XV.
This is the legend that for many centuries has been related at Christmas time on the shores of the Petite-Mer, which in the Breton tongue is called _Armor bihan_, the Celtic name of Brittany.
If you ask what moral these good people draw from this strange story, I will answer that it contains a basketful. Pol and Matheline, condemned to walk around the Basin of the Pagans until the end of time, one without arms, the other without a face, offer a severe lesson to those fellows who are too proud of their broad shoulders and brute force, and gossiping flirts of girls with smiling faces and wicked hearts; the case of Sylvestre Ker teaches young men not to listen to the demon of money; the blow of Josserande’s axe shows the miraculous power of faith; the part of Gildas the Wise proves that it is well to consult the saints.
Still further, that you may bind together these diverse morals in one, here is a proverb which is current in the province: “Never stoop to pick up the pearls of a smile.” After this ask me no more.
As to the authenticity of the story, I have already said that the chestnut-grove belongs to the mayor’s nephew, which is one guaranty; and I will add that the spot is called Sylvestreker, and that the ruins, hung with moss, have no other name than “The Wolf-Tower!”
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MR. FROUDE ON THE DECLINE OF PROTESTANTISM.[102]
We have seen what Mr. Froude thinks of the “Revival of Romanism.” Let us now see what he has to say on a subject nearer his heart—the decline of Protestantism.
He has much to say; and, to use an ordinary phrase, he makes no bones about saying it. At the outset we would dispose of what seems a fair objection. If, it may be urged, you make Mr. Froude so very untrustworthy a witness against Catholics and the Catholic Church, why should he not be equally untrustworthy when assailing Protestantism?
The objection is more plausible than real. Mr. Froude is a professed Protestant. In the cause of Protestantism he is earnest even to aggressiveness. He believes in and loves it with all his heart and soul, as really as he disbelieves in and detests Catholicity. He can say nothing that is too good of the early Protestant Reformers and of their “Reform.” He doubts about nothing, apologizes for nothing, attempts to palliate nothing either in the Reformers or their Reform. He sees nothing in either to apologize for or to palliate. He can only regret that, so far as Protestant belief and work and workers go, the nineteenth century is not as the sixteenth. He is altogether on his own ground here; and we submit that the testimony of such a man in such a matter is of value, the more so when it is confirmed to-day by concurrent Protestant testimony on all sides. The only difference between Mr. Froude and the great mass of non-Catholic writers on this subject is that he is more frank than they, and lays his finger unshrinkingly on very tender Protestant spots.
Of the actual state of Protestantism he has little that is good or hopeful to say, with one notable exception—North Germany—which will be considered later on. Protestantism to-day Mr. Froude finds weak-kneed as well as weak-headed. It has not that aggressive strength of the early teachers and preachers of Reform. The modern teachers have lost that pronounced faith in themselves and in their doctrines, that burning zeal, that fierce hatred of Catholicity, of falsehood, and of sham, that Mr. Froude is pleased to discover in the early Reformers.
“Religion speaks with command,” he says very rightly. It “lays down a set of doctrines, and says, ‘Believe these at your soul’s peril.’ A certain peremptoriness being thus of the essence of the thing, those religious teachers will always command most confidence who dare most to speak in positive tones.” All of which is, of course, most true.
Speaking “in positive tones,” however, does not necessarily imply a divine mission, or even an erroneous sense of a divine mission. It may be bluster; it may be calculated lying; it may be the mistaken enthusiasm of a weak intellect and fervid imagination. To be real it must stand the severest tests. Of a man who asserts his mission from heaven as a teacher of religion something more than his own word is demanded, however positive that word may be. In the preaching and the teaching of the truth there is in all ages a unity of voice, a community of feeling and of purpose, a singleness of eye, of aim, of method, a union of heart and of soul, that is unmistakable and carries conviction with it. There is no change in it; no fleck or flaw. What is new agrees with what is old; is generally a consequence flowing out of the old. It preaches only one God and one law from the beginning. It never contradicts itself; it never narrows or broadens its moral lines to suit the convenience or the whim of persons or of nationalities. It never compromises with humanity. It enlightens the intellect while appealing to the heart of man. It makes no divisions between men or nations; no special code for this or for that. It is awful in its inflexibility; majestic in its calm; eternal in its vigilance; “the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” This is living Truth; this is God’s; and he who speaks the word of God is known by these signs.
Mr. Froude is at a loss to find this spirit now abroad in the world. The nearest approach to it he finds, oddly enough for him, in the Catholic Church. But, of course, that is owing to some devilish ingenuity of which the Catholic Church alone has the secret. As for Protestants, “it is no secret,” he says, “that of late years Protestant divines have spoken with less boldness, with less clearness and confidence, than their predecessors of the last generation.” “They are not to be blamed for it,” he adds, and we quite agree with him. “Their intellectual position has grown in many ways perplexed. Science and historical criticism have shaken positions which used to be thought unassailable” (p. 99). We pointed out one of those “positions”—the Protestant Reformation in England—but that is not in the contemplation of Mr. Froude. To him, even if to him alone, that position still stands, “unassailable.”
“Doctrines once thought to carry their own evidence with them in their inherent fitness for man’s needs have become, for some reason or other, less conclusively obvious. The state of mind to which they were addressed has been altered—altered in some way either for the worse or for the better. And where the evangelical theology retains its hold, it is rather as something which it is unbecoming to doubt than as a body of living truth which penetrates and vitalizes the heart” (p. 99).
It is to be regretted that Mr. Froude does not specify these “doctrines.” He fails to do so in any place, and in such matters, as indeed in all, there is nothing like accuracy in order to arrive at a clear understanding of what is wrong. Some of them, however, may be easily guessed at. In these days it would be hard to discover what precise “doctrines” “evangelical” or any but Catholic theologians do hold, if hard pushed and driven to make an explicit statement of what they do and what they do not believe. The expression “evangelical theology” may help to enlighten us as to Mr. Froude’s meaning. That we take to mean a theology based on the Bible as the first, final, and only guide to man’s knowledge of God and all implied in that knowledge. This view of his meaning is confirmed by another passage (p. 100), wherein, contrasting the doctrinal position of the Catholic and Protestant, he says:
“It” (the Catholic Church) “stands precisely on the same foundation on which the Protestant religion stands—on the truth of the Gospel history. Before we can believe the Gospel history we must appeal to the consciousness of God’s existence, which is written on the hearts of us all.”
There is a mistake here which will be obvious to any instructed reader. There is no more reason “to appeal to the consciousness of God’s existence” for the truth of “the Gospel history” than for the truth of any other history. As a history, history it is and no more, to be judged as to its accuracy on the known laws of historical criticism. It contains a written record of events, and stands or falls on the truth of what it records, just as does Mr. Froude’s own history. If it can be shown that it is false, there is an end of it; false it is, and no man is bound to believe it. The foundation of Protestantism, as Mr. Froude very rightly says, stands “on the truth of the Gospel history”—that is, on the Bible, and the Bible alone. Christ, however, did not build his church on the Bible, but on Peter, the chief of the apostles: “I say to thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Those are very plain, strong, and unmistakable words; and in their comprehension lies a fundamental difference between Catholics and Protestants.
Out of this difference comes a singular effect, more noticeable in these than in former days. Catholics reverence the Bible more really because more truly than do Protestants. Over-reverence is irreverence. They never made the mistake of accepting the Bible as the foundation of Christ’s church, any more than in human affairs we should take a history of a commonwealth, with the digest of its laws, the sayings of some of its wise men, their documents to their contemporaries and to posterity, as the commonwealth itself. Protestants withdrew from the body of the church, which may have had, and had, sore spots and diseased members; they took up the written record and said: Here are the laws; here are the words of Christ; here are the sayings of the fathers; here is truth; here let us build our church anew—each one judging for himself as to what the church was and ought to be. Difficulties that were essential to such a position and that are obvious at sight arose at once and continued all the way down, until at last, in these days of all others, there sprang up in the very bosom of Protestantism a school of assailants of the Bible itself. This is the school of modern scientists, which rejects revelation, rejects God, rejects the truth of the Bible history, rejects Christ—rejects, in a word, everything, save what approves itself to it by so-called positive testimony. Hence arises the perplexity of the “intellectual position” of Protestant divines, which Mr. Froude notices. The very foundation of their creed is questioned, and questioned at every inch. So, until everything is satisfactorily cleared up and the “scientists” absolutely refuted, Protestantism is in a state of dissolution. It has no foundation on which to stand, while Catholics have their living church, to which they adhered steadfastly from the very beginning, which existed, and was called into being, entirely independent of the Bible, and which would have been what it is had the Bible never been written at all. So that, _per impossibile_, even were the Bible shown to be false, it would not affect the fundamental Catholic position. Of course we do not intimate for a moment that the Bible is false, and that the scientists can prove anything against it. We only bring forward this instance of an essential difference between Catholics and Protestants, and the effect of it on their minds, as showing the reason why Catholics take the criticism of the new school of inquirers very calmly, while the result of this criticism on Protestants is disastrous.
Catholics are just as steadfast in their belief as they ever were; Protestants are daily becoming less and less so. Inquiry, or “criticism,” as it is called, while it strengthens, if possible, Catholicity, destroys Protestantism. Truth can stand all things. “Science and historical criticism _have_ shaken positions which used to be thought unassailable” by Protestants, who find themselves in the false position of being compelled to question or reject as false what their fathers pinned their faith to—Germany always excepted, according to Mr. Froude. It is a hard thing indeed to preach and teach as divine truth a doctrine, or by our very profession to subscribe to a doctrine, which in our heart we doubt about or disbelieve. This is a moral phenomenon which Protestantism presents to us every day, and in no one of its infinite branches more conspicuously than in the Anglican.
If men are preaching what they disbelieve or are in grave doubt about, it is simply natural that “where truth” (or what was taken for truth) “was once flashed out like lightning, and attended with oratorical thunders, it is now uttered with comparative feebleness.”
“The most honest, perhaps, are the most uncomfortable and most hesitating, while those who speak most boldly are often affecting a confidence which in their hearts they do not feel” (p. 99). “From some cause, it seems they” (Protestant preachers) “dare not speak, they dare not think, like their fathers. Too many of them condescend to borrow the weapons of their adversaries. _They are not looking for what is true; they are looking for arguments to defend positions which they know to be indefensible._ Their sermons are sometimes sophistical, sometimes cold and mechanical, sometimes honestly diffident. Any way, they are without warmth and cannot give what they do not possess” (p. 100).
This is a very heavy indictment; we leave to others to judge of its truth. It is a mistake, however, to draw the line at “their fathers.” These men are what their fathers have made them. The characteristics that mark the present teachers of Protestantism run down the whole line of the Protestant tradition. Incoherency and inconsistency, not to use harsher terms, necessarily stamped Protestantism from the first.[103] These characteristics are only more apparent to-day because the constant fire of criticism has exposed and brought them more prominently into view.
The practical results of teaching what is necessarily and inherently contradictory scarcely need to be pointed out. “The Protestant,” says Mr. Froude, “finding three centuries ago that the institution called the Church was teaching falsehood, refused to pin his faith upon the Church’s sleeve thenceforward. He has relied on his own judgment, and times come when he is perplexed.” The whole story is told here. It was too late in the day to find that “the Church was teaching falsehood.” The Christian Church can err or it cannot err. There is room for no _via media_ here. If it can err, it could have erred just as easily in the first century as in the fifteenth or sixteenth. If it could err at all there is no necessary reason to suppose that it ever was right; there is no belief to be placed in the promise of Christ; there is no belief to be placed in Christ himself more than in any other man. And again, if it could err, who was right, and who was going to set it right? The church being abandoned as a teacher of falsehood, there is no hope of escape from constant perplexity to the Christian mind; for the Bible itself, being left to private judgment, is of course open to any interpretation that private judgment may be pleased to extract from it. And this in itself is destruction, quite apart from the assaults of hostile criticism. To make the church at all, or at any time, or by any possibility a teacher of falsehood is to strike the divinity from it and convert it into a human institution of the most monstrous assumptions and absurd pretensions.
This is Protestantism, which never had any spiritual life in itself. It was from the beginning, as it still is, a convenient and very powerful political agent, as was Mahometanism. Mr. Froude says very truly, what all men are coming to say, that “there is no real alternative between the Catholic Church and atheism” (p. 100), which leaves Mr. Froude and his fellow-Protestants in a pleasant position.
In the general perplexity of the Protestant mind “the Romanist,” as Mr. Froude graciously puts it, “has availed himself of the opportunity.”
“His church stands as a visible thing, which appears [appeals?] to the imagination as well as the reason. The vexed soul, weary of its doubts, and too impatient to wait till it pleases God to clear away the clouds, demands a certainty on which it can repose—never to ask a question more. By an effort of will which, while claiming the name of faith, is in reality a want of faith, it seizes the Catholic system as a whole. Foregoing the use of the natural reason for evermore, it accepts the word of a spiritual director as an answer to every difficulty, and finds, as it supposes, the peace for which it longed, as the body which is drugged with opium ceases to feel pain” (p. 101).
Such is Mr. Froude’s picture of conversion to the Catholic faith. A man is drugged into Catholicity, and remains drugged to the end of the chapter. Whenever a gleam of his lost reason returns he hurries to the confessional box; his “spiritual director” administers another dose, and the drowsy patient slumbers away again content. We do not pretend to Mr. Froude’s singular gift of prescience which enables him to read so readily the hearts of thousands of men and women who to all the world save Mr. Froude are intellectually and morally strong. He has traced their secret emotions and followed them up even into the confessional box. He has seen the opiate administered and satisfied himself of the process. To ordinary persons the conversion of a man to the Catholic faith is the result of a long and most painful struggle which only the strongest conviction of right can bring about. Leaving him there, deprived of “the use of the natural reason for evermore,” let us see what becomes of those who retain the use of their natural reason and all the noble gifts and faculties that accompany it. Protestants alone see clearly the roads to heaven and hell, according to Mr. Froude; which road do they take?
We have seen the position of their preachers. Were we not deprived of “our natural reason for evermore,” we should describe that position as most pitiable, where it is not dishonest and intellectually immoral. The God of Protestantism, if we believe its expounders, is truly a strange being. He teaches everything, or he teaches nothing, with equal facility and pleasing variety. He teaches that there are three persons in one God; he teaches no such doctrine. He teaches that Christ is truly God and truly man; he is rather doubtful about the matter. He teaches the eternity of punishment; he teaches no such monstrous doctrine. He commands that all men be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, if they would enter the kingdom of heaven; he does not know of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. His views of baptism and its necessity are rather mixed. There is no baptism unless a man is wholly immersed. It is just as good a baptism if a man’s feet be immersed. It is equally good if water be poured on a man’s head. A man is just as fit for the kingdom of heaven, and just as good a Christian, if he be not baptized at all. God teaches that the Blessed Sacrament is really and truly the body and blood of Christ, and to be adored. He teaches that it is only a figure of Christ, and that to adore it is to commit the sin of idolatry. He teaches that man has free-will; he teaches that man has not free-will, and that all he can do is worthless, heaven or hell being portioned out for him from all eternity quite apart from his own endeavor. He teaches that good works as well as faith in him are necessary for salvation; he teaches that faith alone is necessary, and that provided a man believe right he may do wrong. And so on _ad infinitum_ down to the grossest and most abhorrent tenets.
But this is Protestantism, or reliance on one’s “own judgment.” One’s own judgment is very apt to favor one’s own self. One’s own judgment makes a god of self, and right and wrong matters of whim, appetite, and inclination. Let us see its outcome as pictured by Mr. Froude.
In section iv. of his study he considers the “Causes of Weakness in Modern Protestant Churches.” The words “modern” and “churches” are themselves contradictory of unity and of a church built on Christ. He sets out by drawing a glowing picture of what the early “Reformers” did and what they were, which we may let pass as not immediately bearing on our present purpose. “After the middle of the seventeenth century,” he says (p. 111), “Protestantism ceased to be aggressive.”
... “As it became established it adapted itself to the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular doctrines, and abandoned, at first tacitly and afterward deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or practical business.”
Is this true? Did Protestantism cease to be aggressive after the middle of the seventeenth century? We have already said that Mr. Froude was generally the best refutation of Mr. Froude. He shall be his own judge.
Did Protestantism cease to be aggressive in Ireland, for instance, after the middle of the seventeenth century? We might bring many unimpeachable witnesses on the stand to prove our point. Mr. Froude will suffice for us, and we quote him at some length because his words here set forth in the strongest contrast what Protestantism can do to degrade a people, and what Catholicity can do to lift a people out of the slough of degradation. Herein we see the spirits of both in deadly conflict, and the lesson of the struggle is a lesson for to-day, when the same spirits are locked again in strife.
Writing not of the middle of the seventeenth, but of the beginning of the eighteenth, century (1709), Mr. Froude thus describes the second Act against Popery in Ireland:
“The code of law which was designed to transfer the entire soil of Ireland to members of the Established Church, and reduce the Catholics to landless dependents, was finally completed.... By the new act every settlement, every lease on lives, every conveyance made by a Catholic owner since 1704, by which any Protestant or Protestants had been injured,[104] was declared void, and the loop-holes were closed by which the act of that year had been evaded. To defeat Protestant heirs, Catholics had concealed the true value of their property. Children were now enabled to compel their fathers to produce their title-deeds and make a clear confession. Catholic gentlemen had pretended conversion to qualify themselves for being magistrates and sheriffs, for being admitted to the bar, or for holding a seat in Parliament, while their children were being bred up secretly in the old faith. The education of their families was made a test of sincerity, and those whose sons were not brought up as churchmen remained under the disabilities.
“Nor, if words could hinder it, were the acts directed against the priests to be any more trifled with. Fifty pounds reward was now offered for the conviction of any Catholic archbishop, bishop, or vicar-general; twenty pounds reward for the conviction of friar, Jesuit, or unregistered parish priest.... It was now made penal for a priest to officiate anywhere except in the parish church for which he was registered, and the last rivet was driven into the chain by the compulsory imposition of the Abjuration Oath, which every priest was made to swear at his registration. As if this was not enough, any two magistrates received power to summon any or every Irish subject above the age of sixteen, to offer him the oath, and to commit him to prison if he refused it. They might also, if he was a Catholic, ask him where he last heard Mass, and by whom it was celebrated. If the priest officiating was found to have been unregistered he was liable to be transported.
“A fatal clause was added that any Protestant whatever who discovered and was able to prove before a Protestant jury the existence of any purchase or lease of which a Catholic was to have secretly the advantage, should himself be put in possession of the property which was the subject of the fraud” (pp. 332–334).[105]
Even Mr. Froude cannot help remarking on this last clause that “the evasion of a law so contrived that every unscrupulous scoundrel in Ireland was its self-constituted guardian became impossible”; and he adds with gratifying frankness: “That it was unjust in itself never occurred as a passing emotion to any Protestant in the two kingdoms, not even to Swift, who speaks approvingly of what he deems must be the inevitable result.”
Writing still of the Penal Laws, he says that “the practice of the courts” in regard to them “was a very school of lying and a discipline of evasion. No laws could have been invented, perhaps, more ingeniously demoralizing” (p. 374).
Writing of a period still later in the eighteenth century, after the Protestant emigration and the ruin of Irish trade and industry had been brought about by English legislation, he thus describes the condition of the Irish peasant class, who composed the bulk of the population:
“The tenants were forbidden in their leases to break or plough the soil. The people, no longer employed, were driven away into holes and corners, and eked out a wretched subsistence by potato gardens, or by keeping starving cattle of their own on the neglected bogs. Their numbers increased, for they married early, and they were no longer liable, as in the old times, to be killed off like dogs in forays. They grew up in compulsory idleness, encouraged once more in their inherited dislike of labor, and enured to wretchedness and hunger; and, on every failure of the potato crop, hundreds of thousands were starving.”
Horrible as such a picture is, it is but a faint sketch of the reality. All readers of Irish history know it, and no student of English legislation should forget or pass over that dark chapter in England’s history. Our own readers have seen the whole system vividly sketched in these pages recently in the series of papers on “English Rule in Ireland.” What, in human nature and human possibilities, was to become of a people thus submitted to so long and unbending and systematic a course of degradation? They had nothing left but their faith, and the eternal truth of the promise that this is the victory which overcometh the world; and that our faith shall make us free was never more gloriously and wondrously made manifest than in the case of the Irish people.
Ignorance was made compulsory by this Protestant government. The statute law of Ireland forbade Catholics to open schools or to teach in them. The Irish people, of all peoples, have ever had a craving for knowledge. What was left to them to do?
“The Catholics,” says Mr. Froude, “with the same steady courage and unremitting zeal with which they had maintained and multiplied the number of their priests, had established open schools in places like Killarney, where the law was a dead-letter. In the more accessible counties, where open defiance was dangerous, they extemporized class teachers under ruined walls or in the dry ditches by the roadside, where ragged urchins, in the midst of their poverty, learnt English and the elements of arithmetic, and even to read and construe Ovid and Virgil. With institutions which showed a vitality so singular and so spontaneous repressive acts of Parliament contended in vain.”
