I.
A history of Ireland still remains to be written; nor has there been even an attempt to collect some of the chief materials for such a work. Ten centuries of almost continuous conflict since the Danish incursions, or seven since the Anglo-Norman settlement and the destruction or dispersion of the national archives, are sufficient to account for the absence of any full, authentic, or valuable Irish history. From Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century to Froude in our day, there have never been wanting subsidized, and even able, writers to defame and revile the native population and laud the English rule in Ireland. Nor, on the other hand, has there been any lack of enthusiasts whose patriotism, more ardent than their erudition is profound or exact, is ever ready to excuse or defend the natives and execrate the Anglo-Norman and Saxon tyrants and despoilers. Even in Ireland it is difficult to obtain reliable information regarding the country; while outside of it such aim is impossible of attainment. The dispersion of the Irish race during the last thirty years has been greater in extent and over a larger area of the globe than any exodus of humanity known to history. These millions have carried the traditions of their country’s wrongs, and the dismal tales of the misgovernment of Ireland, to the uttermost ends of the earth, exaggerating, perhaps, the oppression of their persecutors, and depicting in touching sympathy the glowing virtues of the victims. The largest contingent of this Irish emigration has enriched the United States of America, where partiality has culminated in alternate praise and censure of the Irish race. The circumstances under which most of these people reached the American shores were truly tragic and appalling, and are well-nigh forgotten by the older portion of the generation now passing away.
The estimated population of Ireland in 1845 was 8,295,061, which made it then one of the most densely peopled countries in Europe. In the autumn of that year the potato crop, one of the chief products of the country and the staple food of three-fifths of the people, failed, involving a loss estimated by Mr. Labouchere, the British minister, of eighty million dollars, or sixteen millions sterling. This failure in 1845 was followed by successive blights of the potato-crop in 1846 and subsequent years, causing what is called the Irish famine, and with it the great emigration, which brought an increase of millions of citizens to the United States. There had been an Irish immigration in America from the earliest days of the colony—to Maryland, for example, in the seventeenth century; but the Irish famine of 1845–49 marks the opening of the great influx of Irish into the United States and Canada.
We propose to consider the social and industrial condition and the political and religious prospects of Ireland in 1878, making the eve of the famine, in 1845, the basis of comparison. We write from Ireland, with the amplest knowledge of our subject, and, as we hope, having no object in view save a full and clear statement of the main facts necessary for its elucidation. We have travelled over every province, every county, every parish, every locality of its soil; are intimate with every phase of its history and every section of its population, and feel every throb of its national life. Yet we invite the fullest criticism of our attempt to discuss the present condition of Ireland from a scientific, a truthful, and an impartial stand-point. Nowhere out of Ireland is such discussion more desirable or more difficult than in the United States. The republic contains about the same number of Irish, by birth or by descent, that remain in the old country. The emigrants of the famine period left under dire pressure, the origin of which is not fully understood abroad. In the forty-four years 1801–1845 the population of Ireland increased from 5,216,329 to 8,295,061, or by 3,078,732 persons—an increase of fifty-nine per cent. Emigration was throughout that period inconsiderable; in the decade 1831–41 it was only 403,459, or about 40,000 a year; in the next four years it fell to little over half that average; while in the year 1843, when O’Connell led the great agitation for repeal of the Union, only 13,026 persons left the country, being the lowest on record. Although the potato blight appeared in 1845, it was not until 1847 that the horrors of the famine and of emigration assumed their most awful aspect. In the single year 1847, that of O’Connell’s death, there was a loss of population of 262,574, or three per cent., by the conjoint action of emigration and the excess of deaths over births; while in the next four years the aggregate decrease reached 1,510,801 persons—little short of nineteen per cent. of the whole population. The following table exhibits the estimated population at the middle of the year relating to our inquiry:
─────┬────────────┬─────────────────────── │ │ DECREASE YEAR│ POPULATION│ PERSONS │ PER CENT. ─────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────── 1845│ 8,295,061│ ——│ —— 1846│ 8,287,848│ 7,213│ 0.09 1847│ 8,025,274│ 262,574│ 3.1 1848│ 7,639,800│ 385,474│ 4.3 1849│ 7,256,314│ 383,486│ 5.0 1850│ 6,877,549│ 378,765│ 5.1 1851│ 6,514,473│ 363,076│ 5.1 1861│ 5,778,415│ 736,058│ 11.3 1871│ 5,395,007│ 383,408│ 6.6 1875│ 5,309,494│ 65,513│ 1.0 1876│ 5,321,618│ ——│ —— 1877│ 5,338,906│ ——│ —— ─────┴────────────┴────────────┴──────────
Over the whole period from 1845 to 1875 population decreased, but the rate of decline diminished after 1851. In the thirty years there was a loss of 2,973,443—nearly 100,000 annually, or thirty-six per cent. of the inhabitants. The year 1876 is memorable as the starting-point of reactionary improvement. For the first time during a generation emigration has so diminished that the natural increase of births over deaths added 10,352 to the population in 1876, and 17,288 in 1877. Increase must henceforth be the normal law of population, but it is never again likely to reach the rate it attained in the thirty years 1801–31, when it expanded about fourteen per cent. each decade, or an increase of nearly one in seven every ten years.
We are now to inquire into the main causes of these terrible calamities, strange and conflicting explanations of which are advanced by public writers in the United States and other countries. One flippant, fertile, and accepted theory is the peculiar proneness of the Irish to contention and disunion—a theory generally credited as sound by those ignorant of history or those prejudiced against the Irish race. We shall adduce a few broad and suggestive facts in disproof of this theory. Can any nation exhibit a nobler proof of unity than the Brehon laws, or _Seanchus Mor_, which prevailed universally in Ireland for centuries before the Christian era, until revised by St. Patrick and the Christian kings, and which continued in force throughout the country, save the small patch called the Pale, until the seventeenth century, while the traditions and principles of that code yet influence the people after a lapse of twenty to five-and-twenty centuries? And so as regards the tenacity with which, for ages, the people have adhered to the use of the Gaelic or native tongue, still spoken by little short of a million of the inhabitants, after the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the Spaniards, the Britons, and the Scotch have mainly abandoned the primitive tongues of their ancestors. All pagan Ireland was converted to Christianity by one man—an example of unity and docility without parallel in the history of the human race. Ireland, like France, England, and other countries, was ravaged by the Danish and Norse invaders, yet the Irish defeated and expelled them in 1014, long before the Gauls or the Saxons had banished or crushed them in Normandy or in England. Towards the close of the twelfth century the Anglo-Normans found partial footing in Ireland, yet for seven hundred years the native race have opposed their rule, and oppose it to-day—an example of unity and persistency unsurpassed in the world. The English, the Scotch, and most of the nations in the north and northwest of Europe abandoned their ancient faith and accepted the Protestant Reformation, at the bidding of their sovereigns, in the sixteenth century; while Catholic Ireland, in defiance of penal laws that plundered property, denied education, reduced the people almost to barbarism, and sent them to the scaffold for adherence to their church, has remained, through centuries of suffering, loyal to conscience, and by unity, fidelity, and perseverance has effected the overthrow of the Protestant Church Establishment of the Tudors. Proud and great memories these for the Irish nation—memories sufficient to disprove the shallow and unfounded charge that to disunion, peculiar to their race, must be attributed the sad and chequered history of the country. While if we turn to all other kingdoms at corresponding periods, even to the present time, we find analogous internal strife and domestic political factions as numerous and as intense as any in Ireland. England, Scotland, the several British colonies, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, and the United States were quite as much torn by internal dissension as Ireland, and are so at the present day; so that this hypothesis is wholly unfounded and quite inadequate to account for the disastrous decadence, or at least want of progress, of Ireland, compared in many respects with other countries.
The causes of Irish discontent and comparative social backwardness are remote, chronic, and cumulative. From the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in 1169 to the defeat of the Irish in the Williamite war, near the close of the seventeenth century, one clear purpose was kept in view by the aliens—the extirpation of the natives from ownership and even occupancy of the soil. Attainders, escheatments, plantations, transplantations, and settlements—all had the same purpose. Penal Laws, the Court of Wards, and dire persecution had driven the Catholic natives from proprietorship, and almost from occupancy, of the soil. Cupidity led many Cromwellian and planter landlords to baffle the Penal Laws and pocket the higher rents offered by popish recusants. Protestants of the humbler classes complained that the protection promised and due to them as of right in the English interest was denied and defeated by the planter and palatine landlords in preferring popish tenants whose lower standard of living and degraded social caste enabled them to pay a higher rent than Protestant tenants, who claimed, by right of class, a better mode of living. Thus robbed and deprived of their estates, denied leases, and rackrented by middlemen and others, the mass of the Irish people before the famine were mere squatters on the soil, neither owners nor, in any true sense, occupiers.
Catholics were emancipated in 1829 and rendered admissible to almost all the offices in the state; they obtained an instalment of educational concession in 1831, and a modification of the grinding oppression of the tithe system and the Protestant Church Establishment a few years afterwards; a Poor Law, directed by a London board, was passed in 1838, and corporate reform was granted in 1840; but these and other remedial measures, in operation for a few years, could effect little towards the elevation of a people impoverished and degraded by centuries of foreign and crushing legislation.
From an economic and industrial stand-point the condition of Catholics, in relation to land, was the chief cause of the wretchedness of the country. The agricultural laborers were in the lowest social state in Europe, scarcely excepting the Russian serfs. Employment was precarious and rarely secured a higher average wages than sixpence to eightpence a day, or scarcely a dollar a week. From Connaught a large number went to England for some weeks at the hay, corn, and potato harvests, where they earned what paid the rent of the cabin and the potato-plot; while many of the cotters and small farmers were little better in position. A few facts from the census of 1841 and 1851 will suffice to illustrate the large number and the terrible fate of these classes, as indicated by the grades of house accommodation before and after the famine:
────────────────────┬───────────────────┬───────────────── │ 1841. │ 1851. HOUSE ACCOMMODATION.│ │ PER│ │ PER │ HOUSES│ CENT.│ HOUSES│ CENT. ────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────┼────── First class │ 31,333│ 2.1│ 39,370│ 3.3 Second class │ 241,664│ 16.4│ 292,280│ 24.3 Third class │ 574,386│ 39.0│ 588,440│ 48.9 Fourth (cabin) class│ 625,356│ 42.5│ 284,229│ 23.5 ────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────┼────── Total│ 1,472,739│ 100.0│ 1,204,319│ 100.0 ────────────────────┴────────────┴──────┴──────────┴──────
Here we see that, seemingly in ten but really in five years, no less than 341,127 fourth-class houses—mud, sod, or stone, thatched cabins with only a single apartment—were swept away, inhabited by that number of families, which included about 1,800,000 persons; while the table of population above given shows that in these years the estimated decrease was 1,780,588—a striking concurrence between both. Another proof as regards the class swept away is found in the following table of agricultural holdings, grouped by extent, in 1841 and 1851:
──────────────────┬──────────┬────────── HOLDINGS. │ 1841. │ 1851. ──────────────────┼──────────┼────────── Not exceeding one │Not known.│ 37,728 acre │ │ One to five acres │ 310,436│ 88,083 Five to fifteen │ 252,799│ 191,854 acres │ │ Fifteen to thirty │ 79,342│ 141,311 acres │ │ Above thirty acres│ 48,625│ 149,090 ──────────────────┼──────────┼────────── Total│ 691,202│ 608,066 ──────────────────┴──────────┴──────────
Excluding the very large number of holdings under an acre not ascertained in 1841, we find the disappearance in that decade, or rather in half of it, of 222,353 tenements between one and five acres, which represents a diminished population of 1,200,000 persons. The decrease of 60,945, in the tenements from five to fifteen acres, representing about 320,000 people, is portion of this same subject. If we now turn to another head of evidence we find that the population was thinned from the least educated classes. The census of 1841 returned fifty-three per cent. of the whole population, aged five years and upwards, as illiterate, being unable to read or write, while the return for 1851 showed a decrease to forty-seven per cent.; and turning to the great decrease in the percentage of the Irish-speaking population between 1841 and 1851, we find similar results. Lastly, the creed census demands attention.
The first taken in Ireland was that by the Royal Commission of Public Instruction in 1834, when, of a population of 7,954,100, it was found there were 6,436,000, or 80.9 per cent., Catholics; while the followers of the intruded Anglican Church, established for three centuries, numbered only 853,160, or 10.7 per cent. The adherents of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, endowed by the state, though not established, 643,058, or 8.1 per cent.; and all other Protestant dissenters mustered only 21,822 or 0.3 per cent. Between 1834 and 1845, when the potato blight first appeared, the population had increased from 7,954,100 to 8,295,061, during which period of eleven years there are ample evidences to prove that the Catholic element underwent a larger increase than the Protestant, so that we may fairly assume the whole population in 1845 to have been thus composed:
PER CENT.
Catholics 6,760,475 81.5
Protestants 1,534,586 18.5
———— ——
Total 8,295,061 100.
These millions of Catholics, emancipated only sixteen years, were the descendants of the natives who for over six centuries had battled against English domination; whose estates and lands had been wrested from them and given to soldiers and adventurers from England and Scotland—“the scum of both nations”; whose ancient church had been despoiled of her property; to whom education was denied and the profession of their faith made penal; whose manufacturing industries were suppressed by English laws; who were excluded from all offices, civil and military, and from all social rank and distinction, and denied not alone a seat in Parliament for 137 years, 1692 to 1829, but from 1727 to 1793, a period of 66 years, the right to vote.
Such is a broad outline of the main facts concerning the population of Ireland in 1845, as to quantity and quality. We must, however, supplement these by a few particulars.
From one-third to one-half the rental of the kingdom went to absentee and alien landlords, who spent it in England or on the Continent. The imperial taxes borne by Ireland were in excess of her capacity and in violation of the articles of the Act of Union. All the state departments had their headquarters in London, while Ireland had slender share either in the appropriating or the enjoyment of those taxes. The local taxation, through grand jury and other cess, was enormous, but levied and appropriated by the country gentry, all predominantly Protestant. The county officers, the grand jury, the jail, the lunatic asylum, infirmary, and poor-law union boards were almost exclusively Protestant. The corporations, reformed by statute in 1840, were still Protestant. One or two Catholic judges had reached the bench, as O’Loghlen, and many Catholics were pressing to the front at the bar and in medicine, while in all the professions, in trade, and in commerce Catholic influence was beginning to be felt. Catholics had, it is true, only trifling share in the administration of the government and the laws. They had little representation in the magistracy or on the grand juries; while jury-packing was the normal condition of the administration of justice. The Orange system, stimulated by the triumph of Catholic emancipation, was rampant and aggressive at the prospect of social equality.
Yet, amidst such disadvantages, Ireland, in the two or three years before the famine, presented a moral and political spectacle such as the modern world had never witnessed. O’Connell, the greatest political leader of this century, led the millions of Irish people in their demand for justice to Ireland. He claimed the restoration of the legislative independence of Ireland as it existed from 1782 to 1801, or a repeal of the Act of Union. His efforts towards that object, the millions who rose to support him, and the moral, intellectual, and national sympathy that his demand elicited, are perfectly well known. The famine appeared in 1845 and blasted the whole agitation, while O’Connell died at Genoa, May 15, 1847, when the country that he wildly, passionately loved was in the throes of the famine, the horrors of which O’Connell vainly endeavored to avert by appeals for substantial relief to the British government. The present prime minister of England, the Earl of Beaconsfield, declared in the House of Commons, in reference to Ireland, on the opening of the famine, that for a country with an absentee proprietary, an alien established church, and a population starving or fleeing the country, most Englishmen can see but one remedy, and that _revolution_.
The great Irish famine, contrary to popular opinion, was exceeded by many visitations of the kind in India and elsewhere, and perhaps equalled by some that had occurred even in Ireland, so far as extent of mortality is concerned; but, measured by the aggregate of its social and economic effects, no such disaster is recorded in history. The mortality was considerably less than was supposed—that is, of deaths caused directly by starvation, suffering, and sickness arising out of the famine. Dysentery, diarrhœa, fever, cholera—all supervened. Workhouse accommodation failed, notwithstanding the utilization, as auxiliary houses, of nearly all the idle and abandoned stores in cities and towns, and of large numbers of rural mansions deserted by the country gentry. All the habits, feelings, and traditions of the Irish nation were opposed to a poor-law. Passed in 1838, although a poor-law had been in operation in England from 1601, it was only in 1847, the third year of the famine, that the last of the 131 Irish workhouses was opened, in Clifden, Connemara, and then by _mandamus_ of the Queen’s Bench. In 1844, the year before the appearance of the potato blight, there were only 113 workhouses open, with an aggregate of 105,358 paupers relieved that year at an expense of $1,085,336. In 1847 the number relieved in the workhouses, auxiliaries included, was 417,139, or nearly fourfold, while the expenditure was $3,214,744, or threefold. The entire Poor-Law Act and the workhouse system utterly broke down under pressure of the mass of destitution. That act was administered from Somerset House, London, under an English commission, from 1838 to 1847. All the leading officers, assistant commissioners, and others were sent from England to carry out a law amongst a people of whose feelings and social circumstances they were thoroughly ignorant, and to their race and faith were totally opposed. That act expressly denied out-door relief, in any form or towards any destitution, how acute soever, in Ireland; while out-door relief was the general and normal form of poor relief in England for centuries, and continues so at present. The law was framed so as to throw the whole influence of its administration into the hands of the landlords and magistracy, or their agents, the vast majority of whom were planters and Cromwellians, hostile in faith and feeling to the destitute classes. A temporary Poor Relief Extension Act, passed June 8, 1847, was necessitated, or the destitute classes must have seized in self-defence the cattle, corn, and other edibles abounding in the country to prevent starvation. Out-door relief was permitted, but should be administered solely in food; while the able-bodied recipients were subjected to severe tests of stone-breaking or other unproductive labor. The tenth section of this act was the infamous quarter-acre clause, which declared that,
“If any person so occupying more than the _quarter of a statute acre_ (less than thirty-five yards square) shall apply for relief, or if any person on his behalf shall apply for relief, _it shall not be lawful for any Board of Guardians to grant such relief, within or without the workhouse_, to any such person.”
This horrible clause gave the alternative of death or the surrender of their cabins, cottages, and small farms to the tens, the hundreds of thousands who occupied the humbler allotments and homesteads in Ireland. If they refused to surrender possession to the landlord, they perished, relief being denied them; while if they yielded, the crowded workhouse, with a weekly mortality of twenty-five in every one thousand inmates, precipitated them from the trap-coffin, often unshrived and always unshrouded, into the common fosse without a semblance of Christian burial. As an adjunct to the quarter-acre clause, and further to effect the clearance of the mass of the laboring and industrious classes, urban as well as rural, occupiers rated at under twenty-five dollars who surrendered their holdings, whether held on lease or otherwise, to their landlords, were, with their families, assisted to emigrate, two-thirds of the expenses of the same to be borne on the rates of the electoral division, the other third by the landlord. And to complete and give effect to these provisions for the death or the extermination of the population, the landlords were secured, by a radical change in the act of 1838, a monopoly in the whole administration of relief. Under that act each Board of Guardians consisted of three-fourths elected members and one-fourth _ex-officio_ members, being magistrates resident in the union; whereas, by an amendment introduced into the act of 1847 the proportion of _ex-officio_ members is doubled, being increased from one-fourth to one-half the whole strength of the board. With a full moiety of the members of the landlord class, the territorial influence through the _multiple_ vote, which gives rated property from one to six votes, and also voting by proxy, the land magnates are always able to command, if not a majority, at least a large number, of seats amongst the elected guardians, and thus secure dominance in the administration of the whole poor-law.
