plants bear fruit--a law which has and can have no indivisible unity.

If the professor means simply that in the universe all proceeds according to the law of cause and effect, he should bear in mind that there are moral causes and effects as well as physical, and supernatural as well as natural; but then he might find himself in accord with theologians, some of whom, perhaps, in his own favorite sciences are able to be his masters. It is not always safe to measure the ignorance of others by our own. No theologian denies, but every one asserts the law of cause and effect, precisely what no atheist, pantheist, or naturalist does do, for none of them ever rise above what the schools call _causa essentialis_, the thing itself, that which, as we say, _makes_ the thing, makes it itself and not another, or constitutes its identity. Every theologian believes that God is logical, logic in itself, and that all his works are dialectical and realize a divine plan, which as a whole and in all its parts is strictly and rigidly logical. If the professor means simply to assert not only that all creatures and all events are under the control of the law of cause and effect, but also under the law of dialectics, there need be no quarrel between him and us; but in such case, if he had known a little theology, he might have spared himself and us a great deal of trouble, for we believe as firmly in the universal reign of law as he or his Grace of Argyle. But he would have gained little credit for original genius, depth of thought, profound science, or rare learning, and most likely would not have lived to see any one of his volumes reach a fifth edition.

But we must not be understood to deny in the development of nations or individuals all dependence on physical conditions, or even of climate and geographical position. Man is neither pure spirit, nor pure matter; he is the union of soul and body, and can no more live without communion with nature, than he can without communion with his like and with God. Hence he requires the three great institutions of religion, society, and property, which, in some form, are found in all tribes, nations, or civil communities, and without which no people ever does or can subsist. {173} Climate and geographical influences, no doubt, count for something, for how much, science has not yet determined. There is a difference in character between the inhabitants of mountains and the inhabitants of plains, the dwellers on the sea-coast and the dwellers inland, and the people of the north and the people of the south; yet the Bas Bretons and the Irish have not lost perceptibly anything, in three thousand years, of their original character as a southern people, though dwelling for that space of time, we know not how many centuries longer, far to the north. Among the Irish you may find types of northern races, some of whom have overrun the Island as conquerors; but amid all their political and social vicissitudes, the Irish have retained, and still retain, their southern character. The English have received many accessions from Ireland and from the south, but they remain, the great body of them, as they originally were, essentially a northern people, and hence the marked difference between the Irish character and the English, though inhabiting very nearly the same parallels of latitude, and subject to much the same climatic and geographical influences. The character of both the English and the Irish is modified on this continent, but more by amalgamation, and by political and social influences, than by climate or geography. The Irish type is the most tenacious, and is not unlikely in time to eliminate the Anglo-Saxon. It has a great power of absorption, and the American people may ultimately lose their northern type, and assume the characteristics of a southern race, in spite of the constant influx of the Teutonic element. What we object to is not giving something to physical causes and conditions, but making them exclusive, and thus rejecting moral causes, and reducing man and nature to an inexorable fatalism.

In the several volumes of the professor, except the first named, we are able to detect neither the philosophical historian nor the man of real science. The respectable author has neither logic nor exact, or even extensive, learning, and the only thing to be admired in him, except his style, is the sublime confidence in himself with which he undertakes to discuss and settle questions, of which, for the most part, he knows nothing, and perhaps the sublimer confidence with which he follows masters that know as little as himself.

We own we have treated Professor Draper's work with very little respect, for we have felt very little. His _Intellectual Development of Europe_ is full of crudities from beginning to end, and for the most part below criticism, or would be were it not that it is levelled at all the principles of individual and social life and progress. The book belongs to the age of Leucippus and Democritus, and _ignores_, if we may use an expressive term, though hardly English, Christian civilization and all the progress men and nations have effected since the opening of the Christian era. It is a monument not of science, but of gross ignorance.

Yet in our remarks we have criticised the class to which the author belongs, rather than the author himself. Men of real science are modest, reverential, and we honor them, whatever the department of nature to which they devote their studies. We delight to sit at their feet and drink in instruction from their lips; but when men, because they are passable chemists, know something of human physiology, or the natural history of fishes, undertake to propagate theories on God, man, and nature, that violate the most sacred traditions of the race, deny the Gospel, reduce the universe to matter, and place man on a level with the brute, theories, too, which are utterly baseless, we cannot reverence them, or listen to them with patience, however graceful their elocution or charming their rhetoric.

----------

{174}

Morning At Spring Park.

Along the upland swell and wooded lawn The aged farmer's voice is heard at dawn: That well-known call across the dewy vale Calls Spark and Daisy to the milking-pail.

The robin chirps; from farm to farm I hear The bugle-note of wakeful chanticleer; And far, far off, through grove and bosky dell, The dreamy tinkle of sleek Snowflake's bell.

The huddling sheep, just loose from kindly fold, Their nibbling way along the hill-side hold; And timid squirrels and shy quails are seen Flitting, unscared, across the shaded green.

The low horizon's dusky, violet blue Is tinged with coming daylight's rosy hue, Till o'er the golden fields of tasselled corn Breaks all the rapture of the summer morn.

Through forest rifts the level sunbeams dart, And gloomy nooks to sudden beauty start; Those long, still lines which through rank foliage steal, Undreamed-of charms among the woods reveal.

The yellow wheat-stooks catch the early light; Far-nested homesteads gleam at once to sight; While, from yon glimmering height, one spire serene Points duly heavenward this terrestrial scene.

Long may the aged farmer's call be heard. At dewy dawn, with song of matin bird. Among his loving flocks and herds of kine, A guileless master, watchful and benign.

And, when no more his agile footstep roves These flowery pastures and these pleasant groves, Good Shepherd, may thy call to fields more fair Wean every thought from earth, make heaven his care!

----------

{175}

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

## CHAPTER III.

"Set is the sun of the Netterville's glory! Down in the dust its bright banners are trailing! Hoarse in our anguish we whisper the story, And men, as they listen, like women are wailing.

"Woe! woe to us--woe! we shall see him no more; Our tears like the rains of November are flowing; Woe! woe to us--woe! for the chief we deplore Alone to his exile of sorrow is going.

"Alone?--not alone! for our dastardly foemen-- As cruel as base in the day of their power-- Have lifted their hands against maidens and women; Uprooted the tree, and then trampled the flower.

"And so they have sent her to weep by strange waters-- The joy of our hearts and the light of our eyes-- The latest and fairest of Netterville's daughters, In whom the last link of their destiny lies.

"Sad will be, mother, thy waking to-morrow! Waking to weep o'er thy dove-rifled nest; Widowed and childless--two-fold is thy sorrow. And two-edged the sword that is lodged in thy breast.

"Well may we mourn her--when we too deplore her-- The vassals and serfs of thy conquering race; If blood could but do it, our blood should restore her-- Restore her to thee and thy loving embrace.

"Yet not for her only, or thee, are we weeping; We weep for our country, fast bound in that chain Which in blood from her wrung heart the foeman is steeping, Till it looks as if reddened and rusted by rain.

"Oh! when shall a leader to true hearts be given. To fall on the stranger and force him to flee? And when shall the shackles that bind her be riven? And Erin stand up in her strength, and be free!"

So sung Hamish, the son of the last of the long line of minstrels who, with harp and voice, had recorded the triumphs of the house of Netterville, or mourned over the death or sorrow of its chieftains. For, in spite of the law by which it was strictly forbidden, the English of the Pale had persisted in the national custom of keeping a bard or minstrel--whose office was always, or almost always, hereditary--attached to their households; and in its palmy days of power the family of Netterville was far too jealous of its own importance not to have been always provided with a similar appendage. Its last recognized minstrel had fallen, however, in the same battle which had deprived Nellie of her father, and, Hamish being then too young to take up his father's office, the harp had ever since, literally as well as figuratively, hung mute and unstrung in the halls of Netterville. But grief and indignation over its utter ruin had unlocked at last the tide of poetry and song, ever ready to flow over in the Celtic breast, and Hamish felt himself changed into a bard upon the spot. Forgetting the presence of the English soldiers, or, more probably, exulting in the knowledge that they did not understand the language in which he gave expression to his feelings, he stepped out into the midst of the people, pouring forth his lamentations, stanza after stanza, with all the readiness and fire of a born _improvisatore_; and when at last he paused, more for want of breath than want of matter, the keeners took up the tale, and told, in their wild, wailing chant, of the goodness and greatness, the glory and honour of their departed chieftain and his heiress, precisely as they would have done had the twain over whom they were lamenting been that very day deposited in their graves. Up to this moment Mrs. Netterville had preserved in a marvellous degree that statue-like calmness of outward bearing which hid, and even at times belied, the workings of a heart full of generous emotions; but the wild wailing of the keeners broke down the artificial restraint she had put upon her conduct, and, unable to listen quietly to what seemed to her ears a positive prophecy of death to her beloved ones, she hastily reëntered the house and retreated to her own apartment. {176} This was a small, dark chamber, which in happier times had been set apart as a quiet retreat for prayer and household purposes, but which now was the only one the mistress of the mansion could call her own--the soldiers having that very morning taken possession of all the others, devoting some of them to their own

## particular accommodation and locking up the others. It was, in

fact, as a very singular and especial favour, and as some return for the kindness she had shown in nursing one of their number who had been taken suddenly ill on the night of their arrival, that the use even of this small chamber had been allowed her; for it was not the custom of Cromwell's army to deal too gently by the vanquished, and many of the "transplanted," as high-born and well-educated as she was, had been compelled, in similar circumstances, to retire to the outer offices of their own abode, while the rough soldiery who displaced them installed themselves in the luxurious apartments of the interior.

Hidden from all curious eyes in this dark retreat, Mrs. Netterville yielded at last to the cry of her weak human heart, and, flinging herself face downward on the floor, gave way to a passion of grief which was all the more terrible that it was absolutely tearless. One or two of the few remaining women of the household, knowing how fearfully her soul, in spite of all outward show of calmness, must be wrung, tapped occasionally at the door; but either she did not hear or did not choose to answer, and they dared not enter without permission.

At last one of them went to Hamish, feeling instinctively that, if any one could venture to intrude unbidden, it would be the foster-brother of Nellie, and said:

"The mistress, God help her! is just drowned with the sorrow, and won't even answer when we call. Hamish, a-bouchal, couldn't you manage to go in, just by accident like, and say something or other to give a turn to her thoughts?"

"Give a turn to her thoughts?" said Hamish crustily; "give a turn to her thoughts, do you say? My certie, but you take it easy! Hasn't the woman lost husband and child, to say nothing of the old lord, who was all as one to her as her own father? and isn't she going, moreover, to be turned out of house and home, and sent adrift upon the wide world? and you talk of giving a turn to her thoughts, as if it was the toothache she was troubled with or a wasp that had stung her?"