Ignorance is esteemed to be the prolific mother of vice. The social condition of the Irish people was made as bad as legislation could make it. Where was the room for morality in such a case? In vainly trying to explain away that most brutal project of law for the mutilation of the Irish priests, Mr. Froude says (vol. i. p. 557): “They (the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council) did propose, not that all the Catholic clergy in Ireland, as Plowden says, but that unregistered priests and friars coming in from abroad, should be liable to castration”; and he adds in a note:
“Not, certainly, as implying a charge of immorality. Amidst the multitude of accusations which I have seen brought against the Irish priests of the last century, I have never, save in a single instance, encountered a charge of unchastity. Rather the exceptional and signal purity of Irish Catholic women of the lower class, unparalleled probably in the civilized world, and not characteristic of the race, which in the sixteenth century was no less distinguished for licentiousness, must be attributed wholly and entirely to the influence of the Catholic clergy.”
Mr. Froude cannot be wholly generous and honest in a matter of this kind, but what is true in this is sufficient for our purpose without inquiring into what is false. It is plain from his own words that the one thing that saved the Irish people from perdition, body and soul, was their Catholic faith. Yet this is the man who, having thus testified to the rival effects of Catholicity and Protestantism on a people, has the effrontery to tell us in the “Revival of Romanism” that
“If by this [conversions] or any other cause the Catholic Church anywhere recovers her ascendency, she will again exhibit the detestable features which have invariably attended her supremacy. Her rule will once more be found incompatible either with justice or intellectual growth, and our children will be forced to recover by some fresh struggle the ground which our forefathers conquered for us, and which we by our pusillanimity surrendered” (p. 103).
With his own testimony before us we may well ask in amazement, Of which church is he writing? It would seem as though Heaven, which through all ages has looked down upon and permitted martyrdom for the faith, had in this instance called upon, not a tender virgin or a strong youth, not an old man tottering into the grave or an innocent child, to step into the arena and offer up their life and blood for the cause of Christ, but a whole people. And the martyrdom of this people was not for a day or an hour; it was the slow torture of centuries. A legacy of martyrdom was “bequeathed from bleeding sire to son.” Life was hopeless to the Irish people under the Penal Laws; the world a wide prison; the earth a grave. They could only lift their eyes and hearts to heaven and wait patiently for merciful death to come. This was the supreme test of faith to a noble and passionate race, as it was faith’s supremest testimony. No work of the saints, no writings of the fathers, no Heaven-illumined mind ever brought to the aid of faith stronger reason for conviction than this. As words pale before deeds, as the blood of a martyr speaks more loudly to men, and cries more clamorously to heaven, than all that divine philosophy can utter or inspired poet sing, so the attitude of the Irish people, so opposed to all the instincts of their quick and passionate nature, bore the very noblest testimony to the reality of the Christian religion. A world looked down into that dark arena and waited for some sign of faltering in the victim, for some sign of pity in the persecutor. Neither came. The victim refused to die or sacrifice to the gods; the persecutor to relent. The struggle ended at length through the sheer weariness of the latter, and brighter times came because darker could not be devised.
Faith conquered. The Irish people arose from its grave, and at once spread abroad over the world to preach the Gospel and to plant the church which for two centuries it had watered with its blood. The Act of Catholic Emancipation was the first real sign of resurrection, and that was only passed in 1829.
So much for Protestantism having “ceased to be aggressive after the middle of the seventeenth century.” How aggressive are certain Protestant powers to-day all men know.
Another thing happened to Protestantism after the middle of the seventeenth century:
“It no longer produced men conspicuously nobler and better than Romanism,” says Mr. Froude, “and therefore it no longer made converts. As it became established, it adapted itself to the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular doctrines” (of no doctrines in
## particular, we should be inclined to say), “and abandoned, at
first tacitly and afterward deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or practical business.”
In plainer words, Protestantism, having secured its place in this world, left the next world to take care of itself, and left men free to go to the devil or not just as they pleased. Mr. Froude faithfully pictures the result:
“Thus Protestant countries are no longer able to boast of any special or remarkable moral standard; and the effect of the creed on the imagination is analogously impaired. Protestant nations show more energy than Catholic nations because the mind is left more free, and the intellect is undisturbed by the authoritative instilment of false principles” (p. 111).
This strikes us as a very easy manner of begging a very important question. However, we are less concerned now with Mr. Froude’s Catholics than with his Protestants.
“But,” he goes on, “Protestant nations have been guilty, as nations, of enormous crimes. Protestant individuals, who profess the soundest of creeds, seem, in their conduct, to have no creed at all, beyond a conviction that pleasure is pleasant, and that money will purchase it. Political corruption grows up; sharp practice in trade grows up—dishonest speculations, short weights and measures, and adulteration of food. The commercial and political Protestant world, on both sides of the Atlantic, has accepted a code of action from which morality has been banished; and the clergy have for the most part sat silent, and occupy themselves in carving and polishing into completeness their schemes of doctrinal salvation. They shrink from offending the wealthy members of their congregation.” (We believe we heard concordant testimony to this from distinguished members of the late Protestant Episcopalian Convention and Congress.) “They withdraw into the affairs of the other world, and leave the present world to the men of business and the devil.”
Mr. Froude having thus placidly handed Protestantism over to the devil, we might as well leave it there, as the devil is proverbially reported to know and take care of his own. And certainly, if Protestantism be only half what Mr. Froude depicts it, it is the devil’s, and a more
## active and fruitful agent of evil he could not well desire. One thing
is beyond dispute: if Protestantism be what so ardent an advocate as Mr. Froude says it is, it is high time for a change. It is time for some one or something to step in and dispute the devil’s absolute sovereignty. If this is the result of the Protestant mind being “left more free” than the Catholic, the sooner such freedom is curtailed the better. It is the freedom of lethargy and license which has yielded up even the little that it had of real freedom and truth to its own child, Materialism, the modern name for paganism.
“They” (the Protestant clergy), says Mr. Froude, “have allowed the Gospel to be superseded by the new formulas of political economy. This so-called science is the most barefaced attempt that has ever yet been openly made on this earth to regulate human society without God or recognition of the moral law. The clergy have allowed it to grow up, to take possession of the air, to penetrate schools and colleges, to control the actions of legislatures, without even so much as opening their lips in remonstrance.”
Yes, because they had nothing better to offer in its place. And this Mr. Froude advances with much truth as one of the causes of the “Revival of Romanism”:
“I once ventured,” he tells us, “to say to a leading Evangelical preacher in London that I thought the clergy were much to blame in these matters. If the diseases of society were unapproachable by human law, the clergy might at least keep their congregations from forgetting that there was a law of another kind which in some shape or other would enforce itself. He told me very plainly that he did not look on it as part of his duty. He could not save the world, nor would he try. The world lay in wickedness, and would lie in wickedness to the end. His business was to save out of it individual souls by working on their spiritual emotions, and bringing them to what he called the truth. As to what men should do or not do, how they should occupy themselves, how and how far they might enjoy themselves, on what principles they should carry on their daily work—on these and similar subjects he had nothing to say.
“I needed no more to explain to me why Evangelical preachers were losing their hold on the more robust intellects, or why Catholics, who at least offered something which at intervals might remind men that they had souls, should have power to win away into their fold many a tender conscience which needed detailed support and guidance” (pp. 112–113).
One ray of light in the universal darkness now enshrouding Protestantism shines before the eyes of Mr. Froude. It falls on the present German Empire. Here at least the weary watchman crying out the hours of heaven may call “All is well” to the sleepers. Here Protestantism had its true birth; here it finds its true home. In this blessed land lies hope and salvation for a lost world. But the picture is so graphic that we give it in Mr. Froude’s own words:
“As the present state of France,” he says, “is the measure of the value of the Catholic revival, so Northern Germany, spiritually, socially, and politically, is the measure of the power of consistent Protestantism. Germany was the cradle of the Reformation. In Germany it moves forward to its manhood; and there, and not elsewhere, will be found the intellectual solution of the speculative perplexities which are now dividing and bewildering us” (pp. 130–131).
“Luther was the root in which the intellect of the modern Germans took its rise. In the spirit of Luther this mental development has gone forward ever since. The seed changes its form when it develops leaves and flowers. But the leaves and flowers are in the seed, and the thoughts of the Germany of to-day lay in germs in the great reformer. Thus Luther has remained through later history the idol of the nation whom he saved. The disputes between religion and science, so baneful in their effects elsewhere, have risen into differences there, but never into quarrels” (p. 132).
“Protestant Germany stands almost alone, with hands and head alike clear. Her theology is undergoing change. Her piety remains unshaken. Protestant she is, Protestant she means to be.... By the mere weight of superior worth the Protestant states have established their ascendency over Catholic Austria and Bavaria, and compel them, whether they will or not, to turn their faces from darkness to light.[106] ... German religion may be summed up in the word which is at once the foundation and the superstructure of all religion—Duty! No people anywhere or at any time have understood better the meaning of duty; and to say that is to say all” (pp. 134–135).
These glowing periods are very tempting to the critic; but it is a mark of cruelty and savagery to gloat over an easy prey. We forbear all verbal criticism, then, and simply deny _in toto_ the truth of Mr. Froude’s statement. It is so very wrong that we can only think he wrote from his imagination—a weakness from which he suffers oftenest when he wishes most to be effective. Had he searched the world he could not have found a worse instance to prove his point than North Germany.
Prussia is the leading North German and Protestant state, and in various passages Mr. Froude shows that he takes it as his beau-ideal of a Protestant power. How stands Protestantism in Prussia to-day?
The indications for more than a quarter of a century past have been that Protestantism in Prussia was little more than the shadow of a once mighty name. These indications have become more marked of late years, especially since the consolidation of the new German Empire. Earnest German Protestants are continually deploring the fact; the press proclaims it; the Protestant ministers avow it, and all the world knew of it, save, apparently, Mr. Froude. “Protestantism in Prussia” formed the subject of a letter from the Berlin correspondent of the London _Times_ as recently as Sept. 7, 1877. His testimony on such a subject could scarcely be called in question, but even if it could be the facts narrated speak for themselves.
“Forty years ago,” he says, “the clergy of the Established Church of this country, including the leading divines and the members of the ecclesiastical government, almost to a man were under the influence of free-thinking theories.
“It was the time when German criticism first undertook to dissect the Bible. History seemed to have surpassed theology, and divines had recourse to ‘interpreting’ what they thought they could no longer maintain according to the letter. The movement extended from the clergy to the educated classes, gradually reaching the lower orders, and ultimately pervaded the entire nation. At this juncture atheism sprang forward to reap the harvest sown by latitudinarians. Then reaction set in. The clergy reverted to orthodoxy, and their conversion to the old faith happening to coincide with the return of the government to political conservatism, subsequent to the troublous period of 1848, the stricter principles embraced by the cloth were systematically enforced by consistory and school....
“The clergy turned orthodox twenty-five years ago; _the laity did not_. The servants of the altar, having realized the melancholy effect of opposite tenets, resolutely fell back upon the ancient dogmas of Christianity; _the congregations declined to follow suit_. Hence the few ‘liberal’ clergymen remaining after the advent of the orthodox period had the consolation of knowing themselves to be in accord, if not with their clerical brethren, at least with the majority of the educated, and, perhaps, even the uneducated, classes.”
He proceeds to mention various cases of prominent Lutheran clergymen who denied the divinity of Christ, or other doctrines equally necessary to be maintained by men professing to be Christians, and of the unsuccessful attempts made to silence them. As the correspondent says “irreverent liberal opinion on the case is well reflected in an article in the Berlin _Volks-Zeitung_,” which is so instructive that we quote it for the especial benefit of Mr. Froude:
“As long as Protestant clergymen are appointed by provincial consistories officiating in behalf of the crown our congregations will have to put up with any candidates that may be forced upon them. They may, perhaps, be allowed to nominate their pastors, but they will be impotent to exact the confirmation of their choice from the ecclesiastical authorities. Nor do we experience any particular curiosity as to the result of the inquiry instituted against Herr Hossbach. In matters of this delicate nature judicious evasions have been too often resorted to by clever accused, and visibly favored by ordained judges of the faith, for us to care much for the result of the suit opened. A sort of fanciful and imaginative prevarication has always flourished in theological debate, and the old artifice, it is to be foreseen, will be employed with fresh versatility in the present instance. Should the election of Herr Hossbach be confirmed, the consistorial decree will be garnished with so many ‘ifs’ and ‘althoughs’ that the brilliant ray of truth will be dimmed by screening assumptions, like a candle placed behind a colored glass. Similarly, should the consistory decline to ratify the choice of the vestry, the refusal is sure to be rendered palatable by the employment of
## particularly mild and euphonious language. In either case the
triumph of the victorious party will be but half a triumph.... It is not a little remarkable that the Protestant Church in this country should be kept under the control of superimposed authorities, while Roman Catholics and Jews are free to preach what they like. The power of the Catholic hierarchy has been broken by the new laws. _Catholic clergymen deviating from the approved doctrine of the Church are protected by the Government from the persecution of their bishops. Catholic congregations are positively urged and instigated to profit by the privileges accorded them, and assert their independence against bishop and priest._ Jewish rabbis, too, are free to disseminate any doctrine without being responsible for their teaching to spiritual or secular judges. Only Protestant congregations enjoy the doubtful advantage of having the election of their clergy controlled, and the candor of their clergy made the theme of penal inquiry.... And yet Protestant congregations have a ready means of escape at their disposal. Let them leave the church, and they are free to elect whomsoever they may choose as their minister. As it is, the indecision of the congregations maintains the _status quo_ by forcing liberal clergymen into the dogmatic straight-waistcoat of the consistories.”
“In the above argument one important fact is overlooked,” says the _Times_’ correspondent.
“Among the liberals opposed to the consistories there are many atheists, but few sufficiently religious to care for reform. Hence the course taken by the consistories may be resented, but the preaching of the liberal clergy is not popular enough to create a new denomination or to compel innovation within the pale of the church. The fashionable metaphysical systems of Germany are pessimist.”
A week previous to the date of this letter the Lutheran pastors held their annual meeting at Berlin. The Rev. Dr. Grau, who is referred to as “a distinguished professor of theology,” speaking of the task of the clergy in modern times—certainly a most important subject for consideration—said:
“These are serious times for the church. The protection of the temporal power is no longer awarded to us to anything like the extent it formerly was. _The great mass of the people is either indifferent or openly hostile to doctrinal teaching._ Not a few listen to those striving to combine Christ with Belial, and to reconcile redeeming truth with modern science and culture. _There are those who dream of a future church erected on the ruins of the Lutheran establishment, which by these enterprising neophytes is already regarded as dead and gone.”_
“The meeting,” observes the correspondent, “by passing the resolutions proposed by Dr. Grau, endorsed the opinions of the principal speaker.” And he adds:
“While giving this unmitigated verdict upon the state of religion among the people, the meeting displayed open antagonism to the leading authorities of the church. To the orthodox pastors the sober and sedative policy pursued by the Ober Kirchen Rath is a dereliction even more offensive than the downright apostasy of the liberals. To render their opposition intelligible the change that has recently supervened in high quarters should be adverted to in a few words. Soon after his accession to the throne the reigning sovereign, in his capacity as _summus episcopus_, recommended a lenient treatment of liberal views. Though himself strictly orthodox, as he has repeatedly taken occasion to announce, the emperor is tolerant in religion, and too much of a statesman to overlook the undesirable consequences that must ensue from permanent warfare between church and people. He therefore appointed a few moderate liberals members of the supreme council, accorded an extensive degree of self-government to the synods, at the expense of his own episcopal prerogative, and finally sanctioned civil marriage and ‘civil baptism,’ as registration is sarcastically called in this country, to the intense astonishment and dismay of the orthodox. The last two measures, it is true, were aimed at the priests of the Roman Catholic Church, who were to be deprived of the power of punishing those of their flock siding with the state in the ecclesiastical war; but, as the operation of the law could not be restricted to one denomination, Protestants were made amenable to a measure which, to the orthodox among them, was quite as objectionable as to the believing adherents of the Pope. The supreme council of the Protestant Church, having to approve these several innovations adopted by the crown, gradually accustomed itself to regard compromise and bland pacification as one of the principal duties imposed upon it.”
The correspondent ends his letter thus:
“When all was over orthodoxy was at feud with the people as well as with the authoritative guardians of the church. Yet neither people nor guardians remonstrated. For opposite reasons both were equally convinced they could afford to ignore the charges made.”
So important was the letter that the London _Times_ made it the subject of an editorial article, wherein it speaks of “the singular revival of theological and ecclesiastical controversy, which is observable in all directions,” having “at last reached the slumbering Protestantism of Prussia.” It confesses that
“The state of things as described by our correspondent is certainly a very anomalous one. The Prussian Protestant Church has, of late years at least, had but little hold on the respect and affections of the great majority of the people; they are at best but indifferent to it when they are not actively hostile. We are not concerned to investigate the causes of this lack of popularity; we are content to take it as a fact manifest to all who know the country and acknowledged by all observers alike.”
“German Protestantism _was_ a power and an influence,” it says,
“To which the modern world is deeply indebted, and with which, now that ultramontanism is triumphant in the Church of Rome and priestcraft is again striving in all quarters to exert its sway, the friends of freedom and toleration can ill afford to dispense. There is no more ominous sign in the history of an established church than a divorce between intelligence and orthodoxy. This is what, to all appearances, has happened in Prussia.”
We could corroborate this by abundance of testimony from all quarters; but surely the evidence here given is sufficient to convince any man of the deplorable state of Protestantism in Prussia. Why Mr. Froude should have chosen that country of all others for his Protestant paradise we cannot conceive, unless on the ground that he is Mr. Froude. “The world on one side, and Popery on the other,” he says, “are dividing the practical control over life and conduct. North Germany, manful in word and deed, sustains the fight against both enemies and carries the old flag to victory. A few years ago another Thirty Years’ War was feared for Germany. A single campaign sufficed to bring Austria on her knees. _Protestantism, as expressed in the leadership of Prussia_, assumed the direction of the German Confederation” (pp. 135–136).
And whither does this leadership tend? To the devil, if the London _Times_, if Dr. Grau, if every observant man who has written or spoken on this subject, is to be believed. The only religion in Prussia to-day is the Catholic; Protestantism has yielded to atheism or nothingism. The persecution has only proved and tempered the Catholic Church; not even a strong and favoring government can infuse a faint breath of life into the dead carcase of Prussian Protestantism. It is much the same story all the world over. Mr. Froude sees clearly enough what is coming. Protestantism as a religious power is dead. It has lost all semblance of reality. It had no religious reality from the beginning. It will still continue to be used as an agent by political schemers and conspirators; but in the fight between religion and irreligion it is of little worth. The fight is not here, but where Mr. Froude rightly places it—between the irreligious world and Catholicity, which “are dividing the practical control over life and conduct.”
And thus heresies die out; they expire of their own corruption. Their very offspring rise up against them. Their children cry for bread and they give them a stone. The fragments of truth on which they first build are sooner or later crushed out by the great mass of falsehood. The few good seeds are choked up by the harvest of the bad, and only the ill weeds thrive, until all the space around them is desolate of fruit or light or sweetness, or anything fair under heaven. Then comes the husbandman in his own good time, and curses the barren fig-tree and clears the desolate waste. It will be with Protestantism as it has been with all the heresies; Christians will wonder, and the time would seem not to be very far distant when they will wonder that Protestantism ever should have been. It will go to its grave, the same wide grave that has swallowed up heresy after heresy. Gnosticism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Protestantism, all the isms, are children of the same family, live the same life, die the same death. The everlasting church buries them all, and no man mourns their loss.
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A RAMBLE AFTER THE WAITS.
“CHRISTMAS comes but once a year, So let us all be merry,”
saith the old song. And now, as the festal season draws nigh, everybody seems bent on fulfilling the behest to the uttermost. The streets are gay with lights and laughter; the shops are all a-glitter with precious things; the markets are bursting with good cheer. The air vibrates with a babble of merry voices, until the very stars seem to catch the infection and twinkle a thought more brightly. The faces of those you meet beam with joyous expectation; huge baskets on their arms, loaded with good things for the morrow, jostle and thump you at every turn, but no one dreams of being ill-natured on Christmas Eve; mysterious bundles in each hand contain unimagined treasures for the little ones at home. And hark! do you not catch a jingle of distant sleigh-bells, a faint, far-off patter and scrunching of tiny hoofs upon the snow? It is the good St. Nicholas setting out upon his merry round; it is Dasher and Slasher and Prancer and Vixen scurrying like the wind over the house-tops. And high over all—“the poor man’s music”—the merry, merry bells of Yule, the solemn, the sacred bells, peal forth the tidings of great joy. Is it not hard to conceive that the time should have been when Christmas was not? impossible to conceive that any in a Christian land should have wished to do away with it—should have been willing, having had it, ever to forego a festival so fraught with all holy and happy memories?