Under the original act of 1838 the incidence of the poor’s rate was divided equally between the occupier and the owner, while occupiers whose tenements were below twenty-five dollars annual valuation were exempt, the rate being charged to the landlord; and, moreover, a clause declared that any contract made between owner and occupier which would release the former from liability to a moiety of the poor’s rate was null and void. The landlord added, of course, the rates to the rent, save in the case of the small number of tenants holding under lease, so that the whole cost of relief fell on the occupier; while a clause in the Poor-Law Amendment Act passed in 1849 repealed the annulling provision of the act of 1838, and legalized the enabling power of the tenant to contract himself, under compulsion, out of the protection secured to him that property should bear a moiety of the cost of poor relief. We may mention that the savage quarter-acre clause continued in operation from 1847 until partially repealed in 1862, a period of fifteen years, during which it quenched many a hearth, dismantled thousands of roof-trees, and sent more than a million of the Irish race to the grave or as scattered exiles over the face of the globe. In 1862, its fell purpose fulfilled, it was partially repealed, to the extent that destitute persons, although occupiers of a quarter of an acre of land, may be relieved, _but in the workhouse only_; so that still a cotter with forty perches of a garden, or a small farmer, suffering under temporary distress from failure of crop, sickness, or accident, must either surrender his little holding and enter the workhouse, _or starve_ under the scheme of legal charity devised to extirpate the Irish from the soil of which their ancestors had been robbed through ages.
We write fact and law, and repudiate all but sober statement in our attempt to illustrate the present position of the Irish people. In the most acute throes of the famine, July 22, 1847, an act was passed for the punishment of vagrants and persons offending against the laws in force for the relief of the poor in Ireland—an act worthy of the worst days of Nero or Diocletian. Let us inquire what was the condition of the country when this act was passed. At the end of February that year there were 116,321 inmates in receipt of relief in the workhouses, and in July there were 10,000 cases of fever, apart from other terrible diseases, in those institutions, the mortality being enormous. Under the Temporary Relief Act there were issued, July 3, rations equal to the support of 3,020,712 persons. Yet the Vagrant Act inflicted imprisonment in a common jail and hard labor for a month upon any person “placing himself in any public place, street, highway, court, or passage to beg or gather alms,” with the same punishment for removing from one poor-law union, or even one electoral division, to another for the purpose of relief. More than half the population were then in receipt of relief, a vast portion of them being engaged upon relief works, which necessitated the migration to considerable distances of the male heads of families. Yet a clause in this act imposed imprisonment for three months, with hard labor, for desertion or wilful neglect of a family by its head—desertion that might have arisen from removal for some miles to another union or electoral division, in order to provide food for them.
Ireland was one uncovered lazar-house in 1847. We write from vivid and painful remembrance of personal travel of 5,000 to 10,000 miles yearly, in an official capacity, over the most afflicted of the famine-stricken districts, from Waterford round to Sligo, during that and subsequent years up to 1858. We visited every workhouse, every auxiliary, every fever hospital, every relief depot, every soup-kitchen, every centre of public works, by way of relief, every missionary station for proselytizing purposes, every ragged-school, every jail, and made a minute personal survey of the most distressed localities in the south and west of Ireland in 1847 and throughout the famine. Holding an important commission from the government, we had access to and command of sources of reliable information open to few, while we had personal communication with the chief officers of several public departments that enabled us to understand thoroughly the precise condition of the suffering classes throughout the whole period of acute distress in Ireland. Charged, unsolicited, by the government with a special inquiry connected with the condition of the destitute and criminal classes which embraced the whole kingdom, owing to experience acquired during the famine period, we visited officially every county, every diocese, every poor-law union, every parish in Ireland, and willingly place the results of that experience before the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The history of the famine is yet to be written, and, if not soon prepared, the records of personal experience will be lost, and a reliable account of it rendered impossible. When political factions in the United States traduce the Irish race, and when factions in the several British colonies do likewise, as regards Irish immigrants, they do so ignorant, it is to be hoped, of the precise circumstances under which these immigrants reached those countries during pressure of the famine. We have treated the amount of decline of population in Ireland, and the social quality of that decline, in this article. The decrease of population directly through the famine is, as we have said, exaggerated. The census commissioners of 1851 set down the deaths from _extraordinary_ causes, between 1841 and 1851, or rather from 1845, as follows:
Deaths from fever 222,029
Deaths from dissentery 134,355 and diarrhœa
Deaths from cholera 35,989
Deaths from starvation 21,770
———
Total 414,143
These figures, sad and enormous as they are, we are prepared to show are an entire understatement of the true facts of the case. The whole condition of society below the middle classes was disorganized and demoralized. Panic and paralysis seized the entire population. The dependent perished at home or in the workhouses, while those with means to emigrate fled the country. Flying from famine, fever, and pestilence, these reluctant emigrants, numbers of whom perished before settlement, have helped to lay the foundation of the prosperity of the United States and of the British colonies. The author of the _Record of the O’Connell Centenary_, describing the character of the early Irish emigrants, says, with great truth and force:
“Snatched from rough rural labor, little skilled in handicraft, a very large number wholly illiterate, and many unable to speak any tongue save the native Gaelic; nearly half of them females, without that cultured training in domestic service required by other countries; a heavy, helpless juvenile element hanging on them; intensely clannish, yet removed from those tribal and religious standards of morality and social life which powerfully influence the Irish at home; memory saddened with the recollection of the roofless cabin and the loved little ancestral farm lost for ever, the dead who had been starved at home or fell in fever, the dear relatives who sought the shelter of the workhouse, but through whose trap-coffin they were precipitated into the famine fosse without shroud or requiem; and the uncertainty of despair as to the living remnant of the family left behind—agonized by such feelings, the millions were hastily deported on the shores of America, Australia, and New Zealand, objects of sympathy and affection to the generous, of pity to the benevolent, of alarm and horror to the timid, of contempt to the misanthropic, and of scorn and hatred to the enemies of the race and faith of the Irish nation. Never before was spectacle so sad, so gigantic, so appalling submitted to the contemplation of humanity; the history of Ireland was dramatized throughout Christendom, and its tragic story personated on every hospitable shore on both hemispheres, when Moore’s prediction was literally and amply fulfilled:
“‘The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plain; The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o’er the deep.’”
We have given an outline sketch of the condition of Ireland just before and in the early stages of the famine; in our next we shall endeavor to trace what progress she has made from that sad period to her present improved position in 1878.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1878.
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THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
Like chants which fade yet linger still to bless, While float their formless notes of joy or dole, So thought doth grieve for words beyond control, That to itself it may thy charms confess, And tell each grace with joyous eagerness, As did the morning stars their anthems roll, Or as the angels greet a ransom’d soul. Such tongues alone could paint the loveliness Which o’er thy face in sad, sweet beauty smiled; As though in unseen wingings, ever near, The Dove had coo’d a legend in thine ear Of some rare tenderness to grief beguiled— Perchance of love which bought redemption dear, With all its cost of sorrow to thy Child.
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AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.
VIRGIL AND HORACE—III.
The work of translation seems in an odd way to enlist that mimetic impulse which is so strong an element of human nature, and which is really at the bottom of so much of human rivalry. To wish to do as much as others in any given line of effort is but an after-thought, a secondary motion of the mind; the initial instinct is to do _the same_ as they. That men do not rest at this; that they are not content with merely duplicating what they see done about them, like the late lamented Mr. Pongo; that they are for ever seeking “to better their instruction,” is due to that further instinctive yearning for perfection which helps to differentiate them from Mr. Pongo, and interferes so sadly with many most ingenious and scientific schemes for recreating the universe without a Creator. All literatures, it may be said, all poets, begin with translation—that is, with imitation of some other literature or poet. Alcæus and Sophron, no doubt, are but Horace and Theocritus to the unknown who went before them; Homer is first, doubtless, only because we know not the greater than Homer—rapt from us by the irrevocable years—whom Homer may have copied, as Virgil copied Homer.
This, however, is a law of literature which was known as long ago as the days of Solomon, at least. What is not so obvious, and even more curious as well as more to the present point, is why translators under certain conditions should be so fond of repeating one another in regard to any particular bit of work.
For a generation or so some one of the poets who are the favorite objects of the translator’s zeal will be neglected and seemingly forgotten. Then some day appears a version which attracts attention and gets talked of, and, _presto_! a dozen pens are in eager chase to rival or surpass it. Now it is Homer which is thus brought into notice, and we have Professor Newman, Lord Derby, Mr. Wright, Mr. Worsley, Mr. Dart, Professor Blackie, Mr. Bryant—what muse shall catalogue the host?—giving us in quick succession and in every kind of metre their versions of the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_, or both? Again it is Virgil, and within a brief interval Professor Conington, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Cranch have done the _Æneid_ into English. Or once more Horace sways the hour, and in a twinkling or thereabouts a dozen translations of the _Odes_ are smoking hot from the press on the critic’s table, and bewildering him to choose among their various merits. Within the last half-century, nay, within the last twenty-five years, we have seen just this revolution. Is it because our own is so peculiarly one of those transitional periods in the history of a literature which are most favorable to translation—indeed, most provocative of it; one of those intervals when the national imagination is, as it were, lying fallow after the exhaustion of some great creative epoch, and intellectual effort takes chiefly the form of criticism, which in one sense translation is? Well, such generalizations are as perilous as they are fascinating and we must not yield to them too rashly. In this case, if we did yield, we should be told, no doubt, that translation was no more a peculiarity of a transitional period than of a creative one; that the notion of such divisions in the history of a literature is preposterous and but another invention of the arch-enemy, like comparative philology and the Eastern question, to set the mildest and wisest of sages—even ourselves, beloved reader—thirsting for each other’s blood; or that, finally, an epoch which has produced Tennyson and Browning, De Vere and Arnold, Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti, and—let nothing tempt us back to our own side of the Atlantic, where poets grow like pumpkins, big and little, in every garden patch; yet surely, if originality goes for anything, we may add—Tupper—that a time so prolific of poetic genius is not to be counted a transitional period at all.
This, or something like it, we should no doubt hear, if we ventured upon putting forth as our own the enticing proposition we have but modestly thrown out as a suggestion to the reader. And if we were not withheld by that providential want of time and opportunity which so often saves us from our rasher selves, we should no doubt go on to make the venture even now: to assert that, in spite of Tennyson and Browning, in spite even of Matthew Arnold—in one sense a truer voice of his time than either of them—in spite of the pagan and mediæval renaissance piloted by that wonderfully clever coterie of the Rossettis, the present can in no sense be called a creative epoch in our literature, as we call creative the two epochs of which Shakspeare and Wordsworth are, broadly speaking, the representative names—representative, however, in different ways and in widely different degrees; that it is, on the contrary, a true transitional period, as the period of Pope and Dryden was transitional, and for analogous reasons; and that, because it is so, the art of translation flourishes now as then. Nor should we forget, in saying this, the numerous translations which marked the Elizabethan era. But it is to be noted that while all, or nearly all, the then extant classics were turned into English before the close of the Elizabethan era, translations of any one of them were not repeated, and precisely for this reason: that the age, being a creative epoch, made its main effort in the direction of knowledge, and not of criticism—sought to acquire ideas, and not to arrange them, as was the case with the translating periods which came after it. Then, too, it was the virtual beginning of our literature, when translation, as we have said, came natural to it. Chaucer two hundred years before was a creative poet, if the term may be used, in a time that was not creative, a time that was not his, a time whose sluggishness not even his pregnant genius could inform; Chaucer was the glad premature swallow of a lingering, long-delaying spring, whose settled sunshine came to us only with Spenser’s later bird-song,
“Preluding those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.”
Milton may be said to have concluded, as Spenser preluded, that mighty time, without fairly belonging to it. They belonged rather to each other. “Milton has owned to me,” says Dryden, “that his original was Spenser.” They were the epilogue and the prologue of that mighty opening chorus of our literature, in which the translators, too, had their parts, but only as prompters to the great singers, to help them to add to their native melody here and there some sweetness of a foreign note.
The time of critical translation, of translation for its own sake, as an art, came in only with Dryden—perhaps, on the whole, the greatest of the transition poets. Then, too, translators began first to repeat each other’s work. Before the year 1580 most of the classic poets had been translated into English verse. They were not duplicated, because, as we have said, the time wanted first of all the knowledge of them, and it was not fastidious as to the shape in which it came. For a hundred years after its appearance Phaer’s version of the _Æneid_ had no rival. Then came Vicars’, only to disappear almost as quickly. Doubly lapped in lead, it sank at once in that Stygian pool where Dulness tries the weight of her favorites, and there it has since remained, like Prospero’s book and staff, drowned
“Deeper than did ever plummet sound.”
Undeterred by this untoward fate, John Ogilby brought out his translation soon after, first at Cambridge and again in London, “adorned with sculptures and illustrated with annotations”—“the fairest edition,” grave Anthony à Wood assures us, “that till then the English press ever produced.” This gorgeous work, pronounced by Pope to be below criticism, nevertheless went through four editions before descending to the congenial fellowship of Vicars under the forgetful wave—a proof how much a good English version of the _Æneid_ was desired. Ogilby had been a dancing-master, and perhaps learned in his profession to rival Lucilius, who
“In hora sæpe ducentos Ut magnum versus dictabat stans pede in uno.”[172]
At all events, although he took to literature late in life—he was past forty before he learned Latin or Greek—he was a prodigious author, as we learn from the _Dunciad_:
“Here groans the shelf with Ogilby the great.”
Besides translating remorselessly everything he could lay hands on, from Homer to Æsop, he found time to write various heroic poems, and had even completed an epic in twelve books on Charles I., when fate took pity on his fellows and sent the great fire of London to the rescue. Phillips, in the _Theatrum Poetarum_, styles Ogilby a prodigy, and avers that his “Paraphrase on Æsop’s Fables” “is generally confessed to have exceeded whatever hath been done before in that kind.”[173] As Milton’s nephew can scarcely be suspected of a joke, we must conclude that this is not one of the critical judgments which Milton inspired. Nevertheless, Ogilby’s translations and paraphrases procured him a “genteel livelihood” which many better poems have failed to do for their authors.
Neither Vicars nor Ogilby, however, was of sufficient note, nor had their labors sufficient vitality, to set the current of translation fairly going. That was reserved for Dryden, whose famous work came out in 1697. Dryden had all the qualifications necessary to ensure him a full harvest of imitation and rivalry at once. He was the most famous poet and critic of his day, and in either capacity had found means to excite abundance of jealousies and resentments. Moreover, his change of religion, and the vigor with which he had espoused the Catholic cause in his _Hind and Panther_, made him many additional enemies. So it is not to be wondered at that when, as Pope puts it,
“Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaux,”
the parsons led the onslaught. First came Parson Milbourn, “the fairest of critics,” who printed his own version side by side with the one he found fault with, and whom Dulness also promptly claimed for her own. Then Dr. Brady, giving over to his worthy coadjutor, Tate, for the nonce the herculean task of promoting Sternhold and Hopkins to be next to the worst poets in the world, devoted himself to the equally gigantic labor of proving that there was a work he could translate more abominably than the Psalms. His version in blank-verse, “when dragged into the light,” says Dr. Johnson, “did not live long enough to cry.” Then Dr. Trapp, the Oxford professor of poetry—_majora viribus audens_—rushed to the attack and did the _Æneid_ into, if possible, still blanker verse than his predecessor’s. It was he who said of Dryden’s version “that where Dryden shines most we often see the least of Virgil.” This was true enough; and it was, no doubt, to avoid the like reproach that the good doctor forbore to shine at all. On him was made the well-known epigram apropos of a certain poem said to be better than Virgil:
“Better than Virgil? Yes, perhaps; But then, by Jove, ’tis Dr. Trapp’s!”
This is only another form of Bentley’s famous judgment: “A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” The doctor has had no better luck than his fellows.
“Olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urguet Somnus; in æternam clauduntur lumina noctem.”[174]
These efforts of the parsons, however, were no doubt inspired at least as much by _odium theologicum_ as by the genuine impulse of emulation. The first true exemplification of this came about 1729 with the version of Pitt,[175] whose choice of Dryden’s couplet was a direct challenge. Johnson’s estimate of the success of this rivalry is not, on the whole, unfair—or, at least, as fair as such comparisons often are. “Dryden,” he says, “leads the reader forward by his general vigor and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet; Dryden’s faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and Pitt’s beauties neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; Pitt pleases the critics and Dryden the people; Pitt is quoted and Dryden read.” Dryden, however, is probably oftener read nowadays than Pitt is quoted. It is something to be a poet after all, and in the exchange of translation we allow for the purity of his metal and the beauty of his coinage. Most of us would rather have the gold of Dryden, though it fall a piece or two short in the reckoning, than the small change of Pitt, though every silver sixpence and copper farthing be accounted for.
Other translations of the _Æneid_ there were during the eighteenth century, among them one by another Oxford professor of poetry, Hawkins, but none have survived. Pope’s translation of Homer, which was published soon after Pitt’s _Æneid_, diverted attention to the Greek poet, and gave him with translators a pre-eminence over his Latin rival which only within a few years he can be said to have lost. Pope had no imitators, however, till long after. Even more absolutely than Dryden he swayed the sceptre of poetry in his time; and the presumptuous wight who had ventured to challenge his sovereignty or to measure strength with “that poetical wonder, the translation of the _Iliad_, a performance which no age or nation can pretend to rival,” gods—critical gods—and men and booksellers would have laughed to scorn. It is true, Addison, that most uneasy “brother near the throne,” was shrewdly suspected of meditating such a design under the cloak of his friend and follower, Tickell, and even went so far as to publish—so ran the current gossip of the coffee-houses—a version of the first book of the _Iliad_ in Tickell’s name. But the scheme stopped there; Pope’s triumph was too splendid and overwhelming, and his great work calmly defied competition, until the spell of his honeyed couplet was broken, and Cowper could find a hearing for his ponderous Miltonic periods, a full half-century after Pope’s death. The battle which soon thereafter came to be joined between the partisans of the Popian and Cowperian methods—both of them, as Mr. Arnold assures us, really on a complete equality of error—had the effect of keeping Homer in the foreground and Virgil in the shade, despite the praiseworthy versions of the latter by Simmons in rhymed couplets about 1817, and Kennedy in blank-verse some thirty years later, until the critical _furore_ created by the appearance of Prof. Conington’s _Æneid_ about ten years since once more turned the tide and brought our Mantuan to the front.
Conington’s translation, by the novelty of its metre, the freshness of its treatment, the spirit of its movement, its union of fidelity and grace, took the public ear and at once won a popularity which, if we may judge from the fact that a new edition has been lately advertised, it has not yet lost nor is destined speedily to lose. Moreover, its peculiar metre gave rise to a discussion among the critics, which has no doubt had its share in bringing out the two additional versions by Mr. Cranch and Mr. Morris at brief intervals after Professor Conington’s, the former at Boston, the latter in England and reprinted here. Each of these three versions has that “proper reason for existing” in novelty of method and manner which Mr. Arnold demands, and without which, indeed, multiplied translations are but cumberers of the book-stall and a weariness to the flesh. Of Mr. Cranch this assertion may sound a trifle odd, since his work upon its face presents little that is new. In place of the galloping octosyllabics of Prof. Conington or the resurrected Alexandrines of Mr. Morris, he offers us only the familiar blank-verse which Kennedy and Trapp and Brady used, or misused, before him; he has no theories to illustrate, but translates his author as faithfully as he knows how, and his rendering is neither so exceedingly good nor so excessively bad as to give it any claim to originality upon that score. But then it is the first American translation of Virgil, and that is surely novelty enough.
For as each age, so every country, looks at a classic author through spectacles of its own. “Each age,” as Conington well says in his preface, “will naturally think that it understands an author whom it studies better than the ages which have gone before it”; and it is for this reason, he adds, “that the great works of antiquity require to be translated afresh from time to time to preserve their interest as part of modern literary culture.” But it is not alone that each age will understand an author better than preceding ages; it will understand him differently; it will see him in another light, from far other points of view, modified and interpreted by its own spirit. What Heyne says of the poet is in a measure true of the translator—that he has the genius of his era, which must necessarily qualify his work. We have sometimes fancied even that this business of translation was a kind of metempsychosis through which the poet’s soul shall speak to many different times and lands through forms and in voices changing to suit the moods of each. This, of course, is only one of those fantastic notions which a writer must sometimes be indulged in, if he is to be kept in reasonable good-humor. But we think we may venture to say that two nations translating for themselves what antiquity has to say to them will insensibly find its utterances modified for each of them by their natural modes of thought. Nay, may we not go further and say that no two human minds will find precisely the same message in Homer or Virgil or Horace—so infinite are the gradations of thought, so innumerable the shades of meaning and suggestion in a word. Of Virgil this is especially true; for he has, says Prof. Conington, “that peculiar habit, ... common to him and Sophocles, of hinting at two or three modes of expression while actually employing one.”