"As you please, Mr. Hoity-toity," said the girl angrily; "I only thought that, as you were a bit of a pet like, on account of our young mistress, you might have ventured on the liberty. Not having set up in that line myself, I cannot, of course, attempt to meddle in the matter."

But though Hamish had spoken roughly, his heart was very sore, for all that, over the sorrows of his lonely mistress.

He waited until Cathleen had vanished in a huff, and then, going quietly to the study-door, knocked softly for admission.

But Mrs. Netterville gave no sign, and, after knocking two or three times in vain, he opened the door gently and looked in. The room was naturally a gloomy one, being panelled in black oak; but Hamish felt as if it never _could_ have looked before so gloomy as it did that moment. {177} Half study, half oratory as it was, Mrs. Netterville had spent here many a long hour of lonely and impassioned prayer, what time her husband and her father-in-law were fighting the battles of their royal and most ungrateful master. A tall crucifix, carved, like the rest of the furniture, in black oak, stood, therefore, on a sort of _prie-dieu_ at the farther end of the room, and near it was a table arranged in desk-fashion, at which she had been in the habit of transacting the business of her household.

Room and _prie-dieu_, crucifix and table, Hamish had them all by heart already.

Here in his baby days he had been used to come, when he and his little foster-sister were wearied with their own play, to sit at the feet of Mrs. Netterville and listen to the tales which she invented for their amusement. Here, as time went on, separating Nellie outwardly from his society, yet leaving her as near to him in heart as ever, he had been wont to bring his morning offerings of fish from the running stream, or bunches of purple heather from the rocks. Here he had come for news of the war, and of the master, on that very day which brought tidings of his death; and here, too, even while he tried to comfort Nellie, who had flung herself down in her childish misery just on the spot where her mother lay prostrate now, he had wondered, and, young as he was, had in part, at least, comprehended the marvellous self-forgetfulness of Mrs. Netterville, who, in the midst of her own bereavement, had yet found heart and voice to comfort her aged father-in-law and her child, as if the blow which had struck them down had not fallen with three-fold force on her own head. In the darkness of the room and the confusion of his own thoughts, he did not, however, at first perceive Mrs. Netterville in her lowly posture, and glanced instinctively toward the _prie-dieu_, where he had so often before seen her take refuge in the hour of trial.

But she was not there, and a thrill of terror ran through his frame when he at last discovered her, face downward, on the floor, her widow's coif flung far away, and her long locks, streaked--by the hand of grief, not time--abundantly with gray, streaming round her in a disorder which struck Hamish all the more forcibly, that it was in such direct contrast to the natural habits of order and propriety she had brought with her from her English home. There she lay, not weeping--such misery as hers knows nothing of the relief of tears--not weeping, but crushed and powerless, as if her very body had proved unequal to the weight of sorrow put upon it, and had fallen beneath the burthen. She seemed, indeed, not in a swoon, but stunned and stupefied, and quite unconscious that she was not alone. Hamish trembled for her intellect; but young as he was, he was used to sorrow, and understood both the danger and the remedy.

His lady must be roused at any cost, even at that the very thought of which made him tremble, the recalling her to a full knowledge of her misery. He advanced farther into the room, moving softly, in his great reverence for her desolation, as we move, almost unconsciously to ourselves, in the presence of the dead, and occupied himself for a few minutes in arranging the loose papers on her desk, and the flowers which Nellie had placed upon the _prie dieu_ only a day or two before. They were faded now--faded as the poor child's fortunes--but instead of throwing them away, he poured fresh water into the vase which held them, as if that could have restored their beauty. {178} Yet he sighed heavily as he did so for the thought would flash across his mind that, whether he sought to give, back life to a withered flower, or joy to the heart of a bereaved mother, in either case his task was hopeless. Mrs. Netterville took no notice of his proceedings, though, as he began to get used to the situation, he purposely made rather more bustle than was needed, in hopes of arousing her. At last, in despair of succeeding by milder methods, he let fall a heavy inkstand, smashing it into a thousand pieces, and scattering the ink in all directions, an event that in happier times would certainly not have passed unreproved. But now she lay within a few inches of the inky stream, as heedless as though she were dead in earnest; and, hopeless of recalling her to consciousness by anything short of a personal appeal, he knelt down beside her and tapped her sharply on the shoulder, half wondering at his own temerity as he did so. She shuddered as if, light as the touch had been, it yet had hurt her, and muttered impatiently, and like one half asleep:

"Not now, Hamish! not now!--leave me for the present, I entreat you!"

"And why not now?" Hamish answered almost roughly. "Do you think _you_ only have a cause for grieving? Tell me, my mistress, if we, humble as we are, and not to be thought of in comparison with your ladyship's honor, if we have not lost--are losing nothing? Ah! if you could but hear the weeping and wailing that is going on among the creatures down-stairs, you would never do us such a wrong as to suppose that _your_ heart is the only one sore and bleeding to-day!"

"Sore and bleeding! Yes! yes! I doubt it not," moaned the lady sadly. "Sore and bleeding; but not widowed--not childless; they have still husbands and children--they have not lost as I have lost!"

"They have lost--not, may be, quite so much, but yet enough, and more than enough, to set them wailing," answered Hamish firmly-- "they have lost a master, who was more like a father than a master, and a young mistress, who was all as one as a daughter to every one of them; and moreover," he added mournfully--"and moreover, instead of the kind hand and generous heart that has reigned over them till now, they are going to be handed over, (as if they were so many stocks or stones encumbering the land,) whether they like it or whether they don't, to the tender mercies of those very men who thought it neither sin nor shame to make the child a shield against the soldier's sword, when they fought knee-deep in blood at the siege of Tredagh!"

"Why do you say these things, Hamish?" she almost shrieked in her anguish. "Is it my fault? Could I help it? or why do you reproach me with it?"

"_Your_ fault! No, indeed, it is not. More's the pity; for if you could have helped it, to a dead certainty it never would have happened," said Hamish, glad that he had roused her, even if only to a fit of anger. "But though you cannot prevent these things, my mistress, you can at all events comfort the creatures that have to bear them, by showing that you have feelings for their sorrows as well as for your own."

"I give comfort! God help me, I give comfort!" she answered, with a sort of passionate irony in her manner; adding, however, immediately afterward, in a softer tone, "How can I give comfort, Hamish--I who need it so entirely myself?"

{179}

"That is the very thing," cried Hamish eagerly. "God love you, madam! Do you not see that the only real comfort you could give them would be the allowing them to try at least and comfort you?"

"Bid them pray, then, for the safe journey of my loved ones," she answered hoarsely--"that is the only real comfort they can give me."

"And why, then, couldn't we pray all together?" cried Hamish, struck suddenly by a bright idea. "Why wouldn't you let them come up here, madam? I warrant you they would pray as the best of them never prayed before, if they only seen your ladyship's honor kneeling and praying in the midst of them."

"I--I cannot pray--I cannot even think," she answered, laying her head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them down-stairs."

"In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you would have us pray at all, it must be here--here where the cross will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and heart-broken--not because her Child had gone before her into exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw Him dying--dying in the midst of tortures--and forsaken so entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knew _that_ never could be) as if God as well as man had utterly abandoned Him."

"You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I shall be ready by the time they are assembled."

As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire, she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing her widow's coif upon them.

Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn her intellect.

When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at the _prie-dieu_, in all the grave composure of her usual manner. She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced reading from her open missal.

But the very sound of her own voice in supplicatory accents seemed to break the spell which had hitherto been laid upon her faculties. She fairly broke down and burst into a flood of tears. This was more than enough for the excitable hearts around her, and the room was filled in a moment with the wailing of her people. {180} Hamish was in despair; and yet, perhaps, no other mode of proceeding could have done so much toward calming her as did this sudden outburst; for Mrs. Netterville had a true Englishwoman's aversion to "scenes," however real and natural to the circumstances of the case they might be. She instantly checked her tears, and waiting quietly until the storm of grief had in some degree died out, she collected all her energies, and read in a low, steady voice the prayer or collect for those travelling by land or sea, as she found it in her missal. A few other short but earnest prayers succeeded, and then she paused once more. Her audience took the hint and quietly retired. Hamish was about to follow, but she rose from the _prie-dieu_, and signed to him to remain.

"Hamish," she said, gently but decidedly, "I have done your bidding, and now I expect that you will do mine. I wish to be alone for the rest of the day--do you understand? alone with God and my great sorrow! To-morrow I will begin the work for which I have been left here, but to-day must be my own. Come not here yourself, and look to it that no one else disturbs me. Keep a heedful watch upon the soldiers, and see that no mischance occurs between them and any of our people, I trust to you for this and all things. Now leave me. If I have need of anything, I will let you know."

There was that in Mrs. Netterville's tone and manner which made Hamish feel he had gone quite far enough already; so, without another word of remonstrance or expostulation, he made his reverence and retired.

## Chapter IV.

Mrs. Netterville waited until the echo of his retreating footsteps had died away in the corridor, and then fastening the door so as to secure herself from any further interruption from the outside, she once more fell on her knees before the crucifix, and buried her face in both her hands. How long she remained thus she never knew exactly; but the shades of a short January evening were already gathering in the room, when, with a start and a look as if her conscience smote her, she rose suddenly from her knees. "Christ pardon me!" she muttered half aloud, "that, in my own selfish sorrows, I have forgotten others! Poor wretch! By this time he must be well-nigh famished, if, indeed, (though I trust it will not,) the delay has not worked him deeper mischief."

As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she opened a cupboard close at hand, and drew from thence a bottle of wine, with some other articles of delicate food, packed carefully in a wicker-basket, and evidently left there for some especial purpose. She then sought through the gloom for a cloak, which she threw upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood down over her face, and taking the basket on her arm, she hastily left the room. Not, however, by the door through which Hamish and the servants had retreated, but by another at the opposite end, and which was almost invisible, in consequence of its forming one of the panels in the black oak wainscoting of the chamber. It led her directly by a short stone passage to another door or low wicket, on opening which she found herself in the private grounds of the castle. Before her at no great distance, stood an old ivy-covered church, half hidden in a group of tall Irish trees, which sheltered its little cemetery. {181} This was not the parish church, but a private chapel, built by the Netterville family for their own particular use; and here their infants had been baptized, their daughters married, and their old men and women laid reverently to their last slumbers, ever since they had established their existence in the land.