Yet once such men were found, and but little more than two centuries ago. It was on the 24th day of December, 1652—day for ever to be marked with the blackest of black stones, nay, with a bowlder of Plutonian nigritude—that the British House of Commons, being moved thereto “by a terrible remonstrance against Christmas day grounded upon divine Scripture, wherein Christmas is called Antichrists masse, and those masse-mongers and Papists who observe it,” and after much time “spent in consultation about the abolition of Christmas day, passed order to that effect, and resolved to sit upon the following day, which was commonly called Christmas day.” Whether this latter resolution was carried into effect we do not know. If so, let us hope that their Christmas dinners disagreed with them horribly, and that the foul fiend Nightmare kept hideous vigil by every Parliamentary pillow.
But think of such an atrocious sentiment being heard at all in Westminster! How must the very echoes of the hall have shrunk from repeating that monstrous proposition—how shuddered and fled away into remotest corners and crevices as that
“Hideous hum Ran through the arch’d roof in words deceiving”!
How must they have disbelieved their ears, and tossed the impious utterance back and forth from one to another in agonized questioning, growing feebler and fainter at each repulse, until their voices, faltering through doubt into dismay, grew dumb with horror! How must “Rufus’ Roaring Hall”[107] have roared again outright with rage and grief over that strange, that unhallowed profanation! What wan phantoms of old-time mummeries and maskings, what dusty and crumbling memories of royal feast and junketing, must have hovered about the heads of those audacious innovators, shrieking at them what unsyllabled reproaches from voiceless lips, shaking at them what shadowy fingers of entreaty or menace! And if the proverb about ill words and burning ears be true, how those crop-ears must have tingled!
Within those very walls England’s kings for generations had kept their Christmas-tide most royally with revelry and dance and wassail. There Henry III. on New Year’s day, 1236, to celebrate the coronation of Eleanor, his queen, entertained 6,000 of his poorer subjects of all degrees; and there twelve years later, though he himself ate his plum-pudding at Winchester, he was graciously pleased to bid his treasurer “fill the king’s Great Hall from Christmas day to the Day of Circumcision with poor people and feast them.” There, too, at a later date Edward III. had for sauce to his Christmas turkey—not to mention all sorts of cates and confections, tarts and pasties of most cunning device, rare liquors and spiced wines—no less than two captive kings, to wit, David of Scotland and John of France. Poor captive kings! _Their_ turkey—though no doubt their princely entertainer was careful to help them to the daintiest tidbits, and to see that they had plenty of stuffing and cranberry sauce—must have been but a tasteless morsel, and their sweetbreads bitter indeed. Another Scottish king, the first James, of tuneful and unhappy memory, had even worse (pot) luck soon after. Fate, and that hospitable _penchant_ of our English cousins in the remoter centuries for quietly confiscating all stray Scotch princes who fell in their way, as though they had been contraband of war, gave him the enviable opportunity of eating no less than a score of Christmas dinners on English soil. But he seems to have been left to eat them alone or with his jailer in “bowery Windsor’s calm retreat” or the less cheerful solitude of the Tower. It does not appear that either the fourth or the fifth Henry, his enforced hosts, ever asked him to put his royal Scotch legs under their royal English mahogany. Had Richard II. been in the place of “the ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke,” we may be sure that his northern guest would not have been treated so shabbily. In his time Westminster and his two thousand French cooks (shades of Lucullus! what an appetite he must have had, and what a broiling and a baking and a basting must they have kept up among them; the proverb of “busier than an English oven at Christmas” had reason then, at least) were not long left idle; for it was their sovereign’s jovial custom to keep open house in the holidays for as many as ten thousand a day—a comfortable tableful. It was his motto plainly to
“Be merry, for our time of stay is short.”
Such a device, however, the third Richard might have made his own with still greater reason. That ill-used prince, who was no doubt a much better fellow at bottom than it has pleased Master Shakspeare to represent him—if Richmond had not been Queen Bess’ grandpapa, we should like enough have had a different story and altogether less about humps and barking dogs—made the most of a limited opportunity to show what he could do in the way of holiday dinner-giving. The only two Christmases he had to spend as king at Westminster—for him but a royal stage on his way to a more permanent residence at Bosworth Field—he celebrated with extraordinary magnificence, as became a prince “reigning,” says Philip de Comines, “in greater splendor than any king of England for the last hundred years.” On the second and last Christmas of his reign and life the revelry was kept up till the Epiphany, when “the king himself, wearing his crown, held a splendid feast in the Great Hall similar to his coronation.” Wearing his crown, poor wretch! He seems to have felt that his time was short for wearing it, and that he must put it to use while he had it. Already, indeed, as he feasted, rapacious Fortune, swooping implacable, was clawing it with skinny, insatiable claws, estimating its value and the probable cost of altering it to fit another wearer, and thinking how much better it would look on the long head of her good friend Richmond, who had privately bespoken it. No doubt some cold shadow of that awful, unseen presence fell across the banquet-table and poisoned the royal porridge.
What need to tell over the long roll of Christmas jollities, whose memory from those historic walls might have pleaded with or rebuked the sour iconoclasts planning gloomily to put an end to all such for ever; how even close-fisted Henry VII.—no fear of his losing a crown, if gripping tight could keep it—feasted there the lord-mayor and aldermen of London on the ninth Christmas of his reign, sitting down himself, with his queen and court and the rest of the nobility and gentry, to one hundred and twenty dishes served by as many knights, while the mayor, who sat at a side-table, no doubt, had to his own share no fewer than twenty-four dishes, followed, it is to be feared, if he ate them all, by as many nightmares; how that meek and exemplary Christian monarch, Henry VIII., “welcomed the coming, sped the parting” wife at successive Christmas banquets of as much splendor as the spoils of something over a thousand monasteries could furnish forth;[108] how good Queen Bess, who had her own private reading of the doctrine “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” sat in state there at this festival season to accept the offerings of her loyal lieges, high and low, gentle and simple, from prime minister to kitchen scullion, until she was able to add to the terrors of death by having to leave behind her something like three thousand dresses and some trunkfuls of jewels in Christmas gifts; or what gorgeous revels and masques—Inigo Jones (Inigo Marquis Would-be), Ben Jonson, and Master Henry Lawes (he of “the tuneful and well-measured song”) thereto conspiring—made the holidays joyous under James and Charles. Some ghostly savor of those bygone banquets might, one would think, have made even Praise-God Barebone’s mouth water, and melted his surly virtue into tolerance of other folks’ cakes and ale—what virtue, however ascetic, could resist the onslaught of two thousand French cooks? Some faint, far echo of all these vanished jollities should have won the ear, if not the heart, of the grimmest “saint” among them. Or if they were proof against the blandishments of the world’s people, if they fled from the abominations of Baal, could not their own George Wither move them to spare the cheery, harmless frivolities, the merry pranks of Yule? Jovially as any Cavalier, shamelessly as any Malignant of them all, he sings their praises in his
“CHRISTMAS CAROL.
“So now is come our joyful’st feast, Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is drest, And every post with holly. Though some churls at our mirth repine, Round your foreheads garlands twine, Drown sorrow in a cup of wine, And let us all be merry.
“Now all our neighbors’ chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning; Their ovens they with bak’d meats choke, And all their spits are turning. Without the door let sorrow lie; And if for cold it hap to die, We’ll bury’t in a Christmas pye. And evermore be merry.
“Now every lad is wondrous trim, And no man minds his labor; Our lasses have provided them A bagpipe and a tabor. Young men and maids, and girls and boys, Give life to one another’s joys; And you anon shall by their noise Perceive that they are merry....
“Now poor men to the justices With capons make their errants; And if they hap to fail of these, They plague them with their warrants: But now they feed them with good cheer, And what they want they take in beer; For Christmas comes but once a year, And then they shall be merry....
“The client now his suit forbears, The prisoner’s heart is eased, The debtor drinks away his cares, And for the time is pleased. Though others’ purses be more fat, Why should we pine or grieve at that? Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat, And therefore let’s be merry....
“Hark! now the wags abroad do call Each other forth to rambling; Anon you’ll see them in the hall, For nuts and apples scrambling. Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound; Anon they’ll think the house goes round, For they the cellar’s depths have found. And there they will be merry.
“The wenches with the wassail-bowls About the streets are singing; The boys are come to catch the owls, The wild mare[109] in is bringing. Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box, And to the kneeling of the ox Our honest neighbors come by flocks, And here they will be merry.
“Now kings and queens poor sheep-cotes have, And mate with everybody; The honest now may play the knave, And wise men play at noddy. Some youths will now a-mumming go, Some others play at Rowland-boe, And twenty other gambols moe, Because they will be merry.
“Then wherefore, in these merry days, Should we, I pray, be duller? No, let us sing some roundelays, To make our mirth the fuller; And, while we thus inspired sing, Let all the streets with echoes ring— Woods and hills and everything Bear witness we are merry.”
Or Master Milton, again, Latin secretary to the council, author of the famous _Iconoclastes_, shield (or, as some would have put it, official scold) of the Commonwealth, the scourge of prelacy and conqueror of Salmasius—he was orthodox surely; yet what of _Arcades_ and _Cornus_? Master Milton, too, had written holiday masques, and, what is more, they had been acted; nay, he had even been known more than once, on no less authority than his worshipful nephew, Master Philips, “to make so bold with his body as to take a gaudy-day” with the gay sparks of Gray’s Inn. Alas! such carnal-minded effusions belonged to the unregenerate days of both these worthy brethren, when they still dwelt in the tents of the ungodly, before they had girded on the sword of Gideon and gone forth to smite the Amalekite hip and thigh. Vainly might the menaced festival look for aid in that direction. So far from saying a word in its favor, they would now have been fiercest in condemnation, if only to cover their early backsliding; if only to avert any suspicion that they still hankered after the fleshpots. Poor Christmas was doomed.
So, by act of Parliament, “our joyful’st feast” was solemnly stricken out of the calendar, cashiered from its high pre-eminence among the holidays of the year, and degraded to the ranks of common days. All its quaint bravery of holly-berries and ivy-leaves was stripped from it, its jolly retinue of boars’ heads and wassail-bowls, of Yule-clogs and mistletoe-boughs, of maskers and mummers, of waits and carols, Lords of Misrule and Princes of Christmas, sent packing. Then began “the fiery persecution of poor mince-pie throughout the land; plum-porridge was denounced as mere popery, and roast-beef as anti-Christian.” ’Twas a fatal, a perfidious, a short-lived triumph. The nation, shocked in its most cherished traditions, repudiated the hideous doctrine; the British stomach, deprived of its holiday beef and pudding, so to speak, revolted. The reign of the righteous was speedily at an end. History, with her usual shallowness, ascribes to General Monk the chief part in the Restoration; it was really brought about by that short-sighted edict of the 24th of December, 1652. Charles or Cromwell, king or protector—what cared honest Hodge who ruled and robbed him? But to forego his Christmas porridge—that was a different matter; and Britons never should be slaves. So, just eight years after it had been banished, Christmas was brought back again with manifold rejoicing and bigger wassail-bowls and Yule-clogs than ever; and, as if to make honorable amends for its brief exile, the Lord of Misrule himself was crowned and seated on the throne, where, as we all know, to do justice to his office, if he never said a foolish thing he never did a wise one.
And from that time to this Christmas has remained a thoroughly British institution, as firmly entrenched in the national affections, as generally respected, and perhaps as widely appreciated as Magna Charta itself. Sit on Christmas day! A British Parliament now would as soon think of sitting on the Derby day. To how many of their constituents have the two festivals any widely differing significance perhaps it would be wise not to inquire too closely. Each is a holiday—that is, a day off work, a synonym for “a good time,” a little better dinner than usual, and considerably more beer. Like the children, “they reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond the cake and orange.” “La justice elle-même,” says Balzac, “se traduit aux yeux de la halle par le commissaire—personage avec lequel elle se familiarise.” His epigram the author of _Ginx’s Baby_ may translate for us—English epigrams, like English plays, being for the most part matter of importation free of duty; _e.g._, that famous one in _Lothair_ about the critic being a man who has failed in literature or art, another consignment from Balzac—when he makes Ginx’s theory of government epitomize itself as a policeman. So Ginx’s notion of Christmas, we suspect, is apt to be beef and beer and Boxing-night—with perhaps a little more beer.
Certainly the attachment of the British public to these features of the day—we are considering it for the moment in the light in which a majority of non-Catholics look upon it, apparently, as a merely social festival, and not at all in its religious aspect (though to a Catholic, of course, the two are as indistinguishably blended as the rose and the perfume of the rose)—has never been shaken. If one may judge from a large amount of the English fiction which at this season finds its way to the American market—and the novels of to-day, among a novel-reading people, are as straight and sure a guide to its heart as were ever its ballads in the time of old Fletcher of Saltoun—if one may judge from much of English Christmas literature, these incidents of the day are, if not the most important, certainly the most prominent and popular. What we may call the Beef and Beer aspect of the season these stories are never tired of glorifying and exalting. Dickens is the archpriest of this idolatry, which, indeed, he in a measure invented, or at least brought into vogue; and his _Christmas Stories_, as most of his stories, fairly reek with the odors of the kitchen and the tap-room. Material comfort, and that, too, usually of a rather coarse kind, is the universal theme, and even the charity they are supposed to inculcate can scarcely be called a moral impulse, so much as the instinct of a physical good-nature, well-fed and content with itself and the world—of a good-humored selfishness willing to make others comfortable, because thereby it puts away from itself the discomfort of seeing them otherwise. It is a kind of charity which, in another sense than that of Scripture, has to cover a multitude of sins.
One may say this of Dickens, without at all detracting from his many great qualities as a writer, that he has done more, perhaps, than any other writer to demoralize and coarsen the popular notion of what Christmas is and means; to make of his readers at best but good-humored pagans with lusty appetites for all manner of victuals and an open-handed readiness to share their good things with the first comer. These are no doubt admirable traits; but one gets a little tired of having them for ever set forth as the crown and completion of Christian excellence, the sum and substance of all that is noble and exalted in the sentiment of the season. Let us enjoy our Christmas dinner by all means; let the plum-pudding be properly boiled and the turkey done to a turn, and may we all have enough to spare a slice or two for a poorer neighbor! But must we therefore sit down and gobble turkey and pudding from morning till night? Should we hang up a sirloin and fall down and worship it? Is that all that Christmas means? Turn from the best of these books to this exquisite little picture of Christmas Eve in a Catholic land:
“Christmas is come—the beautiful festival, the one I love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave the shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one’s whole soul sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon earth—a coming which here is announced on all sides of us by music and by our charming _nadalet_[110] Nothing at Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. You have not even the midnight Mass. We all of us went to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that midnight—so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we were not cold; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried in front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, I do assure you; and I should like you to have seen us there on our road to church, in those lanes with the bushes along their banks as white as if they were in flower. The hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a garland for the communion-table, but it melted in our hands; all flowers fade so soon! I was very sorry about my garland; it was mournful to see it drop away and get smaller and smaller every minute.”
It is Eugénie de Guérin who writes thus—that pure and delicate spirit so well fitted to feel and value all that is beautiful and touching in this most beautiful and touching service of the church. To come from the one reading to the other is like being lifted suddenly out of a narrow valley to the free air and boundless views of a mountain-top; like coming from the gaslight into the starlight; it is like hearing the song of the skylark after the twitter of the robin—a sound pleasant and cheery enough in itself, but not elevating, not inspiring, not in any way satisfying to that hunger after ideal excellence which is the true life of the spirit, and which strikes the true key-note of this festal time.
But Eugénie de Guérin is perhaps too habitual a dweller on those serene heights to furnish a fair comparison; let us take a homelier picture from a lower level. It is still in France; this time in Burgundy, as the other was in Languedoc:
“Every year, at the approach of Advent, people refresh their memories, clear their throats, and begin preluding, in the long evenings by the fireside, those carols whose invariable and eternal theme is the coming of the Messias. They take from old pamphlets little collections begrimed with dust and smoke, ... and as soon as the first Sunday of Advent sounds they gossip, they gad about, they sit together by the fireside, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking turns in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with one common voice the praises of the _Little Jesus_. There are very few villages, even, which during all the evenings of Advent do not hear some of these curious canticles shouted in their streets to the nasal drone of bagpipes.
“More or less, until Christmas Eve, all goes on in this way among our devout singers, with the difference of some gallons of wine or some hundreds of chestnuts. But this famous eve once come, the scale is pitched upon a higher key; the closing evening must be a memorable one.... The supper finished, a circle gathers around the hearth, which is arranged and set in order this evening after a particular fashion, and which at a later hour of the night is to become the object of special interest to the children. On the burning brands an enormous log has been placed; ... it is called the _Suche_ (the Yule-log). ‘Look you,’ say they to the children, ‘if you are good this evening Noel will rain down sugar-plums in the night.’ And the children sit demurely, keeping as quiet as their turbulent little natures will permit. The groups of older persons, not always as orderly as the children, seize this good opportunity to surrender themselves with merry hearts and boisterous voices to the chanted worship of the miraculous Noel. For this final solemnity they have kept the most powerful, the most enthusiastic, the most electrifying carols.
“This last evening the merry-making is prolonged. Instead of retiring at ten or eleven o’clock, as is generally done on all the preceding evenings, they wait for the stroke of midnight; this word sufficiently proclaims to what ceremony they are going to repair. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour the bells have been calling the faithful with a triple-bob-major; and each one, furnished with a little taper streaked with various colors (the Christmas candle), goes through the crowded streets, where the lanterns are dancing like will-o’-the-wisps at the impatient summons of the multitudinous chimes. It is the midnight Mass.”
There you have fun, feasting, and frolic, as, indeed, there may fitly be to all innocent degrees of merriment, on the day which brought redemption to mankind. But there is also, behind and pervading all this rejoicing and harmless household gayety, the religious sentiment which elevates and inspires it, which chastens it from commonplace and grossness, which gives it a meaning and a soul. The English are fond of calling the French an irreligious people, because French literature, especially French fiction, from which they judge, takes its tone from Paris, which is to a great extent irreligious. But outside of the large cities, if a balance were struck on this point between the two countries, it would scarcely be in favor of England.
This, however, by way of episode and as a protest against this grovelling, material treatment of the most glorious festival of the Christian year. As we were about to say when interrupted, though Christmas regained its foothold as a national holiday at the Restoration, it came back sadly denuded of its following and shorn of most of its old-time attractions. So it fared in old England. In New England it can scarcely be said ever to have won a foothold at all, or at best no more than a foothold and a sullen toleration. Almost the first act of those excellent Pilgrim Fathers who did _not_ land at Plymouth Rock was to anticipate by thirty years or so the action of their Parliamentary brethren at home in abolishing the sacred anniversary, which must, indeed, have been a tacit rebuke to the spirit of their creed. They landed on the 16th of December, and “on ye 25th day,” writes William Bradford, “began to erect ye first house for comone use to receive them and their goods.” And lest this might seem an exception made under stress, we find it recorded next year that “on ye day caled Christmas day ye Gov’r caled them out to worke.” So it is clear New England began with a calendar from which Christmas was expunged. In New England affections Thanksgiving day replaces it—an “institution” peculiarly acceptable, we must suppose, to the thrift which can thus wipe out its debt of gratitude to Heaven by giving one day for three hundred and sixty-four—liquidating its liabilities, so to speak, at the rate of about three mills in the dollar. In the Middle States and in the South the day has more of its time-old observance, but neither here nor elsewhere may we hope to encounter many of the quaint and cheery customs with which our fathers loved to honor it, and which made it for them the pivot of the year. Wither has told us something of these; let a later minstrel give us a fuller picture of what Merry Christmas was in days of yore:
“And well our Christian sires of old Loved, when the year its course had rolled, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all its hospitable train. Domestic and religious rite Gave honor to the holy night: On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the Mass was sung; That only night of all the year Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear. The damsel donned her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry men go To gather in the mistletoe. Then opened wide the baron’s hall To vassals, tenants, serf, and all. The heir, with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The lord, underogating, share The vulgar game of ‘post and pair.’ All hailed with uncontrolled delight, And general voice, the happy night That to the cottage, as the crown, Brought tidings of salvation down.
The fire, with well-dried logs supplied, Went roaring up the chimney wide; The huge hall-table’s oaken face, Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace, Bore then upon its massive board No mark to part the squire and lord. Then was brought in the lusty brawn By old blue-coated serving-man; Then the grim boar’s head frowned on high, Crested with bays and rosemary.... The wassail round in good brown bowls, Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls. There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by Plum-porridge stood and Christmas pye. Then came the merry masquers in And carols roared with blithesome din; If unmelodious was the song, It was a hearty note and strong. Who lists may in their mumming see Traces of ancient mystery.... England was merry England then— Old Christmas brought his sports again; ’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale; ’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale; A Christmas gambol oft would cheer A poor man’s heart through half the year.”
Let Herrick supplement the picture with his
“CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMASSE.
“Come, bring with a noise, My merrie, merrie boyes, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free And drink to your hearts’ desiring.
“With the last yeeres brand Light the new block, and For good successe in his spending On your psaltries play, That sweet luck may Come while the log is a-teending.