It is just for this reason that repeated translations of a great author are not only useful but desirable; that, to quote Conington again, “it is well that we should know how our ancestors of the Revolution period conceived of Virgil; it is well that we should be obliged consciously to realize how we conceive of him ourselves.” How true this is no one can fail to perceive who contrasts Dryden’s method in any given passage with Conington’s. The sense of Virgil may be given with equal exactness by each—we say _may_ be, which is rather stretching a point, for, in respect of verbal fidelity, the two versions are not to be compared—the interpretation may be equally poetical, but there will remain a subtle something which stamps each, and which we can only say is the flavor of the time. Or, again, compare the Abbé Delille’s French version with Dryden’s English—perhaps a fairer comparison; for both are equally free, though by no means equally acquainted with their author, and both to a certain extent belonged to the same school of composition. Nor are they so very far apart as they seem in point of time; the century or so which divides them was a very much longer period in England than in France. Charles II. was nearer to Louis XV. than to George III. in point of taste. Yet how different from Dryden’s Virgil, or from any Englishman’s, is Delille’s, even though he does not find in his text such enchanting gallicisms as Jean Regnault de Segrais could twist out of the lines,
“Ubi templum illi centumque Sabæo Thure calent aræ, sertisque recentibus halant”:[176]
“Dans le temple où toujours quelque Amant irrité Accuse dans ses vœux quelque jeune Beauté.”
This is an extreme case, no doubt, and there are Frenchmen even who would not be beyond laughing at it. We are not to forget, as we laugh at it ourselves, that Segrais was not unknown in the Hôtel Rambouillet, and that although his own poetry was not all of this order, not even his _Æneid_—Saint-Evremond liked it—he also wrote novels which not even the Hôtel Rambouillet could read. But when that really able man and accomplished scholar, Cardinal Du Perron, turns Horace’s lines in the charming farewell to Virgil (_Carm._ i. 3):
“Ventorumque regat Pater Obstrictis aliis præter Iapygia,”
into this sort of thing:
“Ainsi des vents l’humide Père Ton cours heureusement tempere, Tenant ses enfants emplumez Si bien sous la clef enfermez Excepté l’opportun Zephyr,”
we have a version which no doubt seems correct and poetical enough to a Frenchman, but to an English mind suggests nothing so much as a damp and aged poultry-fancier locking up his chickens in the hen-house out of the rain. And a countryman of the cardinal can make nothing more of the “laughing eyes” of Dante’s Piccarda:
“Ond’ ella pronta e con _occhi ridenti_,”[177]
than
“L’ombre me repondit _d’un air satisfait_!”
as though the celestial phantom had been a small girl bribed with a tart to answer. To the post-academic Gaul, shivering in the chaste but chilly shadow of that awful Pantheon of the verbal proprieties, the “Marguerite aux yeulx rians et verds” whom his forebears loved to sing would be but a green-eyed monster indeed. Ronsard’s parodies of Pindar were no worse than Ambrose Philips’ travesties of the deep-mouthed Theban—the sparrow-hawk aping the eagle—and not much worse, indeed, than West’s or even Wheelwright’s, or any other imitation of the inimitable that we have seen. But the badness of the one is thoroughly French and of his time, even to his bragging that it was his noble birth which enabled him to reproduce Pindar, wherein Horace, for lack of that virtue, had failed; the badness of the other as thoroughly English and of his age. And what more salient instance could be given of this natural difference in mental constitution, in “the way of looking at things,” than Voltaire’s treatment of the scene in _Hamlet_ where the sentinel answers the question, “Have you had quiet guard?” by the familiar household idiom, “Not a mouse stirring”? “_Pas un souris qui trotte_” the author of _Zaire_ makes it, and proceeds to inform his countrymen that this Shakspeare was a drunken savage.
Now, while there is no such radical difference between English and American ways of thought as between English and French ways, there is still difference enough to justify us in giving place to Mr. Cranch’s blank-verse _Æneid_, as being _à priori_ another thing from the English blank-verse _Æneids_ of forty or one hundred and forty years ago. So, without more ado, let us repeat that these three versions of the last decade are sufficiently unlike one another or any that have gone before to warrant attentive notice.
In choosing for the vehicle of his attempt the octosyllabic line—the well-known metre of Scott’s _Marmion_—Prof. Conington turned his back intrepidly on all the traditions. Scarcely any rhythm we have would seem at first blush worse fitted to give the unlearned reader an adequate idea of the sonorous march of the Latin hexameter or of the stately melody of Virgil’s verse, of the dignity of his sentiments, or the noble gravity of his style. For him who uses such a metre to render the _Æneid_ one half anticipates the need of some such frank confession as that Ronsard, in a fit of remorse, or perhaps a verbal indigestion over his own inconceivable pedantry, puts at the end—at the _end_, mark you—of one of his never-ending series of odes:
“Les François qui mes vers liront, S’ils ne sont et Grecs et Romains, En lieu de ce livre, ils n’auront Qu’un pesant faix entre les mains”—
which for our present purpose we may paraphrase: My excellent reader, if you don’t know Virgil as well as I do, you will find very little of him here, and if you do you will find still less. But Professor Conington soon puts away from us all such forebodings. He gives us, in spite of his metre, for the most part, in rare instances, by the help of it, a great deal of Virgil—more, on the whole, than almost any other of the poet’s translators. He has put the story of the _Æneid_ into bright and animated English verse which may be read with pleasure as a poem for itself, and is yet strictly faithful to the sense and spirit of its original, as close as need be—wonderfully close in many parts—to its language, often skilfully suggestive of some of the most salient peculiarities of its form, and only failing conspicuously, where all translations most conspicuously fail, in rendering the poet’s manner, because the manner of any poet—and we mean by manner that union of thought and form of the poet’s way of seeing with his way of saying things which is the full manifestation of his genius—only failing here because this part of any poet it is next to impossible to reproduce in a foreign tongue, and because the vehicle chosen by Prof. Conington, so opposite in every way to Virgil’s vehicle, increased that difficulty tenfold. But a translation of a long narrative poem is not like the translation of a brief lyric. Is the former to be written for those who understand the original and care for no translation, or for those who, not understanding the original, ask first of the translator that he shall not put them to sleep, and, second, that he shall give them all that his author gives as nearly as possible in the same manner? Two of these demands Prof. Conington’s version fully meets, and it comes as near to the third as was consistent with a metre which gave him the best chance of combining the other two. If any translation of Virgil can hope to be popular it is his; and we hold to the belief that it will share with Dryden’s, which, if only for its author’s sake, will live, the affections of the _unlatined_ English reader for long to come.
As might be expected, it is in battle-pieces and in scenes of swift and animated action, to which Scott’s metre naturally lends itself, and with which it is as naturally associated, that this version chiefly excels. Take, for example, the onset in the eleventh book:
“Meantime the Trojans near the wall, The Tuscans and the horsemen all, In separate troops arrayed; Their mettled steeds the champaign spurn, And, chafing, this and that way turn; Spears bristle o’er the fields, that burn With arms on high displayed. Messapus and the Latian force, And Coras and Camilla’s horse, An adverse front array; With hands drawn back they couch the spear, And aim the dart in full career; The tramp of heroes strikes the ear, Mixed with the charger’s neigh. Arrived within a javelin’s throw, The armies halt a space; when, lo! Sudden they let their good steeds go And meet with deafening cry; Their volleyed darts fly thick as snow, Dark-shadowing all the sky.”
The Latin could scarcely be given with more spirit or closeness; though in neither respect does Morris fall short of his predecessor, from whom in manner, however, he differs _toto cœlo_:
“But in meanwhile the Trojan folk the city draw anigh, The Tuscan dukes and all their horse in many a company Well ordered; over all the plain, neighing, the steed doth fare, Prancing and champing on the bit that turns him here and here. And far and wide the lea is rough with iron harvest now, And with the weapons tost aloft the level meadows glow. Messapus and the Latins swift, lo! on the other hand, And Coras with his brother-lord, and maid Camilla’s band, Against them in the field; and, lo! far back their arms they fling In couching of the level spears, and shot-spears brandishing. All is afire with neigh of steeds and onfall of the men. And now, within a spear-shot come, short up they rein, and then They break out with a mighty cry and spur the maddened steeds; And all at once from every side the storm of spear-shot speeds, As thick as very snowing is, and darkens down the sun.”
It would be hard to say which version is closer to the original. Conington leaves out the epithet _celeres_ which Virgil bestows on the Latins, and also—a graver omission—that brother whom Virgil makes attend him like his shadow (_et cum fratre Coras_) in every battle-field of the _Æneid_. This fraternal warrior Morris gives us, indeed, but not very intelligibly, as Coras’ “brother-lord.” On the other hand, although Morris renders the Latin line for line, he is not so concise as Conington, who puts Virgil’s fifteen hexameters into twenty of his short lines as opposed to fifteen of Morris’ long ones. Virgil has nothing of Morris’ “iron harvest”; here—
“Tum late ferreus hastis Horret ager, campique armis sublimibus ardent”—
we should give Conington the preference, while Morris excels in rendering the verse:
“Adventusque virum fremitusque ardescit equorum.”
In Morris’ version four words are to be specially noted: _folk_, _dukes_, _maid_, and _very_. They contain the key to his method, and we shall recur to them again.
Our American’s blank-verse here helps him to no greater degree of fidelity than either of his rivals, while even patriotism must own his version, as compared with theirs, a trifle tame:
“Meanwhile, the Trojan troops, the Etruscan chiefs, And all the cavalry approach the walls, In order ranged. The coursers leap and neigh Along the fields, and fight against the curb, And wheel about. An iron field of spears Bristles afar, and lifted weapons blaze. Upon the other side the Latins swift, Messapus, Coras, and his brother come, Also Camilla’s wing; in hostile ranks They threaten with their lances backward drawn, And shake their javelins. On the warriors press, And fierce and fiercer neigh the battle steeds. Advancing now within a javelin’s throw, Each army halted; then, with sudden shouts, They cheer and spur their fiery horses on. From all sides now the spears fly thick and fast As showers of sleet, and darken all the sky.”
The word “cavalry” here is too modern in its associations to suit us entirely, nor strikes us as highly poetical.
“Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy _chivalry_,”
is the way Campbell put it. Again, the rendering of the line _Adventusque virum fremitusque ardescit equorum_ is less exact than Morris’, if not than Conington’s, and much less poetical than either; and were it not for the printer’s aid, we should be unable to tell such blank-verse as “Messapus, Coras, and his brother come, also Camilla’s wing,” from the very prosiest of prose. Mr. Cranch, like Prof. Conington, omits Camilla’s attribute of _virginis_—though that is, perhaps, better than to call her, as Dryden does, a “virago”—and turns Virgil’s snow into sleet, no doubt having in mind Gray’s
“Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darkened air,”
or the “sharp sleet of arrowy shower” in _Paradise Regained_.
It may be of interest to set side by side with these English translations the French version of Delille. It will show us, at least, where Mr. Morris went, perhaps, for his “iron harvest”:
“Mais déjà les Troyens, déjà les fiers Toscans Pour attaquer vers Lausente ont déployé leurs rangs; Ils marchent; le coursier de sa tête hautaine Bat l’air, ronge le frein, et bondit dans la plaine; Les champs sont hérissés d’une moisson de fer, Et chaque javelot fait partir un éclair. Et Messape, et Coras et son valeureux frère, Et la chaste Camille et sa troupe légère, Se présentent ensemble. On voit de toutes parts Et s’alonger la lance et s’agiter les dards. Sous les pas des guerriers les champs poudreux gémissent; Et soldats et coursiers de colère frémissent. Enfin, à la distance où le trait peut porter, Les partis ennemis viennent de s’arrêter: On s’écrie, on s’élance, et d’un essor rapide. Chacun pousse en avant son coursier intrépide. Plus pressés que la neige au retour des hivers Des nuages de traits en obscurci les airs.”
In a future number we purpose concluding our present examination and taking a final leave of the translators.
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THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
## CHAPTER II.
NEW IRELAND AND YOUNG ENGLAND.
How glad I felt when morning came, as it brought me nearer to seeing our fair guest! I gathered a bouquet for her, wet with the kisses of the lingering night-dew. I flatter myself that my bouquets are constructed with a tender regard for tone. I have sat for hours in Paris, upon an upturned empty basket in the Marché aux Fleurs, watching the _fleuristes_ deftly composing those exquisite poems in color which serve to render flowers a charming necessity. Upon this occasion I selected blood-red geraniums as the outer edge, with narrowing circlets of stefanotis and mignonette, the whole enshrined in a bower of maiden-hair fern. How lovely she looked when I presented them to her at breakfast; how enchanting her transparent complexion, that flushed as she spoke, and crimsoned when she was spoken to! Alphonse Karr speaks of a similar indefinable charm in his own delightful way: “_Elle avait ce charme poétiquement virginal, qui est la plus grande beauté de la femme._” Alas! my bouquet had been forestalled by the gift of a veritable last rose of summer which Harry Welstone had culled while I was engaged in imparting some finishing touches to my rather bristly hair. The words “too late” to meet me on the very threshold of my new career! It was truly disheartening.
She was attired in a tightly-fitting dress of pure white, adorned by a series of coquettish blue ribbons, the edgings being of the same color. Her cavalier collar and gauntlet cuffs finished a toilette which almost recalled my Virgil, as I could hardly refrain from exclaiming “_O Dea certe!_”
“Might I ask, if it is not an unparliamentary question, Mr. Ormonde, at what hour you allowed poor papa to retire to his bed? Was it late last night or early this morning?” she asked with a droll archness.
“Well, it _was_ rather late, Miss Hawthorne; but as your father was good enough to favor me with some exceedingly interesting passages in his senatorial career, the time galloped by at a break-neck pace and we took no note of it.”
I had already learned to play the hypocrite. O Master Cupid! and this was thy first lesson.
“Is my memory mocking me, or did I hear awful mention of Irish whisky?” she laughed.
This enabled me to explain the blunder of my retainer in his desire to uphold the honor of the family, and to exonerate myself from the _soupçon_ of having neglected her society for that of the bottle. Peter’s ideas upon the family _status_ seemed to afford her the liveliest merriment, and she laughed the silvery laugh with which, old playgoers tell me, Mme. Vestris used to bring down the house.
“Peter is a character, then?”
“You will find that out before very long, Miss Hawthorne.”
“I do _so_ love characters!”
I ran over my characteristics like a flash, and found them of the baldest and mildest nature. Not a single strong point came to the rescue, not a liking or a disliking. Pah! what a dull, drowsy weed; what a prosy, colorless nobody.
“Peter is a great admirer of the fair sex,” said my mother. “You must see him on Sunday standing at the chapel gate ‘discoorsin’’ the pretty girls as they pass in to last Mass.”
“Is he a bachelor?”
“Oh! yes. I have often asked him why he doesn’t marry, and his invariable reply is, ‘I’d rayther keep looking at them.’”
“Perhaps I might have a chance,” said Miss Hawthorne, with a delicious coquetry in her manner.
“Not a bit of it, my dear; he would not ally himself to a Saxon for a crock of gold.”
“He is a hard-hearted wretch, then,” laughed our guest, “and I shall not endeavor to make a conquest.”
Little did she imagine that she might have uttered _Veni, vidi, vici_ at that particular moment. A poor triumph, though—a paltry victory. I did not feel myself worthy of powder and shot.
Harry Welstone kept gazing at Miss Hawthorne from out his supremely handsome eyes. How I envied him those deep, dark, corsair-like organs of vision, inwardly railing against my own heavy blues! He chatted with her upon every conceivable topic, planning excursions, arranging her boating, riding, walking, and even the songs she was to sing, disposing of her time to his own especial advantage, and leaving me helplessly out in the cold with the prosy member for Doodleshire. I could not find a solitary topic to speak upon; at least, just as I had summoned up courage to “cut in,” as they say at whist, the wind had shifted and the current of the conversation had taken another turn, leaving my disabled argosy high and dry. I had spent my most recent years in the secluded valley of Kilkenley with my mother, my horses, and my dogs. I had seen little or nothing of the whirl of the world, and was so purely, so essentially local as to be almost ignorant of what was going on in the outer circle of life. Of course I read the _Freeman’s Journal_—generally two days old when it reached us—and then I merely glanced at the hunting fixtures or the sales of thoroughbreds at Farrell’s or Sewell’s. Of course I had done some reading; and of a lighter kind the Waverley Novels and Dickens, the Titanic Thackeray and a few unwholesome French effusions; but of late I had read nothing, and, as a consequence, was local to a contemptuous degree. In what did Peter, my own servant, differ from me? Merely in the perusal of a few books. He was a better judge of a horse and—but why proceed? My reflections were all of this melancholy cast as I listened to dissertations upon Chopin, Schubert, and Wagner, upon the novelists and poets of the period, upon Gainsborough hats and Pompadour flounces, upon the relative merits of Rève d’Amour and Ess’ bouquet. Harry and our fair young guest kept the shuttlecock going between them, and I was forced to bear the burden of my own ignorance in a stolid, stupid silence. One chance was offered me which I took as I would a six-foot wall—flying. The question of horses came upon the _tapis_, and I vaulted into the saddle. I rode down Harry and scarcely spared Miss Hawthorne; nor did I draw rein until I had described _the_ run of last season, from meet to death, winding a “View-halloo!” that actually caused the teacups to ring upon their saucers. This blew off my compressed excitement, and, although very much ashamed, I felt all the better for it. My foot was on my native heath, and I showed _her_ that my name was McGregor.
“What are you going to do with Mr. Hawthorne to-day?” asked my mother.
“What are _you_ going to do with Miss Hawthorne, mother?” I retorted.
“Oh! Harry Welstone and I have arranged all that. _You_ are not in the baby-house.”
This was gratifying intelligence with a vengeance. I was told off as bear-leader to the prosy Parliament man, while Harry was to revel in the radiance of Miss Hawthorne’s presence. This was grilling. And yet what could I do or say? My hands were tied behind my back. I was host, and should pay deference to the respected rites of bread and salt, the sacred laws of hospitality. A sacrifice was demanded, and in me was found the victim.
“Could we not manage to unite our forces?” I suggested, in the faint, flickering hope that a compromise might be effected.
“Impossible!” said Harry.
I could have flung my teacup at his head.
“And why not, pray?” I asked in a short, testy way.
“Because you are to take Mr. Hawthorne over to Clonacooney, and to talk tenant-right and landlord-wrong with old Mr. Cassidy; then, when exhausted there, you are bound for the model farm at Rouserstown, and any amount of steam-ploughing and top-dressing; then you can pay a flying visit to Phil Dempsey’s hundred-acre field, and show the Saxon the richness of the land he has invaded; then you are to call for Father O’Dowd, where you can coal and do Home Rule; and then you may come home to dinner, where _we_ shall be very happy to receive you.” And Harry laughed loudly and long at my utter discomfiture—a discomfiture written in my rueful countenance in lines as heavy as those laid on the grim visage of Don Quixote by Gustave Doré.
“You are very kind, Welstone—a most considerate fellow. Why not have arranged for Knobber, or the other side of the Shannon—say Ballybawn, or Curlagh Island?”
The iron had entered my soul.
“Is not this arrangement a very heavy tax upon Mr. Ormonde’s good-nature?” exclaimed our fair guest, graciously coming to the rescue, addressing my mother, who, _par parenthèse_, expressed herself perfectly charmed with Miss Hawthorne.
“Tax! my dear child? On the contrary, it is just the sort of day my son will thoroughly enjoy: going about the country, talking second crops, turnips, and the price of hay and oats. He is devoted to all that sort of thing, and I doubt if even his duties of gallantry to you, Mabel, would get the better of his devotion to Mme. Ceres.”