Mrs. Netterville could not resist a sigh as she glanced toward its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that she had gone there to lay down her husband in his lowly grave, hoping and praying, out of the depths of her own great grief, that she might soon be permitted to sleep quietly beside him. And now, even this sad hope was to be hers no longer; this poor possession of six feet of earth was to be wrested from her; strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she would be separated from her husband. The thought was too painful to bear much lingering upon it, and turning her back upon the church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay close under the castle walls, and led to a court-yard at a considerable distance. Round this court-yard were grouped stables and other offices, which, having been built at different periods and without any consecutive idea as a whole, presented rather the appearance of a collection of stunted farm-houses, than of the regular out-buildings of an important mansion.

Each of these houses had a private entrance of its own; and opening the door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville looked in quietly and entered. The interior was a room, poorly but yet decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end lay a young man, who, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, had all the look of a person just rescued from the jaws of death. A knapsack on the floor, a pike and musket in one corner of the room, and a steel cap and buff coat in another, seemed to announce him as one of the band of successful soldiers who were even then in possession of the castle.

Poor fellow! he lay, with closed eyes, wan and weary, on his bed, looking, at that moment, like anything rather than like a successful soldier; but he lifted his head as he caught the noise of the door creaking on its hinges, and his face brightened into an expression of joy and gratitude pleasant to behold when he discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the threshold.

"Can you ever forgive me?" she said, going up to him at once. "I cannot easily forgive myself for having left you so long alone. In the grief and anguish in which I have been plunged all day, I had well-nigh forgotten your existence, and you must be faint, I fear me, for want of nourishment."

"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good deal of that comfortable self-assurance in spiritual matters which seems to have been an especial inheritance of "Cromwell's saints." "If _you_ have forgotten, the Lord at least hath been mindful of his servant, and hath cast so deep a slumber on my senses, that I have been altogether unconscious of the lapse of time, or of the absence of those carnal comforts which, however the spirit may rebel against them, are nevertheless not altogether to be despised, as being the means by which we receive strength to do the bidding of our Master."

Mrs. Netterville could not help thinking that the posset-cup and soothing draught, which she had administered the night before, might have had as much as any especial interposition of Providence to say to his seasonable slumbers; but the times were too much out of joint to permit of her making, however reverently, such an observation, so she merely touched his brow and hand, and said:

{182}

"I am right glad, at all events, that you seem in nowise to have suffered from my neglect. Eat now and drink, I pray you; for I perceive by this refreshing moisture on your skin that all danger has passed away, and that you need at present no worse physic than good food and wine to restore you to your former strength."

"Nay, madam," said the soldier, with great and hardly repressed feeling in his voice and manner. "Eat or drink I cannot, or in any way refresh myself, until I have poured forth my song of gratitude, first to the Lord of hosts, who hath delivered me from this great danger, and then to you, who have tended me (even as the widow of Sarepta might have waited on Elias) through the perils of a sickness from which my very comrades and fellow-laborers in the vineyard fled, trembling and afraid."

"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field, yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature, its more awful dangers."

"Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I should have done the same. Nevertheless--and though I have no ill feeling toward them--I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my gratitude if I could."

"You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending any of the household to wait on you in my stead."

"Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory manner.

"Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly. "You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble--which is altogether unavoidable in any sickness--has been, you may believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."

"Would that I could aid you," he answered fervently--"would that I could comfort you! But, alas! in this matter of the transplantation, I can do naught, seeing that it is the Lord himself who hath girded on our swords, bidding us to smite and spare not. {183} Nevertheless, lady, I am not ungrateful, and in the long, sleepless nights of my weary malady I have wrestled for you in prayer, striving exceedingly and being much exercised on your account; nor gave I over until I had received the comfortable assurance that, as the Lord sent angels to Lot to deliver him out of Sodom, so he would some day make of me a shield and a defence, whereby you might be snatched from the woes that he is about to rain down on this land, because 'the cry of its idolatry is waxen great before his face,' and he hath sworn to destroy it."

"Well, well!" she answered a little impatiently, "I thank you for your good-will, at all events; but for the present we will discourse no further on this matter. God will one day judge between us, and by his fiat I am content to stand or fall, in all those matters of religion on which, unhappily, we differ. See, I have trimmed the lamp so that it will burn brightly until morning, and there is food and wine on this little table. I will put it close to the bed, so that when you need nourishment, you will have but to put forth your hand to take it. And now I must say good-night--to-morrow I will be with you by the early dawn."

Having thus done all that either charity or hospitality could ask at her hands, Mrs. Netterville retired from the room, sooner, probably, than she would have done if the soldier's last words had not grated on her ear, and roused more angry passions than she wished to yield to in her breast.

"He has a good heart, poor wretch," she thought, as she took her way back to the castle; "but strange and fearful is it to see how pride, in him, as in all his comrades, usurps the place of true humility and religion."

The sudden sound of a pistol going off disturbed her in the midst of her cogitations; and with a pang of indescribable fear and presentiment of evil at her heart, she stood still. It seemed to come from the grove of yew-trees round the church, and was not repeated. Having ascertained this fact, she walked rapidly forward in the direction of the sound, her mind in a perfect whirl of fear, and only able to shape itself into the one thought, pregnant of future evil, that, either by some of her own people, or by one of the English soldiers, a murder had been committed. Just as she entered the grove of yew-trees, she perceived something like the loose garb of a woman fluttering down the path before her, and then suddenly disappearing behind the tower of the little church. She did not dare to call out; but feeling certain that this person must either have fired the shot herself, or have seen it fired by some one else, she quickened her pace in order to overtake her. Twilight was already deepening among the yew-trees; the path, moreover, was overgrown with weeds and brambles, and as she ran with her eyes fixed on the spot where the figure had disappeared, she felt herself suddenly tripped up by some object lying right before her, and fell heavily against it. At the first touch of that unseen something, a sense of terror, such as animals are said to be conscious of in the presence of their own dead, seized upon her senses, and all the blood was curdling in her veins as slowly and with difficulty she removed herself from its contact. Gradually, as she recovered from the stunning effects of her fall, and her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom around her, the "thing" on the ground shaped itself into the form of a human being--but of a human being so still and motionless, that it seemed probable it was a corpse already. {184} Very reluctantly she put forth her hand to try if life were really extinct; but suddenly discovering that she was dabbling it in a pool of yet warm blood, she withdrew it with a shudder.

"My God! my God!" she moaned, "what enemy hath done this? Surely it is one of the soldiers from the castle, and they will accuse our people of the murder! Grant Heaven, indeed, that they are innocent! Would that Hamish were here to help me. Yet no! they would certainly in that case try to fix the guilt on him. I will go hence and let them discover it as they can. Yet what if I should meet them? I am all dabbled in his gore!"

With a new and sharp terror in her heart, as this thought took possession of it, she began hastily to rub her hands in the moss and dry leaves around her, in order to free them from the blood which clung to them; and she was still engaged in this rather equivocal occupation when a sudden stream of light was cast on her from behind, and, rising suddenly, she found herself face to face with the officer who had been left in command of the garrison of the castle.

Half-a-dozen of his men were at his back, and by the light of the lantern, which he carried, she read in their faces their conviction of her guilt. At a sign from their chief they surrounded her in awful silence, and he himself laid his hand heavily on her shoulder:

"Murderess!" he said, "thou art taken in thy sin!"

"I did it not," cried Mrs. Netterville, so utterly confounded by this terrible accusation that she hardly knew what she said. "So help me Heaven! I am innocent of this deed!"

"Innocent! sayest thou?" the officer answered firmly. "Innocent! thou with his blood red upon thy hands! Yea, and thy very garments clotted in his gore! If then thou art innocent, as thou wouldst have us to believe, say what wert thou doing in this lonely spot at an hour when none but the murderer or the wanton would care to be abroad?"

"I was returning from a visit to the soldier Jackson--a visit which, as thou knowest, Master Rippel, I pay him every evening at the hour of dusk; and I had well-nigh reached the castle, when hearing a shot in this direction, and fearing mischief either for my own people or for thine, I came hither if possible to prevent it."

"A likely story, truly!" replied the officer, who, unluckily for her, was one of the fiercest, if not the saintliest, of the band of warriors then domiciled at the castle. "Nay, woman, and for thine own sake hold thy peace, or out of thine own mouth thou shalt stand presently condemned. For tell me, my masters," he added, addressing the other men, "where will you find a woman, who, hearing a shot, and dreading mischief, would not have fled from the danger, instead of incontinently rushing, as she would have us to believe she did, into its very jaws?"

"Yet have I rushed into the jaws of danger more than once already within this fortnight, and that not for the sake of my own people but of thine; as none ought to know better than thou, Master Rippel, and thy comrades," Mrs. Netterville, now fairly put upon her mettle, retorted bravely.

"Nay, and that is naught but the very truth, though the father of lies (which is Beelzebub) himself had said it," one of the men here ventured to remark. "For surely, Captain Rippel, you cannot have forgotten that we should have had a soldier the less in the camp of Israel, if she had not nursed the good youth Jackson through this black business of the plague, when we, even we, men anointed and girded to the fight, did hesitate to go near him."

{185}

"Ha! Dost thou also venture to defend her?" cried the officer angrily. "Nay, then, let that woman which is called Deborah be brought forward and confronted with the prisoner. Her testimony must decide between us."

One or two of the soldiers who had been lingering at a little distance in the dusky twilight now advanced, half pushing before them, half leading, the very woman who had addressed Nellie so impudently in the morning. She came forward with a strange mixture of eagerness and reluctance in her manner; willing enough, it might be, to bear false testimony against her neighbor, but very unwilling to be confronted with its object.

They placed her face to face with Mrs. Netterville, and the captain turned his lantern so that the light fell full on the features of the latter. They were cold and calm, and almost disdainful in their expression, now that she knew who was her accuser; and Deborah, spite of all her efforts to brazen out the interview, cowered beneath her glance of scorn.

"Nay, but look well upon her, Deborah," said the captain, seeing that her eyes fell beneath those of the woman she had accused. "Look well upon her, and say if this be not that Moabitish woman whom thou sawest, as thou wert lingering (for no good purpose, I do fear me greatly) in the shadow of the trees--whom thou sawest, say I, steal hither between light and darkness, and treacherously do to death our brother Tomkins, who, being--as methinks you revealed to me just now--wearied overmuch with prayer and holding forth, (he was, as I myself can testify, a man of most precious doctrine, and greatly favored in the gift of preaching,) had come hither to repose himself."

"Nay," said the woman, speaking in very tolerable English, an accomplishment she had picked up when in service in Dublin; "of that great weariness caused by too much prayer and preaching. Master Rippel, I said naught--my own impression being," she added, unable even before such an audience to repress the gibe, "that the slumberous inclinations of worthy Master Tomkins had been caused by a somewhat too ardent devotion lately tendered to the wine-cask."

"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act--yea, the very act of murder."

"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs. Netterville as she spoke.