“Drink now the strong beere, Cut the white loafe here, The while the meate is a-shredding For the rare mince-pie, And the plums stand by To fill the paste that’s a-kneading.”
Does the picture please you? Would you fain be a guest at the baron’s table, or lend a hand with jovial Herrick to fetch in the mighty Yule-log? Are you longing for a cut of that boar’s head or a draught of the wassail, or curious to explore the contents of that mysterious “Christmas pye,” which seems to differ so much from all other pies that it has to be spelled with a _y_? Well, well, we must not repine. Fate, which has denied us these joys, has given us compensations. No doubt the baron, for all his Yule-logs, would sometimes have given his baronial head (when he happened to have a cold in it) for such a fire—let it be of sea-coal in a low grate and the curtains drawn—as the reader and his humble servant are this very minute toasting their toes at. Those huge open fireplaces are admirably effective in poetry, but not altogether satisfactory of a cold winter’s night, when half the heat goes up the chimney and all the winds of heaven are shrieking in through the chinks in your baronial hall and playing the very mischief with your baronial rheumatism. Or do we believe that boar’s head was such a mighty fascinating dish after all, or much, if anything, superior to the soused pig’s head with which good old Squire Bracebridge replaced it? No, every age to its own customs; we may be sure that each finds out what is best for it and for its people.
Yet one custom we do begrudge a little to the past, or rather to the other lands where it still lingers here and there in the present. That is the graceful and kindly custom of the waits. These were Christmas carols, as the reader no doubt knows, chanted by singers from house to house in the rural districts during the season of Advent. In France they were called noels, and in Longfellow’s translation of one of these we may see what they were like:
“I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs; Hark! they play so sweet. On their hautboys, Christmas songs! Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire!...
“Shepherds at the grange Where the Babe was born Sang with many a change Christmas carols until morn. Let us, etc.
“These good people sang Songs devout and sweet; While the rafters rang, There they stood with freezing feet. Let us, etc.
“Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings; But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol brings. Let us, etc.”
In some parts of rural England, too, the custom is still to some extent kept up, and the reader may find a pleasant, and we dare say faithful, description of it in a charming English story called _Under the Greenwood Tree_, by Mr. Thomas Hardy, a writer whose closeness of observation and precision and delicacy of touch give him a leading place among the younger writers of fiction.
Very pleasant, we fancy, it must be of a Christmas Eve when one is, as aforesaid, toasting one’s toes at the fire over a favorite book, or hanging up the children’s stockings, let us say, or peering through the curtains out over the moonlit snow, and wondering how cold it is out-doors with that little perfunctory shiver which is comfort’s homage to itself—there should always be snow upon the ground at Christmas, for then Nature
“With speeches fair Woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow”;
but let us have no wind, since
“Peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the world began. The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kist, Whispering new joys to the wild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave”—
at such a time, we say, it would be pleasant to hear the shrill voices of the Waits cleaving the cold, starlit air in some such quaint old ditty as the “Cherry-tree Carol” or “The Three Ships.” No doubt, too, would we but confess it, there would come to us a little wicked enhancement of pleasure in the reflection that the artists without were a trifle less comfortable than the hearer within. That rogue Tibullus had a shrewd notion of what constitutes true comfort when he wrote, _Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem_—which, freely translated, means, How jolly it is to sit by the fireside and listen to other fellows singing for your benefit in the cold without! But that idea we should dismiss as unworthy, and even try to feel a little uncomfortable by way of penance; and then, when their song was ended, and we heard their departing footsteps scrunching fainter and fainter in the snow, and their voices dying away until they became the merest suggestion of an echo, we should perhaps find—for these are to be ideal Waits—that their song had left behind it in the listener’s soul a starlit silence like that of the night without, but the stars should be heavenly thoughts.
These are ideal Waits; the real ones might be less agreeable or salutary. But have we far to look for such? Are there not on the shelves yonder a score of immortal minstrels only waiting our bidding to sing the sacred glories of the time? Shall we ask grave John Milton to tune his harp for us, or gentle Father Southworth, or impassioned Crashaw, or tender Faber? These are Waits we need not scruple to listen to, nor fail to hear with profit.
Milton’s _Ode on the Nativity_ is, no doubt, the finest in the language. Considering the difficulties of a subject to which, short of inspiration, it is next to impossible to do any justice at all, it is very fine indeed. It is not all equal, however; there are in it stanzas which remind one that he was but twenty-one when he wrote it. Yet other stanzas are scarcely surpassed by anything he has written.
“Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing Mercy will sit between, Thron’d in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering, And heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
“But wisest Fate says, No, It must not yet be so; The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss, So both himself and us to glorify; Yet first to those ychained in sleep The wakeful trump of doom must thunder thro’ the deep,
“With such a horrid clang As on Mount Sinai rang, While the red fire and smould’ring clouds out-brake. The aged earth, aghast With terror of that blast, Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When at the world’s last session The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
—————
“The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathèd spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
“The lonely mountains o’er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament. From haunted spring, and dale Edg’d with poplar pale, The parting genius is with sighing sent. With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket mourn.”
Seldom has Milton sung in loftier strains than this. What a magnificent line is that:
“The wakeful trump of doom shall thunder through the deep.”
The poet evidently had his eye on that wonderful verse of the _Dies Iræ_:
“Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Cogit omnes ante thronum,”
but the imitation falls little short of the original. Dr. Johnson characteristically passes this ode over in silence—perhaps because of his opinion that sacred poetry was a contradiction in terms. His great namesake, and in some respects curious antitype, was more generous to another poem we shall quote—Father Southwell’s “Burning Babe.” “So he had written it,” he told Drummond, “he would have been content to destroy many of his.”
“As I, in hoary winter’s night, stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear, Who, scorchéd with exceeding heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames with what his tears were fed; ‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I. My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns; Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals; The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiléd souls; For which, as now in fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.’ With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrank away, And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.”
The fire is getting low in the grate, the stars are twinkling pale, and though the minstrels are many we should have been glad to introduce to the reader—grand old St. Thomas of Aquin; silver-tongued Giacopone, whose lately-discovered _Stabat Mater Speciosa_ is one of the loveliest of the mediæval hymns; rapturous St. Bernard—they must wait a fitter time. We can hear but another of our Christmas waits—one of the most effective English poems on the Nativity, considered as mere poetry, it has been our fortune to meet. The author is the hero of Browning’s verses, “What’s become of Waring?”—Alfred H. Dommett; a poet who, perhaps, would be better known had he been a worse poet. And with this we must wish our readers “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
“It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars; Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain; Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars Held undisturbed their ancient reign In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.
“’Twas in the calm and silent night! The senator of haughty Rome Impatient urged his chariot’s flight, From lonely revel rolling home. Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away In the solemn midnight Centuries ago?
“Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor; A streak of light before him lay, Fallen through a half-shut stable-door, Across his path. He passed; for naught Told what was going on within. How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold, and thin! In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.
“O strange indifference! Low and high Drowsed over common joys and cares; The earth was still, but knew not why; The world was listening unawares. How calm a moment may precede One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment none would heed; Man’s doom was linked, no more to sever, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.
“It is the calm and solemn night! A thousand bells ring out and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite The darkness, charmed and holy now! The night, that erst no name had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago.”
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THE DESCENT OF MAN.
Mr. Charles Darwin, in his _Descent of Man_, proposes to himself to show that man is nothing more than a modified beast, and that his remote ancestors are to be found among some tribes of brutes. A paradox of this kind, in a work of fiction such as Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, would not offend an intelligent reader; but in a work which professes to be serious and scientific it is extremely offensive, for it amounts to a deliberate insult to all humanity in general and to every human being in particular. Mr. Darwin’s work violates the dignity of human nature, blots out of our souls the image and likeness of our Creator, and totally perverts the notions most cherished by civil and Christian society. This effort does certainly not entitle him to credit for wisdom. A man of ordinary prudence, before he undertakes to maintain in the face of the public a theory which conflicts with a doctrine thoroughly established and universally received, would examine both sides of the case, and ascertain that he is in possession of sufficient evidence to make good his assertions and to defend them against the arguments of the opposite side. Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, seems to have satisfied himself that a man of his eminence in natural history had a right to be believed, whatever he might venture to say, even though he was to give no satisfactory evidence in support of his views, and no answer to the objections which he ought to refute.
We do not say that Mr. Darwin did not do his best to prove his new doctrine on man; we only say that he has signally failed in his attempt, and that his failure is as inexcusable as it is ignominious. A man of his ability should have seen that the origin of man was not a problem to be solved by physiology; and he ought also to have considered that a man of science could only stultify himself by submitting to the test of science a historical fact of which science, as such, is entirely incompetent to speak. Indeed, we scarcely know which to admire most in Mr. Darwin, the serenity with which he ignores the difficulty of his philosophic position, or the audacity with which he affirms things which he cannot prove. What a pity that a man so richly endowed by nature has been so entirely absorbed by the study of material organisms as to find no time for the more important study of philosophy, especially of psychology, without which it is impossible to form a rational theory respecting the origin and the destiny of man! Shall we add that a sound scientific theory cannot be the outcome of illogical reasoning? And yet it is a plain fact, though our advanced thinkers will deny it, that Mr. Darwin’s logic, to judge from his _Descent of Man_, is as mischievous as most of his assumptions are reckless.
It would be impossible within the limits of our space to enter into a detailed examination of the logical and metaphysical blunders to which the Darwinian theory owes its existence. We shall, therefore, at present confine ourselves to a short criticism of the first chapter of the work in question; for, if we are not mistaken, every impartial reader will be able, after a sufficient analysis of this first chapter, to judge of the kind of logic that characterizes the whole treatise.
Mr. Darwin begins thus:
“He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form would probably first inquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties; and, if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals. Again, are the variations the result, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general causes, and are they governed by the same general laws, as in the case of other organisms—for instance, by correlation, the inherited effects of use and disuse, etc.? Is man subject to similar malconformations, the result of arrested development, of reduplication of parts, etc., and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of structure? It might also naturally be inquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species? How are such races distributed over the world; and how, when crossed, do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations? And so with many other points.”
This preamble, which superficial readers may have considered perfectly harmless, contains the seed of all the mischievous reasonings scattered through the rest of the work. It comes to this: “If we find that man varies, however slightly, according to the same laws which prevail with the lower animals, we shall be justified in concluding that man is a modified descendant of some pre-existing form.” Now, this assertion is evidently nothing but clap-trap for the ignorant. In the first place, Mr. Darwin takes for granted that mankind wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form. This gratuitous supposition implies that mankind is still ignorant or doubtful of its true origin; which is by no means the case. We have an authentic record of the origin of man; and we know that the first man and the first woman were not the descendants of any lower pre-existing form. The Bible tells us very clearly that God created them to his own image and likeness; and so long as Mr. Darwin does not demolish the Biblical history of creation he has no right to assume that there may be the least reasonable doubt regarding the origin of man. Mr. Darwin, it is true, makes light of the Biblical history; but contempt is no argument. On the other hand, philosophy and common sense, and science, if not perverted, unanimously agree with the Mosaic record in proclaiming that the origin of man must be traced to a special creation. Thus there has never been, nor is there at present, among thinking men, any real doubt as to the origin of our race; whence we infer that the question raised by the _Descent of Man_ is a mere fiction which would deserve no answer but a smile of pity.
In the second place, granting for the sake of argument that there may be an honest doubt about the origin of man, and that physiology and other kindred sciences are competent to answer it, would the inquiry suggested by Mr. Darwin convince an honest doubter that man is the descendant of a lower animal? Suppose that “man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties”; suppose that “such variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals”; and suppose that all the other conditions enumerated by Mr. Darwin are verified—would we then be justified in concluding that “man is a modified descendant of some pre-existing form”? Evidently not. The utmost that logic would allow us to grant is that the present form of human beings, owing to the slight variations transmitted to us by our human ancestors, may exhibit some accidental features slightly different from those which were possessed by the primitive men, yet without any change of the specific form, which must always remain essentially the same. But Mr. Darwin is not content with this. His peculiar logic allows him to confound the accidental and unimportant variations that occur within the limits of any single species with a gradual transition from one species to another—a transition which science no less than philosophy utterly rejects. Nowhere in nature do we find an instance of such a pretended transition. Varieties are indeed very numerous, but none of them show the least departure from the species to which they belong. The oak emits every year thousands of leaves, of which each one differs from every other in some accidental feature; but who has ever seen the oak-leaves change into fir-leaves, or fig-leaves, or maple-leaves, or any other leaves? If nature admitted such a specific change, a thousand indications would awaken our attention to the fact. The transition, being gradual, would leave everywhere innumerable traces of its reality. There would be all around us a host of transitional forms from the fish to the lizard, from the lizard to the bird, from the bird to the ape, and from the ape to man. But where do we find such transitional forms? Science itself proclaims that they have no existence. Hence to affirm the transition from one species to another is a gross scientific blunder, whatever Mr. Darwin and his eminent associates may say to the contrary.
In the third place, even admitting that a gradual transition from one species to another were not rejected by science, Mr. Darwin’s view would still remain a ludicrous absurdity. In fact, the pretended transition from a form of a lower to a form of a higher species would be an open violation of the principle of causality; and therefore, if any transition were to be admitted at all, it could only be a transition from a higher to a lower species. Thus, the transition from a human to a brutish form by continual deterioration and degradation, though repugnant to other principles, would not conflict with the principle of causality, inasmuch as deterioration and degradation are negative results, which may be brought about by mere lack of intellectual, moral, and social development. But the transition from a brutish to a human form would be a positive effect without a positive proportionate cause. The lower cannot generate the higher, because to constitute the higher something is necessary which the lower cannot impart. Just as a force = 10 cannot produce an effect = 20, so cannot the irrational brute produce the rational man. To assume the contrary is to assume that the less contains the greater, that emptiness begets fulness—in a word, that nature is a standing contradiction.
A full development of this last consideration would lead us too far from our line of argument, as it would require a psychological treatment of the subject. We will merely remark that _rational_ and _irrational_ differ not only in degree but in kind; that the human soul is not produced by the forces of nature, but proceeds directly and immediately from God’s creative action; and that Darwinism, which ignores the soul’s spirituality and immortality, is, on this account also, a monument of philosophical ignorance.
But let us proceed. The author considers it an important point to ascertain “whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence, and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or in mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated.” This is another of Mr. Darwin’s delusions. It is not in the nature of man that the stronger should murder the weaker. Man, as a rule, is benevolent towards his kind, and even savages respect the life of the weak; whereas it is always the stronger that go to battle and fall in the struggle. Thus a struggle for existence, occasioned by a too rapid increase, would deprive the race of its best men and mar its further development. On the other hand, if at any time or in any place there has been a struggle for existence, it is in our large cities that we can best study the nature of its results. Is it in London, Paris, Berlin, or Vienna that we meet the best specimens of the race? Surely, if there is a tremendous struggle for existence anywhere, it is in such capitals as these; and yet no one is ignorant that such proud cities would, in a few generations, sink into insignificance, were they not continually refurnished with new blood from the country, where the best propagators of the race are brought up in great numbers and without any apparent struggle for existence. But we need not dwell any further on this point. A struggle for existence presupposes existence; and if man existed before struggling, the origin of man does not depend on his struggle. Hence the so-called “important point” has really no importance whatever.
Then he asks: “Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct?” and he answers the question in the affirmative. To this we have no objection. We only remark that “races” and “species” are not synonymous; hence it is surprising how a naturalist of Mr. Darwin’s celebrity could show the least hesitation which of the two terms he ought to apply to mankind.
He proceeds to examine “how far the bodily structure of man shows traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form,” and he contends that the existence of such “traces” can be proved, first, from the similarity of bodily structure in men and beasts; secondly, from the similarity of their embryonic development; thirdly, from the existence of rudimentary organs, which show that man and all other vertebrate animals have been constructed on the same general model.
Bearing in mind that Mr. Darwin’s object is to prove that there are “traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from some lower form, we cannot help expressing our astonishment when we find that he has failed to see the necessity of grounding his proofs on a secure foundation. That the bodily structure of man has some resemblance to the structure of other mammals; that all the bones of his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal; that this comparison may be extended to his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal viscera; that the brain, the most important of all organs, follows the same law, etc., etc., are indeed well-known facts, from which we rightly infer that man is constructed on the same _general_ type as other mammals. But can these same facts be considered as “traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from any lower form? Mr. Darwin says _Yes_; but instead of giving any conclusive reason for his assertion, he loses his time in accumulating superfluous anatomical and physiological details which, however instructive, have no bearing upon the thesis he has engaged to prove.
To prove his assumption he ought to have made a syllogism somewhat like the following:
Wherever there is similarity of bodily structure or development there are “traces” of a common origin or descent;
But man and other mammals have similar bodily structures and a similar development;
Therefore man and other mammals show “traces” of a common origin or descent.
This argument would have left no escape to the most decided adversary of the Darwinian view, if its first proposition had been susceptible of demonstration. But Mr. Darwin, seeing the utter impossibility of demonstrating it, and yet being unable to dispense with it, resorted to the ordinary trick of his school, which consists in assuming latently what they dare not openly maintain; and thus he turned the whole attention of his reader to the second proposition, which had no need of demonstration, as it was not questioned by instructed men. Thus the twenty pages of physiologic lore with which Mr. Darwin in this chapter distracts and amuses his readers may be styled, in a logical point of view, a prolonged _ignoratio elenchi_—an effort to prove that which is conceded instead of that which is denied—a blunder into which men of science of the modern type are sure to fall when they presume to meddle with matters above their reach.
There is one sense only in which it may be affirmed that the similarity of bodily structure in men and lower animals proves their common origin, and it is this: that men and animals have been made by the same Creator on a similar ideal type of homogeneous organic arrangements; in other terms, that their organic similarity proves them to be the work of the same Maker. Man was destined to live on this earth among other inferior animals and surrounded by like conditions. His animal life was therefore to be dependent on similar means of support, exposed to similar influences, and subject to similar needs. It is not surprising, then, that he should have received from a wise Creator an organic constitution similar to that of the inferior creatures that were placed around him. This fully accounts for the similarity of the human organism with that of other mammals. But to say that because the bodily structure of man is similar to that of the ape, therefore man is the descendant of the ape, is as nonsensical as to say that because the bodily structure of the ape is similar to that of man, therefore the ape is the descendant of man. How was it possible for Mr. Darwin to lay down such an absurd principle, and not foresee how easily it might be turned against his own conclusion?
Thus the argument drawn from the similarity of bodily structure is a mere delusion. It avails nothing to say that man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc. This fact, says Mr. Darwin, “proves the similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analysis.” But this is a mistake; for the evidence afforded by the microscope as to existing diversities cannot be negatived by any guesses of ours respecting the communication of diseases and its conditions; it being evident that what is obscure and mysterious is not calculated to weaken the certitude of a fact which we see with our own eyes. Nor does it matter that “medicines produce the same effect on them [monkeys] as on us,” or that many monkeys “have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors,” or even that a certain monkey “smoked tobacco with pleasure” in Mr. Darwin’s presence. These and other details of the same nature may be interesting, but they are no indication of a common origin, except in the sense which we have pointed out—viz., that they are the work of the same Maker.
But, says Mr. Darwin, “the homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions. On any other view the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable. It is no scientific explanation to assert that they have all been formed on the same ideal plan.” These words, which occur at the end of the chapter we are examining, show how little Mr. Darwin understands the duty of his position as author of a new theory. To say that an explanation is not _scientific_ is a very poor excuse for setting it aside. Science, if not perverted, is an excellent thing, but it does not profess to give an explanation of every subject we may think of. Its range is co-extensive with the material world, but only with respect to matter and its modifications as known by observation and experiment. This means that there are numberless things about which science is altogether incompetent to speak, because such things do not fall under observation and experiment. To pretend, therefore, that an explanation which is not scientific has no claim to be heeded by a man of science, is like pretending that a man of science, as such, must remain in blissful ignorance of everything which transcends experiment and observation. Will Mr. Darwin reject historical explanations of historical events, philosophical explanations of philosophical conclusions, mathematical explanations of mathematical questions? The origin of things is not a scientific but a philosophic problem. Science cannot speak of creation, of which it can have no experimental knowledge; it gives it up to the philosopher and the theologian, who alone know the grounds on which it must be demonstrated. The question, then, whether mammals have all been formed on the same _ideal_ plan, is not scientific, and therefore it needs no scientific explanation. The plea that the explanation is not scientific might be held valid, if Mr. Darwin had humbly acknowledged his inability to rise above matter, and his incompetency to give a judgment in philosophic matters; but his disregard of the explanation shows that, when he calls it _not scientific_, he desires his reader to believe that it is _anti-scientific_ or irreconcilable with science; and this is as absurd as if he pretended that reason and science destroy one another.