I was about to blurt out something that might possibly have compromised me on all sides, when, as luck would have it, the M.P. entered.
He stalked into the room as if the division-bell were ringing, and took his seat as though below the gangway, bowing gravely to the assembled House. He lifted his cup as he would a blue-book, and handled his knife as an act of Parliament.
“You will—ahem!—I’m sure excuse my being a little late”—with a preparatory cough—“but the late sittings of last session have totally unfitted me for bed until the wee sma’ hours.”
“Surely, papa, you are not going to carry the House of Commons hours into the romantic glens of Kilkenly?”
“I admit that I ought not to do so, my dear, but, as a great statesman once observed—I, ahem! quite forget his name at this particular moment—habit is second nature; and were I to retire early, it would—ha! ha!—be only for the purpose of quarrelling with one of my best friends, my _best_ friend—Morpheus.”
“You must find the fatigues of Parliament very great,” said my mother.
“Herculean, madam. My correspondence, before I go down to the House at all, is a herculean task, and one in which I am very considerably aided by my daughter.”
“Oh! yes,” she laughed; “I can write such diplomatic letters as ‘I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication of the blank instant, which shall have my very best attention.’ Papa’s constituents invariably hear from me in that exact phraseology by return of post. I have a whole lot of such letters, as the Americans say, ‘on hand.’”
“If it were not for the off-nights, madam,” continued the member for Doodleshire, “Wednesdays and Saturdays, I should seriously think of accepting the Chiltern Hundreds, which is a gentlemanlike way of resigning a seat in the House.”
“And on the off-nights poor papa devotes himself to _me_,” exclaimed Mabel; “and I always accept invitations for those nights, so the only chance he has for sleep is during the recess.”
I wondered who her friends might be, what they were like, where they resided, and if the men were all in love with her. She had upon three distinct occasions referred to a Mr. Melton, and somehow the mention of this man filled me with a grim foreboding.
“We take too much sleep. We should do with as little as possible, and divide that by three. Sleep is waste of time. Sleep is a sad nuisance, a bore. It is born in a yawn and dies in imbecility,” cried Harry, suddenly bursting into vitality.
“Is it thus you would designate Nature’s soft nurse, sir?” demanded Mr. Hawthorne in a severe tone.
“This comes very badly from Mr. Welstone,” said my mother, “who requires to be called about ten times before he will deign to leave off sleeping.”
“You should see the panels of his door—actually worn away with knuckle-knocking,” I added.
“In the country I sleep because there’s nothing else to do. I get up early! What for? To see the same mist on the same mountains, and the same cows in the same field, and the same birds in the same trees; though, _mot d’honneur_, I was up and out this morning at eight o’clock, and played Romeo to Miss Hawthorne’s Juliet—at least, so far as a garden and a balcony could do it.”
“Who ever heard of a Romeo by daylight?” I exclaimed sarcastically.
“Let’s see what that love-stricken wretch does ‘neath the sun’s rays. We all know what he says and does in the pale moonlight.”
“He kills Tybalt,” I interposed, not utterly displeased in being able to show Mabel that I was on intimate terms with the Bard of Avon.
“And buys a penn’orth of strychnine,” added Harry with a grin.
“We know a gentleman who plays Romeo to perfection,” observed Mabel. “Such a handsome fellow! And the dress suits him charmingly.”
How I hated this Romeo!
“A Mr. Wynwood Melton.”
I knew it before she had uttered the words.
“An actor?” I drawled in a careless sort of way.
“Oh! dear, no; he’s in the Foreign Office, and a swell. He is nephew or cousin—I don’t know which—to Mr. Gladstone or some other great chief.” This with an animation that sent a thrill of despairing jealousy to my very soul.
“He is—ahem!—a very promising young man, a great favorite of ours, and will make his mark. He is destined for the House. You’ll meet him, Mr. Ormonde, when you come over. He is—ha! ha! ha!—rather a constant visitor,” with a significant glance in the direction of his daughter.
She flushed crimson. The deep scarlet glowed all over her like a rosy veil. That blush tolled the death-knell of my hopes. Our eyes met; she withdrew her glance, as I haughtily outstared her.
“He is a great favorite of papa’s,” she murmured, almost apologetically.
“And how about papa’s only daughter?” laughed my mother.
“Papa’s only daughter admires him very much—thinks him very handsome, very nice, very cultivated, very clever, _et voilà tout_.”
“What more would papa’s only daughter have?”
A quaint little shrug, and a dainty laugh.
“A thousand things,” she said. From that moment I marked down Melton as my foe—as the man who had dared to cross my path. Not that I hoped for success, or could ever hope for it; yet to him she had evidently surrendered her heart, and _he_ must reckon with _me_. Meet him! Rather! I would now accept the invitation to London for the sole purpose of falling foul of Melton. It would be such exquisite torture to see them together; such racking bliss to behold them pressing hands and looking into each other’s eyes. What pleasurable agony to look calmly on while those nameless frivolities and gentle dalliances by which lovers bridge the conventionalities were being performed beneath my very nose! Ha! ha! I would close with Mr. Hawthorne’s offer and make arrangements for proceeding to ‘town,’ as he would persist in calling the English metropolis, at the earliest possible opportunity consistent with his, and Melton’s, convenience.
“Miss Hawthorne,” suddenly exclaimed Harry, “_do_ tell us something more about this Romeo. You have only given us enough to make us wish for more. What is he like?”
“Will you have his portrait in oil or a twopenny photo?” she laughed.
“Let us strike ‘ile’ by all means.”
“_Imprimis_—that’s a good word to begin with—he is tall.”
“Good!”
“Graceful.”
“Good again!”
“Dignified-looking.”
“_Bravissimo!_”
“Parts his hair in the centre.”
“I don’t care for that,” said Harry.
“It becomes _him_.”
“Possibly. Pray proceed. His eyes?”
“Gray.”
“Nose?”
“Aquiline.”
“Beard?—men parting their hair in the centre wear beards.”
“Henri Quatre.”
“Hands?”
“Small and white.”
I threw a hasty glance at mine; they were of the same hue as the leg of the mahogany breakfast-table at which we were seated. Sun and saddle had done their work effectually.
“Does he smile?”
“Why, _of course_ he does.”
“Now,” said Harry, “upon your description of his smile a good deal may depend.”
“I object to this line of cross-examination,” said my mother.
“I consider the subject has been sufficiently thrashed already,” I added. Truly, I was sick of it.
“I shall throw up my brief, if I do not get an answer to my question.”
“I shall tell you by and by, Mr. Welstone.”
“By and by will not do.”
“Well, then, Mr. Melton’s smile is like a sunbeam. Are you satisfied _now_?”
“Mr. Hawthorne,” said Harry, turning to the M.P., “this is a very bad case.”
“I’m afraid—ha! ha! ha!—that it looks somewhat suspicious,” was the significant reply.
“If you mean—” Mabel began.
“I don’t mean what _you_ mean,” laughed Harry.
“What _do_ you mean?” she asked.
“What do _you_ mean?” he playfully retorted.
At this juncture Peter O’Brien’s shock head appeared at the open window, through which he unceremoniously thrust it, announcing, in no very delicate accents:
“The yokes is _con_vaynient.”
“That’s a fine morning, Peter,” exclaimed Miss Hawthorne, rising and approaching the window.
“Troth, it’s that same, miss, glory be to God! It’s iligant weather intirely for the craps.”
“We’ve cut all our corn in England, Peter.”
“See that, now,” gloomily; but, brightening up, he added: “Sorra a haporth to hindher _us_ from cuttin’ it long ago, av it was only ripe enough.”
“An Irish peasant will never admit Saxon superiority in anything,” said my mother, placing her arm about Mabel’s waist. “What ‘yokes’ have you out to-day, Peter?”
“The shay for you, ma’am, and the young leddy there; though I’m afeared it’s not as nate as it ought for to be, be raisin av a rogue av a hin—a red wan, full av consait an’ impidence—makin’ her nest right—”
“Here, Peter,” I cried, to put a stop to these hideous revelations, “get my car round at once.” I could have strangled him.
As all English visitors to Ireland are possessed of a frantic desire to experience the jolting of an Irish jaunting-car, I ordered my own special conveyance round, also from the workshop of Bates—a low, rakish-looking craft, with a very deep well for the dogs when going out shooting, and bright yellow corduroy cushions; an idea of my own, and upon which I rather piqued myself. Harry Welstone and the ladies came to the doorsteps to see us off, and while he explained the beauties of the chariot to Miss Hawthorne I endeavored to initiate her father into the mysteries of clinging on, advising him not to clutch the front and back rail so convulsively, but rather to allow his body to swing with every motion of the vehicle, and above all things to trust to luck.
“Lave yourself as if ye wor a sack o’ male, sir,” suggested Peter, who was charioteer, “or as if ye had a sup in. Sorra a man that was full ever dhropped off av a car, barrin’ Murty Flinn; an’ shure that was not his fault aither, for it was intirely be raisin av a bargain he med wud a lump av a mare he was dhrivin’ at that time.”
“Who was Murty Flinn, Peter?” asked Miss Hawthorne.
“A dacent boy, miss, that lives beyant at the crass-roads—a rale hayro for sperits,” was the prompt response, accompanied by a semi-military salute.
“And how did he fall off the car?”
“Troth, thin, _mavourneen_, it wasn’t Murty that fell aff av the car, so much as that the car fell aff av Murty; an’ this is how it happened: Murty was comin’ from the fair av Bohernacopple, where he wint for to sell a little slip av a calf, an’ afore he left the fair he tuk several gollioges av sperits, an’ had a cupple uv haits wud Phil Clancy, the red-hedded wan—not Phil av Tubbermory—an’ he was bet up intirely betune the whiskey an’ the rounds wud red Clancy, so that whin he cum for to make for home he was hard set for to yoke the mare, an’ harder set agin for to mount to his sate on the car. But Murty is the persevarionist man ye ever laid yer two purty eyes on, miss, an’ he ruz himself into the sate afther a tremendjus battle; and th’ ould mare, whin she seen that he was comfortable, tuk the road like a Christian mare. Well, Murty rowled backwards an’ forwards, an’ every joult av the car ye’d think wud sind him on the crown av his _caubeen_; but, be me song, he was as secure as a prisner in Botany Bay, an’ it’s a sailor he thought he was, up in a hammock no less. Well, miss, the night was a little dark an’ the road was shaded wud threes, an’ whin they cum to th’ ould graveyard at Killencanick never a fut the mare ‘ud go farther.
“‘What’s the matther wud ye?’ axed Murty; but sorra an answer she med him.
“‘Are ye bet,’ sez he, ‘an’ you so far from home?’ She riz a cupple av kicks, as much as to say, ‘Ye hit it off that time, anyhow, Misther Flinn!’
“‘Did ye get a dhrink at the fair beyant, Moria?’—the little mare’s name, miss. She shuk her hed in a way that tould him that she was as dhry as a cuckoo.
“‘Musha, musha, but that was cruel thratemint,’ sez he. ‘What’s to be done at all, at all?’
“Well, miss, he thought for a minit, an’ he sez: ‘Moria, we’re only two mile from the Cock an’ Blackberry, an’ I’ll tell ye what I’ll do wud ye: you carry me wan mile, sez he, ‘an’ I’ll carry you th’ other.’”
This proposition on the part of Murty Flinn was received with a peal of ringing laughter from Miss Hawthorne, who, with flashing eyes and an eager expression of delighted curiosity, begged of Peter to proceed.
“Av coorse, miss,” replied the gratified Jehu. “Well, ye see the words was hardly acrass his mouth whin, cockin’ her ears an’ her tail, th’ ould mare darted aff as if she was runnin’ for the Cunningham Coop at Punchestown, an’ Murty swingin’ like a log round a dog’s neck all the voyage; an’ the minnit she come to the milestone undher Headford demesne she stopped like a dead rabbit.
“‘Where are we now?’ axed Murty.
“She sed nothin’, but rouled the car up to the milestone an’ grazed it wud the step.
“‘Well, yer the cutest little crayture,’ sez Murty, ‘that ever wore shoes,’ sez he; ‘an’, be the powers, as ye kept yer word wud me, I’ll keep me word wud you.’ And he rouled aff av the car into the middle o’ the road, while th’ ould mare unyoked herself as aisy as if it was aitin’ hay she was insted av undoin’ buckles that riz many a blisther on Murty’s fingers; for the harness was _con_trairy, and more betoken as rusty as a Hessian’s baggonet. When Murty seen the mare stannin’ naked in the road, he med an offer for to get up, but he was bet intirely be raisin av the sup he tuk, an’ he cudn’t stir more nor his arms; but the ould mare wasn’t goin’ for to be done out av her jaunt in that way, so she cum over, an’ sazin’ him—savin’ yer presence, miss—be the sate av his small-clothes, riz him to his feet, an’, wud a cupple av twists, dhruv him betune the shafts av the car, an’ in a brace av shakes had him harnessed like a racer.
“‘I’m reddy now, ma’am,’ sez Murty, mighty polite, for he seen the whip in one av her forepaws—‘I’m reddy now, ma’am; so up wud ye, an’ I’ll go bail we’ll not be long coverin’ the road betune this an’ the Cock an’ Blackberry.’
“Well, miss, th’ ould mare mounted the car, an’ Murty started aff as well as he cud; but he was bet up afther runnin’ a few yards, an’ he dhropped into a walk, but no sooner he done it than he got a welt av the whip that med him hop.
“‘What are ye doin?’ sez he, an’ down cums the lash agin be way av an answer.
“‘How dare ye raise yer hand to a Christian?’ sez he. A cupple av welts follied this.
“‘I’ll not stan’ it!’ he bawled; but the more he roared an’ bawled the heavier th’ ould mare welted, an’ he might as well be spakin’ to the Rock o’ Cashel.
“‘Hould yer hand!’ he roared, thryin to soothe her—‘hould yer hand, an’ ye’ll have a bellyful av the finest oats in the barony—ould Tim Collins’ best crap. Dhrop the whip, an’ sorra a taste av work ye’ll do till next Michaelmas. I can’t thravel faster, Moria, be raisin av a corn,’ and the like; but the mare had him, an’ she ped off ould scores, an’ be the time they kem to the Cock an’ Blackberry poor Murty was bet like an ould carpet, an’ he wasn’t fit for to frighten the crows out av an oat-field. An’ that’s how it all happened, miss.”
“And did he give Moria the drink?” asked Miss Hawthorne.
“He sez he did,” replied Peter, with a peculiar grin; “but the people that owns the public-house sez that he niver darkened their doore, an’ that he was found lying undher the yoke near the crass-roads, wud th’ ould mare grazin’ about a half a mile down the road. But it’s a thrue story,” he added with somewhat of solemn emphasis.
“_Si non e vero e ben trovato_,” laughed our guest, as she waved us a graceful adieu.
It was one of those lovely mornings nowhere to be found but in Ireland: the dim, half-gray light, the heavily-perfumed air, the stillness that imparted a sort of sad solemnity to the scene, the glorious tints of green on hill and hollow that mellowed themselves with the sombre sky, a something that inspires a silence that is at once a resource and a regret. I became wrapped up in my own thoughts—so much so that, although I held the “ribbons” I was scarcely aware of the fact, and it was only the exclamation from Peter: “Blur an’ ages! Masther Fred, luk out for the brudge”—a narrow structure, across which it was possible to pass without grazing the parapet walls, and nothing more—that brought me to my senses. My guest, in spite of the earnest instructions of Peter, was clinging frantically to the rails at either end of the seat, and, instead of allowing his body to swing with the motion of the vehicle, was endeavoring to sit bolt upright, as though he were in the House of Commons and in anxious expectation of catching the Speaker’s eye. Upon arriving at the foot of Ballymacrow hill Peter sprang to the ground—an example followed by myself; but Mr. Hawthorne retained his seat, as there was plenty of walking in store for him, and my horse could well endure the weight of one, when the weight of three would make a very essential difference in so steep a climb.
Peter, reins in hand, walked beside the “mimber,” and in a few minutes was engaged in “discoorsin’” him.
“Home Rule? Sorra a wan o’ me cares a thraneen for it, thin.”
“What is a thraneen?” asked Mr. Hawthorne, eager for information all along the line.
“A thraneen is what the boys reddies their dhudeens wud,” was the response to the query.
“I am still in ignorance.”
“Wisha, wisha! an’ this is a mimber av Parliamint,” muttered Peter, “an’ he doesn’t know what a thraneen manes, an’ the littlest gossoon out av Father Finnerty’s school beyant cud tell him”; adding aloud: “A thraneen is a blade av grass that sheeps nor cows won’t ait, an’ it sticks up in a field; there’s wan,” suiting the action to the word, plucking it from a bank on the side of the road, and presenting it to the member for Doodleshire.
“And so you are not a Home-Ruler, my man?”
“Sorra a bit, sir.”
“Then what are you?”
“I am a repayler. I’m for teetotal separation; that’s what Dan O’Connell sed to Drizzlyeye.”
“What did Mr. O’Connell say to Mr. Disraeli?” asked my guest in very Parliamentary phraseology.
“I’ll tell ye. ‘What is it yez want at all, at all, over beyant in Hibernium?’ sez Drizzlyeye. ‘Yez are always wantin’ somethin,’ sez he, ‘an’ what the dickens do yez want now?’
“‘I’ll tell ye what we want,’ says Dan, as bould as a ram.
“‘What is it, Dan?’ sez Drizzlyeye.
“‘We want teetotal separation,’ sez Dan.
“‘Arrah, ge lang ou’ a that,’ sez Drizzlyeye. ‘Yez cudn’t get along wudout us,’ sez he.
“‘Cudn’t we?’ sez Dan. ‘Thry us, Drizzlyeye,’ sez he. ‘How did we get on afore?’
“‘Bad enuff,’ sez Drizzlyeye—‘bad enuff, Dan. Yez were always batin’ aich other and divartin’ yerselves, and, barrin’ the weltin’ Brian Boru gev the Danes at Clontarf, bad cess to the haporth yez ever done, Dan. England is yer best frind. We always play fair,’ sez he.
“‘How dar ye say that to me?’ sez Dan, takin’ the Traity av Limerick out av his pocketbuke. ‘Luk at that documint,’ sez he, firin’ up; ‘there’s some av yer dirty work; an’ I ax ye square an’ fair,’ sez Dan, in a hait, for he was riz, ‘if the brakin’ av that wasn’t as bad as anything yer notorious ancesthor ever done?’ alludin’ to Drizzlyeye’s ancesthor, the impenitint thief.
“‘That’s none of my doin’, Dan,’ sez Drizzlyeye, turnin’ white as a banshee.
“‘I know it’s not,’ sez Dan; ‘but ye’d do it to-morrow mornin’,’ sez he, ‘an’ that’s why I demand the repale an’ a teetotal separation.’
“‘Begorra, but I think yer right, Dan,’ sez Drizzlyeye.”
“Such an interview could not possibly have occurred,” observed the practical Englishman.
“Cudn’t it?” with an indignant toss of the head. “I had it from Lanty Finnegan, who heerd it from the bishop’s own body-man.” And Peter, giving the horse a lash of the whip, dashed into the laurestine-bordered avenue leading up to the cosey cottage wherein resided the “darlintest priest outside av Room,” Father Myles O’Dowd.