"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly, why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?--why not strike up my weapon?--why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the sleeping soldier?"

"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them accordingly I left it."

{186}

"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."

## Chapter V.

The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a young girl--the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while with the other she supported the failing strength of her companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed, almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless, footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her, crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky, and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty, beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud scenery" which is nowhere more beautiful or varied than in Ireland. {187} To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and shining at her feet--Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore, and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile, Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building, perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild, uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in which they had told her she was to establish her new home. _House_, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls, formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together, betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square, simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and which still remains in many places, the silent but uncontrovertible witness--the seal which they themselves have set upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.

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Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining energy to say cheerfully:

"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of a peasant to shelter them from the weather."

"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation. "What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have been sent to make themselves a home among these barren mountains?"

Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.

"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these wilds."

"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but themselves?"

"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident determination to look, for the present at least, only on the bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."

She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw that she started violently as she did so. She said not another word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade paler--if that were possible--than it had been before, as she continued to gaze silently in that direction.

"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so white and scared?"

"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house, therefore, must be inhabited already!"

{189}

"People in the court-yard!" cried the old man, now fairly aroused to that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last half-hour. "What people, Nellie? Tell me, child, if you can distinguish whether they seem to be natives or strangers to the place. Our fate, alas! may be dependent on that fact."

The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from the blinding sunshine, looked again, and yet again, in the direction of the tower.

"Yes," she said at last; "I was not mistaken. There is a party in the court-yard, and some of them are even standing in the gate-way, as if they had but this instant stept forth from the mansion. Surely, grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or mistaken our instructions? There is no other building to be seen--even in the distance--and this one answers in all respects to the description. The man, too, from whom we inquired our way this morning, assured us that it was called 'The Rath'--the very name set down in our certificate. We cannot have been mistaken, and yet--and yet--if there be persons already in possession, their claim must needs be superior to our own."

She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning.

"It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have waited our arrival before giving up possession."

"Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find it empty."

"They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its original possessors."

"And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls--their iniquity and our own."

"What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me, Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is."

"I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought only--fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own misfortunes--I thought only of tracts of land left barren for want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us--us who have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers have to ours!"

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"Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered restlessly. "And the iniquity--for it _is_ an iniquity--is theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have been compelled in our own despite to do it."

But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and she answered vehemently:

"But it must not be in ours, sir--it must not be in ours! We will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or conscience, we can make ourselves a home."

"As you will, Nellie--as you will," he answered, too weary, perhaps, to be able longer to dispute the point. "But after all, we may be mistaken as to the ownership of these people. Look again, and tell me, if you can, whether they are clad like Englishmen, or in the native weeds?"

"Not in the native weeds, I think, my father. Rather I should say, if it were not impossible, that the men whom I see down yonder belonged to the army of the oppressor. Ha! Now a lady is coming forth, and now they are mounting her, and a tall, stately personage in--yes--certainly in military attire, is mounting also, and takes his place at her side. Now half a dozen servants, I suppose, or friends, are on their horses likewise, and now they are moving forward. Father, they must come this way, there is none other that I can see by which horses can pass with safety. Let us wait for them behind the bank, and then, when they are near enough, we will accost them, and if they be of the conquering army, show them our certificate. They will, of course, bow to its authority, and help us to take possession of that house which the document assigns us. I am glad a woman is among them; it will make it easier, I think, to speak."

As Nellie ran on thus, she drew her grandfather with her behind a bank which dipt down suddenly upon the path, narrowing it until it was all but impassable to riders. There, with pale face and tightened breath, she nervously awaited the advent of the party upon whose favorable or unfavorable disposition toward them she felt her own fate and Lord Netterville's to be so painfully dependent.

To Be Continued.

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The Roman Gathering. [Footnote 46]

By W. G. Dix.

[Footnote 46: We give place to the above article in our columns, though from a non-Catholic pen, thinking that it will be read with interest by our readers, while it indicates, at the same time, the religious tendencies which are becoming more and more prevalent among not a small class of minds in our country.--Editor C. W.]

A man of many years, without vast temporal resources, despoiled of a part of his possessions, having many and vigorous enemies about him, and regarded by many even of those who profess the Christian faith as about to fall from his high place in Christendom, such a man invites his brethren of the apostolical ministry throughout the world to honor by their personal presence at Rome the anniversary of the martyrdom, eighteen hundred years ago, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to join with him in the exaltation of martyrs who, like them, though in far distant lands, were "faithful unto death." They respond with eager joy and haste to the call, and those who cannot go send on the wings of the wind their words of loving veneration.

To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church. Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude, from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city of the faith.

The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was about so to change the structure of society that the old and decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that, surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo! here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence; and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God.

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As in these instances, so in many others, the church has extended her sway and deepened her power by the very forces which many supposed would work her ruin. The history of the church has shown in the domain of natural science, so often applied in the service of infidelity and disorder, as in the field of human passion, that God will make the wrath of man to praise him, and turn weapons designed to attack his holy Church into her consecrated armor of defence. The grace of God so overrules the inventions of man and the powers of nature, that even the terrible lightning becomes the vivid messenger to convey to the ends of the earth the benediction of the Vicar of Christ.

What is the chief lesson of the recent gathering at Rome? It is this, that the church of God, so often, in the view of her enemies, destroyed, will not stay destroyed; that after every "destruction" she renews her invincible youth, and rises to pursue her career of conquest over sin, prejudice, and wrong; that, though she may bend awhile to the storm that beats upon her sacred head, she has never been wholly overcome; that, notwithstanding all that mortal enmity, defection, outrage, have done or can do, she yet lifts her forehead to the sky to be anew baptized with light from the sun of truth above; and, strong in the faith and promise of the Eternal God, she falters not in her endeavors, patient and persistent, to subdue the world to Christ.

The history of the Catholic Church abounds with instances like the Roman gathering in June, which prove that her hours of affliction are those very ones when her faithful children gather to her side, to assure her of their prayers and support, and to discern upon her saintly face those "smiles through tears," which, in times of trial, are the warmest and most touching acknowledgments of filial veneration.

The commemorative assemblage at the capital of Christendom, signifies that the church of God is indestructible by any forces that earth or hell, singly or united, can bring against her. She may be at times like the bird in the snare of the fowler; but she is sure of being released at length, and then she plumes her wings afresh, and soars heavenward, filling the air with the divine, exultant music of her voice. The powerful of the earth have sometimes loaded the church with fetters; but by the strength of Christ that dwells evermore in her, she has broken the bonds asunder, or, by his transforming grace, they have become the wreaths and garlands of new victory, even as the cross of humiliation has become, by the sacrifice of our Lord, the emblem of unfading glory.

The church of Christ, bearing on her brow his holy seal, and in her hands his gifts of power, knelt in sorrow at his grave; but she hailed his resurrection with joy, and was endowed anew with treasures of immortal life. {193} Afterward, the might of heathendom arose against her, and she descended from the wrath of man into the catacombs; but she reascended, to wear upon her brow the diadem of a spiritual empire that shall never fall until the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and even then, true to all her history in deriving new glory from every apparent defeat, she will rise again from the great grave of nature to enjoy for ever the vision of God. Kings of the earth have denied her right to invest the pastors of her children with their due prerogatives, and have even dared her to mortal combat; but though distressed and thwarted, she has never relinquished her inherent rights, and she never will. As many times as the head of the church on earth has been driven from Rome by armed, ungrateful violence, so many times exactly has he been welcomed back with tears of penitence and shouts of rapture.

Despoiled of treasures committed to her care by faithful stewards of God's bounty, she has labored with her own hands to feed her needy children. At one time, persecuted in the wilderness, she has found a refuge and a welcome in the courts of princes; at another, driven from the courts of princes, because she would not deny her Lord or her divine commission, she has found a humble sanctuary in the wilderness, and knelt upon the bare earth to adore the Lord of life and light, once the child in the manger, and to invoke all the saints in glory to plead her cause in the ear of infinite justice and goodness.

She has spurned the anointed king from the temple of God, until he repented of his crime; and on the head of the lowly monk who was spending his days in labor and prayer, she has placed the triple crown. With one hand she has bathed with "baptismal dew" the brow of the day-laborer's child, while the other she has raised in defiance of imperial might, which dared to assail her holy altar.

One of the most violent objections to the Catholic Church has been urged for the very reason that she has so faithfully held the balance between the contending forces of society. She has been accused of favoring the claims of absolutism or popular demands, as the triumph of either at the time would favor her own ends, irrespective of right. The charge is unjust, is urged by many who know better, yet it springs from an honest misapprehension in many minds. It would have been utterly impossible for an institution, designed to enlighten and guide mankind in its higher relations, not to touch human interests of every kind, and human institutions generally in many ways; yet the challenge may safely be given to any thoughtful student of history, to acknowledge with candor, whatever may be his ecclesiastical position, that the Catholic Church, having often been chosen to be, and having an inherent right to be, the umpire between the rights of authority and the rights of individuals, has faithfully labored to sustain lawful authority when assailed by the wild fury of misguided multitudes, and that she has interposed her powerful shield, often with the most triumphant success, to protect men whose rights as men were assailed by authority changed by ambition into arrogant and exacting tyranny. What inconsistency and insincerity have been charged against the Catholic Church for this remarkable and noble fact in her history! In this respect the Catholic Church has followed strictly in the steps of her Divine Author, who, when on earth, invariably upheld the rights of authority, while vehemently denouncing those who unjustly exercised it; and while going about doing good, the friend of the friendless and the helper of the helpless, pleading with divine eloquence, and laboring with divine power for the outcast and the poor, never and nowhere sanctioned the spirit of insurrection, but enjoined obedience as one of the main duties of life. {194} Hence, it has come about, by one of those sublime mysteries, which prove the divine origin of Christianity, that the greatest revolution which has ever taken place in religious belief and in civil society in all their bearings, has been effected by the teachings, by the life and death of one who by no word or deed ever assailed authority itself or incited resistance to it.

Beauty and order being the same thing, and religious truth being the beauty of holiness, Christ, who was truth in person, must have made his church the friend and upholder of all beauty and order; and so it has proved for eighteen hundred years. The church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love, and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and incited men by higher motives to a higher life. Have painting and sculpture sought to represent objects of refining grace and sublimity? the church of Christ persuaded them to look into the records of the Christian past, and there they found treasures of beauty and splendor, devotion and martyrdom, whose wealth of illustration as examples; incentives, and memorials, art has not exhausted for centuries, and will never exhaust. Christian history is the inexhaustible quarry of whatever is most noble and heroic in man, purified by the grace of God. Has architecture sought to invest stone with the attributes of spiritual and intellectual grace? the church of God has so portrayed before her the sublimities of the Christian faith, that she knelt at her feet in veneration, and thenceforth consecrated herself to build enduring structures, which, the more they show of human power and skill, the more they persuade men to the worship of God. Has eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life? the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul? the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship, and worship on earth like beatific music.