On the other hand, what shall we say of the pretended “scientific” explanation offered by Mr. Darwin? “The homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor.” Is this appeal to a common progenitor a scientific explanation of the fact in question? If a common progenitor accounts scientifically for the fact, why should not a common Creator account scientifically for it? Science—that is, Mr. Darwin’s science—does not know a common Creator; it knows even less of a common progenitor; and yet it sets up the latter to exclude the former, and boasts that its gratuitous and degrading hypothesis is a “scientific” explanation! Yet all true scientists aver that no instance has ever been found of a transition from one species to another; philosophers go even further, and show that such a transition is against nature. Hence Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, far from being scientific, contradicts science and philosophy, observation and experiment, reason and fact. The descent from a common progenitor, even if it made “intelligible” the similarity of different mammals, would still be unscientific. The ancients accounted for the movement of the heavenly bodies by putting them under the control of intellectual agents. This hypothesis made the astronomical phenomena intelligible. The fall of heavy bodies was accounted for by assuming that all such bodies had a natural intrinsic tendency to a central point. This hypothesis, too, made the fall of bodies intelligible. Even in modern physics a number of hypotheses have been proposed regarding light, magnetism, electricity, chemical changes, etc., to make phenomena intelligible. But hypotheses, however satisfactory at first, are soon discarded when a deeper study of the facts reveals new features and new relations for which such hypotheses cannot account. This is why the hypothesis of the descent of all mammals from a common progenitor, even if it seems to make their homological construction intelligible in a manner, must be rejected. For in every species of mammals we find features for which the hypothesis cannot account, and relations of genetic opposition by which the hypothesis is reduced to nothing.
Mr. Darwin says that, “on any other view, the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable.” We do not see any great similarity between the hand of a man and the foot of a horse or the flipper of a seal, etc. We would rather say, with Mr. Darwin’s permission, that we see in all such organs a great dissimilarity. Each of them has a special adaptation to a special end, and each of them is constructed on a different specific pattern. Their similarity is therefore generic, not specific; and, accordingly, each species must have its own distinct progenitors. We might make other remarks, but we are afraid that we have already taxed the patience of the reader to a greater extent than the case requires; and therefore we will now pass to the second argument of the author.
This second argument is drawn from the consideration of the embryonic development. “Man,” says Mr. Darwin, “is developed from an ovule about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.” This is a very reckless assertion. For how does Mr. Darwin happen to know that the human ovule “differs in no respect” from the ovules of other animals? When a man of science lays down an assertion as the groundwork of his doctrine, he must be able to show that the assertion is true. Hence we are entitled to ask on what foundation our great scientist can maintain his proposition. Will he appeal to the microscope? Probably he will, but to no purpose; for he has just declared, as we have seen, that the best microscope does not reveal everything with sufficient distinction. On the other hand, if he resorts to the mode of reasoning which he has just employed while speaking of diseases—that is, if he argues from the effects to the causes—he cannot but defeat himself; for, as similarity of diseases was, in his judgment, a proof of similar organic structure, so now the dissimilarity of the final development of two ovules will be a proof that the two ovules are really dissimilar. One ovule constantly develops into a monkey, another constantly develops into a dog, and a third constantly develops into a man. Is it conceivable that the three ovules are identically the same, so as to “differ in no respect”? We do not know what Mr. Darwin will reply. At any rate he cannot reply on scientific grounds; for science neither knows the intimate constitution of the ovules, nor is it likely ever to know it, as the primordial organic molecules baffle the best microscopic investigations.
“The embryo itself,” he adds, “at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom.... At a somewhat later period, when the extremities are developed, ‘the feet of lizards and mammals,’ as the illustrious Von Baer remarks, ‘the wings and feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of man, all arise from the same fundamental form.’ It is, says Prof. Huxley, ‘quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape.’”
If these assertions and quotations are intended as a proof that the human ovule “differs in no respect” from the ovules of lower animals, we must confess that our advanced scientific thinkers are endowed with a wonderful power of blinding themselves. We have two ovules: the one develops into hands and feet; the other develops into wings and feathers; and yet we are told that they are both “_the same_ fundamental form”! What is the fundamental form? Who has seen it? We are sure that neither Prof. Huxley nor the illustrious Von Baer has had the privilege of inspecting and determining the proper form of the mysterious organism known under the name of ovule. Much less have they, or has Mr. Darwin, discerned what is fundamental and what is not in its constitution. They are, therefore, not more competent to judge of the fundamental sameness of two ovules than is the blind to judge of colors; and their view, as founded on nothing but presumption and ignorance, must be considered altogether unscientific.
The same view is also, as we have already shown, eminently unphilosophic. If two ovules are essentially the same and “differ in no respect” from one another, what is it that causes them invariably to develop into different specific organisms? Does a constant difference in the effects countenance the idea that they proceed from identical causes? It is evident that a theory which resorts to such absurdities for its support has no claim to be accepted, or even tolerated, by lovers of reason and truth. The very boldness of its affirmations, its air of dogmatism, its allegation of partisan authorities, and its contempt of fundamental principles prove it to be nothing but a flippant attempt at imposition.
Although Mr. Darwin has insisted so strongly on the similarity between our bodily structure and that of the lower animals, and although he has endeavored to convince us that the human ovule differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals, yet he is compelled by abundant evidence to admit that there is something in man which does not exist in the lower animals, and something in the lower animals which does not exist in man. How does he account for these organic differences? Men of science, only twenty years ago, would have explained the fact by the old philosophical and scientific axiom, _Omne animal generat simile sibi_, which means that each species of animals has progenitors of the same species; whence they would have inferred by legitimate deduction that animals of different species owe their specific differences to their having issued from progenitors of different species. This explanation was universally received, as it was supported by an induction based on centuries of observation, without a single example to the contrary. It was, therefore, a truly scientific explanation. But twenty years are passed, and with them (if we believe Mr. Darwin) the axioms, the logic, and the experimental knowledge of all centuries have disappeared from the world of science, to make room for higher and deeper conceptions. It was not an easy task, that of giving the lie to a uniform and perpetual experience; but to Mr. Darwin nothing is difficult. He needs only a word. With one word, “Rudiments,” he is confident that he will transform the objections of the old science into arguments in his favor, just as King Midas by the touch of his hand transmuted everything into shining gold.
The world has hitherto believed that man has only two hands, whereas the monkey has four. But we must not say this in Mr. Darwin’s face. If we did, he would inform us that we are strangely mistaken. Man, he pretends, belongs to the order of quadrumana; hence he has four hands no less than the monkey, though two of them are used as feet, which may be considered as rudimentary or undeveloped hands. If we were to remark in his presence that monkeys have a tail, whilst man can boast of no such elegant appendage, he would immediately confound our ignorance by informing us that we all possess a rudimentary tail, which might be made to develop and grow by mere local irritation.
In this way he explains all the organic differences which separate one species from another. Every difference is made to depend either on the development in man of an organ which is undeveloped and rudimentary in lower animals, or on the development in lower animals of some organ which is rudimentary and undeveloped in man. To explain this theory he reasons as follows:
“The chief agents in causing organs to become rudimentary seem to have been disuse at that period of life when the organ is chiefly used (and this is generally during maturity), and also inheritance at a corresponding period of life. The term ‘disuse’ does not relate merely to the lessened action of muscles, but includes a diminished flow of blood to a part or organ from being subjected to fewer alterations of pressure, or from becoming in any way less habitually active. Rudiments, however, may occur in one sex of those parts which are normally present in the other sex; and such rudiments, as we shall hereafter see, have often originated in a way distinct from those here referred to. In some cases organs have been reduced by means of natural selection, from having become injurious to the species under changed habits of life. The process of reduction is probably often aided through the two principles of compensation and economy of growth; but the later stages of reduction, after disuse has done all that can fairly be attributed to it, and when the saving to be effected by the economy of growth would be very small, are difficult to understand. The final and complete suppression of a part already useless and much reduced in size, in which case neither compensation nor economy can come into play, is perhaps intelligible by the aid of the hypothesis of pangenesis.”
On this passage, which forms the main foundation of the Darwinian theory of rudiments, much might be said; but we must limit ourselves to the following obvious remark. Science and philosophy reason on ascertained facts, but do not invent them; whereas Mr. Darwin in this very passage, as in many others, not only invents with poetic liberty all the facts which he needs to build up his theory, but also violates the laws of reasoning by drawing from his imaginary facts such conclusions as even real facts would not warrant. Philosophy would certainly not allow him to assume without proof that “organs _become_ rudimentary”; for this is not an ascertained fact. Nor would philosophy permit the gratuitous introduction of rudiments derived “from the corresponding organs of other more developed animals”; for there is no evidence that such has ever been the case. Nor would philosophy sanction “the final and complete suppression of a part already useless”; for on the one hand we have no means of knowing whether a part be really useless, and on the other no total suppression of organic parts has ever been known to occur (except in monsters) within the range of any given species. Nor would philosophy permit an appeal to the hypothesis of pangenesis or to the principle of compensation to evade the difficulties of which the new theory cannot give a solution; for the hypothesis of pangenesis is itself in need of proof, and the principle of compensation involves, in our case, a begging of the question, inasmuch as it assumes the mutability of species—the very thing which the theory is intended to demonstrate.
But, says Mr. Darwin, perhaps the hypothesis of pangenesis would make “intelligible” the suppression of a useless part. Let it be so, though we hold the contrary to be true; what then? Is all hypothesis to be accepted which would make a thing “intelligible”? The succession of days and nights was intelligible in the Ptolemaic hypothesis; the loss of a battle becomes intelligible by the hypothesis of treason; the death of an old woman is intelligible by the hypothesis of starvation; but no man of sense would mistake the hypothesis for a fact. The truth is that Mr. Darwin, before attempting the explanation of what he calls “the final and complete suppression of a part,” was bound to prove that the absence of such a part was a _real suppression_ of the pre-existing part. This he has not done; in fact, he had no means of doing it. Hence all his reasonings on this subject are paralogistic, and his theory of rudiments is a rope of sand.
The preceding remarks are fully applicable to the other examples of rudiments given by the author in the fourteen remaining pages of the chapter. Thus, “rudiments of various muscles have been observed in many parts of the human body.” We flatly deny the assertion. “Not a few muscles which are regularly present in some of the lower animals can occasionally be detected in man in a greatly-reduced condition.” We answer that such muscles are not at all in a _reduced_ condition, but in the condition originally required by the nature of the individual. “Remnants of the _panniculus carnosus_ in an efficient state are found in various parts of our bodies; for instance, the muscle on the forehead by which the eyebrows are raised.” On what ground can this muscle be called a _remnant_? “The muscles which serve to move the external ear are in a rudimentary condition in man.... The whole external shell (of the ear) may be considered a rudiment, together with the various folds and prominences which in the lower animals strengthen and support the ear when erect.” Where is the proof of such rudimentary condition? “The nictitating membrane is especially well developed in birds, ... but in man it exists as a mere rudiment, called the semilunar fold.” How is it proved that the semilunar fold is a mere rudiment, and not a special organism, purposely contrived by the hand of the Creator at the first production of man?
Mr. Darwin goes on making any number of assertions of the same kind, not one of which is or can be substantiated, and yet at the end of the
## chapter closes his argumentation in the following triumphant words:
“Consequently, we ought frankly to admit their community of descent [of man and other vertebrate animals]. To take any other view is to admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment. This conclusion is greatly strengthened, if we look to the members of the whole animal series, and consider the evidence derived from their affinities or classification, their geographical distribution and geological succession. It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion. But the time will before long come when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists who were well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man and other mammals should have believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation.”
This conclusion, though well known, and already famous throughout the scientific world, is here given in the proper words of the great naturalist, that the reader may see what unbounded confidence a man of science can place in himself and in his speculations. All the scientific world, excepting a few sectarian unbelievers, is against him; he knows it, and he is not dismayed. If you listen to him, his opponents are “arrogant”; they demur to his conclusion only because they pretend to be “the descendants of demi-gods.” He alone is right, he alone understands science. Buffon, Cuvier, Quatrefages, Agassiz, Elam, Frédault, and a host of other naturalists are evidently wrong. In fact, all philosophers are wrong; Mr. Darwin alone knows how to interpret scientific results; and he is so sure of this that he ventures to prophesy his approaching triumph over those benighted naturalists who, though “well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man and other mammals,” are nevertheless so foolish as to believe that each species is the work of a separate act of creation. Such is his modesty!
Perhaps we, too, may be allowed to venture a little prophecy. Mr. Darwin is not young, and before many years, we are sorry to say, death will snatch him from us; his scientific friends in England and in Germany will shed a cold tear on his dead “mammalian structure,” while his spiritual and immortal soul will be summoned before the God he has insulted in the noblest of his creatures, to account for the abuse of his talents, and to receive the sentence due to those who know and disregard truth. Then the _Descent of Man_ will soon be a thing of the past; and those who now sing its praises in all tunes, and feign such an enthusiastic conviction of its coming triumph, will become the laughing stock of cultivated society, unless they put a timely end to their “scientific” jugglery. This is the fate which the common sense of mankind keeps in store for the Darwinian theory.
Mr. Darwin, in formulating his conclusion, sums up the whole discussion in a single sentence: “To take any other view is to admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment.” No doubt a “snare” is laid; not, however, by the Author of nature, but by the author of the _Descent of Man_. The homologousness of animal structures does not prove a common genetic descent: it only proves, as we have shown, that all such structures are the work of the same Maker; hence the arbitrary substitution of a common progenitor for a common Creator is “a mere snare” laid by Mr. Darwin to entrap the judgment of the ignorant. We say _of the ignorant_; for he who knows anything about philosophy will simply wonder at the audacity of a writer who derives reason from unreason, and intellect from organism; and he who knows anything about divine revelation will rebuke him for his disregard of the Mosaic history, than which no document has greater antiquity or higher authority; whereas he who knows anything of zoölogy will be scandalized at the impudence of a man who dares to contradict in the name of science what he knows to be an unquestionable fact and a fundamental principle of science—viz., the unchangeableness of species.
To “strengthen” his worthless conclusion Mr. Darwin bids us look to “the members of the whole animal series” and consider “the evidence derived from their affinities or classification, their geographical distribution and geological succession.” But it must be evident to every intelligent reader that the considerations here suggested by Mr. Darwin are not calculated to “strengthen” his position. Between the members of the animal series there are not only affinities, but also specific differences and incompatibilities, which a man of science ought not to ignore, were they ever so embarrassing to his inventive genius. And as to the “geological succession” of animal forms, need we remind Mr. Darwin that the geological remains and their succession afford the most peremptory refutation of his theory? He himself acknowledges that no transitional forms from one species to another have been dug up from the bowels of the earth; whereas his theory requires a succession of animal remains of all transitional forms and in all stages of development. It would have been wiser for him to have kept back all mention of geology; but, alas! those who lay snares for others sometimes succeed also in entrapping themselves.
This may suffice to give an idea of the first chapter of the _Descent of Man_, and even of the whole work. Everywhere we find the same want of rigorous logic, the same absence of method, the same disregard of principles, and the same abundance of fanciful assumptions. Such is not the proceeding of science. “I believe,” says Prof. Agassiz, “that the Darwinian system is pernicious and fatal to the progress of the sciences.” “This system,” says Dr. Constantin James, “starts from the unknown, appeals to evidences which are nowhere to be found, and falls into consequences which are simply absurd and impossible. One would say that Darwin merely undertook to blot out creation and bring back chaos.”[111] We cannot, without trespassing on the limits prescribed to this article, give the scientific arguments by which these and other eminent writers set at naught the assumptions, the reasonings, and the conclusions of our eccentric “mammalian,” but we venture to say that if the reader procures a copy of Dr. James’ work, and examines the Darwinian theory in the light of the facts that the learned author has culled from physiology, palæontology, and other branches of science connected with the history of the animal world, he will be fully satisfied that the _Descent of Man_ is nothing but a congeries of blunders.
But we may be asked: How is it possible to admit that a theory so manifestly absurd should have been received with enthusiasm and lauded to the skies by men of recognized ability and scientific eminence? The answer is obvious. Scientific eminence, as now understood, means only acquaintance with the materials of science, and is no warrant against false reasoning. “There can be fools in science as well as in any other walk in life,” says a well-known English writer: “in fact, in proportion to the small aggregate number of scientific men, I should be disposed to think that there is a greater percentage in that class than in any other.” But the same writer gives us another remarkable explanation of the fact.
“I have read,” says he, “the writings of Mr. Darwin and Prof. Huxley and others, and had the advantage of personal talk with an eminent friend of theirs who shares their views, and I have read without prejudice, but failed to find that they advanced one solid argument in support of their views. I am quite certain that, if this controversy could be turned into a law suit, any judge on the bench would dismiss the case against the evolutionists with costs, without calling for a reply. The eminent friend I allude to, himself one of the first of living mathematicians, and an intimate associate of Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, etc., and sharing their views, was candid enough to admit that the theory was beset with difficulties, that quite as many facts were against it as for it, that it hardly seemed susceptible of proof. And when I asked why he held the theory under such a condition of the evidence; why, on the assumption of this law, Dr. Tyndall chaffed and derided prayer, and Prof. Huxley gnashed his teeth at dogma and chuckled over the base descent of man, his reply was: ‘We are bound to hold it, because it is the only theory yet propounded which can account for life, all we see of life, without the intervention of a God. Nature must be held to be capable of producing everything by herself and within herself, with no interference _ab extra_, and this theory explains how she may have done it. Hence we feel bound to hold it, and to teach it.’ Shade of Bacon! here is science!”[112]
These words need no comment of ours. We knew already from other evidences that a conspiracy had been formed with the aim of turning science against religion, and we now see its work. We have here a candid avowal that the enthusiasm of certain scientists for the new theory has its root in malice, not in reason, and is kept up, though with ever-increased difficulty, in the interest not of science but of a brutal atheism. In fact, science has nothing to do with the origin of man; and the very attempt at transforming a historical event into a scientific speculation clearly reveals the wicked determination of obscuring, corrupting, and discrediting truth. To carry out their object the leaders of the conspiracy organized a body of infidel scientists, doctors, professors, lecturers, and journalists; they took hold of the scientific press, which was to illustrate the names and magnify the merits of such men as Moleschott, Louis Büchner, Wolff, Von Baer, or such men as Clausius, Tyndall, Spencer, and Comte, or as Huxley, Draper, and Häckel—a task not at all difficult, as these men, and others whom we might name, were all bound together in a mutual-admiration society, in which the celebrity of each member was an honor and an encouragement for all the other members, and the praises lavished upon each one were repaid with interest to all the others. Thus they have become great scientific oracles, each and all; and by ignoring as completely as possible the writings, the discoveries, and even the existence of those men of science who did not fall on their knees before the new ideas, they succeeded in creating a belief that they alone were in possession of scientific truth, and they alone were enlightened enough to point out with infallible certainty the hidden path of progress.
Their success, to judge from the number and tone of their scientific publications, must have been very flattering to their vanity. It is probable, however, that their noise is greater than their success. The profligate and the sceptic may, of course, relish a theory which assimilates them to the ape or the hog, makes the soul a modification of matter, and suppresses God; but the honest, the pure, the thoughtful are not easily duped by the low hypotheses of these modern thinkers. Society in general rejects with disgust a doctrine which aims at degrading humanity and destroying the bases of morality, religion, and civilization. If there is no God, rights and duties, the main ties of the social body, must be given up; justice will become an unmeaning word, and civil and criminal courts a tyrannical institution. If man is only a modified beast, if his soul is not immortal, if his end is like that of the dog, then why should the stronger refrain from hunting and devouring the weaker? Do we not hunt and kill and eat other animals? Alas! the progress of humanity towards barbarism and cannibalism is so intimately and inevitably connected with Darwinism that even the most uncivilized of human beings would protest against its admission.
That society is still unwilling to submit to the dictation of this advanced science, and that common sense is yet strong enough to silence the present scientific blustering, is a fact of which we find an implicit confession in the writings and addresses of anti-Christian thinkers. _Nature_, a weekly illustrated journal of science, the _Popular Science Monthly_, and other publications of the infidel party, do not cease to inculcate the introduction of science (materialism, evolution, pantheism, etc.) into the schools frequented by our children. They have found that our schools are not godless enough to secure the triumph of unbelief: they are godless in a negative sense only, inasmuch as they ignore God; but now they must be made positively godless by teaching theories which do away with creation, which deny providence, which leave no hope of reward, and ridicule all fear of punishment in an after-life; and they must be made positively immoral by teaching that man is always right in following his animal proclivities, as all other animals do, and that no human being can be justly called to account for his doings, it being demonstrated by science that what we call “free-will” is an organic function subject to invariable laws, like everything else in the material world, with no greater freedom to choose its course than a stone has under terrestrial attraction. These doctrines are widely circulated in printed works, but make few converts, owing to the fact that they come too late, and find the minds of men already imbued with principles of an opposite nature; and, therefore, it is now proposed to instil all this poison into the minds of the young, who have no antidote at hand to counteract its destructive action. We hope that this new attempt will be defeated; but when we see that the attempt is considered necessary for a successful diffusion of the false scientific theories of the day, we cannot be much mistaken if we infer that the success of such theories up to the present time has been less satisfactory to the infidel schemers than their publications pretend.