Father O’Dowd’s residence was a long, single-storied house, whitewashed to a dazzling whiteness, and thatched with straw the color of the amber wept by the sorrowing seabird. A border of blood-red geraniums ran along the entire _façade_, and the gable ends were embowered in honeysuckle and clematis. A rustic porch entwined with Virginia creeper jealously guarded the entrance, boldly backed up by the “iligantest ratter in the barony” in the shape of a bandy-legged terrier, who winked a sort of facetious welcome at Peter and bestowed a cough-like bark of recognition upon me. The parlor was a genuine snuggery, “papered with books,” all of which, from St. Thomas of Aquinas to Father Perrone, were of the rarest and choicest theological reading. Nor were the secular authors left out in the cold, to which the well-thumbed volumes of the Waverley Novels and the immortal _facetiæ_ of Dickens bore ample testimony. A charming copy of Raphael’s masterpiece stood opposite the door, the glorious eyes of the Virgin Mother lighting the apartment with a soft and holy radiance, while the fresh and rosy flesh-tints of the divine Infant bespoke the workmanship as being that of a _maestro_. A portrait of Henry Grattan hung over the chimney-piece, and facing it, between the windows, a print of the review of the volunteers in College Green, while some dozen valuable engravings, all of a sacred character, adorned the walls in graceful profusion. A statuette of the Holy Father occupied a niche specially prepared for it, and an old brass-bound rosewood bureau, black as ebony from age, sternly asserted itself in defiance of a hustling crowd of horse-hair-seated chairs; a shining sofa a little the worse for the wear, and presenting a series of comfortless ridges to the unwary sitter, and a genuine Domingo mahogany table bearing an honest corned beef and cabbage and “boiled leg with” completed a picture that was at once refreshing and invigorating to behold.
“Shure he’s only acrass the bog, Masther Fred,” exclaimed Biddy Finnegan, the housekeeper, with a joyous smile illuminating the very frills of her old-world white cap, “an’ I’ll send wan av the boys for him. He’d be sore an’ sorry for to miss ye, sir. An’ how’s the misthress—God be good to her!—an’ the major, whin ye heerd av him? It’s himself that’s kindly and dhroll.” And Biddy, dusting the sofa, requested the member for Doodleshire to take a “sate.”
“Won’t ye have a sup o’ somethin’ afther yer jaunt, Masther Fred, or this gintleman? Och! but here’s himself now.”
Father O’Dowd had been attached to Imogeela since his ordination—a period of thirty years, during twenty-five of which he was its devoted parish priest. Respectfully declining the promotion in the church which his piety, erudition, and talents claimed for him as their natural heritage, he clung with paternal fondness to his little parish, ministering to the spiritual wants of his flock with an earnest and holy watchfulness that was repaid to the uttermost by a childlike and truthful obedience. To his parishioners he was all, everything—guide, philosopher, friend. He shared their joys and their sorrows, their hopes and their fears. He whispered hope when the sky was overcast, urging moderation when the sun was at its brightest. He had christened every child and married every adult in the parish; and those, alas! so many, lying beneath the green grass in the churchyard of Imogeela had been soothed to their long, long rest by the words of heavenly consolation from his pious lips. Ever at his post, the cold, bleak nights of winter would find him wending his way through rugged mountain-passes, fording swollen streams, or wading treacherous bogs to attend to the wants of the sick and dying, while a granite boulder or the stump of a felled tree, the blue canopy of heaven overhead, has upon many memorable occasions constituted his confessional. A profound scholar, a finished gentleman, and, despite his surroundings, a good deal a man of the world, I was proud, exceedingly proud, to be enabled to present to Mr. Hawthorne so true a specimen of that order which Lord John Russell had been pleased to describe as “surpliced ruffians.”
The priest entered, a smile illuminating his expressive face like a ray of sunlight. Stretching forth both hands, he bade me welcome, exclaiming: “Ah! you have made your pilgrimage at last; you come, as old Horace hath it, _inter silvas Academi quærere verum_. How is your excellent mother? I received your joint epistle, and I hope you got my promissory note, due almost at sight.”
Father O’Dowd was about fifty-five or fifty-six; hale, handsome, and muscular; his silken, snow-white hair and ruddy complexion, with his lustrous, dark blue eyes and glittering teeth, giving him an air of genial cordiality pronounceable at a single glance. Tall, sunburnt, and powerfully built, he carried that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked in muscular Christianity. I saw with feelings of intense pleasure that my guest was both pleased and impressed—an impression strengthened by the cordial greeting which the worthy priest extended to him.
“Welcome to Ireland, Mr. Hawthorne. It’s about the best thing Strongbow ever did for me—the pleasure of seeing a friend of my dear young friend’s here. Collectively you Saxons hate us; individually you find us not quite the lawless savages the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Spectator_ would make us.”
“We want to know you better,” said the M.P.
“Ah! that’s the rub. You don’t know us, and never will know us; but _we_ know _you_. Englishmen come over to Ireland, believing that a real knowledge of the country is not to be acquired from newspapers, but that a man must see Ireland for himself. They come; they go; and all they pick up is a little of our brogue. We never can hope for much more than what Lucan calls _concordia discors_.”
“I believe if Ireland were to take the same stand as Scotland—”
“Scotland me no Scotland,” laughed Father O’Dowd.
“Scotland is contented and thrifty.”
“And Ireland is poor and proud. I tell you, Mr. Hawthorne, that we have a big bill of indictment against you that I fear may never be settled in _my_ day. Why should not Scotland be contented? Is she not fed on sugar-plums? Is there not a sandy-haired Scotchman in every position worth having, from the cabinet to the custom-house? Do you not develop all her industries, and pat her on the back like a spoiled child? Are not your royal family _ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores_, or, if I freely translate myself, more Scotch than the Scotch themselves? Why should she not be contented and prosperous when she gets everything she asks for?”
“But you ask too much, reverend sir.”
“It is scarcely asking too much to ask for one’s own.”
“Surely yours are at best but—ahem!—sentimental grievances, and the House makes every—ahem!—effort at conciliation.”
“We can stand hard knocks and square fighting, and possibly feel all the better for it; but when you speak of conciliation and all that sort of thing we get on our edge at once, as we know that we are going to be bamboozled.”
“But surely you will admit that we have done a good deal for the country. See the Church Disestablishment Act and the Land Act.”
“Only two patches on our ragged coats, my dear sir. We want independence, and that you won’t give us; nor will you offer us a _quid pro quo_, as you did with Scotland, because you know we would not accept it. No, Mr. Hawthorne, we’ll have to fight you for this, and our Irish members must do the Mrs. Caudle for John Bull, and give him sleepless and wretched nights in the big house at St. Stephen’s.”
“Have you any fault to find with the administration of the laws?”
“Fault! When we find ourselves gagged and fettered by a miserably weak administration, and hedged in by a set of uncertain and floating laws, we begin to think about righting ourselves. You send us a lord-lieutenant who knows as much about Ireland as he does of Bungaroo—who comes over with a hazy idea that there’s some one to be conciliated and some one to be hanged; a chief-secretary who knows less; an attorney-general who, if active, means a necessity for strengthening the garrison; and a commander of the forces who pants for a chance of manœuvring his flying columns over our prostrate bodies. But here comes Biddy Finnegan with a cutlet of mountain mutton, and I can give you a drop of the real mountain dew that never paid the Saxon gauger a farthing duty—or, at least, if we had our rights, ought not, according to Peter O’Brien.” And he laughed. “These subjects are much better worth discussing than English misrule. _Quantum est in rebus inane._” And ushering Mr. Hawthorne to a seat upon his right hand, he proceeded to do the honors with a courtly grace blended with a fascinating hospitality.
“That _poteen_ has its story. As I have already told you, it never paid duty. A friend of mine was anxious that I should keep it on tap, as he constantly comes this way. It is somewhat difficult to obtain it now, as the excise officers are, like you members of Parliament,
## particularly wide awake.” The M.P. bowed solemnly in recognition of the
compliment. “At last, however, he managed to drop on a man, who knew another man, who knew another man, in whose cabin this particular crayture was to be found. My friend ferreted him out, and, upon asking the price per gallon, was informed by the manufacturer that he would only charge _him_ eighteen shillings.
“‘Eighteen shillings!’ exclaimed my friend. ‘Why, that’s an enormous price.’
“‘Och! shure,’ replied the other, with a droll look perfectly indescribable, ‘I cudn’t part it for less, _as the duty’s riz_.’”
It took a considerable time to drive the point of Father O’Dowd’s fictitious narrative and the illicit distiller’s rejoinder into the head of the member for Doodleshire; and when he did manage to grapple it, wishing to lay it by in order to retail it in the House, it was found impossible to get him completely round it, as the word “riz” invariably balked him, and it is scarcely necessary to observe that his Anglican substitution failed in every way to improve the story. The cutlets were deliciously tender, and the potatoes in their jackets so mealy and inviting that the Saxon fell to with a vigor that fairly astonished me. As dish after dish of the diminutive shies disappeared, and potato after potato left its jacket in shreds behind it, I congratulated myself upon the signal success of this visit.
“My drive gave me an appetite, father,” he said. “I haven’t eaten luncheon for many months. In the House I generally pair off with some friend to a biscuit and a glass of sherry; but here I have—ahem!—eaten like a navvy.”
“I’m delighted to hear you mention the drive as the cause of the appetite; for I must endeavor to induce you to repeat it and help me to eat a saddle of mutton that will be fit for Lucullus on Thursday.”
“I am in Mr. Ormonde’s hands.”
I was in an agony—another day from Mabel!
“Oh! Ormonde will do as I direct him; and I’ll tell you what we must conspire about to-night—to induce the ladies to drive over. I should be very pleased to show Miss Hawthorne a little this side of the county.”
I breathed again.
“You shall have my vote,” said the M.P.; “and, if I might dare suggest an amendment to the saddle, it would be in ‘chops.’”
“We might do the swell thing,” laughed the _padre_, “and have two dishes—an _entrée_; how magnificently that sounds! In any case I can say with Horace:
“Hinc tibi copia Manabit ad plenum, benigno Ruris bonorum opulenta cornu.”
“I have—ahem!—almost forgotten my Horace,” sighed our guest.
“One might say to you, as was said to the non-whist-player, What an unhappy old age you are laying up for yourself, Mr. Hawthorne!”
“Well, reverend sir, so long as a man has the _Times_ he can defy _ennui_; every leader is an essay.”
“You cannot commit the _Times_ to memory.”
“I read it every day, sir,” was the pompous reply.
“Apropos of the _Times_, they tell a story of Chief-Baron Pigott which is eminently characteristic. He is one of the most scrupulous, painstaking men the world ever saw, who, sooner than do a criminal injustice, would go over evidence _ad nauseam_ and weigh the _pros_ and _cons_, driving the bar nearly to distraction. One day a friend found him upon the steps of his house superintending the removal of a huge pile of newspapers.
“‘What papers are those, Chief-Baron?’ he asked.
“‘The London _Times_.’
“‘Do you read the _Times_ regularly?’
“‘Oh! dear, yes.’
“‘Did you read that slashing leader on Bright’s speech?’
“‘No; when did it appear?’
“‘Last Thursday.’
“‘Oh! my dear friend, I shall come to it by and by; but at present I am _a year in arrear_.’”
“Am I to understand that he intended to read up to that speech?”
“Certainly. This will illustrate the man. At his house in Leeson Street, Dublin, the hall-door was divided into two, and a knocker attached to each door. The chief-baron has been known to stand for hours, pausing to consider which knocker he would rap with, fearing to act unjustly by the unutilized one.”
“I can scarcely credit this,” exclaimed the member.
“Oh! you’ll hear of stranger things than that before you leave Ireland.” And the merry twinkle in the priest’s eye dissipated any doubts still lingering in the ponderous mind of the learned member for Doodleshire.
“That story is worthy of our—ahem!—charioteer.”
“Who? Peter O’Brien? What good company the rascal is! Of him one can safely say with Publius, _Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est_. Peter would lighten any journey. What was the subject of the debate to-day?”
“Well—ahem!—he gave us a new and original version of _A Strange Adventure with a Phaeton_.” And the little man chuckled at his wit.
“I know the story,” said Father O’Dowd. “It is one of Peter’s favorites, and it takes Peter to tell it.”
“From the phaeton he plunged into Home Rule.”
“Freddy,” addressing me, “you must get Peter to tell our English friend here the story of how ‘ould Casey done Dochther Huttle out av a guinea’; it’s racy of the soil.”
“There are—ahem!—some words of his that I cannot exactly follow. They are Irish, but they have quite a Saxon ring about them, which evidently shows the affinity in the languages.”
“And a further reason for uniting us. You English will never rest content until a causeway is built between Kingstown and Holyhead, garrisoned for the whole sixty miles by a Yorkshire or Shropshire regiment—one that can be depended upon.”
“That idea has been mooted in the House before now; I mean the—ahem!—connection of the two countries by a tunnel.”
“So you would bind us in the dark, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“Ha! ha! ha! Father O’Dowd, that is so good that I must book it here,” tapping his forehead in a ghastly way. “Don’t be surprised if it is heard in the House. We are very witty there.”
“If there is any wit in the House of Commons we send it to you. But I doubt if there is a sparkle of repartee among all the Irish members even. I’ve seen a French _mot_ rehashed, with the epigram left out in the cold, and an Irish story with the point striking somewhere in Tipperary.”
“Tipperary is very Irish, is it not? They speak the Irish language there, and run their vowels into each other.”
“You are right, sir; that is the place where you’d get your two _i_’s knocked into one.”
Mr. Hawthorne saw this, and, although the laugh was against him, enjoyed it amazingly. Father O’Dowd could hit from the shoulder, but could also pick up his prostrate foe with the delicacy of a woman. When creed or country came up, one found a stalwart champion in the worthy priest, who could meet his adversary with shillelah or polished steel, as the requirements of the case demanded.
“Finish that glass of wine, and let me show you a set of the finest boneens in the county.”
“Boneens? What are boneens?”
“This is more of your Saxon ignorance,” laughed Father O’Dowd, as, followed by Mr. Hawthorne and myself, he led the way in the direction of the stable-yard.
TO BE CONTINUED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUTSIDE ST. PETER’S.
How grand the approach! The dome’s Olympian disc Albeit has sunk behind the huge façade. Lo! with its cross the sentinel obelisk Salutes as on parade.
“Hewn from the red heart of primeval granite,” It says, “among the monuments which man Reared to outmass the mountains of his planet, I was, ere Rome began.
“By no dark hieroglyphs my sides are storied; My titular god, in Heliopolis, In the world’s morning burned into my forehead The signet of his kiss.
“Converted like an ancient scroll rewritten, What heeds the Sun of Righteousness my date? I lift his symbol on my brow, dawn-smitten, And at his portal wait!”
And the twin fountains leap in joy, and twist Their silvery shafts in foaming strength amain, Whose loosening coil is whirled into a mist Of sun-illumined rain.
Therein the bow of promise tenderly, A Heart in glory, palpitates and glows; And musically, in words of melody, The crystal cadence flows:
“Ho! fallen ones, Eve’s sorrowing sons and daughters! In our lustration nothing is accurst; Ho! come ye, come ye to the living waters, Whoever is athirst.”
The colonnaded, stately double-porch For world-wide wanderers stretches arms of grace; The bosom of the universal church Draws us to her embrace.
In their white silence the apostles look Benignantly upon us. Waving hands Of welcome—if our tears such vision brook— In midst the Master stands.
“Humanity,” he pleadeth, “heavy laden, Come unto me, and I will give you rest! Through this, my portal, to the nobler Eden Enter, and be possessed!”
’Tis Easter; and they sing the risen Christ— How jubilant St. Peter’s wondrous choir! But now no vision of the Evangelist, Preceding throne and tiar,
Is borne amid the mystic candlesticks; No waving feathers flash with starry eyes; In the gold chalice and the gold-rayed pyx, For paschal sacrifice,
No pontiff consecrates the elements; And dost remember, in the olden time, How heaven was stormed with silver violence— That trumpet-burst sublime,
Like cherubim in battle? Or, all sound Tranced for the elevation of the Host, How tingling silence thrilled through worlds profound, Where moved the Holy Ghost,
And then Rome rocked with bells? If such things were, They are not now. But we are strangely wrought And vibrant, answering like a harp in air The impalpable wind of thought.
O’er the Campagna’s wastes of feverous blight I’ve watched St. Peter’s mighty dome expand In soaring cycloids to the infinite, When heaven was blue and bland.
When storm was on the mountains and the sea, Have seen its whole empyreal glory tost Like shipwreck on a wild immensity, That heaved without a coast.
But it was grand through all. From far or near, It seemed too vast for heresies or schisms; No colored glass, within its hemisphere, Breaks white light as with prisms.
I have dreamed dreams therein: of charity Wide as the world, impartial as the sun; That on such Sion, in fraternity, Might all men meet as one.
Dreams! Yet one cross, one hope—we scarce can err— May, must all wanderers to one fold recall: The Apostles’ Creed, the bunch of precious myrrh, Can purify us all.
“I have builded on a rock!” His word symbolic He will make plain—the Eternal cannot fail: “Earth shall not shake my One Church Apostolic, Nor gates of hell prevail!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRENCH HOME LIFE.[178]
Philosophers, theologians, and political economists alike are agreed that the family is the basis of society and the type of government. Home life and teaching, therefore, is the most important thing in youth, and of whatsoever kind it is, so will be the behavior in riper years of the generation brought up in its precepts. If parents did their duty, the state would need fewer prisons; or, as a Chinese proverb more tersely puts it, “If parents would buy rods, the hangman would sell his implements.” Individual effort, however heroically it may make head against the stream, has but a hard and uncertain task in an atmosphere the very reverse of Christian and Scriptural, and in the teeth of laws becoming every day more and more antagonistic to the Ten Commandments. Still, since the spirit of the age has almost put on one side, as obsolete, the ideal of reverence for age and experience, and the respect due to parents, husbands, masters, and superiors, the preservation of the worthy traditions of Christian home-life falls necessarily to the hands of families themselves. We have to live not up to or within the laws, but beyond them, and to train our children not only as good and obedient citizens but as earnest and practical Christians. Not only in one country is this the case, nor even among the countries of one race, but everywhere, from modernized Japan to Spain, from Russia to the reservations of friendly Indians.
There is one country, however, whose modern literature and practice for a century and a half has been a synonym for looseness of teaching, for disregard of family ties, honor, authority, and restraint, for every element brilliantly and fatally disintegrating, for every moral and philosophical novelty. France is perhaps the nation most misrepresented and maligned by her public literature—at least the France whose delinquencies have been so shamelessly and with seeming enjoyment dissected before our eyes by her novelists and satirists. The sound body on whose surface these sores break out is ignored; the old tradition, rigid and artificial in many points, but made so by the very license of court and city which for ever assaulted its simplicity, is overlooked, and the decent, quiet, and strong substratum of manliness, truth, and purity underlying the froth of vice in the capital and the large towns is forgotten.
The first French Revolution was prepared by atheistical epicures, the airy and refined unbelievers of the court of Louis XIV. and XV.; and though turbulent masses here and there caught the infection, and with cruel precision put in practice against the court nobility the theories about which the latter so complacently wrote essays and epigrams, yet the rural populations still believed in God and virtue—the evil had not struck root among the body of the nation. The infidelity of the present century has completed the task left unfinished by Voltaire and Rousseau; newspapers have carried doubt and arrogance among the simple people of the country; the laws of partition have destroyed many homesteads once centres of families, and driven people into crowded and unhealthy cities; the example of a noisily prominent class of self-styled leaders has carried away the senses of otherwise sober and decent men; the increase of drunkenness has further loosened family and home ties; politics have become a mere profession, instead of the portion allotted by duty to the collective body of fathers of families, and so the old ideal is vanishing fast. Frenchmen of the right sort look despairingly into the far past of their own country, and into the history of foreign nations—English, American, Dutch, Hanoverian—for models of pure living, respect for authority, law-abidingness, and attachment to home. Some have set themselves to study Hindoo, Chinese, and Egyptian models, and to put together from the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes of Solomon, and the exhortations of Plato and Cicero, an ideal code of home-life; some have gathered together and published with loving regret the memorials of French life at its purest, of the patriarchal ideal which survived even till the seventeenth century—the age, pre-eminently, of great Frenchmen and women, and of which some shadows lingered into our own century. From the _naïf_ advice of Louis IX., the saintly king of France, to his son and daughter, Philip and Isabel, to the family registers of small yeomen of Provençal valleys and the grave admonitions of a judge to his newly-married daughter just before the French Revolution, the same spirit breathes through the dying addresses of Christian fathers of families in what we only know as infidel and immoral France. “The seven thousand who bowed not the knee to Baal” were always represented, though the licentious courts of the Valois and the Bourbons threw a veil over the virtues of the country; not one class alone, but all, from the titled proprietor to the small tradesman and struggling _ménager_, or yeoman, contributed its quota of redeeming virtue. But it is noticeable that the majority of these upright men were poor. They could not afford to be idle; they had large families to support; they had their patrimony to keep in the family, and, if possible, to increase. All the customs that we are going to see unrolled before us, the sentiments expressed, the simple, dull, serious life led, are utterly alien from anything we call technically French. We shall be surprised at every page, but less so if we remember that this patriarchal life was generally spent in the country, and often in mountainous regions and severe climates. While reading of these scenes some may be reminded of a story placed in a singular region in the south of France,—the Camargue, not far from Aigues-Mortes—in which Miss Bowles has embodied the characteristic traits of a magnificent, healthy, hardy, and upright race. One of these Provençal farms had much in common with some described in that book.