As in these respects, so in others, the church has made a holy conquest of whatever is noblest among the endowments of men. In speaking of Catholic history, even from the secular point of view, it may be justly said, that nowhere else has there been such wonderful discernment of the various capacities of the human mind, and of their various adaptations. Tenacious of the truth and of all its prerogatives, the Catholic Church has, nevertheless, allowed a wide liberty of thought. That the Catholic Church has narrowed the understandings of men, is a singular charge to make in the face of the schools of Catholic philosophy, in which men of varying mental structure, training, or habits of thought, have had full, free play of their faculties. {195} And where else have there been so many free and varying

## activities as in the Catholic Church? The false charge that the

church fetters the minds and movements of men, may be traced to the fact that all Catholic diversities of thought have converged, like different rays of light, in the elucidation of truth, and that varying modes of Catholic action have had one object--the advancement of truth.

Here is the intended force of all these illustrations, for they have had a logical purpose. The world will never outgrow the church. All the boasted improvements in science, in art, in civilization, so far from impeding the church of Christ, and making her existence no longer needed, will, at the same time, advance her power, and make her more needed than ever. If in the middle ages, when society was in the process of transition from the old to the new, the church was pre-eminently needed to keep what was just and right and true in the older forms of civilization, and gradually to adapt to them what was just and right and true in the newer developments of society, most truly is the church needed now, when there exists a perfect chaos of opinions, and when a part of the civilized world is in another transition, from the aimless, rudderless vagaries of Protestantism to the solid rock of Catholicity. If ever the voice of authority was needed, like the voice of the angel of God, heard amid and above the howlings of the storm, it is needed now.

Much false reasoning has been uttered about the "unchangeable church," as though, because "unchangeable," it was not adapted to a changing and striving world, when, in truth, for the very reason that the church of Christ is unchangeably true, she is required and adapted for all the changes and emergencies of time. Who ever heard a sailor complain of the mariner's compass, because, on account of its unchangeable obstinacy, it would not conform to his private judgments and caprices about the right course? No one. It is for the very reason that the mariner's compass is unchangeably true to the eternal law of magnetic attraction, under all circumstances and in all places, that it is the unerring guide among the whirlwinds and heavings of the great deep. Catholicity is the mariner's compass upon a greater deep--even that of the wild and rolling, beating ocean of humanity, pointing, amid sunny calms, or gentle winds, or raging gales, unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ, as the needle of the mariner's compass points to the north--guiding, age after age, the precious freights of immortal souls to the harbor of infinite and unending joy.

The force of this illustration is all the stronger that the mariner's compass is a human adaptation of an immutable law of nature to navigation, while the church of the living God is divine alike in origin and application, and has existed from the beginning, unchangeable, like God himself, yet adapting herself to the wants of every age. The church of God is like his own infinite providence, in which unchangeable truth meets in the harmony of mercy the innumerable changes of human need.

Much has been written and more said about "the church of the future," as though it were to be some millennial manifestation altogether different from the historic church; but the church of the future, which is not also the church of the past and of the present, can be no church; for a true church must reach to the ages back as well as to those before. {196} If the continuity is broken, truth is broken, and cannot be restored. As for eighteen centuries there have been no forms of civil society, no calms or tempests in the moral, political, social, or religious world, in which the Catholic Church has not been true to the organic principles of her divine life, even the enemy of catholicity should admit--that fact being granted--that the presumption is on her side that she will be equally true to those principles during the centuries that are to come. He may deny that the church has been true, and, consequently, that she will be true, but he will not admit one proposition and deny the other; he will admit both or deny both. In other words, he will admit, equally with the friend of catholicity, the identity of the church, past, present, and to come. Now, it will be impossible for a friend or enemy of the Catholic Church, from her beginning to this very day, to point to an hour when she was not a living church; it is, then, probable, that she will continue to be a living church. But where, since the promulgation of Christianity to this time, has existed a body of Christian believers, which, for the quality of continual existence, has so good a right to be called the church of Christ as the Catholic Church? Considering her numbers, extent, and duration, that church has been preeminently the church of the past; considering numbers, extent, and duration, that church is pre-eminently the church of the present; considering all analogies and probabilities, then the Catholic Church will be preeminently the church of the future. In truth, the vindictive anger of the enemies of the Catholic Church, in whatever form of opposition it may be shown, proceeds from the fact, not that she is the dead church of the past, as she is sometimes called, for there would be no reason to war with the dead, but because she is, as she has been and will be, the living church. The Catholic Church is hated not for being too dead, but for being too living. She has seen the birth and death of countless "improvements" of her principles, and she has received with gladness into her fold many an eager and conscientious inquirer for the "new church," who has at length reached an end of his wanderings and a solution of his doubts in finding, with tears of rapturous submission, that the new church, for which he was seeking, is the same church which has stood for ages, ever old, yet ever new, because representing Him who is alike the Living God and the Ancient of Days.

The Catholic Church, so frequently and unjustly denounced as ever behind the age, or even as facing the past, has been foremost in all parts of the world. She has sent her faithful soldiers of the cross where the spirit of commerce dared not go; she was the first in the east and the first in the West; it was her lamp of divine light which dispelled the gloomy terrors of the barbarous north of Europe; it was her sceptre of celestial beauty, which, under the guidance of Heaven, transformed the political and social wreck of southern Europe into order. In what part of the world which man could reach has she not planted the cross? Where on the face of the earth is the mountain whose craggy sides have not, at one time or another, sent back into the sounding air the echoes of Catholic worship?

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Daniel Webster gave a vivid picture of the extent of the power of England, in what I think to be the grandest sentence which America has contributed to the common treasure of English literature. He said: "The morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." That grand figure of speech may be applied to the extent of the Catholic Church. Yet it is not by martial airs, but by hymns of praise and penitential orisons and the continuous sacrifice that the Catholic Church daily celebrates, "from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same," the triumphant march of the Prince of Peace. How like "the sound of many waters" rolls hourly heavenward the anthems of catholic worship throughout the world! Not only is every moment of every day consecrated by catholic hymns sung somewhere on earth; but how majestically roll down through eighteen hundred years the unbroken anthems of catholic devotion! Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year, century after century, the holy strains go on unending. To the mind's ear seem blended in one almost overpowering flood of holy harmony the unnumbered voices which have sounded from the very hour when the shepherds of Bethlehem heard the angelic song to this very moment, when, somewhere, catholic voices are chanting praise to the Lord and Saviour of men.

And, in this view, how literally has been fulfilled that consoling prophecy, "Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." Wherever the Divine Son has been duly honored, there also she, who was remembered with filial love even amid his dying agonies for a world's salvation, has been remembered and called blessed; called blessed from that lowly home and from that mount of sorrow in the distant east, in millions of lowly homes, and under the shadow of mountains to the farthest west; called blessed by millions of loving and imploring voices through all the ages since; called blessed in all the languages that have been spoken since that time in all the world; called blessed in the rudest forms of human speech and in the most ecstatic music of voice and skill; called blessed by the lips of the little child that can hardly speak the name of mother, and by the lips that tremble with age and sorrow; called blessed by the sailor on the deep, by the ploughman on the land, by the scholar at his books, by the soldier drawing his sword for right upon the battle-field; called blessed by the voices of peasant-girls singing in sunny vineyards, and by the voices of those from whose brows have flashed the gems of royal diadems; called blessed in cottages and palaces, at wayside shrines, and under the golden roofs of grand cathedrals; called blessed in the hour of joy and in the hour of anguish--in the strength and beauty of life, and at the gates of death. How long, how ardently, how faithfully has all this loving honor been paid for so many generations, and will continue to be paid for all generations to come, to that sorrowing yet benignant one, who bore him who bore our woe!

The recent gathering at Rome indicates that there is no demand which civilization can rightfully make of the Christian Church which she will not eagerly, fully, and faithfully meet. The largest assemblage of professed ministers of Christ which this age has known--leaving here out of view the claims of the Catholic Church to an apostolical priesthood--has been held in Rome by the church, so extensively proclaimed and derided as being behind the age. If there is life, deep, full, pervading life anywhere on earth, it is in the Catholic Church and in all her movements. {198} She will continue to draw to herself all the qualities and capacities of life which are in harmony with her spirit; and this accumulated spiritual force will constantly weaken the barriers that divide her from the sympathies of a large part of Christendom, until at length she will be acknowledged by all as the only living and true church of Christ.

"The restoration of the unity of the church" has been the subject of many thoughts, of many words, of earnest and devout prayer, of much and noble effort, and, when understood as referring to the reconciliation of those who have left the Catholic Church, or who are now out of it because their fathers left it, the phrase may pass without objection; but the phrase is greatly objectionable, even to the extent of expressing an untruth, when it is used to convey the idea that the unity of the church has ever been broken. This has not been, and could not be. The church, intended to be one, and to endure until the end of time, could not, in its organic structure, be really broken at any period of its history, without destroying its title as the one church of Christ. Individuals, communities, even nations, as such, have been broken off from it; but the essential church herself has remained one and unbroken through all vicissitudes. The theory that the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the Church of England are equal and co-ordinate branches of the one church of Christ has no foundation as an historical fact, and is as destructive of all true ideas of the unity of the church as the wildest vagaries of Protestantism. Is there on earth an institution which schism, heresy, and political ambition have tried to destroy and have tried in vain? There is; it is the Catholic Church. Is there an institution on earth which, leaving out of regard all its claims, has had the quality of historical continuity for eighteen centuries? There is; it is the Catholic Church.

The charge, if not of bigotry, yet of most unreasonable arrogance, has been more or less directly made against the Catholic Church, because she has not received overtures of reconciliation from enthusiastic and earnest individuals claiming to represent national churches, as cordially as was expected. But how can she accept, or even consider, any such overtures, proceeding as they do from the assumption of equal position and authority, without disowning herself, without denying even those claims and prerogatives, the existence of which alone makes union with her desirable? If there is no institution on earth which has a valid title to be the continuous church of Christ, all efforts will be vain to supply the gap of centuries by an establishment now. A union of churches will not satisfy the design or promise of our Lord, when he founded the unity of his church. If the Christian church has really been broken into pieces, it will be in vain to gather up the fragments; for, on that supposition, the divine principle has long since departed, and the gates of hell have prevailed. Those men of strong Catholic predilections, who, nevertheless, have clung to the theory that the church of Christ has been really broken, and must be repaired by management, will yet thank God from their inmost souls for the immovable firmness with which that theory has been denied at Rome.