As for the _Descent of Man_, however, no amount of sophistry, in our opinion, will succeed in making it fashionable. The Darwinian theory is utterly unscientific and unphilosophical. Common sense, geology, and history condemn it; logic proclaims it a fraud; and human dignity throws upon it a look of pity and dismisses it with ineffable contempt. Mr. Darwin may yet live long enough to see his theory totally eclipsed and forgotten, when he will ask himself whether it would not have been better to devote his talents, his time, and his labor to striving to elevate rather than striving to debase his kind.
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MICKEY CASEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER-PARTY.
In a large, gloomy, bald-looking house in Merrion Street, Dublin, lived a red-faced, red-haired little attorney rejoicing in the name of Mickey Casey. There is no man better known in Green Street than Mickey, and no member of the profession whose services are more eagerly retained by the luckless ones whose “misfortunes” have brought them within range of the “blessing of the recorder.” Mickey knows the exact moment to bully, concede, or back out; and as for the law, it has been said of him that there is not a dirty lane or alley in the whole of the Acts of Parliament in which he has not mentally resided for the benefit of his _clientèle_, as well as to his own especial emolument. When Mr. Casey was put up for membership of the Law Club, there was much muttering and considerable frowning in the smoking-room of that legally exclusive establishment while his chances of success were being weighed in the balance and found wanting; but the election being judiciously set down for the long vacation, and Mickey having offered several of the leading members unlimited shooting over his trifle of property in the neighborhood of Derrymachulish—which, as all well-informed people are aware, lies in the very heart of the County Tipperary—somehow or other he pulled through by the “skin of his teeth,” and became socially, as he was by act of Parliament, a _gentleman_ in the profession.
Mickey was a cheery little man, who loved a drop of the “crayture” not wisely but too well, and whose whole soul was wrapped up in his only child, a daughter, a mincing young lady, who was now close upon her nineteenth birthday, and who bore a most unmistakable resemblance to her sire in the color of her hair, her “chaney blue” eyes, and a bulbous-shaped—vulgarly termed thumbottle—nose.
“I’ve spent oceans of money on me daughter’s education, sir,” Mickey would exclaim. “Oceans—Atlantic and Pacific. She’s had masters and mistresses, and tutors and governesses, and short lessons and long lessons, some at a guinea apiece, sir—yes, begar, a guinea for thirty minutes jingling on a piana. But she’s come out of it well; I’ve got her through, and the sentence of the court is that she’s as fine a performer as there is in Dublin in the way of an amatewer.”
Mrs. Casey was a very stout, very florid, very untidy lady, whose face never bore traces of any recent lavatory process, and whose garments appeared to have dropped upon her from the ceiling by chance, retaining their original _pose_. The parting of her hair bore a strong resemblance to forked lightning, and her nails reminded the visitor of family bereavement, so deep the mourning in which they were invariably enshrined. She, in common with her husband, was wrapped up in her daughter, and lost to every consideration other than the advancement of her child’s welfare and happiness.
Matilda Casey was spoiled in her cradle, spoiled at school, spoiled at home. Her word was law, her every whim gratified, her every wish anticipated. Her parents were her slaves. Dressed by Mrs. Manning, the Worth of Dublin, at fancy prices, the newest Parisian toilettes were flaunted upon Miss Casey’s neat little figure, whilst her mother went in greasy gowns of antiquated date and old-world pattern. The brougham was at her beck, and Mrs. Casey was flattered beyond measure when offered a seat in it. She asked whom she pleased to Merrion Street, and many people came and went whom her mother never even saw. In furtherance of her musical talents she had boxes at the Theatre Royal and Gaiety for any performance it pleased her Serene Highness to select, while she forced her father to run the gauntlet of musical societies in order to ensure the necessary vouchers of admission.
And yet Matilda Casey was by no means a bad sort of girl. Her heart was in the right place, but her brains were blown out—to use a homely metaphor—by the flattery and incense which were being perpetually offered up at her shrine, until she was seized with a mad craving to enter the portals of the best society.
Hitherto she had but stood at the gate, like the Peri, gazing through the golden bars, and was more or less inclined to accept her position; but there came a time when she resolved upon endeavoring to _force_ her way through.
The task that lay before her was a terrible one—a task full of weeping, and wailing, and mortification, and heart-burning, and gnashing of teeth. Society in Dublin is as exclusive as in the Faubourg St. Germain. The line is so distinctly drawn that no person can cross it by mere accident. “No trespassers admitted” is written up in letters of cold steel. The viceregal “set” won’t have the professional set, save those whose offices entitle them to the _entrèe_, and then they are but tolerated. The professional set won’t know the mercantile set, and here society stops short. A shopkeeper, be his store as large as Stewart’s and be he as wealthy as Rothschild, has no chance. He is a Pariah, and must pitch his tent out in that wilderness peopled by nobodies. The great struggle lies with the mercantile people to become blended with the professionals. This is done by money. Of course there are exceptional cases, but such a case is _rara avis in terris_.
Matilda Casey was in no set. The people with whom she was acquainted, though not amongst the outcasts, held no position whatsoever. Clerks in the Bank of Ireland residing at Rathmines; commercial travellers; custom-house employés; attorneys of cadaverous practice, or of a practice that meant no weight in the profession; needy barristers perpetually kotowing to her father for business, and obsequiously civil to her _as business_—these people with their wives formed her surroundings, and she was sick of them, tired, disgusted, bored to death. Why should she not be acquainted with the daughter of Mr. Bigwig, Q.C., who resided next door? Surely she played better than Miss Bigwig, and dressed better, and rode in her brougham, while Miss B. trudged in thick-soled boots in the mud. She had left cards on the Bigwigs upon their coming to Merrion Street, but her visit had never been returned, while that shabby little girl, Miss Oliver, was for ever in and out there; and what was Miss Oliver’s papa but an attorney?
Why was she not at some of the balls perpetually going on around her?—the rattling of the cabs to and from which, during the night and morning, kept her awake upon her tear-bedewed pillow.
Why did the Serges, of the firm of Serge & Twist, the linen-drapers in Sackville Street, leave her out of their invitations to their afternoon teas? Assuredly they were no great swells, and she had driven Miss Serge on more than one occasion in her brougham, and had sent Mrs. Serge a bouquet of hot-house flowers when that lady was laid up with the measles.
How came it that their social circle never increased save in the wrong direction? Had she not persuaded her papa to give a brief to young Mr. Bronsbill, who was possessed of as much brains as a nutmeg-grater, and whose advocacy cost Mr. Casey’s client his cause, in order to become acquainted with his family?—Mr. B. having informed her—the treacherous villain!—that his mother and sisters intended to call upon her.
Had she not thrown open the house to Mr. and Mrs. Minnion, whom she had met at the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, the preceding summer, in the hope of those delightful introductions which the artful Mrs. M. had held out like a glittering jewel before her entranced and eager gaze? Had not Mr. and Mrs. Minnion eaten, drunk, and slept in Merrion Street? And whom did they introduce? A little drunken captain of militia, who insisted upon coming there at unlawful hours of the night, and in calling for brandy and soda-water, as if the establishment was a public-house, and not even a respectable hotel!
But Fortune is not for ever cruel, and the wheel will turn up a prize at possibly the least expected moment.
Mickey Casey knew his daughter’s heart-burning, and strove might and main to ease it by even one throb. He gave dinner-parties to the best class of men with whom he was acquainted, feeding them like “fighting-cocks” upon _petit dîners_ served by Mitchell, of Grafton Street, and giving them wines of the rarest vintages from the cellars of Turbot & Redmond.
“Ye’ll come to see us again, won’t ye?” he would say to his guest. “And I say, just bring your wife the next time. Me daughter will send the brougham—cost a hundred and fifty at Hutton’s—say Monday next.”
The guest would declare how delighted his wife would be to make the acquaintance of so charming a young lady as Miss Casey; but when the Monday came round, and with it a dinner fit for the viceroy, the guest would arrive wifeless, the lady being laid up with a cold, or “that dreadful baby, you know,” or “visitors from the country,” and the banquet would be served in a lugubrious silence, save when the daughter of the house ventured upon some cutting sarcasm anent snobbery and stuck-up people.
Matilda Casey could make such a guest wish himself over a mutton-chop in his own establishment, instead of the salmi of partridge or plover’s eggs served in silver dishes at Number 190 Merrion Street: and she did it, too.
“I’ve news for ye, Matilda,” exclaimed Casey one evening as he took his seat at the dinner-table. “I’ve news for ye, pet. I defended old Colonel Bowdler in a case in which a servant sued him for wages, and got him off at half-price. He’s on half-pay, lives with his wife in Stephen’s Green, and is a tip-topper, mixing with the lord-lieutenant’s household as if they were his own.”
“Well, and what is that to me?” exclaimed Miss Casey with considerable asperity.
“This, me darling: he was so pleased at the way I got him out on half-pay—ha! ha! ha!—that he and his wife—wife, mind ye—are coming to call on you to-morrow.”
Mrs. Casey was never taken into account, Matilda being the central figure.
“Pshaw! I wonder you can be such a fool, papa. It’s the old story,” retorted his daughter. “This colonel will come here, eat our dinners, drink our wine, and perhaps drop his wife’s card without her knowledge, as Mr. Neligan did—as we found out to our mortification when we went to return a visit that was never paid, and were politely told by Mrs. Neligan that her husband had never even mentioned our names to her.”
“Never fear, Matilda. We’re in the right box this time. They’ll be here to-morrow, you may depend upon it.”
Casey had his own good reasons for believing that the colonel would bide tryste—of which more anon. The morrow came, and with it Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler.
The colonel was a chatty, elderly gentleman of imposing aspect and dyed hair; his wife a tall, gaunt female, with a vulture-like appearance, and a sort of sergeant-major-in-petticoats look—the outcome of many a hard-fought campaign. The colonel had sketched Casey and Casey’s social desires, and Mrs. Bowdler, like the shrewd veteran that she was, took in the situation at a glance.
The flutter of excitement at 190 Merrion Street was intense when the thundering knock came to the door, accompanied by a crashing pull at the bell.
“Be awfully civil to these people, Jemima,” whispered the colonel as he entered, “and we can forage here three times a week. Promise them the moon.”
Mrs. Casey fled to her bedroom for the purpose of arranging her person in a gorgeous mauve moire-antique all over grease-spots, and Matilda rushed frantically to the drawing-room, in order to be _en pose_ to receive the welcome visitors.
The coachman, who acted also in the capacity of butler, was feverishly hurried from his den at the back of the house, bearing with him a gentle aroma of the stable, and, even while opening the hall-door, was engaged in thrusting his arms into the sleeves of a coat—a perfect suit of mail in buttons.
“Mrs. Casey at home?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.
“I dunno whether the misthris is convaynient, ma’am, but Miss Casey is above in the dhrawin’-room. Won’t yez come in anyhow?” And the man motioned them to ascend with considerable cordiality and welcome.
“Take these cards, please.”
“Well, ma’am, me hands is a thrifle dirty; but av it obliges ye—” and hastily brushing the fingers of his right hand upon the legs of his trowsers, he took the extended pasteboard in as gingerly a manner as if he expected it to explode there and then.
The visitors stood in the hall, and so did Luke Fogarty.
“What am I for to do wud this ma’am?” he asked, eyeing it with a glance full of concern.
“Hand it to Miss Casey,” replied Mrs. Bowdler.
“Oh! that’s it, is it?” And he darted up-stairs with an alarming alacrity.
“This is a charming _ménage_,” said Mrs. Bowdler.
“A fine open country, my dear; no concealed enemy.”
“Yez are for to folly me,” shouted Fogarty from the top of the stairs.
Matilda was enchanted to see them, and ordered sherry and cake. Mrs. Bowdler professed herself charmed to make Miss Casey’s acquaintance, and declared she quite resembled the lord-lieutenant’s youngest daughter “And in manner, too, Miss Casey, you quite remind me of her. We are perpetually at the Viceregal Lodge, and _very_ intimate with the Abercorns. We are asked to everything, and—he! he! he!—it costs us a small fortune for cabs.”
“You can have my brougham, Mrs. Bowdler.”
“Oh! dear, no, my dear young lady, that would never do; but if you lend it to me occasionally to take out _dear_ Lady Maude Laseilles, who is _such_ an invalid. Do you know her?”
Matilda replied in the negative.
As a matter of fact, no such person existed, but it suited Mrs. Bowdler to create her, Mrs. B. being a lady who would make a shilling do duty for half a crown. She was a veteran of infinite resources, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and who was now bent upon taking her change out of the world. She had heard of the craving to enter the portals of society that was devouring Matilda Casey—the attorney had openly confided the fact to the colonel—and was resolved upon making the most of the situation. The Bowdlers were hangers-on at the Castle, mere hacks, who attended the drawing-rooms, the solitary state ball to which they were annually invited, and St. Patrick’s ball with undeviating punctuality. They resided in a pinched-looking house in Stephen’s Green, where Mrs. Bowdler “operated” the colonel’s half-pay with the financial ability of a Dudelac, stretching every sixpence and racking the silver coin to its final gasp. They went everywhere, accepting every invitation, “foraging on the enemy” as the colonel expressed it, giving no return. Trading upon his military rank, they managed to go about a good deal amongst very third-rate people, who were glad to have a colonel to dinner, and a lady who could talk so familiarly of half the peerage as his wife. A more singularly worthless or selfish pair was not to be found, or a pair who better knew how “to work the oracle,” than Colonel Brownlow Bowdler, late of Her Majesty’s Fifty-ninth Regiment of Infantry, and Jemima, his consort.
Mrs. Casey came smilingly into the drawing-room and almost embraced Mrs. Bowdler.
“What will ye take, now? Sure ye must take something. Matilda, make Mrs. Colonel Bowdler take something. Colonel, you’ll take a bottle of champagne—do, now, that’s right; and I’ll get a little jelly for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler, and then Matilda will play for ye. She plays lovely.”
“O mamma!” exclaimed Matilda.
“Now, ye know ye do, darling.” And Mrs. Casey, who is the soul of hospitality, joyously descended to the lower regions, in order to send up the delicacies she so temptingly set forth.
“Are you going to the ball the Twelfth are giving at the Royal Barracks?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.
“I am not, Mrs. Bowdler, but I wish I was,” replied Matilda.
“Colonel, do you hear that? Miss Casey has not received a card for the Twelfth ball. _You_ must take care that she gets one.”
“I’ll go to Major McVickers at once—the old rascal and I served in India together—and see what can be done.”
He had been to Major McVickers five times already to secure invitations for himself and wife, but without success.
Luke Fogarty entered with an enormous silver salver bearing the champagne, jelly, fruit, and cake. He would have preferred to have been behind a runaway horse, ay, and down-hill to boot. He regarded the jelly with a savage eye, muttering “Woa! woa!” in an undertone as it shook from the movement of the tray, accompanying the exclamation by that purring sound so dear to grooms when closely applying the curry-comb.
“Open the champagne, Fogarty,” said Matilda in a tone of lofty command.
“To be shure I will, miss,” replied the willing retainer, diving into the pockets of his trowsers in search of an iron-moulded corkscrew, which he eventually brought to the surface after considerable effort. “I’ll open it in a jiffy.”
He tortured and twisted the wires until he was nearly black in the face from sheer exertion, but, although yielding to his pressure, they still clung perplexingly to the cork.
“Bad cess to thim for wires! but they have the fingers nearly cut aff o’ me. Curse o’ the crows on them!” making another despairing effort; “but I’m not bet yit.”
The wire, slipping suddenly aside, gave freedom to the cork, which bounded gaily against the colonel’s nose, and, ricochetting, lodged in the bosom of Mrs. Bowdler’s dress, while the froth spurted high in the air, descending in seething showers upon the gallant warrior’s head, disarranging the few brown hairs which were carefully laid across his bald, shining pate, resembling cracks upon an inverted china bowl, and causing him to utter maledictions strong and deep.
“See that, now!” exclaimed Fogarty, clapping his hand on the opening of the bottle. “It’s livelier nor spirits. Hould yer glass, colonel, or the lickher ‘ill be lost intirely.”
“Champagne is my favorite wine,” said Mrs. Bowdler, tossing off her glass without winking.
“And mine,” added the colonel, filling it for her again, and then replenishing his own.
“Oh! dear me, I’m so glad to know that. Fogarty, bring another bottle. We’ve heaps of it in the cellar at ninety-six shillings a dozen—a top price. You’ll always get good wine here,” said Mrs. Casey.
“The man who would give his guest bad wine ought to be blown from the muzzle of a gun,” observed the colonel, plunging at the jelly.
This came strangely from an individual who, whenever he gave a visitor a drink, gave it of a liquor warranted to kill at fifty yards. Young Bangs, of the Tenth, whose father instructed him to visit Bowdler, was laid up for an entire week after a teaspoonful of the colonel’s tap.
The second bottle of champagne appeared.
“Ye’d betther open this combusticle yerself, gineral,” suggested Fogarty; “an mind ye hould on to the cork, or it ‘ill give ye the slip as shure as there’s a bill on a crow.”
“I must introduce your dear daughter here to the Dayrolles,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “and to the Fitzmaurices. You will like Lady Fitzmaurice, Miss Casey, and I _know_ she will like _you_.”
“Do you hear that, Matilda? Now, won’t ye play for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler?”
“I’m a very poor player,” simpered Matilda.
Nevertheless, she proceeded to the piano and dashed off a _morceau_ of Chopin with considerable vigor, during which the colonel improved the occasion by pocketing a bunch of grapes and a good-sized cut of seed-cake.
“_Bravissima!_” he cried, as if in rapture. “Lord St. Lawrence must hear that, Jemima; we must try and get him to name a night.”
“We can reckon on Lady Howth.”
“Certainly. She’s always too glad to be asked.”
“And the Powerscourts?”
“By the way, that reminds me: we owe a visit at Powerscourt, do we not?”
“I can’t say, colonel, until I look at my list. We have such an enormous visiting list, Mrs. Casey,” turning to that lady, who was nearly caught in a feeble attempt at winking at her daughter, in order to beget that young person’s special attention to the delightful conversation going on between the visitors, and who was perfectly overwhelmed with dismay and apprehension lest she should have been perceived. “I put my engagements down alphabetically, and—he! he! he!—I’m so glad to think that _you_ are so high on our list.”
The Bowdlers took their departure, after having promised to dine in Merrion Street on the following day.
“To-morrow will be Thursday, and we dine with the Commander of the Forces. Friday we dine at Lord Newry’s.”
“Never mind, my dear,” interposed the colonel, “I’ll come _here_. I’m heartily sick of those fearfully ceremonious banquets; besides,” he added, “we are not asked here every day, and Newry or Strathnairn will be glad to get us when they can.”
When Mickey Casey returned that evening from his office he found his wife and daughter in ecstasies over their newly-made acquaintances. There were no words in the English language sufficiently strong to convey a tithe of the admiration they entertained for them. Such elegance, such urbanity, such distinguished manners, such amiability!
“I’m going to the Twelfth ball,” cried Matilda, “and to be introduced to Lady Fitzmaurice and the Dayrolles, and dear Mrs. Bowdler is going to give a party for me, and to ask Lady Howth and Lord St. Lawrence and Lord Powerscourt all to hear me play. What _shall_ I play? I must begin to practise at once. I’ll go to Pigott’s to-morrow for something new—_the_ newest thing—and I’ll get Mrs. Joseph Robinson to give me six lessons.”
“I’ve asked them to dinner here,” said Mrs. Casey; “and only to think, Mick, I—”
“I _do_ wish you’d say Mr. Casey, or at all events Michael, mamma,” burst in Matilda. “You see how _dear_ Mrs. Bowdler addressed her husband. You’ll find it much more genteel.”
“Whatever you say, me darling. Well, _Mister_ Casey—oh! I can’t do that after Micking him for twenty years,” she cried. “Well, Mick, what do you think, but the colonel gave up a dinner at the Commander of the Forces’ to come to us on Thursday.”
“Thursday, did ye say, Mary?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awkward; that’s to-morrow, and your brother Tim Rooney comes up in the morning to stop for a month.”
Mrs. Casey glanced timidly at her daughter, who gave a little shriek.
“It will never do, mamma. Uncle Timothy is too rough, too vulgar, and too careless of what he says and does, to meet Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler. It would destroy us at once. You must telegraph him, papa, not to come till Friday or Saturday.”
“I can’t, me honey, for he started this morning; and may be it’s in Tullamore he is while I’d be wiring to Inchanappa.”
Matilda clasped her hands in a sort of mute despair.
“He _cannot_ dine at this table to-morrow,” she cried. “I’d rather put off the Bowdlers, first.”
“Suppose ye give him an early dinner and plenty of liquor, and send him with Fogarty to the play.”
“We will want Fogarty, papa. His livery opening the door looks very genteel.”
“It won’t do to insult him. Tim has twenty thousand pounds, and you’re his god-daughter, me darling,” said Casey.