The reason which makes the author of _La Vie Domestique_ choose the Courtois family register as the first subject of his two volumes is that it is the latest that has come to his knowledge; and reproducing, almost in our own generation, the traits of a vanished society, it is of more interest and of greater weight as a possible model. The author of it, descended from a family of lawyers and judges at least two hundred years old, died in 1828, and his descendants still live in the valley of Sault—one of those natural republics not uncommon in mountainous districts—retired from the outer world, faithful to ancestral tradition, and governing themselves patriarchally according to their old and never-interrupted communal liberties. There is a vast field for research, and more for meditation, in the liberties of the old mediæval states north and south of the Pyrenees; it is startling to see what bold claims the parliaments of Aragon and Navarre could enforce, and their Spartan disregard of the kingly office unless joined to almost perfect virtue. But centralization, the genius of our time, has ruthlessly declared that sort of liberty antiquated, and, after the decay of the despotism which the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began, the liberty of the individual was insisted on rather than that of the commonwealth.
The valley of Sault was originally independent of any feudal duties, and though later on its lords, the D’Agoults, paid homage and fealty to the counts of Provence and then to the counts D’Anjou, they still retained the sovereign rights of coinage and independent legislation. The country is rocky and woody; for, though reckless wood-cutting decreased the forests round this commune, Sault itself remained a forest oasis, which the provident inhabitants have tried to perpetuate by planting young oaks on the barren slopes of their hills. The Courtois were assiduous planters of trees, and a grove of fairly-grown oaks formed a background to their farm buildings. Quantities of aromatic herbs grow in this neighborhood, and their distillation into essences forms an industry of the country. But the beauty that Sault chiefly lacks is that of water; for, though not far from the famous fountain of Vaucluse, there is no local stream of any importance. This is Alpine scenery without Alpine torrents. But, on the other hand, Sault has a sulphur spring, as yet only locally famous, and the meadows are green and moist. The principal natural curiosity of the valley is the _Avens_, a kind of rifts in the earth, like craters, which, at the rainy season, gape open and absorb floods of rain, leaving only a small portion to feed the Nesque, a tiny tributary of the Rhone. Beech, birch, and maple abound, and pasturage forms a surer road to fortune than agriculture. Yet the small freeholds are pretty equally divided, and the more advanced among the inhabitants have very clear and approved notions of practical farming. The custom of selling or exchanging the paternal acres was, till the last quarter of a century, unknown, or at least abhorred; and a local tradition dating hundreds of years back had established a modified right of primogeniture—one of the sons, generally but not necessarily the eldest, devoting himself to the care of his aged parents, the settlement of his sisters, the management of the farm, and the accumulation of a reserve fund from his income for the unforeseen necessities of the younger branches of the family. His portion in money was sometimes double, according to the Mosaic precedent, but it was understood that the Support of the House (such was the phrase) should use his advantages only for the general benefit of the family, and also that his wife’s dowry should nearly cover the deficit caused by the marriage and dowries of his sisters.
Those simple people knew nothing of laws, such as shameful excesses have made necessary in Anglo-Saxon countries, for the protection, against the husband and father, of the wife’s fortune and children’s inheritance. Antoine de Courtois, one of these model yeomen of southern France, looked upon any alienation of ancestral property, or even any use of capital, as sheer robbery of his descendants, and says in his family register: “To sell our forefathers’ land is to renounce our name and disinherit our children. Never believe that it can be replaced by other property, and remember that all those who have been ready to exchange their ancestors’ for other land have ruined themselves.... If our farm is well managed, it will always bring in more than six per cent. Any other land you could buy would not bring in three per cent., and would ruin you to improve it. You would have a decreased capital and no income, and it would break your heart.”
The description of the homestead is interesting. The buildings included the master’s house, with ten rooms on the ground-floor, eight others on the first floor, three granaries above, with a dovecote, and three cellars below; a farmer’s house, a shepherd’s, hay-barns and stables, a courtyard and fountain, a garden and orchard with over a hundred fruit-trees, a fish-pond, fifty bee-hives, and two hundred sheep. He had rebuilt much of this himself, and spent ten thousand francs on the work; and in laying some new foundations he had put his wife’s and children’s names below the corner-stone. As to farm management, he emphatically preferred and advised self-work with hired help, instead of renting the place on shares or otherwise to a farmer with a useless family. He gave very judicious rules for sowing, hoeing, harvesting, etc., and impressed upon his son the profit to be derived from bees, and the increased value of land of a certain kind, if planted with young oaks. Work he considered the only condition of happiness, as well as the road to comfort, and he said he would sooner see his sons shoemakers than idlers. The family profession was the law, though he himself in his youth studied medicine, successfully enough in theory, but not in practice, since, after losing his first patient, his scruples and disgust ended by forcing him to leave his calling. The business of a notary public was the one he recommended to his son in the choice of a profession; his family tradition led him in this groove, where, indeed, he had been preceded by some of the greatest men in France.
This choice of a state is so much a matter of custom or of personal inclination that we must carefully discern between things in the Courtois family which were models and things of indifference. Their moral qualities alone are universal types; their local customs, worthy in their own circumstances, would probably be utterly unfit for a country and race so different as ours. But Courtois’ native town, of which he was mayor for nearly twenty years, gives an example less rare in foreign countries than in either England or the United States—that of supporting an institution containing an archæological museum, a botanical collection, and a collection of local zoölogy and mineralogy, besides a library which occupies a separate building, the whole under the care of a member of the French Archæological Society, M. Henri Chrestian—an example which it would be well if our own towns of three thousand inhabitants (Sault has no more) would be public-spirited enough to follow. It is not the lack of money that debars small rural towns of such advantages; they generally contrive to keep three or four barrooms going, a dancing-hall, a Masonic hall, an annual ball and supper, half a dozen discreditable places for summer picnics, and other things either useless and showy or downright disreputable. Instead of paying money year by year for the gratification of folly and temptation to vice, and putting money in the pockets of men who deliberately trade on their fellow-men’s weakness or wickedness, why not pay a subscription the full benefits of which they reap themselves not for one day or night only in a year, but every day? Where there _is_ a library in a small town, what books are most numerous? Trashy novels vilely illustrated, and Saturday newspapers with their ignoble, misleading, immoral tales and cuts. What a contrast to many a French, Italian, German village of three to five thousand inhabitants, or even to some of the island-villages of North Holland, remote and unvisited as they are!
Antoine de Courtois was the natural outcome of the secluded domestic atmosphere in which his family had grown up. The doctrines that led to the excesses of the Reign of Terror—for we must not confound the legal and rightful reforms of 1789 with the bloody fury of 1793—and the abuses that hurried on the great dislocation of society, had not reached his valley. In all lands where the local land-owners had remained at home and identified themselves with their neighbors, keeping only as a badge of their superiority a higher standard of honor and bravery, there was no revolt against the gentlemen. If any village followed the example of the large cities, it was sure to be owing to some scapegrace who had left home and learnt a more successful rascality among the tavern politicians of some seething city, and then come back to play Robespierre on his own small stage. Courtois married in the midst of the Revolution, in 1798, and quietly took up the task of his brother Philip, who had died suddenly without leaving any children, and whose wife, though only a bride of a few months, devoted herself all her life to the family interests. Antoine, always humane and charitable, had given shelter to two of the revolutionary commissioners, pursued by enemies of an opposite faction then uppermost, for which he was speedily denounced by an informer and imprisoned. His widowed sister-in-law travelled to Nice and besought the interference of the man he had formerly saved—the young Robespierre. A respite, then a pardon, was granted, and Antoine retired for a short time to Nice, sheltering himself behind his nominal profession of medicine, until one night the informer who had betrayed him came trembling to his door, begging him to save his life. He fed and clothed him, and gave him money to set him on his way, as well as a promise to turn his pursuers from his track should he be examined.
Such a man acted as he believed, and might say the Lord’s Prayer with a clear conscience. His equable temperament, and his firm reliance on reason as the corner-stone of morality, are very unlike what we attribute to the typical Frenchman—emotional, unreliable, fantastic, or affected; the Parisian has blotted out all worthier types from our sight. His advice to his children on their duty of consulting reason and moderation in all things, and sternly repressing mere inclination or passion, goes so far as to seem exaggerated and to banish from life even its most legitimate pleasures. But he knew the corruption pressing upon his retreat, besieging it and luring it, and to extreme evils he opposed extreme remedies. Besides, ancient custom sanctioned, or at least colored, his advice as to marriage, in which matter not only his daughters but also his son were not to choose for themselves, but let their mother choose and decide for them. He required his children to be wise beyond their years, and would fain have put “old heads on young shoulders”; but the frightful license he saw around him made the recoil only natural. Men had need to be Solomons in early youth, when hoary heads degraded themselves to play at Satyrs. Among other precepts—and there is not one that could not be matched out of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes—he insisted on the duty of neither borrowing nor lending; his teaching was inflexible on this point. “Better go shirtless than borrow money” was his maxim. In these days of lax and indiscriminate pity for all misfortune such advice sounds selfish and harsh; it belongs to the conscience of each man to interpret it and make exceptions. As to the borrowing we might be inclined to say, “Never under any circumstances”; but as to the lending there may be exceptions. In the first you fetter yourself, than which nothing is less wise; in the second you incur no obligation, and, if you can afford to lose the sum lent, there is an additional excuse. Courtois’ objection was founded on the principle he set forth elsewhere, that your property is not your own but your posterity’s, and that you have no right to diminish it. If he had had any other and absolutely personal property, the objection would have been no doubt qualified. In many cases he showed by his own example that he had no objection to _give_, and to be helpful to his neighbor according to his ability. He was rigidly opposed to the reading of novels, to games of chance, to balls and theatre-going; one could almost fancy one’s self listening to an old Puritan on this subject. But in this respect who is more of a Puritan than St. Jerome in his instructions to Paula for the education of her daughter? Reading consisted, with Antoine de Courtois, chiefly of the Scriptures and of the _Following of Christ_, that universal book of devotion, with Châteaubriand’s then recently-published _Génie du Christianisme_. The later development of Christian literature, less florid than Châteaubriand, might have added other books in his own language to his restricted library, but they hardly existed in his day. For instance, he would have sympathized with Joubert, who wrote: “Whenever the words altars, graves, inheritance, native country, old customs, nurse, masters, piety, are heard or said with indifference, all is lost.”
The practical and physical advantages of virtue were always before his eyes, and he never ceased showing his children how sensible and rational are the laws of God. They preserved health and gave success; they ensured happiness and kept peace. Honesty is not only the first duty of man to his fellow, but is the safest road for one’s self, and brings with it the confidence, the respect, and the love of one’s neighbors. On the subject of drunkenness it is worth while to note what a Frenchman, one of a nation of wine-drinkers—who, it is said, are so sober as opposed to a nation of ale and spirit drinkers—and of a generation long preceding any agitation on the temperance question, says in his solemn advice to his children:
“Nothing is more contemptible than drunkenness, and, in order that it may be impossible for you to fall into this sin, I advise you never to drink wine. Water-drinkers live longer and are stronger and healthier. Be sure of this: it is easy to accustom yourself to drink no wine, but, once the habit of drinking wine is formed, it costs a good deal to satisfy it, and often painful efforts to restrain it within the bounds of moderation. I never drank wine till I was five-and-thirty, and I should have done better never to drink any. Wine strengthens nothing but our passions; it wears out the body and disturbs the mind.”
He recommended work, not only as a duty but as the essential condition of happiness, and no one knows how true this is but those who have tried to do without regular employment. One often hears people wonder why so-and-so, being so rich, continues in business, and slaves at the desk instead of enjoying the fruits of his wealth. Nothing is more natural, unless a man has a taste strong enough to form an occupation, such as Schliemann had from his boyhood, and was able to indulge after he earned money enough by business to prosecute researches in the East. The leisure that some people recommend is only idleness under a veil of refinement, and no man or woman can be rationally happy unless through some special occupation which towers above all others. Doing a score of things, and giving an hour or so to each, never brings any result worth mentioning; devoting all your spare time to one pursuit strengthens the mind even where it is not needed to support the body. “If you have no profession,” says Antoine de Courtois, “you will never be anything but useless men, a burden to yourselves and a weariness to others.”
Domestic economy is another cardinal virtue of this thrifty French farmer, and the rule he prescribes—that of laying by one-sixth of one’s income to form a reserve fund, so as not to encroach on one’s capital for repairs or other unexpected expenses—is worthy of notice. Going to law, especially among relations, he utterly abhors, and advises his son, in cases of dispute, to have recourse to the arbitration of some mutual friend. On one occasion, when he was compelled to go to law against a neighbor, he mentions the suit as that of “our mill against ——’s meadow,” and takes the first opportunity to do his adversary a personal favor, carefully distinguishing between the individual and the cause. In a word, all the elements of discord and dissolution most familiar to ourselves, and too unhappily common to cause any surprise, or even to elicit more than languid blame, are, in this family register, studiously held up to execration.
Family affection, again, was not restricted to the brothers and sisters; it included all relations, and was supposed, whenever necessary, to show itself in practical help. Uncles and aunts were second fathers and mothers; god-parents were more than nominal connections; cousins were only another set of brothers and sisters. A maiden aunt, Mlle. Girard, called in the affectionate _patois_ of Provence “our good _tata_,” helped to bring up Antoine’s children, and her brothers, far from wishing her to follow her first impulse, and, on account of her feeble health, take the veil in some neighboring convent, argued with her in favor of home life and duties. She died at the age of fifty-two, a holy death, as her life had been useful, humble, and charitable. Courtois himself considered marriage the natural state of man, and said that, for his part, he thought “there was no true happiness, and perhaps no salvation, outside of the married state.” But he looked upon it as so much a means to an end that he deprecated the interference of personal inclination against such practical considerations as health, virtue, becoming circumstances of fortune and station. He wisely said that one was only the steward of one’s own property, and was bound to hand it on unimpaired to one’s posterity; yet it is possible that he had too little confidence in the probably wise choice his children would make for themselves. It is true that the choice of mates by the parents provides in each generation a balance to the inability of the parents to choose for themselves in their own case—a sort of poetic retribution; and it is true also that men and women at the age of parents with marriageable children have just come to that maturity and perfection of judgment which enables them to be good guides to their sons and daughters while the latter are still in that chrysalis state when obedience is the wisest course. But such an education as he had given them should have made them more capable of discernment than others, and in his precepts there is perhaps as much of old tradition as of reaction against the subversive theories which were rending French society in pieces. How else interpret such a sweeping assertion as this: “A father is the only man a young girl need not fear”?—a withering comment, indeed, on the general state of society. On the important subject of marriage and its duties Mme. de Lamartine, the mother of the poet, has a beautiful passage in her journal, written at Milly, near Mâcon, at a small country house, whose orchards, meadows, and vineyards brought in the small income of six hundred dollars a year. On this she had a large family of sons to bring up and workmen to pay, yet the family life was as dignified and as calm as Abraham’s with his vast possessions. Her husband she calls a peerless man, “a man after God’s own heart,” and, as is often the case with the fathers of brilliant men, his character stands contrasted with that of the poet, as the oak by the side of the willow. The father of Macaulay was infinitely superior in his moral character to his amiable, genial, and gifted son—a man of iron, austerely upright, and a rock on which to depend, “through thick and thin,” but not what the world calls charming. Here is Mme. de Lamartine’s judgment, worthy to be graven in the heart of every bride as she leaves the altar:
“I was present to-day, 5th Feb., 1805, at a taking of the veil of a Sister of Mercy in the hospital at Mâcon. There was a sermon, in which the candidate was told that she had chosen a state of penance and mortification, and, as an emblem of this, a crown of thorns was put upon her head. I admired her self-sacrifice, but could not help remembering also that the state of the mother of a family, if she fulfils her duties, can match the cloistered state. Women do not think enough of it when they marry, but they really make a vow of poverty, since they entrust their fortune to their husbands, and can no longer use any of it except what he allows them to spend. We also take a vow of chastity and obedience to our husbands, since we are hereafter forbidden to seek to please or lure any other man. Over and above this we take a vow of charity towards our husbands, our children, our servants, including the duty of nursing them in sickness, of teaching them as far as we are able, and of giving them sound and Christian advice. I need not, therefore, envy the Sisters of Mercy; I have only faithfully to fulfil my duties, which are fully as arduous as theirs, and perhaps more so, since we are not surrounded by good examples, as they are, but rather by everything which would tend to distract us. These thoughts did my soul much good; I renewed my vows before God, and I trust to him to keep me always faithful to them.”[179]
Her life was serious and busy:
“I go to Mass every morning with my children at seven. Then we breakfast, and I attend to some housekeeping cares; then study, first the Bible, then grammar and French history—I sewing all the while.... My chief object is to make my children very pious and keep them constantly in full occupation.”
They had family prayer, too, and she says in her journal:
“It is a beautiful custom and most useful, if one would have one’s house, as Scripture recommends, a house of brethren. Nothing is so good for the mind of servants as this daily partaking with their masters in prayer and humiliation before God, who recognizes neither superiors nor inferiors. It is good for the masters to be thus reminded of Christian equality with those who are their inferiors in the world’s eyes, and the children are thus early taught to think of their true and invisible Father, whom they see their elders beseech with awe and confidence.”
The Courtois family were cousins of the Girards, one of whom, Philip de Girard, invented a flax-spinning machine in 1810, and many other mechanical improvements. In 1823 his father’s property was in danger of being sold at auction, and, having no capital but his genius, he made a contract with the Russian government, binding himself to become chief-engineer of the Polish mines for ten years. He thus saved his patrimony. A new town grew up around one of the factories established in Poland on his system, and took his name, Girardow; the present emperor has given the town a block of porphyry as a pedestal for the founder’s statue. He, too, was of the old French stock, a dutiful son and sincere Christian, schooled in tribulation in his own country, but, notwithstanding his many disappointments as an inventor, happy enough to have been buried in his own old home.
A better-known name is that of the D’Aguesseau family, a remarkable house, both for inherited piety and genius. The great chancellor of this name was a model son to a model father, and all his own children were worthy of him. Perhaps the La Ferronnays are equally fortunate; as far as their family life is revealed in _A Sister’s Story_, it seems cast in the same mould. Few, however, so prominent, and therefore so open to temptation, as the D’Aguesseaus have given such a sustained example of high virtue. The chancellor, whose family, always connected with the law, dated authentically from the end of the fifteenth century, was dangerously fortunate in his public career. At twenty-two he was advocate-general to the Parliament of Paris, and procurator-general at thirty-two, an orator famous all over France, a historian, a judge, a philosopher, and a writer. His name was synonymous with several important laws. He held the seals of the chancellorship for thirty-two years, and died in 1751, over eighty. His linguistic studies embraced Hebrew and Arabic—rare acquirements at that time—and he was also a good mathematician. His own saying, which he applied to his father, is no less true of himself: “The way of the righteous is at first but an imperceptible spot of light, which grows steadily by degrees till it becomes a perfect day.” Another of his maxims was that “public reform begins in home and self-reform.” His children’s education was his greatest solicitude, even among his public duties, and one gets an interesting glimpse of him in Mme. d’Aguesseau’s letters describing the business journeys of inspection on which he had to go, and which he made with his family in a big coach. The mother would open the day by prayer, and the sons then studied the classics and philosophy with their father, while even the hours of leisure were mostly filled up by reading; for the chancellor wisely taught his boys to choose subjects of interest out of school-hours, that they might not identify reading with compulsory tasks. School teaching he considered only as a basis for continued education by one’s self, and his ideal of his daughter’s education was the union of domestic deftness with scientific study. This daughter, in her turn, left to her sons advice such as truly proved her to be a mother in Israel. His wife he enthroned as a queen in his heart and his home, and would smile when others rallied him on his domestic obedience. He trusted to her for all home matters and expenses; and such women as she and those she represented were fit to be trusted.