The Catholic Church has never condemned a heresy more false or destructive than the proposition that she is herself but one of the divisions of the Christian church, having no authority to speak or to rule in the name of her Lord. {199} To deny that the one church of Christ is now existing, and that she has existed for ages, is to deny not merely a fact in history, but it is to deny the word of our Lord; and to do that, is to deny alike his holiness and his divinity. How can the Catholic Church treat with those who wish to make terms before submitting to her authority, on the basis of a positive untruth? Catholicity is not an inheritance, to be decided among many claimants, no one of whom has any right to be or to be regarded as the sole heir of the homestead; but it is an estate left by the divine Lord of the manor, in charge of the Prince of the Apostles and his successors, on the express injunction that it is to be kept one and undivided, in trust for the benefit of the faithful for all time. The estate has been kept one and undivided, according to the title-deed; the injunction has never been broken; notwithstanding all defections from the household, the homestead of the Christian world remains in the hands of the same faithful succession to which it was committed by our Lord himself. May God grant that all the younger sons who have gone astray, may return with penitential alacrity to their Father's house!

The Catholic Church will not stop in her progress, until she has converted the world to Christ; but she has not denied, and will not deny, her sacred trust and prerogative of catholicity for the sake even of adding whole nations to her fold. Whoever enters her fold must admit by that act her claim to be the one, undivided, indivisible Church of Christ. There can be no "branches of the Catholic Church" which are not directly joined to the root and trunk of catholicity. A severed branch is no branch.

It is not the fault of the Catholic Church that multitudes "who profess and call themselves Christians" are not members of her communion. She affords the very largest liberty for individual or associated action that can be yielded without denying her faith or her commission. The highest poetry and the severest logic may kneel in brotherly harmony at her altar. Gifts and talents the most diverse have been consecrated to her service. The Catholic Church advancing, century after century, under the banner of the cross and dove, to the spiritual conquest of the world! how far more sublime a spectacle it is than that of some parts of Christendom, which are broken into little independent bands of sectarian skirmishers, keeping up a kind of guerrilla warfare against "the world, the flesh, and the devil," and each other.

There are inspiring tokens which show the depth and breadth of the conviction, that the great schism of three centuries ago has proved a terrible mistake. Multitudes outside of the Catholic Church are inquiring with earnest solicitude about the meaning of catholic unity. The main course of intellectual inquiry is, in both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the Catholic Church. There are evident signs that the chaos of Protestantism is about to be broken up, and the wild, and dreary waste to bloom and glow with Catholic beauty and order. God grant that it may be so, and that not only thousands of individuals may know how precious a prize it is to kneel devoutly and sincerely before, the altar of God; but that even, mighty nations may be convinced, what priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of separation from the source of all they have that has been or is worth keeping.

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In view of the fact that the revival of catholic feeling enkindles also the enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Catholic Church will continue to be the guide of life and the empire of civilization, but it is also a sublime challenge against all the agencies of every kind that have been, or may be tried, to eliminate Catholicity from the age. The Catholic Church has a work to do, and she will do it. She can no more forego it, than she can die by her own will. She has never flinched yet; she never will. It is the very necessity as well as the reason of her being that she shall fulfil her charge without wavering or diminution; and this she will do. If the "gates of hell" cannot prevail against the church of God, she may safely defy all mortal might. The sun might more easily have refused to come forth at the bidding of the Creator, than the church can refuse to do his will in conquering the world for Christ. God speed the day when the divisions of Christendom shall end; when all who profess to be the disciples of Jesus Christ shall seek and find consolation in his one, true, enduring fold; and when the sceptre of God, manifest in the church, shall be extended in benignant power over an obedient and rejoicing world.

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"The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland." [Footnote 47]

[Footnote 47: _Ireland and her Churches_. By James Godkin. London, Chapman & Hall. 1867. 1 vol. pp. 623.]

It is well to be accurate in the bestowal of titles, and we give, therefore, the institution whose latest history lies before us the exact definition by which, these sixty years past, it rejoices to be known. Under this designation of its own choice this institution is open to the reflection of being one of the most modern of all the churches pretending to be national; the junior of even our own American Episcopal Church, which is not itself very far stricken in years; the junior, indeed, of all the other churches we can at this moment recall to memory, unless we were to include "the Church of the Latter-Day Saints," whose Mecca stands upon Salt Lake.

On the first day of January, in the first year of this century, the ecclesiastical system, establishment, or organization which designates itself as "the United Church of England and Ireland, in Ireland," came, with sound of many trumpets, into the world. On that auspicious day, the legislative union of Ireland and Great Britain was proclaimed; a new national flag, "the Union Jack," was run up from the royal towers of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh; a new royal title was assumed for the coinage of the new realm, and in all great public transactions; a new "great seal" was struck for the sovereign of the newly modelled state; new peers and new commoners were added to the two houses of Parliament, and, to complete the revolution, by the 5th clause of the same act, the matters previously mentioned having been first disposed of, this new church was, on that same day and hour, by the same authority, called into existence. His majesty's proclamation, announced at Paul's Cross in London, at the Cross in Edinburgh, and where the Cross of _le Dame_ street ought to have been, in Dublin, that "the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England."

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The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick--his independence of Rome more especially--was the favorite argument of its defenders.

No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.

The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative. There is one advantage in having this description of authority to refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth (1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years; and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion, before the union, of 111 years. {202} It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the 14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the churches, and subsequently down to 1829.

The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a political history. Its best record is to be found in the parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that establishment previous to the present century, we must condense into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union. Political in its origin, its organization, and its government, from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system. As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.

Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution. There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome." No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of those days at the new doctors and doctrines:

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"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that the people of England went into opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by the king and council new laws and statutes after their own will."

But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result, however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign, (1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have completed the severance of England from Rome.

Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year. Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe, halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady--"very devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.

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But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad, especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke. A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed. So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this "work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral, the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it "translated into Irish in those places that need it." The following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary exemption from persecution it had afforded.

Anti-national and anti-popular in its conception, the reformation presented itself in Ireland as the enemy at once of the useful and all the fine arts; of all that amused and ennobled and entertained the people. Among both races, war was a business, and the layman's hand was always within reach of his weapon. The arts of peace--agriculture, architecture, botany, medicine, music, were all inmates of the convent and the monastery. The civil glories and treasures of the country were hoarded up where alone they could be secured, in the chancel and the cloister. It was, however, the first duty of the new reformers to strike down and demolish these venerated remains of the piety of former generations. Pictures brought from abroad, or the work of native artists, were defaced; stained windows were brutally broken; shrines smashed; beautiful missals thrown into the fire; croziers broken to bits; chalices and ciboriums melted into bullion; bells blessed to the offices of peace and forgiveness melted down to be cast into ordnance; and all the endearing, civilizing, and solemn associations interwoven from childhood with these consecrated objects of art, were rudely torn out of the bleeding hearts of the people. In the six remaining years of Henry, and the six of Edward VI., nearly six hundred religious houses were thus stripped, desecrated, and dismantled. {205} "They sold their roofs and bells," say the Four Masters, in the annal already quoted, "so there was not a monastery left from the Arran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea, which was not broken and shattered, except a few only" in the remoter corners of the kingdom. Of the regular religious orders then established in that small kingdom, the rule of St. Augustine was followed by 256 houses, male and female; that of St. Bernard by 44; of St. Francis by 114; of St. Dominick by 41; of St. Benedict by 14; of Mount Carmel by 29. Besides these, it is a pathetic and instructive circumstance to remember, that there were then, even in that far western island, not less than 22 houses of Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, vowed to the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre, and 14 of the Trinitarian Order for the redemption of Christian captives from African slavery. All these, with their interior furniture and external possessions, were with ruthless hand transferred to the new clergy, or converted to worldly purposes, in order to prepare the way of the new religion as set forth by the king's order.

It is but fair to point out, that the preachers of this religious revolution were only in part, though in a very considerable part, the receivers of the spoils. A new aristocracy arose on the ruins of the monasteries and churches. Some Irish houses may claim to have ancestors who came in with Strongbow; but many more founders of families came in penniless adventurers at the reformation. The Bagnals and Chichesters, in the north; the St. Legers, Boyles, and Kings in the south; and the Burkes and Croftons in the west, were formerly, and some of their descendants still are, the largest inheritors of ecclesiastical plunder. The chartered minorities of townsmen, whose consciences consented to take the oath of supremacy, were not without their recompense even in this world. The neighboring church and convent property was frequently assigned to these corporators, no matter how few in number, for the use indeed of the corporation; but as they generally contrived to become in their individual capacity tenants under themselves as a corporation, there was at least one description of occupants in the country, who held their lands on easy conditions. These corporate bodies, which continued exclusively Protestant down to the passage of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill in 1834, were often reduced to a ludicrously small number; but even in such Catholic cities as Limerick, Cashel, Clonmel, and Waterford and Drogheda, they continued to possess and dispose of, and often to alienate, the former endowments of pious chiefs and barons to the suppressed convents and colleges of the vicinity.

The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to require the constant protection and superintendence of the creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and suppression of those who represented the important interests so dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III. has been known exclusively by the name of _The Penal Code_. {206} The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell, (afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister, Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British annals of the last hundred years.

The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures. In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later, (1564,) the English _Book of Articles_ was declared of full force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.

"1. The Trinity in Unity; 2. The Sufficiency of the Scriptures to Salvation; 3. The Orthodoxy of Particular Churches; 4. The Necessity of Holy Orders; 5. The Queen's Supremacy; 6. Denial of the Pope's authority 'to be more than other Bishops have;' 7. The Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures; 8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial; 9. Condemns 'Private Masses,' and denies that the Mass can be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead; 10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds; 11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics, and Pilgrimages; 12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles."

The subsequent legislation of Elizabeth in Ireland was chiefly political, if we except (in the 11th and 12th of her reign) the act respecting vacant benefices, and the act establishing [Protestant] free schools.

Parliaments in those days assembled at long and uncertain intervals. The only one held during the first James's reign in Ireland--twenty-seven years after Elizabeth's last, and twenty-one before Charles I. convened another--was purely political. This parliament was opened and managed by the Lord Deputy, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose avowed and almost only object in using such an agency was to make his royal master "as absolute as any king in Christendom." Four years later, (1639) was held the second and last Irish parliament of this reign, and simultaneously, (at the instance, and under the advice of Laud), the able, iron-nerved, and most unscrupulous deputy summoned a convocation of the bishops and clergy of the established religion, which forms a very curious picture of the state of that establishment at the end of the first century of the reformation. Strafford himself shall be our authority at this point, and as abbreviated in Mr. Godkin's book, pp. 64 and 65.