“I wonder, if we told him that these people were very ceremonious and very grand, if he’d consent to dine alone,” suggested Matilda.
“That would only rouse Tim, my pet,” observed Mrs. Casey. “He’d just come in on purpose then, and if he got a sup in there would be no holding him.”
“What _is_ to be done?” cried Matilda, starting from her chair and pacing the floor with long and hasty strides.
At this moment a short, sharp double knock was heard at the hall-door.
“That’s Tim,” groaned Mrs. Casey.
“A telegraph!” roared Fogarty, bursting into the room as if a human life depended upon his celerity.
“Yer in luck, Matilda, my pet; it’s from your uncle. Read it.”
It ran thus:
“_From Tim Rooney, ‘The Ram’s Tail,’ Inchanappa, County Tipperary, to Mickey Casey, 190 Merrion Street, Dublin_:
“I can’t stir for a couple of days. I have to bolus a horse, and Phil Dempsey is after drinking a cow on me, the blackguard!”
“What a relief!” cried Matilda Casey, throwing herself into an easy-chair.
The dinner at 190 was supplied by Murphy, of Clare Street, the Gunter, the Delmonico of Dublin.
“I don’t care a farden about the price,” said Mickey to the smiling caterer. “I want it done tip-top, and let the ongtrays be something quite out of the common; for Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler are to dine with us, and me wife is very anxious to have everything spiffy.”
Mrs. Casey was in a fever of preparation the livelong day, washing glasses, getting out wine, laying the table, while Matilda with her own fair hands fitted up the _épergne_ with rare hot-house plants and crystallized fruits.
“Papa will take Mrs. Colonel Bowdler in to dinner, and Colonel Bowdler will take you, mamma.”
“Oh! no, me pet; I’d rather he’d take you.”
“But it’s not etiquette.”
“Oh! bother etiquette,” exclaimed Mrs. Casey, wiping her face in a napkin.
“It’s all very fine to say bother etiquette; but if we do not show it now, what will Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler think of us?”
The appalling consequences attendant upon her refusal to be led to the banquet by the gallant colonel smote the mind of Mrs. Casey with such considerable force that she at once assented to the proposal, lauding her daughter’s foresight to the very skies.
“You’re a wonderful child, dear; ‘pon me word, you think of everything.”
“The colonel will sit here, and I’ll put this bouquet opposite his chair with the menoo card; and Mrs. Bowdler will sit here, Fogarty,” addressing Luke, who was standing by with a portion of harness about his neck. “Take care that Colonel Bowdler gets enough of champagne.”
“Be me faix, thin, Miss Matilda, ye’d betther lave out a dozen anyhow, for he lapped it up yistherda like wather,” replied that functionary with a broad grin.
“And see that Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s glass is always full.”
“I’m thinkin’ she’ll see to that herself wudout thrubblin’ me,” muttered Fogarty.
“Ask Colonel Bowdler if he’ll take sherry or Madeira with his soup.”
“To be sure he will, miss.”
“I say ask him which he’ll take.”
“I’ll make bould to say he’ll take the both o’ thim,” grinned Fogarty, who, with that quick perception characteristic of his race, had already “measured his man.”
“Be very particular about the ongtray.”
“I will, miss, an’ the tay-thray too.”
“And above all things keep sober, Fogarty.”
“He’s a teetotaler,” chimed in Mrs. Casey. “Aren’t ye a teetotaler, Luke?”
There was a comical expression upon Luke’s face as he stoutly replied: “I am, ma’am; but _I’m not a bigoted wan_.”
At about four o’clock a note arrived from Mrs. Bowdler.
“Oh! my gracious, I hope there’s no disappointment,” cried Matilda, turning very pale, while dire apprehension was written in the pallid features of her mamma.
“I hope not; that would be awful, me pet.”
The note ran thus:
“292 STEPHEN’S GREEN, 3.30 o’clock.
“MY DEAREST MISS CASEY: Our dear friend Major Beamish and his _charming_ daughter, nearly related to the Beamishes of Cork, have just written to say that they will dine with us to-day. I must, therefore, with the MOST _painful reluctance_, ask of you to allow us to cancel our engagement to you. I cannot tell you how sincerely this grieves me, but the B.’s, though _very old_ friends, are people of that _haute distinction_ that one cannot treat as one possibly could wish.
“With kindest regards to your _dear_ mamma, and with united kind regards from the colonel to all _chez vous_, I am, my dearest Miss Casey, yours affectionately,
JEMIMA BOWDLER.”
“This is agonizing!” cried Matilda, ready to burst into tears.
“Our lovely dinner!” moaned Mrs. Casey.
“There is some fatality about us.”
“Wan pound five a head without wine, and seventeen and six extra for a pineapple.”
“Was ever anything so provoking? It’s enough to drive one mad!”
“I suppose Mick must ask in the apprentice to eat the dinner, as we’ve to pay for it. Such food for to cock up an apprentice with!” sighed Mrs. Casey.
Miss Casey perused the letter again, and finding P. T. O. in the corner, turned the page and read a postscript as follows:
“P. S.—The colonel has just come in, and what do you think he has the audacity to suggest?—that we ask your permission to bring the Beamishes to your dinner to-day. The colonel has taken such a fancy to you, _dearest young friend_, that he treats you as if he had been on intimate terms for years. He insists upon my writing this, but please to blame _him_ for this piece of audacity.
J. B.”
Miss Casey’s joy knew no bounds. The Beamishes of Cork, one of the oldest families in Ireland—such a charming addition to the party. She would order round the brougham, and drive over to dear Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s at once to thank her for such a signal mark of kindness; as for the colonel, she could have hugged the gallant veteran from sheer gratitude.
_She_ did not know that the Bowdlers wished to shelve the hungry major and his daughter in a polite way, and provide them with a sumptuous repast at the expense of Mickey Casey. Not she, indeed; so she stepped into her carriage, and having driven, first, round to the caterer’s to order reinforcements, proceeded to Stephen’s Green, where she was received by Mrs. Bowdler in a small, dingy front room _minus_ a fire, although it was late in December and bitterly raw and cold.
Mrs. Bowdler kissed her, and gushed over her, and begged to be excused for hurrying her away for the tyrant post, as she was compelled to finish a letter to her _dearest_ friend, the wife of the governor-general of India. Miss Casey cut short her stay, as in duty bound, and Mrs. Bowdler ascended to the drawing-room, where three or four visitors were assembled around a fairly decent fire—one of the ladies, during the temporary absence of the hostess, having surreptitiously stirred it up—to whom she imparted the intelligence that she had just parted from the governess to Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby, whom that aristocratic personage had sent over in the Ponsonby brougham with a request that she and the colonel would dine in Fitzwilliam Place upon that day, whereat the visitors declared that Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby was evidently very desirous of Mrs. Bowdler’s company, and that it was a very remarkable instance of her esteem and regard.
At 6.30, military time, the company arrived, and were ushered into Mickey Casey’s study in order to uncloak. Major Beamish wore a short brown wig on the top of a very high, a very bald, and very shiny head. His eyes were small and watery, and his moustache, greased with a cheap ointment, lay like a solid cushion of hair beneath a nose with nostrils as expansive as those of a rocking-horse. He was attired in a faded suit of evening clothes, his shirt-bosom bearing the indelible imprint not only of the hand of Time, but of the hand of a reckless laundress, who hesitated not to use her nails upon the sierras of its coy and threadbare folds.
Miss Beamish was a gushing maiden of twenty anything, possessed of a profusion of frizzly fair hair, done in a simple and childlike fashion, and bound by a fillet of blue ribbon over a vast expanse of forehead. Her eyes were greenish gray, and not quite free from a suspicion of a squint. Her nose resembled that of her sire, and her mouth was almost concealed by her thin and bloodless lips. Her gaunt frame was enveloped in a gauzy substance over a pink silk, which betrayed the recent presence of the smoothing-iron. Bog-oak ornaments rattled around her neck, at her ears, and upon her lean and sinewy arms.
“Colonel an’ Missis Bowhowdler,” roared Fogarty, as the guests entered the drawing-room. “Major an’ Missis Baymish.”
“Miss, fellow, Miss,” impatiently cried the major.
“Miss Baymish, I mane,” adding in an undertone: “It’s not but she’s ould enough and tough enough for to be a missis tin times over.”
“This is _so_ good of you,” said Matilda, shaking hands all round, “and _so_ good of _dear_ Mrs. Bowdler to give us the pleasure of having you.”
“Monstrous fine gal. Right good quarters,” observed the major to the colonel, glancing round the room at the superb mirrors, buhl cabinets, inlaid tables, rich hangings, and furniture upholstered in yellow satin.
“You might do worse than take this girl. Casey’s good for twenty thousand,” suggested the colonel.
“If Tibie was once quartered on the enemy I’d enlist again—I would, sir, by George! I’d take the shilling from that seductive and dangerous recruiting sergeant, Hymen,” exclaimed the major, wagging one soiled white glove and posing himself after a gratified and prolonged glance in the mirror.
“Miss Matilda,” whispered Fogarty, who had just entered, and who was endeavoring to attract her attention. “Miss Matilda! Miss Tilly!”
“What is it, Fogarty?” asked Miss Casey at length; and upon perceiving him, “What _is_ it?” she repeated somewhat testily, as Mrs. Bowdler was engaged in narrating a delightful conversation with the lady-lieutenant.
“The masther’s clanin’ himself, an’ he wants a lind av yer soap, miss, as there’s not a screed in the house, be raisin’ av the misthris washin’ the glass an’ chany wild the rest av it.”
The guests filed down in the order prescribed by Matilda, save that she fell to the arm of Major Beamish, who overwhelmed her with compliments, which only lasted until the soup was served, as from that moment his attention became concentrated upon the delicacies placed before him, on which he opened so murderous and effective a fire as almost to paralyze the energies of the ubiquitous and perspiring Fogarty, and the solicitous attentions of a young lady from the kitchen, whose stertorous breathing made itself heard above the din and clatter of knives, forks, and conversation, in a distinct and somewhat alarming manner.
“Hi! some more soup. Another cut of fish. I’ll try that _entrée_ again. Let me have that last _entrée_ once more. Some turkey and ham. Why don’t you look alive with the champagne? A slice of roast beef—underdone. Some pheasant; ay, I’ll try the woodcock. Jelly, of course.” And the gallant major kept the servants pretty busily engaged during the entire repast.
Matilda was in a shimmer of delight. Her darling hopes were being realized at last, and society was budding for her. A colonel and his wife, a major and his daughter—why, what higher rank need any person desire? How friendly, how gracious, and how charmingly they ate and drank and praised everything! This was life—a life worth living; this was that delicious glow of which she had read in _Lothair_ and other novels portraying fashionable existence.
While these rosy thoughts were coursing through her brain a noise was heard in the direction of the hall, and a man’s voice in tones of angry expostulation.
“Your servants are quarrelling, Mrs. Casey,” observed Mrs. Bowdler, holding up her hand to enjoin silence.
“It’s that Luke Fogarty; he can’t keep his fingers off the dishes, and the girl is—”
At this moment the individual in question burst into the apartment with an expression as if some fearful catastrophe had just happened.
“What is the matter, Fogarty?” demanded Mrs. Casey, glancing at her retainer with an inquiring eye.
“We’re bet, ma’am,” responded Fogarty in a half-whisper.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re bet up intirely. Misther Tim has came.”
Mrs. Casey felt as if she would have fainted, while Matilda bit her lips till the blood came; and as they were still gazing at each other in the direst consternation, Mr. Timothy Rooney entered the apartment, clad in a bulgy Ulster that had known fairs and markets and race-courses for several previous years, a felt hat of an essentially rakish and vulgar description, his pants shoved into his muddy boots after the fashion of a Texas ranger, while his hands were swollen and the color of beet-root.
“Company, be the hokey crikey!” he exclaimed, as he advanced to embrace the reluctant hostess. “Ah! Mary, ye didn’t expect me,” giving her a kiss that made the glass drops upon the chandelier jingle again.
“No, we didn’t expect you, Tim,” gasped his sister.
“No, of course not. Shure I sent ye a telegraph that that villyan of a Phil Dempsey drank me best cow on me—tellin’ ye that—”
“Won’t you take some dinner in your own room?” interposed his niece, now the color of a peony.
“Come over here and kiss your uncle, ye young rogue. Up-stairs, indeed! What would I do that for?”
“You are not exactly dressed for dinner.”
“Oh! I’ve a shirt on under this Ulster, and I’ll show a bit of the bussom, as the man said, never fear. Well, Mickey, me hearty, how goes it? Put it there,” extending his beet-root fist to his brother-in-law.
“My brother, a regular character, immensely wealthy; obliged to put up with his ways,” explained Mrs. Casey, while her daughter retired with Mr. Rooney, with a view to inducing that gentleman to refrain from again putting in an appearance.
“A very fine, joyous son of the Emerald Isle,” cried the colonel, helping himself to champagne.
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major, following the good example of his senior officer, “we had just such a joyous, devil-may-care fellow in the Tenth. He resided in the bungalow with me, the compound being in common. One morning, while enjoying chotohassary—the major aired his Indian experiences and Hindoo acquirements upon all occasions— I happened to call my kitmagar as well as my consumar, who was—”
The narrative was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Rooney and his despairing niece. Tim had given his face what is commonly known as a “Scotch lick,” causing it to shine again. He was about forty years of age, rough-looking as a Shetland pony, and a “warm man”—_i.e._, the possessor of a few thousands in the bank and of a well-to-do, well-stocked farm.
“I’m tidy enough now, I think; at all events, yer friends will be aisy on a traveller. Why don’t ye introduce us, Mick? Where are yer manners?”
He was presented in due form by the abashed Casey, and, after having shaken hands with all round, commenced a vigorous attack upon a slice of turbot with his knife, plunging that useful instrument two or three inches into his mouth at every helping, until Miss Beamish, who was seated opposite, shuddered with apprehension.
“Is there anything the matter with ye, ma’am?” he demanded, upon observing a ghastly contraction of the muscles of her face.
“N-nothing,” she stammered.
“Ye haven’t got a pain?”
“Uncle, help yourself to champagne,” shrilly interposed Matilda.
“Pshaw! get me some whiskey, me pet,” adding, as he winked facetiously upon Mrs. Bowdler, “_champagne is taydious_.”
“By and by, uncle,” said the agonized girl.
“A little drop wouldn’t harm Miss Baymish there, Matty; she looks as if—”
“Take some more beef, Tim,” put in Mrs. Casey.
“Well, just wan skelp more, Mary. Room for wan inside, as the man said.”
When the ladies had retired Mr. Rooney stretched his legs beneath the table and his body on the chair until his chin was nearly on a level with the table.
“Now, Mickey, in with the hot water, and let the girl put a kettle under the pump. Are ye fond of sperrits, major?”
“Well, the fact is that spirits don’t agree with me.”
“Oh, then, Mickey Casey has some that will oil the curls of yer wig for ye.”
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major hastily, “there happened to be a very rollicking, gay, charming fellow of our mess, who shared my bungalow with me—the compound being in common. One morning I was engaged at chotohassary and—”
“What the dickens is chotohassary?”
“Breakfast, Mr. Rooney.”
“I never heard it called by that name before. Go on, you old son of a gun.”
“Well, sir,” continued the major somewhat stiffly, “I had occasion to call my kitmagar.”
“Kit who?” asked Tim.
“Kitmagar, one of my servants.”
“An Irishman, of course.”
“No, sir, a Hindoo.”
“Well, this flogs; are ye listening to this, Mickey?” addressing Casey, who had drawn off the colonel.
“Am I listening to what?” asked the host rather gruffly.
“To this old fogy here.”
“Really, Mr. Rooney—” began the offended major.
“Don’t mind him, Major Beamish,” cried Casey, “but pitch into the claret; it’s Château Lafitte of a comet vintage. At least, Redmond told me so, and he ought to know.”
“It’s a very fine wine, Casey—a soft wine, sir, in superb condition, and heated to perfection,” observed the major, tossing off a glassful and quickly replacing the goblet.
“Goes down like mother’s milk,” added the colonel, following suit.
“Well, major, go on about Kit Megar,” urged Rooney.
“Coffee is in the dhrawin’-room, jintlemin,” yelled Fogarty, entering.
“Well, let it stay there, Luke.”
“Shall we join the ladies?” asked Casey, with a society air.
The colonel looked at the major, the major looked at the colonel, and both looked at the claret jugs.
“Oh! hang it all, no,” responded the major; “this wine is too good—much too good.”
“More power to yer elbow, Baymish! An old dog for a hard road,” laughed Tim Rooney. “Eh, Luke, this is a knowing old codger.”
Mr. Fogarty, being thus appealed to, gave a willing assent: “Up to every trick in the box.”
After the gallant warriors had sufficiently punished Casey’s cellar they repaired to the drawing-room. As they ascended the stairs they compared notes.
“Did you ever meet such a queer customer as this brother-in-law?”
“Never. He’s the most vulgar, insolent blackguard I ever encountered.”
“He has lots of money.”
“I wonder does he play loo?”
“We can ask him.”
“He’d play a lively game.”
“And could be plucked like a green gosling.”
To the intense relief of the Casey family, Mr. Rooney stoutly refused to adjourn to the upper regions, but remained in the dining-room smoking a short clay pipe and drinking whiskey-punch.
Miss Beamish, upon hearing that he was enormously wealthy and unmarried to boot, began to build a castle in Spain, in which she figured as châtelaine, while the uncultured proprietor was gradually toned down by those feminine influences which smooth the angles of the most rugged natures.
“I _do_ like this child of nature, Miss Casey,” she gushed; “it is sweet to hear the wild bird in the full, untutored sweetness of its note. Shall we see your uncle again to-night?”
“I hope not,” was Matilda’s reply.
“Oh! why? He reminds me so much of an _arrière pensée_, a bright oasis in the desert of my life, that I feel as if I could—but why recall recollections that are fraught with bitterness, why strike a chord which produces but—discord?” letting her pointed chin drop upon the bog-oak necklet, which responded by a dull rattle.
Matilda played for the major—who marked her as the successor of the late Mrs. B——, wagging his be-wigged pate to the music and applauding with maudlin vigor.
“Exquisite! Divine! When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” And he jogged over the same road, to arrive as far as the consumar, when Mrs. Bowdler intimated that it was time to leave.
“But ye won’t go without supper? Just a sandwich and a glass of wine,” entreated Mrs. Casey.
Of course they wouldn’t go, and they didn’t go until they had partaken largely of both.
“Never was more charmed in my life,” exclaimed the colonel, as he bade good-night. “Right glad I refused Lord Howth.”
“I thought it was the commander-in-chief,” said Mrs. Casey artlessly.
“Ahem! of course, and so it was; but I have so many invites, you see, that I forget.”
Gentlemen who draw upon their imagination for their facts must needs possess accurate memories.
“You’ll all dine with us on Christmas day,” said Mrs. Casey.
“Oh! yes, _do_, please,” added Matilda.
“Do, colonel; do, major, like good fellows,” urged Casey.
“Well, really, my dear, I don’t know what to say,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “but I fear we cannot get out of going to Lady Meath’s.”
“Oh! hang Lady Meath; _you_ may go to her, I’ll come here,” laughed the colonel.
“It’s fixed,” said Casey; “and you, major?”
“I couldn’t say no to such a good offer. When I was quartered in Dum Dum—”
“Is this old fogy at it still?” asked Tim Rooney, emerging from the dining-room into the hall where they were now all assembled.
“We are coming to dine here on Christmas day, Mr. Rooney,” said Miss Beamish, casting a languishing look at him.
“Are ye? Thin upon me conscience ye’ll git a tail end of beef that will feed you for a fortnight—wan of me own cows. And all Mary here has to do is see that the wisps of cabbage is plenty.”
With great hand-shaking, and a general buzz of pleased excitement, the guests took their departure.
“What a success!” exclaimed Matilda, throwing herself on a sofa that had been wheeled out of the dining-room into the hall in order to make room, “except for”—nodding towards Tim, who was endeavoring to light a bedroom candlestick with a singularly unsteady hand.
“They all took to him,” whispered Mrs. Casey.
“I never got such a turn as when he came in. O mamma! I thought I should have died.”
“Well, aren’t the Bowdlers nice, agreeable people, Matilda?” demanded Mr. Casey.
“Delightful, exquisite! Such elegant refinement. And the Beamishes are equally well bred.”
“That major is a downy old bird.”
“He is a most perfect gentleman. How he did praise my playing!”
The Caseys did not see much of the Bowdlers during the next few days, the colonel having over-eaten himself, and his wife being laid up with an attack of bronchitis; but Major Beamish and his daughter were most constant in their attentions, calling, staying to dinner, going to the theatre—Casey paying for all, cabs included—coming home to supper, and other attentions equally delicate and one-sided. The major was very _prononcé_ in his manner toward Matilda, who, while she accepted his homage, did not for a moment imagine it meant more than that excessive and chivalrous politeness which distinguishes the _vieux militaire_ of any nationality.