The seventeenth century was essentially the age of great women in France, and the early part of the eighteenth still kept the tradition. Mme. de Chantal had a manly soul in a woman’s body, and yet proved herself as good a housekeeper as an administrator of her son’s estate while a minor. Prayer, work, and study went hand in hand in these women, and the D’Aguesseaus were only shining representatives of whole families and classes of noble wives and mothers. They remind one of some Scotch mothers and homes, in districts where old customs still abide; where servants are part of the family, yet never, in all their loving and rude familiarity, approach to a thought of disrespect or disobedience; where there is intense love but no demonstration; where honor and truth are loved better than life, and simplicity becomes in reality the most delicate and grave courtesy. D’Aguesseau loved farming as his chosen recreation, and vehemently denounced the rising prejudice of the young who were ashamed of their father’s simple homestead and refused to live such rustic lives. The Hebrew ideal—than which no finer has ever been invented—was his absolute standard of home-life, and how his father’s character answered to it we shall presently see. The publication of this manuscript biography and other domestic writings of the chancellor was due only to long-continued pressure, and his sons consented only with the hope of doing good to a perverse generation. In these days, when people are rather flattered than otherwise to see their names in print, even if it be only in a local sheet, many may wonder at this reticence which denoted the delicacy of this exceptional family. Whether the publication did good we can hardly judge; it must have helped to stop some on a downward career, or at least strengthened the weak resolves of some few struggling against the current.
The elder D’Aguesseau had singular natural advantages such as the majority lack, but much of this happy temperament was probably the result of generations of clean, temperate, and orderly living, such as his forefathers had been famous for. His son traces a portrait of him which seems to unite the primitive Christian with the ancient Roman:
“Exempt from all passion, one could hardly tell if he had ever had any to fight against, so calmly and sovereignly did virtue rule over his soul. I believe the love of pleasure never made him lose a single instant of his life. It even seemed as if he needed no relaxation to balance the exhaustion of his mind, and, if he allowed himself any at rare intervals, a little historical or literary reading, a short conversation with a friend, or a chat with my mother was enough to strengthen his mind for more work; but these relaxations were so few and far between that one would have thought he grudged them to himself. Ambition never disturbed his heart; for himself, he had never had any, and in his children’s careers he looked only for opportunities for them to serve their country and avoid idleness and luxury, which he considered a perpetual temptation to evil. How could avarice come near a soul so generous?... Twenty years’ labor on public works and thirty-one in the council never suggested to him the idea of asking for anything.[180] ... He died at the age of eighty-one, never having received any extraordinary gratuity, pension, or grant. Even his salary, in spite of his share in the distribution of the public treasury, was always the last to be paid. Mr. Desmarets, finance minister, said to me one day as we were walking in his garden: ‘I must say your father is an extraordinary man. I found out by chance that his salary has not been paid for some time, though he needs it. Why did he not tell me? He sees me every day, and he knows there is no one I would oblige sooner than him.’ I answered with a laugh that the salary never would be paid, if he waited for my father to ask for it, for he well knew that the word _ask_ was the hardest in the world for my father to utter.... What defects could a man have who was so insensible to pleasure, ambition, even legitimate self-interest? Nearly all human weaknesses are the results of these three passions, ... and Despréaux was only literally in the right when he said of your grandfather: ‘Such a man makes humanity despair.’ He did not know justice only through the discernment of his mind; he felt it as the natural instinct and impulse of his heart, spite of all prejudices and predilections. Diffident of his own judgment, he feared the illusions of a first impulse and the snares of a hasty conclusion. Wisely lavish of his time in listening to causes and reading the memoranda of his clients, he was never contented till he had got to the smallest details of the truth, for to judge aright was the only anxiety or disturbance of mind he ever experienced. Mindful only of things in the abstract, he wholly lost sight of names and persons; and if in the exercise of his functions he was ever known to give way to emotion, it was only on behalf of endangered justice, never of individuals as such. In this there was no obstinacy or arrogance. Zeal for justice and love of truth would often so move him that he was unable to contain his thoughts, and would admonish others of the danger of trusting too much to what is erroneously called common sense, though it be so rare a gift; of the duty of learning accurately the principles of justice, and of forming one’s judgment on the experience of the wisest men.”
His gentleness and patience, his prudence and discretion, were no less conspicuous; his son says further: “No one knew men better, and no one spoke less of them.” His gentleness was a companion virtue of his courage. Apparently timid, he was yet impassible; neither moral nor physical danger awed him.
“From this mixture of justice, prudence, and bravery resulted a perfect equipoise as little in danger from variations of temper as from tempests of passion.... He was always the same, always himself, always lord of his thoughts and feelings. Hence that groundwork of moderation that kept him in an atmosphere so serene that pride never puffed him up, nor weakness degraded him, nor extreme joy upset him, nor immoderate sorrow depressed him. Duty, ever present to his mind, kept him within the bounds of the most solid wisdom, and one might epitomize his character thus: he was a living reason, quickening a body obedient to its lessons and early accustomed to bear willingly the yoke of virtue.”
Of lesser qualities, having these greater ones, he could not be destitute, and in his daily life, his eating and drinking, his recreations, his domestic relations, he was equally steady and perfect. He disliked dinner-parties especially, as involving a loss of time, though, if obliged to be at them, he never went beyond the frugal portion equivalent to his home meals; he drank so little wine that it scarcely colored the water with which he mixed it; and as to display, he was such an enemy to it that he would use only a pair of horses where his colleagues and subordinates ostentatiously used two pair. He was sickly of body, but retained his gentle and equable temperament throughout his life; his servants found him too easy to serve, so careless was he of his personal comfort; his friends, few but sincere, found in him another self, so forgetful was he of his interests in theirs. In conversation he repressed his natural turn for pleasantry, because he despised such frivolous talents; but his _esprit_ pierced his gravity at times, and he was always a hearty laugher. Piety was inborn in him, and his faith was as childlike as his morals were pure. Scripture was his favorite reading, the Gospels especially, and his grave devotion in church was a rebuke to younger and more thoughtless men. He laid aside a tenth of his income for the use of the poor, whom he looked upon collectively as an additional child of his own; and a famine, or local distress of any kind, always found him with a reserve fund ready to help the needy. On the other hand, he practised the strictest domestic economy, and on principle shunned all display beyond what was necessary for simple comfort and the respect due to his official position. We might go further in this eulogium, but, having pointed out the steadiness of character which was peculiar to him, we need not enlarge on qualities which he shared with many weaker but still well-meaning men. All real saints are first true men; wherever an element of weakness crosses the life of a servant of God there is a corresponding flaw in his perfection. The death of Henri d’Aguesseau was worthy of his life; the consideration for others, the solicitude for some poor clients whose interests he feared would suffer through the time lost in formalities after his death, the strong reliance on God, the frequent repetition of the Psalms, “the possessing his soul in patience,” which distinguished his dying hours, all pointed to the “preciousness” which it must have worn in God’s sight.
The Chancellor d’Aguesseau walked in his father’s footsteps. Among his teachings to his son, who at nineteen was leaving home, he insists especially on the study of Holy Scripture, supplemented by a practice of marking and bringing together in writing all such passages as relate to the duties of a Christian and a public life, to serve as a body of moral precepts for his own guidance. Others, he says, have commented upon Scripture in this direction, but he does not advise his son to follow them in their methods, for “the true usefulness and value of this sort of work is only for the person himself, who thereby profits at his leisure, and imbues himself with the truths he gathers.” In his book, _Reflections on Christ_, he says: “The characteristic of Gospel doctrine is that it is as sublime, while it is also as simple, as _one_, as God himself. There is but one thing needful: to serve God, to imitate him, to be one with him. This truth includes all man’s duties.” Simplicity and uprightness, singleness of purpose and love of truth, were for him the practical synonym of religion. His father’s death he calls “simple and great”; Job’s eulogium he emphatically points out as having been that of “a man simple and upright, fearing God and eschewing evil.” Other moralists, public and private, have harped, not unnecessarily, on the same string. The Provençal poet, Frederick Mistral, adds another element to the definition of goodness—work. Brought up on a farm, among all the interests and details of agriculture and the vintage, in a household whose head was his father and teacher, and where daily family prayer and reading in common ended a day of hard work, he was a strong and rustic boy. All old customs were in vogue: the father solemnly blessed the huge Yule-log at Christmas, and then told his children of the worthy doings of their ancestors. He never complained of the weather, rebuking those who did in these words: “My friends, God above knows what he is about, and also what is best for us.” His table was open to all comers, and he had a welcome for all but idlers. He would ask if such and such a one was a good worker, and, if answered in the affirmative, he would say: “Then he is an honest man, and I am his friend.” The men and women on the farm were busy, healthy, strong, and pious. The old man had been a soldier under Napoleon, and had harbored proscribed and hunted fugitives in the Reign of Terror. His adventures were a never-ending source of interest to his family, his hired men, and to strangers. We are perhaps wrong in saying so, but there is always a tendency, when we see or hear of such men, to say: “There are none such now.” Certainly there are fewer, but in every age the same lament has been raised. The “good old times,” if you pursue them closely, vanish into the age of fable; yet in hidden corners one may always find some of their representatives, and goodness, alas! has always been exceptional. M. Taine, in his _Sources of Contemporary France_, wisely says: “In order to become practical, to lord it over the soul, to become an acknowledged mainspring of action, a doctrine must sink into the mind as an accepted, indisputable thing, a habit, an established institution, a home tradition, and must filter through reason into the foundations of the will; then only can it become a social force and part of a national character.” Unfortunately, it takes centuries, or at least generations, to produce such results; but the continual and unchanging teaching of religion, running parallel to, and yet distinct from, all local changes of circumstance, may often supply much of this natural tradition. In the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres, in a manual of agriculture, touches on the duties of a landholder, and the old principles of the Bible are revived in his archaic French. He bids masters, “according to their gifts, exhort their servants and laborers to fly sin and follow virtue.”
“He (the master) shall show them how industry profits every business, specially farming, by means of which many poor men have built houses; and, on the other hand, how by neglect many rich families have been ruined. On this subject he shall quote the sayings of the wise man, ‘that the hand of the diligent gathers riches,’ and that the idler who will not work in winter will beg his bread in summer. Such and like discourses shall be the ordinary stock of the wise and prudent father of a family concerning his men, whence also he will learn to be the first to follow diligence and virtue, and to let no word of blasphemy, of lasciviousness, of foolishness, or of backbiting ever pass his lips, in order that he may be a mirror of all modesty.”
Gerebtzoff’s _History of Ancient Russian Civilization_ gives curious details of the patriarchal rules of life in that country, the respect lavished on parents and elders, the early-imbibed love of truth, and the familiar use of proverbs embodying these doctrines. Why do these things seem new to us, or at least why is their repetition so necessary? St. Marc Girardin, lecturing at the Sorbonne thirty years ago on the fifth chapter of Proverbs, distrusted the effect on his audience of youths “of the period.” He handled the subject manfully, but so well that his audience caught his own enthusiasm and rained down applause on those noble, ancient Hebrew maxims, so dignified in theory, so beautiful in practice. But if the world would not listen to such teaching, the same precepts would meet it unawares in the books of classic writers—in the _Republic_ of Plato, in the speeches of Cicero, the _Politics_ of Aristotle, in the laws of Solon. The ancients constantly startle us with their maxims of more than human virtue; much of their heathen teaching puts to shame the practice of their pseudo-Christian successors. Those among them who do not uphold piety, filial respect, obedience, and faith belong to a time when literature as well as morals was degenerating; but it would have required a Sardanapalus in literature to teach unblushingly what Rousseau taught to the most polished society of Europe. All law is contained in the Ten Commandments, and in China, relates one of the missionaries whose “letters,” unpretentious as they are, are the greatest help to science, a committee of learned men, on being ordered to report flaws in Christian doctrine, said they had considered well, but dared not do it, for all the essential doctrine was already contained in their own sacred books, the _King_. Again, Christian practice in old times revived the precept of Deuteronomy to bear the commandments “on the wrist, and engrave them on the threshold of the house and the lintel of the door” (Deut. _vi_. 6–9). In Luneburg, Hanover, a farm-house built in 1000, and which for six hundred years has been in the family of its present owner, a small yeoman, Peter Heinrich Rabe, has this text over the door: “The blessing of God shall be thy wealth, If, mindful of naught else, thou art Faithful and busy in the state God has given thee, And seekest to fulfil all thy duties. Amen.” English and Dutch, German and French, houses have more or less such decorations and reminders on their walls; churches abounded with them, and men and women wore illuminated texts as jewels. The immutable law of which Cicero, in his _Republic_, gives a definition worthy of the Bible, and to deny which, he says, is to fly from one’s self, deny one’s own nature, and be therefore most grievously tormented, even if one escapes human punishment; the law of conscience, of which a Chinese family register says: “Nothing in the world should turn your heart away from truth one hair’s breadth,” and “If you set yourself above your conscience, it will avenge itself by remorse; heaven and earth and all the spirits will be against you”; the law which Père Gratry resumed in three passages of Scripture: “Increase and multiply, and possess the earth,” “Man is put on earth to set order and justice in the world,” and “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things else shall be added unto you”; the law which Garron de la Bévière, a victim of the Revolution, though himself a sincere advocate of liberty, translates thus: “He who knows not how to suffer knows not how to live”; that law which does not deal only in magnificent generalities, but carries its dignity into the smallest details of practical life, so that Père de Ravignan could apply it from the pulpit of Notre Dame to the sore point of a fashionable audience whom he startled by asking if they paid their debts—that law was the shield and the groundwork of the heroic old family life of French provinces. Simple tradesmen and untaught peasants lived under it as blamelessly as gentlemen and statesmen, and taught their sons the same traditions, the same honesty, the same truth, the same deference to their conscience, the same fear of evil for evil’s sake, and not for the punishments it involves or the misfortunes it often brings on. The custom of keeping family registers is a very old one; even before St. Louis’ famous instructions to his children it was common: Bayard’s mother left him a similar manual, and people of all conditions made a practice of it. From these documents, and the sentiments written in them from time to time by fathers for the guidance of their children, M. de Ribbe has collected many memorials of domestic life in France—chiefly in remote and happy neighborhoods, but also in more populous and disturbed ones; and the sameness of the precepts in all is less strange than the likeness they bear to those of the Chinese family books, which date back often more than 2,000 years. He has found in the recently-discovered papyri in Egyptian tombs the same eternal rules, set forth in language almost equal to the simple grandeur of the Bible, while the Hindoo hymns and books of morals teach in many instances the same truths in nearly the same words.
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DR. DRAPER AND EVOLUTION.
At a meeting of Unitarian ministers held at Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 11th of October, 1877, Dr. J. W. Draper delivered a lecture on “Evolution: its Origin, Progress, and Consequences.” Prof. Youmans publishes it in the _Popular Science Monthly_, with the remark that “some passages omitted in the lecture for want of time are here introduced”; which means, so far as we can understand, that Dr. Draper, before allowing the publication of his lecture, retouched it, and introduced into it some items, views, or considerations which the lecture delivered to the Unitarian meeting did not contain, but which he considered necessary as giving the last finish to his composition. It seems, in fact, that the doctor must have felt a little embarrassed in the performance of the task which he had accepted; for he well knew that in speaking to a body of sectarian ministers he could not make the best use of the ordinary resources of free-thought without breaking through the barriers of conventional propriety; and he himself candidly informs his hearers that, when he received the request to deliver this lecture before them, he was at first disposed to excuse himself, giving the following reason for his hesitation: “Holding religious views which perhaps in many respects are not in accordance with those that have recommended themselves to you, I was reluctant to present to your consideration a topic which, though it is in truth purely scientific, is yet connected with some of the most important and imposing theological dogmas.” This was, perhaps, one of the motives (besides the want of time) why in the delivery of the lecture some passages were omitted which have subsequently found their way into the pages of the scientific monthly.
It would be interesting to know what “imposing theological dogmas” Dr. Draper considered it to be his duty to respect while lecturing before a Unitarian audience. Unitarians do not generally overload their liberal minds with dogmas. Their creed is very short. They simply admit, as even the good Mahometans do, that there is one God. This is all. What that one God is they are not required to know; their denial of the Holy Trinity leaves them free to conceive their God as an impersonal being, a universal soul, or a sum total of the forces of nature. On the other hand, their denial of ecclesiastical authority and of the inspiration of the Scriptures leaves them absolutely free to disbelieve every other dogma and mystery of Christianity. It seems to us, therefore, that Dr. Draper, who had no need, and certainly no inclination, to descant on Trinitarian views or to defend the inspiration of the Bible, ought not to have feared to scandalize the good souls to whom he was requested to break the bread of modern science. It is clear that only an unequivocal profession of scientific atheism could have been construed into an offence; and even this, we fancy, would have been pardoned, for the sake of science, by the easy and accommodating gentlemen whose “liberality of sentiment” triumphed at last over Dr. Draper’s hesitation.
Whether or not the assembled Unitarian ministers were satisfied with the lecture, and converted to the scientific views maintained by the lecturer, we do not know; this, however, we do know: that Dr. Draper’s reasoning and assertions about the origin, progress, and consequences of evolution, even apart from all consideration of religious dogmas, are not calculated to command the assent of cultivated intellects.
The lecture begins with the statement that two explanations have been introduced to account for the origin of the organic beings that surround us; the one, according to the lecturer, “is conveniently designated as the hypothesis of creation,” the other as “the hypothesis of evolution.” This statement, to begin with, is incorrect. It may, indeed, be very “convenient” for Dr. Draper to speak of creation as a mere hypothesis; but the device is too transparent. The creation or original formation of organic beings by God is not a hypothesis, but an historical fact perfectly established, and even scientifically and philosophically demonstrated. Evolution, on the contrary, as understood by the modern school, is only an empty word and a dream, unworthy of the name of scientific hypothesis, under which sciolists attempt to conceal its absurdity. In fact, even the little we ourselves have said on this subject in some of our past numbers would amply suffice to convince a moderately intelligent man that the theory of evolution has no real scientific character, is irreconcilable with the conclusions of natural history, and has no ground to stand upon except the worn-out fallacies of a perverted logic. To call it “hypothesis” is therefore to do it an honor which it does not deserve. A pile of rubbish is not a palace, and a heap of blunders is not a hypothesis.
“Creation,” says Dr. Draper, “reposes on the arbitrary act of God; evolution on the universal reign of law.” This statement, too, is entirely groundless. Creation is a _free_ act of God; but a free act needs not to be _arbitrary_. We usually call that arbitrary which is done rashly or without reason. But an act which forms part of an intellectual plan for an appointed end we call an act of wisdom; to call it “arbitrary” is to falsify its nature. If Dr. Draper admits that there is a God, he ought to speak of him with greater respect. But, omitting this, is it true that evolution “reposes on the universal reign of law”? By no means. We defy Dr. Draper and all the modern evolutionists to substantiate this bold assertion. Not only is there no universal law on which the evolution of species can repose, but there is, on the contrary, a well-known universal law which sets at naught the speculations and stultifies the pretensions of the Darwinian school. The law we refer to is the following: In the generation of organic beings there is no transition from one species to another. This is the universal law which rules the department of organic life; and it is almost inconceivable how a man who is not resolved to injure his scientific reputation could so far forget himself and his science as to pretend a blissful ignorance of this known truth, in order to propagate a silly imposture exploded by philosophy and contradicted by the constant, unequivocal testimony of nature itself.