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"He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet simultaneously with the parliament for the purpose of adopting the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the Irish articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, etc., to the best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory, apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the tyrant, _circa sacra_, in a style worthy of Henry VIII. Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the house. This order he obeyed; 'but,' says the lord deputy, 'when I came to open the book, and run over the _deliberandums_ in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was ashamed and scandalized with it above measure.' He gave the dean imperative orders not to report anything until he heard from him again. He also issued orders to the primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole committee, to wait upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting so unlike churchmen; told them that a few petty clerks had presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or consent of state or bishop, as if they purposed at once 'to take away all government and order forth of the church. But those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their pulpits.' He next gave them strict injunctions as to what the convocation should do. They were to say content, or not content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure that they should be disputed. He ordered the primate to frame a canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so the lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought the lord deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is best told in Strafford's own vigorous language--'But I confess, having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was most confident there were not six in the house that would refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for order's sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first in the upper house of convocation, and so voted, then to pass the question beneath also.' He adds that he enclosed the canon [Footnote 48] to Dean Leslie, 'which, accordingly, that afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'"

[Footnote 48: The first Irish canon.]

We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?

Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II., (1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated, but 60--one per cent--were restored, in part or whole, to their hereditary estates.

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Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000 remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar proscription--so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive religion."

No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in 1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of Limerick"--at the close of the war--had simply imposed one unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."' The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, _ecclesiastical_ or _spiritual_, within the realm." There never was a more shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the restoration to their former _status_ of all who chose to take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary; so help me God."

And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other." Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part" of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.

The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:

1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for Catholic minors. 2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in private families, unless by license of the Protestant ordinaries of their several dioceses. 3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as guardians to minor children. 4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics. 5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.

During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery," of which the following were the principal provisions:

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"The third clause provides that if the son of an estated Papist shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause prohibits a Papist from being the guardian of his own child; and orders that, if at any time the child, though ever so young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts that, if a Papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than one third of the amount of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between all his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause vests in her majesty all advowsons possessed by Papists.

"A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of £30 per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale: For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, £50; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman not registered, £20, and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, £10. The twenty-first clause empowers two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise touching the residence of any Popish priest or schoolmaster; and if he refuses to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of £20, or imprisonment for twelve months.

"Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament, of which we can only notice one; it excludes Catholics from the office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow."--_McGee's Ireland_, vol. ii. pp. 605, 608.

We may here turn from this repulsive record of tyrannous legislation to inquire into the consequences of it all at the end of the second, and once again at the end of the third century, from the reformation.

George II. came to the throne in 1727, and bequeathed it to his successor in 1760. This generation saw, therefore, the close of the second century of the great Protestant experiment; and if a centennial celebration had been proposed to them in 1751, the report of progress made must have included the following principal facts.

"We have dispossessed the Catholic proprietors of five sixths of their property during this last century; we have excluded them from the bench, the bar, and parliament; we have prohibited them being guardians or teachers of youth; we have disfranchised and disarmed their whole body, even their nobles and gentry; yet as far as the people are concerned, we labor in vain. There has been lately (1747) a census of the kingdom, and out of 4,300,000 inhabitants, 3,500,000 are returned as papists. Even in Ulster they are not supplanted; in Leinster they are three to one; in Munster, seven to one; in Connaught, twelve to one. Without property, with few priests, and scarce any bishops, still doth this perverse generation increase and multiply. What can we do with them more than we have done to convince and convert them?" To this searching question some observer more profound than the others seems to have replied, "Try education!"

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The third centennial celebration of the introduction of the English liturgy into Ireland--the 51st year of the union of the two national churches--would have afforded an excellent opportunity of taking stock, humanly speaking, of the progress made in a hundred years. But no one thought of suggesting an appropriate celebration of the great event, and so, unhappily, the precious opportunity has been lost. We shall endeavor, however, to supply the want of such a comprehensive retrospect; and here, for the first time, we find the facts and figures of Mr. Godkin's book of considerable service to the subject. From the House of Commons debates of the year 1834, Mr. Godkin gives the following sketch of the arguments and illustrations used in support of "the Church Temporalities Act:"

"Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy. Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church Establishment--that it should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an instrument of political power--they demanded whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in Ireland? In the course of something more than a century it was stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to £800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own small flock within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers. For example. Lord John Russell said, 'By Tighe's _History of Kilkenny_, it appears that the number of Protestant families in 1731 was 1055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The total number of Protestants at the former period was 5238, while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000, in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart's _History of Armagh_, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in that country were as two to one; now they are as one to three. In 1733, the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even that proportion. In Tullamore, in 1731, there were 64 Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics; but according to Mason's parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to only five, while the Roman Catholics had augmented to 2455. On the whole, from the best computation he had seen--and he believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other--the entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000; and of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of Armagh.'"--pp. 153.

Now, for the maintenance of this church of 700,000 out of a population of 7,000,000--this church of a tenth of the people--there were then and now are held in mortmain of the best lands of the kingdom, above 600,000 acres. We are told by the poet:

"A time there was ere England's woes began When every rood of ground sustained its man."

The Irish soil is not so nutritious; still, even there, every acre stands for a soul saved or to be saved, according to "the doctrine and discipline" of the united church. {211} In addition to the lands and their revenues, there are also certain supplementary parliamentary grants not to be despised even by light and worldly-minded persons. Mr. Godkin enumerates, in his introduction, several of these:

"It may be desirable to add some more precise information on that subject. There was a return made to Parliament, dated 24th July, 1803, and signed by the then Chief Secretary, Mr. Wickham, who certified that it was made up from the best materials in the chief secretary's office, and believed to be nearly accurate. From this return it appears that the number of parishes in Ireland then was 2436; of benefices, 1120; of churches, 1001; and of glebe-houses, 355. This represents the state of the establishment in the year 1791.

"From 1791 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted the sum of £500, in 88 cases, for the building of churches, making a total of £44,000. During the same period the Board granted £100 each for 116 glebe-houses, making a total of £11,600.

"From a parliamentary return, ordered in 1826, it appears that within the present century the following amounts have been voted by parliament up to that date: Gifts for building churches, £224,946; loans for building churches, £286,572; total, £511,538, for building churches in twenty-five years.

"During the same period gifts were made for glebes, £61,484; gifts for building glebe-houses, £144,734. Loans were granted for the same purpose amounting to £222,291, making a total for glebes and glebe-houses of £428,509. Thus, between the year 1791 and 1826 the Establishment obtained for churches and glebes the sum of £940,047. The number of glebe-houses in 1826 was increased to 771, and of benefices to 1396. The number of cures with non-residence was 286." [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: The following additional figures (from the _Union_ to the year 1844) are given on page 96: For building churches,-- £625,371 For building glebe houses,-- 336,889 For Protestant charity schools,-- 1,105,588 For the Society for Discountenancing Vice, etc.-- 101,991]

And, on the other hand, the celebrants of the third centenary, if they had thought of holding one, would have learned from Mr. Godkin (himself a resolute Protestant of the Unitarian school, and an ex-reverend) of the alarming increase of popery of late days even in the very capital of English authority.

"Indeed, the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in Europe. In 1820, there were in Dublin only ten parochial chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents or 'friaries,' as they were then called, and ten nunneries, which Mr. Wright described as 'religious asylums where the females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when deprived of the protection of their relatives by the hand of Providence.' [Footnote 50] Now the loveliest daughters of some of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes bringing with them ample fortunes--devoting themselves to the work of education and the relief of the poor as 'Sisters of Mercy,' 'Sisters of Charity,' etc.

[Footnote 50: Wright's _Dublin_, p. 174.]

"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy is 287, and of regulars 125; total priests, 412. The number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000. Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--the Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'the Palace of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence within half a century."--p. 94.

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Such is the latest presentation of facts in relation to "Ireland and her churches." Of Mr. Godkin's book (we don't know whether or not he is still called _Reverend_) we can only say that it is very fairly intended, and shows great industry in the accumulation of materials. From some statements in the historical introduction we most decidedly demur; but the valuable collection of facts in the second part, under the head "Inspection of Bishoprics," and the manifest desire to do, and to inculcate the doing of, justice to men of all churches, throughout the whole book, must bring in every true friend of Ireland the author's debtor.

-----

Love's Burden.

"My burden is light"

The Disciple.

"Dear Lord, how canst thou say 'Tis light, When I behold thee on the way To Calvary's height, Fainting and falling 'neath its heavy weight? Ah! no. For me thy burden is too great."

The Master.

"Good child, thou dost mistake The burden I would have thee take. The cruel load That crushed me down on Calvary's road Was thine, Not mine. What lighter burden can there be Than that which Love would lay on thee?"

The Disciple.

"Kind Lord, how foolish is my speech! I mark the truth which thou wouldst teach To my cold heart. Love all the burden bears of others' woes, Beyond its might; But of its own on them it would impose Only a part, And makes that light."

--------

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Florence Athern's Trial.

The farm-house occupied by the Lees, Henry and Margaret, was an old-fashioned, plain brick building. It stood at right angles to a country road which formed a short cut from the turnpike (leading from the city of C---- to Hamilton, the county-town of Butler county, Ohio) to the mills down on the Miami, passing through Mr. Lee's property and by his garden-gate. The house was some fifteen or twenty feet back from the road, and built one room deep three sides, with an old-fashioned garret across the whole of the main building. A wide brick pavement ran from the gate opening into the road past the front of the house to another gate opening into a private lane, leading from the barn and stables, a hundred yards or so back of the house, to a creek some distance in front, which had been dammed up to afford a convenient watering-place for the farm cattle; another brick pavement, not quite so wide, encircled the rear and sides of the house. A broad gravel walk led from the back hall-door to a gate, which, with a hedge, separated the grassy yard from the vegetable-garden, up through that to the barn; another path led from the front-door down between broad grass-plats of grass, studded with evergreens and fruit-trees, over a rustic bridge that spanned a deep ravine, to some stone steps leading down to a spring, which, with the space around and the hill behind, was paved with stone, beneath which the water ran a few feet, then spread out into a creek fringed with willows. On the right of the path from the bridge to some distance behind the spring was a cherry orchard; on the left an open knoll bordered with flower-beds and shrubbery, and occupied in the centre by a rustic summer-house.

In front of the farm-house on the edge of the grass-plats was a row of locust-trees. The parlor was at the end of the house toward the road and to the right of the hall; to the left of that was the dining-room; and on the left of that again the kitchen, not fronting evenly with the rest, but leaving space for a porch running to the end of the house, into the end of which a door opened from the dining-room.