Miss Beamish lay in wait for Tim Rooney, and spun her web as deftly as the uncouth movements of this desirable fly permitted. She adroitly learned his hours for going out, and invariably intercepted him.
“I’m always meeting that wan,” he observed to his sister. “She’s for ever in the street.”
“She’s a very elegant lady, Tim.”
“Elegant enough, but, as tough as shoe-leather.”
By degrees, however, the fair Circe interested him, and when the others were engaged in listening with rapt attention to the major’s oft-repeated story commencing, “When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” Tibie Beamish, eyes plunged into those of the Tipperary farmer, would hang upon his accents as he detailed his own “cuteness” in the purchase of a drove of heifers at the great fair of Ballinasloe, or how he palmed off a spavined pony upon a neighboring but less wide-awake grazier.
If a woman wants to win a man, let her listen to him, if he be fond of narrating his personal experiences; and what man does not revel in _ego_?”
“She _is_ a nice little girl, Mary, and is not above learning a trifle. I’ll be bail she could go into Ballinasloe fair next October and finger a baste as well as that villyan Phil Dempsey, from the knowledge I give her.”
The spell was working.
* * * * *
Christmas day came, bright, crisp, and joyous. Snow had fallen for the previous few days, and was now hard and shining in the streets, rendering walking somewhat hazardous and sliding almost unavoidable.
Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler arrived very early at Merrion Street—in fact, just in time for luncheon—and by a strange coincidence Major Beamish and his daughter dropped in almost at the same moment. A walk was proposed, but abandoned, and the party, broken up into two camps, sat chatting around the fires in the back and front drawing-rooms.
Everybody is hungry on Christmas day. Everybody thinks of the boiled turkey, Limerick ham, roast beef, plum-pudding, and mince-pies. Why, then, should the guests of Mickey Casey prove an exception to the rule?
Fogarty announced the dinner in a voice that savored of a joyous anticipation. He had had a private and confidential snack with the cook, but merely enough to make him wish for more.
“That’s me tail end of beef,” exclaimed Tim Rooney, as the huge mound of golden fatted meat was uncovered, behind which the host sat in a state of total eclipse—“that’s me tail end, and a lovelier baste never nipped grass, nor the—”
“Will you carve this turkey, Tim?” interrupted his sister.
“To be sure I will, Mary; but ye must let me do it me own way,” divesting himself of his coat and proceeding to work with a will.
“O Tim!”
“O uncle!”
“Let him alone,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, whose teeth were watering for a slice of the breast. “Such a gigantic bird requires to be carved _sans cérémonie_.”
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” began the major.
“See here, now, me ould codger, we’ve had enough of that singsong.”
The major smiled grimly and tossed off a glass of Amontillado.
“You _are_ a character, Rooney,” he said.
Tim acquitted himself admirably, cutting the bird and innumerable jokes at the same time, many of them of a personal nature, such as allusions to the gallant major’s wig, which he called a “jasey,” the scragginess of Mrs. Bowdler, and the rosy tip at the extremity of the colonel’s nasal appendage. However, as everybody was in good-humor, his _facetiæ_ passed off without exciting ill-feeling, and all went as merry as a marriage-bell.
The dinner had disappeared, and the company sat tranquilly over the dessert. Tim, having resigned his post of honor, returned to his chair beside Miss Beamish, to whom he whispered a good deal, to the intense amusement of his brother-in-law, who declared that Tim Rooney had been hit at last.
“There’s many a true word said in jest, Mick,” retorted Tim. Miss Beamish hung down her head and tried to blush, and, failing in this, essayed a cough, which proved more successful.
“Oh! Tim is an old bachelor,” cried Mrs. Casey, “and a most determined one.”
“It’s never too late to mend, Mary.”
“_You’ll_ never mend, Tim.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” ogling his fair neighbor, who again tried a cough, which, however, terminated in a hoarse gurgle.
Tim Rooney was possessor of twenty thousand pounds, all in the Bank of Ireland. His farm was valued at ten thousand, and his stock at five thousand more. He was Matilda’s godfather, and, as a matter of course, all these good things would revert to her in time. It was a standing joke at Merrion Street that Tim should get married without delay.
“Not a bit of it,” he would retort. “I’ll keep looking at them during the winter, and I’ll take another summer out of myself.”
His joking now on the subject of Miss Beamish was exquisite fun to the family of Casey, who enjoyed it only as family jokes _can_ be enjoyed.
“You’ll ask me to the wedding, uncle?” said Matilda.
“Sure you’ll be a bridesmaid, Matty.”
“And you’ll have to give me a new dress, a real Parisian one; won’t he, Miss Beamish?”
Miss Beamish bashfully tittered.
“When is it to be, Tim?” asked Mr. Casey.
“Next Thursday, then,” he grinned.
“That’s mighty quick.”
“Delays is dangerous.”
“Right, Tim,” cried Casey. “If I hadn’t asked your sister on the Friday, Joe Mulligan, the tailor would have—”
“Papa, _do_ see that Colonel Bowdler takes his wine,” almost shrieked Matilda.
O agony! he was about informing their patrician guests that his rival had been a—tailor!
“Well, see here, Mickey, and see here, Mary, and see here, Matty,” said Mr. Rooney, rising, “I’ll give ye all a toast.”
“Oh! toasts are vulgar; are they not, Colonel Bowdler?” interposed Matilda.
“Well, ahem! except upon special occasions they are not in vogue,” replied that gallant warrior.
“Well this _is_ a special occasion, and a _very_ special occasion”—Hear! hear! from the host—“and wan that calls for particular mention; an’ it’s health, long life, and happiness to Mrs. Tim Rooney that is for to be. Ye must all drink it on yer legs.”
Anything to humor Tim, now that the Bowdlers and Beamishes tolerated him. So with much laughing on the part of the gentlemen, and much giggling on the part of the ladies, the toast was drunk with all honor.
“And now, Mick, Mary and Matty,” cried Tim, “I may as well let the cat out of the bag. Me and Miss Tibie is to be married on Thursday.”
Had a bombshell fallen in their midst greater consternation could not have shown itself upon the countenances of the Casey family.
“Yer not in airnest, Tim,” said Casey, endeavoring to smile a sickly smile.
“Tim must have his joke,” observed Mrs. Casey, her face as white as a sheet.
“Uncle is _so_ full of fun,” tittered Matilda, dire apprehension in every lineament.
“It’s no jest; is it, Tibie?” asked Tim of his _fiancée_.
“No, Timothy, I am proud to say it is not,” responded Miss Beamish, placing her hand in the arm of her lover.
* * * * *
“And to think I gave that Bowdler a hundred pounds for to lose us forty thousand,” groaned Casey, as, seated with his weeping wife and daughter, he grimly surveyed the wedding-cards of Mr. and Mrs. T. Rooney. “This comes of yer infernal tomfoolery wantin’ to get into society that wouldn’t touch ye with a forty-foot pole. Serve ye right.”
“Serve us right indeed!” echoed the two ladies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CATHOLIC “CIRCLES” FOR WORKING-MEN IN FRANCE.
Immediately after the German invasion and the Paris Commune there existed already at Paris a Catholic “Circle” of working-men, distinct, if not in appearance, yet in reality, from the associations of young apprentices called by this name, or under the more appropriate one of _Patronages_. It was, in fact, a working-men’s association—a little Christian republic; self-governing, by means of a council chosen from among its own number, the members of which council were considered as irremovable. On its festivals the whole association assembled in the chapel belonging to the circle; there its elected functionaries were received into office at the foot of the altar, there they made frequent communions, and thence, in accordance with the customs of the ancient confraternities of craftsmen, they bore in procession the banners of their patron saints. There were formed earnest men, accustomed to hear the language of duty, and ready to make the sacrifices it demands, as those of their number who died in the war had testified, as well as the many more who did not cease to incur, with patience and steadfastness, the persecutions of their scoffing companions in the ateliers.
This association was the work of a religious of the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul—M. Maignen, Director of the Circle of Montparnasse. The subscriptions of the circle, however, which had previously sufficed for its support, were unequal to the burden incurred by its installation, and the external subscriptions which had hitherto aided it had become few in number and small in amount.
M. Maignen then resolved to assemble in council, on the evening of Christmas day, a group of capitalists, among whom were three deputies, three well-known writers, and three military officers, scarcely known to each other except by name; but they were all good and earnest Catholics, and had, moreover, suffered and fought for their country. After uniting in prayer they resolved to seek, in the definitions of the church in regard to her relations to civil society, the germ of the sole social force capable of saving France from the consequences of her errors; and this force, they decided, should be constituted in the form of Catholic Circles for Working-men, similar to the one in which they were met together.
They began, in the first place, by addressing to the Holy Father the expression of their resolution, to which he granted his benediction. In the next they sent, by thousands of copies, an energetic appeal to all “men of good-will.” “The revolution,” they said, “has descended from the brains of (so-called) philosophers into the minds of the people. Are we to leave our misguided working-men to perdition—a perdition in which they will also involve their country—or, by drawing a supernatural strength from the heart of Jesus—himself a working-man—shall we not oppose the associations of men who love darkness rather than light by the Catholic Association, and meet the lessons of materialism by those of the Gospel, and a cold cosmopolitanism by the love of our country?”
Then the little group of men who signed the engagement further united themselves by a religious bond—the daily recital of a prayer, and an annual communion for the intentions of the work, the duties of which the members distributed among themselves according to their respective facilities.
Each section set to work under the direction of a chief: the first for the general promulgation of the work, the second for its foundations, the third for the creation of resources, and the fourth for the popular diffusion of its teaching. The sections worked independently of each other, but met in committee when there was any need for arranging or deciding as to any general plan of action. For the purpose of directing and controlling the action of the fourth section the committee also appointed a council under the name of _Jésus-Ouvrier_. Thus the work was constituted in its first _committee_—that is to say, the first association of the directing class—on the principle of its first “circle,” the Catholic declaration and the division of responsibilities, and, lastly, as a sign and pledge of the union of the
## active members of the work, the religious bond.
The association thus organized bore marvellous fruit, and in a few months the committee found itself able to relieve the Cercle Montparnasse by creating two similar ones in the quarters (of evil notoriety) of Belleville and Montmartre, which were chosen with the intention of a public expiation, and to furnish each of the circles with a council of its quarter.
This was the golden age of the work, which was, as it were, crowned by the high testimony it received at the Congress of Directors of the Catholic Working-men’s Associations assembled at Poitiers under the auspices of Mgr. Pie. It obtained also an exceptional _éclat_ from the remarkable eloquence of one of its initiators at the Cercle Montparnasse—the intrepid Count Albert de Mun—as well as from the fact of there being several other military officers among them. The work appeared to be marked with a providential character, having at its outset the stamp of trial, followed by that of rapid expansion, and possessing another in the saintly character of its first founder; for, although God may be pleased to employ unworthy instruments to promote his merciful designs, it will always be found that, in the first instance, they have been deposited, as in a chalice, in a holy and devoted soul.
The impetus was given. The large towns of France answered the appeal by requesting the initiators to form, within them, committees like the Directing Committee at Paris. The principles of the constitution never varied; _i.e._, Catholic affirmation by the acceptance of the religious bond, and the general bases of the work, division of labor among the members of the local association, and periodic communication with the secretariate general.
This in a short time was carried out at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lille, and many other places of importance, numerous smaller towns, and even villages, asking for the same institution. And everywhere it bore fruit, the formation of a committee being in every instance followed by the opening of a circle.
At the same time the Council of _Jésus-Ouvrier_, and, following its example, the committees of the large towns, opened public conferences in popular quarters, where the people were addressed in frank and energetic language, inspired by the intimate union of religious and social faith, and the doctrines of liberalism boldly denounced, which substitute for the precepts “Love one another” and “Bear ye one another’s burdens” that of “To each according to his work”—a maxim good enough in itself, but which the employer translates into “Each one for himself,” and the employed into “My turn next for enjoyment.” These declarations, repeated simultaneously in all parts of France, gave the work a remarkable unity of spirit, which was amply manifested at the first general assembly of its members, held in the spring of 1873.
Difficulties, however, arose in proportion to the progress made. Few adherents were obtained from among the manufacturing chiefs, on whom depends the whole economy of the working-classes; while the committees, formed of men little accustomed to study the laws of labor, did not well observe its divisions, and thus dwindled away. That of Paris, to which had been allotted the most complete autonomy, and which was more especially devoted to the general propagation of the work, gave way beneath its accumulated burden.
“We then” (to quote the words of one of the members in his address to the Congress at Rheims)—“We then turned our eyes with confidence to her who is the help of Christians, our ever Blessed Lady, resolving to go all together and invoke her aid in one of the sanctuaries of France where she has most anciently manifested her power, and where formerly the kingdom was dedicated to her by a solemn vow—Notre Dame de Liesse. The funds of the Paris committee were already exhausted and the year only half over. We collected ten thousand francs, and unhesitatingly devoted them to defray the expenses of this distant pilgrimage.
“The committees of the north were invited to join it at the head of the circles they had formed, and on the 17th of August, 1873, twenty-five hundred pilgrims arrived from their respective towns to form one procession to Notre Dame de Liesse. Half of the number, in spite of the fatigues of the way, there received Holy Communion, and we returned with renewed strength and confidence to our posts.”
We will not here give a detailed account of the toils and progress of the year which succeeded the pilgrimage. A brief of the Holy Father confirmed the constitution of the work by the grant of duly specified indulgences attached to it; it also received the canonical protection of a cardinal of the church.
These favors brought a timely encouragement to the promoters of the work; for with its progress its trials also increased. Among the most painful were those of seeing it misunderstood by many persons who might have been expected to prove its warmest advocates. Some of these lost sight of its social character, and preferred to seek the good of a few individual souls instead of helping forward a Christian restoration of society; while others, again, mistook the part to be taken in the committees by the upper classes. “Of what use,” they asked, “is a committee, unless to provide resources for an ecclesiastical director?”
This is a question which has been frequently asked. But it must be borne in mind that if the circle establishes among its members social _fraternity_, the director could not himself alone represent its _paternity_. To do this would be to deter other Christians of the upper classes from the unmistakable command they have received to exercise this social paternity which they have from God in the very advantages of their social condition.
For why are riches and honors bestowed upon the few—why the benefits of education, of leisure, of cultivation of the mind—unless it be that they are to be consecrated to the moral guidance and material assistance of the classes who are deprived of such advantages? In regard to this social paternity, as in regard to that which creates the family, the priest must be the consecrator: but, in his turn, the father who would abandon to the priest the charges and responsibilities of the dignity which, by divine right, is his own, would only disappear from among his fellow-men to be confounded before the Eternal Father—he and the two complaisant accomplices of his culpable abdication.
After establishing social fraternity by the _circles_, and social paternity by the committees, it remained to restore the social _family_—that is, to associate Christian families in the benefits of the work, after having associated in it the _heads_ of families of various conditions.
The family is, in fact, the first association by natural right, and therefore every constitution which embraces it and does not take it for its foundation is vitiated and sterile. The founders of the work knew this, and were, moreover, not allowed to forget it by the daily reproaches they received—“You are destroying the family; you are destroying the parish!”—and what not. But how to reach the family so as to be of service to it instead of injurious was not for some time made clear. The Circle of Montparnasse, the prototype of the rest, had avoided rather than faced the difficulty by disposing of its active functions in favor only of its unmarried members. But this was plainly not the solution.
The solution had, however, been discovered, at no great distance from Rheims, in the great manufacturing region which has for the motive power of its machines the waters of the Suippe, for its boundary the extensive woods which form an oasis of verdure in the burning plains of Champagne, and for its population factory-men, who wander, at the bidding of the industrial fluctuations of the time, to and from the looms of the north, of Rheims, or of St. Quentin—a population exceptionally indigent, since the struggle between capital and wages, inaugurated by liberalism, has become the normal condition of the producer and the consumer.
In the hamlet of Val-des-Bois, in the centre of this district, an industrial family settled about half a century ago, and brought with it the example of every Christian virtue. Kind towards their workmen, generous even beyond their gains, Messieurs Harmel assembled around their vast establishment all the religious and philanthropic institutions by means of which it has hitherto been attempted to re-establish harmony in the world of labor.
As is but too frequently the case, they failed in this attempt completely. But they were not daunted, nor did they rest satisfied with their past endeavors; for, if they loved the working-men, they loved their Lord still more, and desired as earnestly as ever that he should reign in the hearts of those in their employ.
Not many years ago it occurred to one of them to introduce among the population of their factories—which did not count a single practising Christian—the principle of the Catholic Association. He determined to ask four men to join together to form the nucleus of a circle, and three young girls to be received as _Enfants de Marie_ and wear the badge. In proportion as the associations developed themselves he multiplied them according to the sex, age, and condition of each individual; and this with such success that at the present time the twelve hundred souls who people Val-des-Bois are united in a marvellous aggregation of pious confraternities, among whose members are made, in the course of a year, more than ten thousand communions, in the intention of making reparation to our Lord for the outrages he receives in the modern factory.
Then, also, as earthly goods are often increased abundantly to those who seek first the kingdom of God, the principle of Catholic Association applied to the families of the Factory of the Sacred Heart (l’Usine du Sacrè-Cœur)—for it bears this name—has realized there innumerable economical benefits, a fact which will not surprise those who know the power of this principle. Assistance of every kind, clothing, food, and fuel at very reasonable prices, schools free of expense to the parents, and occasional holidays for recreation, have brought with them, together with economy, the comfort also and prosperity of the families. All these institutions, economic, charitable, and religious, are governed by those personally interested. The _circle_, which brings together the fathers of families, is, as it were, the centre of this machinery; and the master, who is its motive power, associates with himself not only all the members of his own family and the chaplain of the factory, but also his principal employés, to fulfil the paternal function of a protecting and directing committee, and so to secure to the association the chances of continuance as well as the fruits of example. To this end delegates are annually appointed, who, under the presidency of the master, are the guardians of the corporation.
We will give the result of all these well-considered combinations in M. Harmel’s own words:[113]
“By the persevering endeavors of many years we have attained the end at which we aimed. Families are reconstituted, peace and love have taken the place of quarrels and disorder around the domestic hearth; the mother rejoices at the change wrought in her husband and children; the father finds in a new life the courage and happiness of labor; his home is delightful to him from the respect of his children, the ready cheerfulness of his wife, and the love of all. Economy has put an end to debts and created savings; the anniversary festivals of the family bring back that affectionate gayety and warmth which give repose amid the fatigues of life, and inspire fresh ardor to go bravely on the way. When we are in the midst of these good and honest faces transformed by Christian influences, we read there confidence and love, and thank the good God who has made the large family of Val-des-Bois.” Such are the experiences there obtained, as if to complete those of the Cercle Montparnasse.
Alone among the many excellent men who, after the war and Commune, arose to attempt some means of healing the internal wounds of France, the members of the _Œuvre Ouvrière_ took a solemn engagement, the terms of which were marked out with precision. Each member affixes his signature to an individual and public act of devoted adhesion to the doctrines defined by the _Syllabus of the Errors of Modern Society_. Preserved, therefore, from the liberalism which in reality puts oppression into the hands of the strongest, and the socialism which demands it for the masses, they will pursue more efficaciously than either of these the vindication of the popular interests, such as the due observance of the Sunday and the protection of the family and home, and, guided by grace and supported by prayer, will find Christian solutions for all the social questions of labor.
The work of the Catholic circles has set on foot a periodical for the study and discussion of these questions—namely, the review which borrows its title from one of the principles of the work: _L’Association Catholique_. It is open to all questions, but not to all doctrines, for a work which, at the head of its statutes, invokes the definitions of the Catholic Church cannot admit the errors which she has condemned. It numbers among its contributors some of the best social economists and solid Christian writers of the time, and thus provides weapons of proof to the polemics of the Catholic press, besides furthering the great social effort made by the association, which now reckons three hundred circles in all parts of France.
In conclusion, we would mention that it must be borne in mind that the important part in this good work is not the exclusive institution of circles, this being only the first and one of the different forms under which the principle is brought to act. That principle is the direction and protection of the working-classes by the higher and more educated, and the association of the interests of both, as opposed to the lamentable antagonism of the same different classes which is, in our times, the great difficulty of social government and the source of increasing disorder and conflict. These associations are intended to react, by every possible means, against the erroneous social theories so numerous and so impotent for good, and to bring into practice the only true and effectual social law—namely, conformity to the social duties of Catholics. Our religion has remedies for all evils; its practice is supreme political and social wisdom, and in the alarming state of society among the working-classes there cannot be, nor ever will be, found any other course to be adopted than to return to the rules of Christian life. It is evident, then, how wide a field is opened by such a desire breaking forth in the hearts and minds of fervent Christians such as M. de Mun and his friends, and it would be impossible to show in few words all that it has produced and is producing by the grace of God; and although this work of charity has originated in France, and at present exists only in France, it may, it is to be hoped, give rise to similar laudable efforts in all countries, where also, among their associations of Catholic circles for the working-classes, shall, as in this country, be raised the _labarum_ of Constantine and its sacred motto: “In hoc signo vinces.”
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THE RIVER’S VOICE.