It was Christmas eve, 18--. A lovely, clear moonlight night, rendered brighter by six or eight inches of snow that had fallen the day before, and now lay glistening like diamond-dust in the rays of the full moon. No sound disturbed the silence save the occasional crackling of a branch or twig among the trees, and one or two passers-by on horse-back or in wagon, trudging merrily homeward; for though the railroad had long since made a much shorter route from the city to the mills and Hamilton, Mr. Lee had not retracted the permit to pass through his farm, and the road still remained open.

The parlor windows gave out a brilliant light from the candles burning on the mantle-piece and the Christmas tree, that blazed between them and the wood fire on the old-fashioned hearth. A group was seated round it. {214} Harry Lee, with just a shade of care on his joyous face and a few threads of silver through his thick brown hair, sat opposite the front windows at one side of the hearth; at his side, with her arm resting on his knee, seated on a low ottoman, was a young girl, his niece, Florence Athern; from the lamp on the table a little behind her the soft light fell on the masses of golden hair that covered her well-shaped head, and on the pages of a richly illustrated book, the leaves of which were held open by a hand perfect in its size, shape, and texture; and her face, as she raised it from time to time, in answer to a caressing nod or motion of her uncle, was very lovely, with a tinge of sadness in the light of the soft blue eyes and the curve of the sensitive lips. Opposite these two sat Margaret Lee. Younger than her brother, but old before her time, her sad face was still interesting, though it could not be called handsome. At her side was a younger sister, whose whole attention was given to the three children seated on the floor in the space before the fire, eagerly examining the gifts just taken from the Christmas-trees. Her husband sat on the other side of the table, on which was the lamp, looking over a book of engravings, and trying, from time to time, to restrain the uproar made by the juvenile group. Watching the children while her hands were full of gifts that had fallen to her share, stood an old colored woman, short and fat, and dressed in a neat black dress, while on her head she wore a false front of crinkled black hair and a black lace cap. Her kind old face beamed with enjoyment at the children's pleasure.

The room was furnished handsomely and with taste. One or two portraits and paintings of merit hung on the walls, and over the mantle-piece was a picture of the Nativity, wreathed with holly, and before which two wax candles were burning.

No one heard the step that approached the house; no one saw the wan but handsome face that was thrust close to the panes for a few moments. A tall, well-dressed man stood there looking in, then turned away with a sound like a sob and a sigh and covered his face with his hands. "It is she, my child, my darling; but I am not worthy, O God! I am not worthy!" He did not look in again, but turned and walked down the path leading to the spring, murmuring, "Fifteen years, and so little change in outward things. The same trees, the porch, the door-steps, only that snow-ball and these ailanthuses grown into large bushes, and here and there a flower-bed where there had been grass; but she--ah! how has my darling passed these years that have been so dreary to me?" Just then the kitchen-door opened, flooding the porch floor, the steps, and portion of the walk with light. One of the workmen came out, and the stranger drew himself closely behind a pear-shaped evergreen. "I hope," he thought, "the fellow will not bring a dog with him. He has a bucket in his hand, and may be going to the spring; in that case, I have no escape, for the snow will betray me if I move!" But the man said good-night in a German accent, and, whistling to the Newfoundland which had come out with him, and now stood snuffing the air toward where the stranger was hiding, turned and walked the length of the porch, down the steps at the end, past the pump and smoke-house, out through the gate into the back lane, and so up to the barn. "So," said the stranger, "he has gone to feed the horses for the night, and I am safe." {215} He walked slowly down across the bridge, and stood for a few moments on the topmost step leading to the spring; then went down there, and kneeling on the stones at the edge, scooped up some water in his hand and drank; then rising and brushing the snow off his clothes, he retraced his steps and once more gazed in at the parlor window. It happened that the old colored woman had just picked up the youngest child in her arms, and, followed by the others, was moving toward the door, her face turned full to the window, when she made an exclamation and nearly dropped the child she held. "Why, Tamar," exclaimed Miss Lee, "what's the matter?" "Oh! nothin'," replied the woman, "spec this colored pusson gettin' nervus, dat's all. Come long, chicks, to roost." And she left the room without affording a chance to the group round the fire to see her face, which bore a frightened look. But the children, busy with their happy prattle, did not notice it, neither did the nurse who was waiting for them. As soon as she had seen them snug in their beds, with stockings duly hung, and night prayers said, she started to return to the kitchen. Her mistress heard her, and came into the hall to speak to her, preceding her through the dining-room and across the space on the porch between the dining-room and kitchen doors, much to her satisfaction, to the latter department, to make some necessary arrangements for breakfast. On Miss Lee's return to the parlor, a game of whist was proposed, in which the four elders joined, leaving Florence to the quiet enjoyment of her book. After a rubber of three games, a motion to retire was made by the sisters; and Henry Lee, turning to Florence, said, "Well, Puss, is it not time to give up your book? Half-past eleven, my pet," (looking at his watch,) "and we must be up early, you know, to be ready for church, and dinner at Uncle Joe's to-morrow."

At last the brother and sister were left alone, and stood looking at one another for a few moments; then Mr. Lee spoke: "It must be done to-morrow. Who shall do it--you or I?"

"I think I had better, Harry dear. Women can deal better with women in such a time, although I know your tender, loving heart, and do not doubt it."

"I am glad, Mag, you will take it on yourself, for I feel a very coward in the matter."

"Oh! yes, it is better that I should; but I will not tell her till night--I will not mar the happiness of her Christmas till I cannot help it."

"As you will; and now good-night, I must go and see that matters are all right for the night. You say Anthony has gone up?"

"Oh! yes, some time ago."

"Well, good-night!" He left the parlor, and getting a lantern from the closet under the stairs, lit it, and started to the barn.

It had been the custom in this family, since Anna Lee married, that she and her husband should spend Christmas eve at the old homestead, and return to their own house in Hamilton, with her brother, sister, and niece, on Christmas morning. The early Mass was too early for them to hear it, so the clergyman was willing to give them the holy communion as soon as they had spent a sufficient time in preparation on their arrival. After making their thanksgiving, they adjourned to Mrs. Mohun's house for breakfast. Then, after High Mass and a Christmas dinner at Mrs. Mohun's, the two Lees and Florence returned to "The Solitude."

This programme was carried out as usual on this Christmas day, and the evening found the three sitting quietly in the parlor round the fire-place, with no noise of children's prattle to distract their attention. {216} On pretence of letters to write, Mr. Lee left the women alone with a glance at his sister. No face was flattened against the windows tonight, though old Tamar refrained from looking toward them.

Florence occupied a low seat between her aunt and uncle; and when the latter left the room, Margaret laid her head gently on the young girl's shoulder, and drew her toward her, saying:

"Florence, dearest, your uncle had a letter yesterday from Arthur Hinsdale. One to you came by the same mail; but on reading that directed to him, your uncle decided not to give you yours till he or I had told you something which you must know before you can answer it. Here are both the letters, dear; you can read them in your own room when I have finished. You have often asked," she continued, as Florence took the letters in silence, "to be told something about your mother and father. To-night I will tell you." A hardness came into her voice as she spoke that made the girl look up in surprise. "We lived, till your mother married, in the northern part of the State of New York, among the mountains, where people from the city came every summer to spend the hot months. My father was wealthy, but cared for no life but that of the country, so we saw nothing of the fashionable world, beyond the glimpse caught in the summer. My mother was an invalid, and cared for little beyond her own health; and Anna, who was then a child ten or twelve years old, your mother, and I did pretty much as we pleased. Harry was away at college at Fordham, and, when at home in the vacations, was our constant companion in our rides and walks.

"One summer a party of gentlemen from Philadelphia came up to the Adirondacks to fish. Our farm and house was not far from the spot where they encamped, and we met them several times in riding. Your father was among them." Here she paused, as if choking back some strong feeling, and Florence, slipping on her knees, wound her arms around her, resting her head against her. "Your mother was very beautiful," continued Margaret, threading her fingers through the young girl's golden hair lingeringly, as though she saw a resemblance that she loved to trace, "and it is not to be wondered at that she should have attracted attention. After several accidental meetings, he, your father, took advantage of some trivial accident, the dropping of Florence's whip, or something of the kind, to speak when, one day, we came upon them suddenly. From this it was easy to make an excuse to visit the farm-house with some of his friends. My father was a man of cultivation and education, though he chose to bury himself from the world, and liked the young men. After one or two visits, he invited them to the house freely, I need not tell you the old, old story, dear. Before the time came for the visitors to break up their camp, Paul Athern was engaged to my sister. Florence was but sixteen; Paul said he was nearly twenty-one; and my father insisted that they should wait two years, and there was to be no regular engagement for one year. This was at length agreed to with great reluctance by, by--your father. He also, being a Protestant, made all the necessary promises that your mother should be allowed the full enjoyment of her religion.

"Well, the winter passed quietly as usual, and toward spring a cousin of my mother's wrote, inviting us to pay her a visit in New York. We had once before visited her when I was fourteen and Florence twelve; so remembering the former pleasure, we were quite eager to go, Florence particularly seemed anxious. {217} Tamar's mother was our cook, and had been my grandfather's slave before slavery was done away with in New York. Tamar, a girl of my own age, was our waiting-maid and humble companion and _confidante_, and was to go with us. After a good deal of hesitation--for he seemed to feel a presentiment of evil--my father consented, and we went to New York. Our visit was nearly over, when, one day, on coming home from a walk with my cousin, I found Florence in the drawing-room with Paul Athern. She looked guilty, and blushed when she saw my look of surprise; but Paul greeted me with great apparent pleasure, and an easy grace that covered whatever confusion he may have felt. That night, when alone in our room, Florence said, 'Mag, was I very, very wrong to let Paul know I was here? I did want to see him so much, dear. Oh! you _don't_ know how I have craved a sight of his dear face!' I could not resist her gentle pleading, so did not blame her very much; but told her I must write to father, it was the right thing to do and I must do it. The answer to my letter was a peremptory order for our instant return home. We, or I, had no idea of disobedience, and so prepared to return at once. The day before we were to have left, Florence was particularly affectionate, and seemed not to wish to be left alone. I had some last errands to attend to, and leaving Tamar and Florence busy with their packing, went out for two or three hours. I returned to find the trunks packed, but neither Florence nor Tamar was in the house. My cousin said Florence kissed her when she went out, saying laughingly, 'May be you won't see me again.' Tamar went with her, carrying her satchel. As evening drew on and they did not return, a great fear came over me, and Cousin Mary had difficulty in keeping me from rushing into the street to seek for them. At last, a ring at the door was followed by Tamar's rushing into the drawing-room. She threw herself at my feet, buried her face in my lap, and cried as if her heart would break. At last, when she could speak, Cousin Mary had great trouble to understand her broken sentences. As for me, I sat stupefied, filled with the one idea that Tamar had come back without Florence.