Had we been present in the Unitarian audience when the doctor uttered the assertion in question, we doubt if it would have been possible for us to let him proceed further without interruption; for the recklessness of his doctrine called for an immediate challenge. When a man, in laying down the foundations of a theory, takes his stand upon the most evident false premises, he simply insults his hearers. Why should an intelligent man accept in silence such a glaring absurdity as that “evolution reposes on the universal reign of law”? Why should he not rise and say: “I beg permission, in the name of science, to contradict the statement just made, and to express my astonishment at the want of consideration shown to this learned assembly by the lecturer”? However contrary to the received usages, such an interruption would have been highly proper and meritorious in the eyes of a lover of truth. But, unfortunately, the assembled ministers had no right to remonstrate. They had requested the doctor to lecture, and to lecture on that very subject; they knew beforehand the doctor’s views concerning evolution; and they were not ignorant that his manner of reasoning was likely to exhibit that disregard of truth of which so many striking instances had been discovered in his history of the conflict between religion and science. The assembled ministers were simply anxious to hear a bit of genuine modern thought; hence, whatever the lecturer might think good to say, they were bound to listen to with calm resignation, if not with thankful submission.
Dr. Draper told them, also, that the hypothesis of evolution derives all the organisms which we see in the world “from one or a few original organisms” by a process of development, and “it will not admit that there has been any intervention of the divine power.” But when asked, Whence did the original organisms spring? he replies: “As to the origin of organisms, it (the hypothesis) withholds, for the present, any definite expression. There are, however, many naturalists who incline to believe in spontaneous generation.” Here we must admire, if not the consistency, at least the sincerity, of the lecturer. He candidly acknowledges that, as to the origin of organisms, the theory of evolution “withholds, for the present, any definite expression.” This phrase, stripped of its pretentious modesty, means that the advocates of evolution, though often called upon to account by their theory for the origin of organic life, and though obliged by the nature of the case to show how life could have originated in matter alone “with no intervention of the divine power,” have always failed to extricate themselves from the difficulties of their position, and have never offered an explanation deserving the sanction of science, or even the attention of thoughtful men. The axiom _Omne vivum ex ovo_ still stares them in the face. They cannot shut their eyes so as to lose sight of it. At the same time they cannot explain the origin of the _ovum_ without abandoning their principles; for if the first _ovum_, or vital organism, is not the product of evolution, then its existence cannot be accounted for except by the intervention of the divine power, which they are determined to reject; and if the first vital organism be assumed to have been the product of evolution, then they cannot escape the conclusion that it must have sprung from lifeless, inorganic matter—a conclusion which few of them dare to maintain, as they clearly see that it is absurd to expect from matter alone anything so cunningly devised as is the least seed, egg, or cell of a living organism. To confess, therefore, that the evolution theory cannot account for the origin of the primitive organisms is to confess that the efforts of the evolutionists towards banishing the intervention of the divine power and suppressing creation have been, are, and will ever be ineffectual.
But this legitimate inference was carefully kept out of view by the lecturer, who, not to spoil his argument, hastened to add that “many naturalists incline to believe in spontaneous generation.” This, however, far from making things better, will only make them worse. It is only when a cause is nearly despaired of that the most irrational fictions are resorted to in its defence. Now, spontaneous generation is an irrational fiction. Even in our own time, when the world is full of organic matter, and when the working of nature has been subjected to the most searching investigations, the spontaneous formation of a living organism without a parent of the same species is deemed to be against reason; for reason cannot give the lie to the principle of causality, by virtue of which nothing can be found in the effect which is not contained in its cause. Hence very few naturalists (though Dr. Draper calls them _many_) are so reckless as to support, or countenance by their example, a belief in spontaneous generation. Nothing would be easier to them than to imitate Dr. Draper by assuming without proof what is not susceptible of proof; but, although some scientists have adopted this convenient course, few have dared to follow them, because the inadmissibility of spontaneous generation has been confirmed by the best experimental methods of modern science itself. Now, if this is the case in the present condition of the world, and with such an abundance of organic matter, how can any one, with any show of reason, maintain that in the remote ages of the world, and before any organic compound had made its appearance on earth, cells and seeds and eggs burst forth spontaneously from inorganic matter without the intervention of the divine power?
At any rate, if it would be preposterous to assume that inert, lifeless, unintelligent matter has the power of planning and making a time-piece, a sewing-machine, a velocipede, or a wheelbarrow, how can a man in his senses assume that the same inert, lifeless, and unintelligent matter has the power to plan, form, and put together in perfect harmony, due proportion, and providential order the organic elements and rudiments of that immensely more complicated structure which we call an _ovum_ or a seed, with its potentiality of life and growth, and its indefinite power of reproduction? And who can believe that the same inert, lifeless, and unintelligent matter has been so inventive, so crafty, and so provident as to devise two sexes for each animal species, and to make them so fit for one another, with so powerful an instinct to unite with one another, as to ensure the propagation of their kind for an indefinite series of centuries?
We need not develop this argument further. Books of natural history are full of the beauties and marvels concealed in millions of minute organisms, which proclaim to the world the wisdom of their contriver, and denounce the folly of a science which bestows on dead matter the honor due to the living God. Evolution of life under the hand of God would have a meaning; but evolution of life “without the intervention of the divine power” means nothing at all, as it is, in fact, inconceivable.
Dr. Draper quotes Aristotle in favor of spontaneous generation. The Greek philosopher, in the eighth book of his history of animals, when speaking of the chain of living things remarks: “Nature passes so gradually from inanimate to animate things that from their continuity the boundary between them is indistinct. The race of plants succeeds immediately that of inanimate objects, and these differ from each other in the proportion of life in which they participate; for, compared with minerals, plants appear to possess life, though when compared with animals they appear inanimate. The change from plants to animals is gradual; a person might question to which of these classes some marine objects belong.” This doctrine is unobjectionable; but we fail to see its bearing on spontaneous generation. Aristotle does not speak here of a chain of beings genetically connected, nor does he derive the plant from the mineral, or the animal from the plant. On the other hand, even if we granted that Aristotle “referred the primitive organisms to spontaneous generation,” we might easily explain the blunder by reflecting that a pagan philosopher, having no idea of creation, could not but err when philosophizing about the origin of things.
We need not follow our lecturer into the details of the Arabic philosophy. When we are told that the Arabian philosophers “had rejected the theory of creation and adopted that of evolution,” and that they reached this conclusion “through their doctrine of emanation and absorption rather than from an investigation of visible nature,” we may well dismiss them without a hearing. Dr. Draper seems to be much pained at the thought that a religious revolt against philosophy succeeded in “exterminating” such progressive ideas so thoroughly that they “never again appeared in Islam.” But that which causes him still greater disgust is that “if the doctrine of the government of the world by law was thus held in detestation by Islam, it was still more bitterly refused by Christendom, in which the possibility of changing the divine purposes was carried to its extreme by the invocation of angels and saints, and great gains accrued to the church through its supposed influence in procuring these miraculous interventions.” These words, and others which we are about to quote, must have given great pleasure to the assembled Unitarian ministers; for we all know that to throw dirt at the church is a task singularly congenial to the natural bent of the sectarian mind. But, be this as it may, whoever knows that our lecturer is the author of the history of the conflict between religion and science, so truly described by the late Dr. Brownson as “a tissue of lies,” will agree that Dr. Draper’s denunciations deserve no answer. When a man undertakes to speak of that of which he is absolutely ignorant, the best course is to let him blunder till his credit is entirely gone. The reader need not be informed that Christendom never opposed the doctrine of “the government of the world by law,” and never imagined that there was a “possibility of changing the divine purposes” through the invocation of angels and saints; whilst, if “miraculous interventions” brought “great gains to the church,” the fact is very naturally explained by the principle that “piety is useful for all things,” and that God’s intervention cannot be barren of beneficial results. But Dr. Draper, who does not understand how God’s intervention is compatible with the universal reign of law, denies all miracles, and denounces the church as a school of deceit, superstition, and hypocrisy, his hatred of miracles being his only proof that all miracles are frauds. His assumption is that, because the natural order is ruled by law, therefore no supernatural order can be admitted; which, if true, would equally warrant the following: Because bodies gravitate towards the centre of the earth, therefore no solar attraction can be admitted.
The papal government, Dr. Draper assures us, could not tolerate “universal and irreversible law.” How did he ascertain this? Perhaps he thought that the papal government was embarrassed to reconcile irreversible law with miracles. But the popes never taught or believed that a miracle was a _reversal_ of law; they only taught that the course of nature, without any law being reversed, was susceptible of alteration, and that this alteration, when proceeding from a power above nature, was miraculous. We fancy that even Dr. Draper must concede this, unless he prefers to say with the fool that “there is no God.”
“The Inquisition had been invented and set at work.” To do what? To overthrow the “universal and irreversible law”? Certainly not. What was it, then, called to do?
“It speedily put an end, not only in the south of France but all over Europe, to everything supposed to be not in harmony with the orthodox faith, by instituting a reign of terror.” It is scarcely necessary to remark that what the lecturer calls “a reign of terror” was nothing but self-defence against the murderous attacks of the Albigenses and other cut-throats of the same dye, who were themselves the terror of Christendom—a circumstance which Dr. Draper should not have ignored. But whilst the Inquisition caused some terror to the enemies of Christian society, it actually restored the reign of law and secured the benefits of religious peace to countries which, but for its remedial action, would have sunk again into a lawless barbarism. And if the Inquisition “put an end to everything contrary to the orthodox faith,” no thoughtful man will find fault with it. False doctrines are a greater curse than even armed rebellions. Dr. Draper will surely not complain that the United States “put an end” to the rebellion of the Southern Confederates, though they were gallant fellows and fought for what they believed to be their right. But, while he finds it natural that thousands of valuable lives should have been destroyed for the sake of the American Union, he pretends to be scandalized at the punishment which the Inquisition, after regular trial, inflicted on a few worthless and contumacious felons for the sake of religious and civil peace and the preservation of the great Catholic union. Such is the delicacy of his conscience! Then he continues:
“The Reign of Terror in revolutionary France lasted but a few months, the atrocities of the Commune at the close of the Franco-German war only a few days; but the reign of terror in Christendom has continued from the thirteenth century with declining energy to our times. Its object has been the forcible subjugation of thought.”
This is how Dr. Draper manipulates history. It would be superfluous to inform our readers that there has never been a reign of terror in Christendom, except when and where Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglican Puritans, or infidel revolutionists held the reins of power, and crowned their apostasy by tyrannical persecution, by plundering, and burning, and murdering, and demolishing, and prostituting whatever they could lay their hands on, with that diabolical fiendishness and cool brutality of which we had lately a new instance in the Paris Commune here mentioned by the lecturer. This very mention of the Commune, and of the reign of terror inaugurated by it, is a blunder on the part of Dr. Draper. The heroes of the Commune belong to _his_ school; they are infidels; they are men whose thought has not been “subjugated” by the church; and to confess that their ephemeral triumph constituted a reign of terror amounts to a condemnation of unsubjugated thought and a vindication of the principle acted on by the church, that from unbridled thought nothing can be expected but discord, confusion, and violence. Yet Dr. Draper, who is a profound chemist, knows how to make poison out of innocent drugs; and whilst the church aimed only at _preserving_ the loyalty of her children from the attacks of heresy and the snares of hypocrisy, the doctor depicts her as “subjugating” thought. This is just what might be expected. The snake draws poison from the same flowers from which the bee sucks honey:
Spesso del serpe in seno Il fior si fa veleno; Ma in sen dell’ ape il fiore Dolce liquor si fa. —_Metastasio_.
We have dwelt longer than we intended on this subject, which is, after all, only a digression from the principal question; yet Dr. Draper furnishes us with the opportunity of a further remark, which we think we ought not to omit. He says: “The Reformation came. It did not much change the matter. It insisted on the Mosaic views, and would tolerate no natural science that did not accord with them.” On this fact we argue as follows. If the reason why Catholics rejected certain theories was that they were “under a reign of terror,” and that their thought had been “forcibly subjugated,” it would seem that the Protestants, whose thought could not be subjugated, who laughed at the Inquisition and were inaccessible to terror, should have embraced those long-forbidden theories, were it only for showing to the world that they had broken all their chains and recovered unbounded liberty. What could prevent them from throwing away the book of Genesis and reviving the Arabian theory of evolution? Had they not rejected other parts of the Bible? Had they not freed themselves from the confession of sins, explained away the Real Presence, set at naught authority, and inaugurated free-thought? The truth is that they could not resuscitate a theory for which they could not account either by science or by philosophy, and which would have involved them in endless difficulties. It is common sense, therefore, and not reverence for the Mosaic views, that compelled them to abide by the Biblical record of creation. The consequence is that men of common sense had no need of being “forcibly subjugated” to the Mosaic views, and that the Inquisition had nothing to do with the matter. Hence Dr. Draper’s declamation against the Inquisition was entirely out of place in a lecture on evolution. But his bias against the church led him still further. He wanted to denounce also the Congregation of the Index; and as he knew of no book on evolution condemned by it, he charged it with having condemned the works of Copernicus and Kepler. The reader may ask what these two great men have done for the theory of evolution. The lecturer answers that “the starting-point in the theory of evolution” among Christians “was the publication by Copernicus of the book _De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium_.” At this we are tempted to smile; but he continues:
“His work was followed by Kepler’s great discovery of the three laws that bear his name.... It was very plain that the tendency of Kepler’s discovery was to confirm the dominating influence of law in the solar system.... It was, therefore, adverse to the Italian theological views and to the current religious practices. Kepler had published an epitome of the Copernican theory. This, as also the book itself of Copernicus, was placed in the Index and forbidden to be read.”
It is evident that these statements and remarks have nothing to do with the subject of evolution, and that they have been introduced into the lecture for the mere purpose of slandering “the Italian theological views” which were the views of the whole Christian world, and of decrying the Congregation of the Index, which opposed as dangerous the spreading of an opinion that was at that time a mere guess, and was universally contradicted by the men of science. Dr. Draper ignores altogether this last circumstance, and remarks that “after the invention of printing the _Index Expurgatorius_ of prohibited books had become essentially necessary to the religious reign of terror, and for the stifling of the intellectual development of man. The papal government, accordingly, established the Congregation of the Index.” It is a great pity that we have no room here for instituting a comparison between the intellectual development of the Catholic and of the Protestant or the infidel mind. Such a comparison would show whether the _Index Expurgatorius_ has stifled our intellectual development as much as Protestant inconsistency, and the anarchy of thought which followed, have stifled that of other people. We are still able, after all, to fight our intellectual battles and to beat our adversaries with good arguments, whereas they are sinking every day deeper into scepticism, and know of no better weapons than arbitrary assumption, flippancy, and misrepresentation.
The lecturer goes on to say that Newton’s book substituted mechanical force for the finger of Providence; and thus “the reign of law, that great essential to the theory of evolution, was solidly established.” This sentence contains three errors. The first is that the Newtonian theory of mechanical force suppresses Providence. The second is that the reign of law was not solidly established before the publication of Newton’s work. The third is that the establishment of the law of mechanical forces lends support to the theory of evolution. Is this the result of “intellectual development,” as understood by Dr. Draper? Newton, whose intellect was undoubtedly more developed than that of the lecturer, did not substitute mechanical force for the finger of Providence, but continued to acknowledge the finger of Providence as the indispensable foundation of his scientific theory. Nor did he imagine that his theory was calculated to establish the reign of law. The reign of law was already perfectly established, so much so that it was on this very ground that Newton based his deductions. Finally, neither Newton, nor any really “developed intellect,” ever confounded the mechanical with the vital forces so as to argue from the law of gravitation to the law of animal propagation. From this we can form an estimate of the intellectual development of man by free-thought. The lecturer blunders in philosophy by contrasting law against Providence; he blunders in history by attributing to Newton the discovery of the reign of law; and he blunders in logic by tracing the theory of evolution to a mere law of mechanics.
Further on Dr. Draper gives a sketch of Lamarck’s theory. Lamarck was Darwin’s precursor. He advocated the doctrine of descent. According to him, organic forms originated by spontaneous generation, the simplest coming first, and the complex being evolved from them.
“So far from meeting with acceptance,” says Dr. Draper, “the ideas of Lamarck brought upon him ridicule and obloquy. He was as much misrepresented as in former days the Arabian nature-philosophers had been. The great influence of Cuvier, who had made himself a champion of the doctrine of permanence of species, caused Lamarck’s views to be silently ignored or, if by chance they were referred to, denounced. They were condemned as morally reprehensible and theologically dangerous.”
The fact is, however, that there had been no necessity of “misrepresenting” Lamarck’s ideas, and that his infant Darwinism was condemned not only as morally reprehensible and theologically dangerous, but also as scientifically false. Cuvier had certainly the greatest influence on the views regarding this branch of knowledge; but his influence was not the result of a Masonic conspiracy, as is the case with certain modern celebrities, but the honest result of deep knowledge and strict reasoning; for men were not yet accustomed to believe without proofs, and scientists had not yet forgotten philosophy.
Dr. Draper tells his audience that Geoffroy St. Hilaire “became the opponent of Cuvier, and did very much to break down the influence of that zoölogist.” Yes; but did he succeed in his effort? Did he destroy the peremptory arguments of the great zoölogist? Did he convince the scientific world, or make even a score of converts? No. The influence of Cuvier remained unimpaired, and evolution did not advance a step. Then Mr. Darwin came. Mr. Darwin is, we have reason to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that infidel clique whose well-known object is to do away with all idea of a God. Owing to this circumstance, he was sure to have followers. A few professors in Germany, and a few others in England, proclaimed with boldness the new theory; they wrote articles, delivered lectures, printed pamphlets in his honor; his works were widely advertised and strongly recommended; and the curiosity of the public, which had been raised by all these means, was carefully entertained by the scientific press. People read Darwin and smiled; read Wallace, the friend of Darwin, and were not converted; read Huxley, the great Darwinian oracle, and remained obdurate. Only two classes of men took to the new theory—professors of unbelief and simpletons. Thus Darwinism in Europe, in spite of the great efforts of its friends, has been a failure. Here in America the same means have been employed with the same effect. No sooner was anything published in England or Germany in support of the new theory than some worthy associate of the European infidels republished it for the American people. New original articles were also added by some of our professors; and even Mr. Huxley did not disdain to devote his versatile eloquence to the enlightenment of our free but benighted citizens concerning the subject of evolution. What has been the result? Are the American people converted to the new doctrine? No. They laugh at it. The failure of Darwinism is as conspicuous and as complete in America as it has been in Europe.
Has Dr. Draper, after all, converted any of the Unitarian ministers who attended his lecture? We think not; and the lecturer himself seems to have felt that his words fell on sceptical ears and failed to work on the brains or touch the hearts of his hearers. Towards the end of his lecture he exclaims: “My friends, let me plead with you. Don’t reject the theory of evolution!” It is manifest from this exhortation that the audience, in the opinion of the lecturer himself, was still reluctant to accept the theory. Had the lecturer thought otherwise, he would have said: “My friends, I need not plead with you. You have heard my arguments. I leave it to you to decide whether the theory of evolution can be rejected by intelligent men.” This language would have shown the earnest conviction of the lecturer that he was right, and that his reasonings were duly appreciated and approved. But to say, “Don’t reject the theory,” is to acknowledge that the arguments had not commanded the assent of the intellect, and that no other resource remained than a warm appeal to the good-will of the hearers. Such an appeal, in a scientific lecture, may seem out of place; but it is instructive, for it leads us to the conclusion that even Dr. Draper was convinced of the futility of his attempt.
The only argument which we could find in his lecture in support of the Darwinian theory is so puerile that we believe not one of the assembled ministers can have been tempted to give it his adhesion. After pointing out that “each of the geological periods has its dominating representative type of life,” the lecturer introduces his argument in the following form:
“Perhaps it may be asked: ‘How can we be satisfied that the members of this long series are strictly the successive descendants by evolution from older forms, and in their turn the progenitors of the latter? How do we know that they have not been introduced by sudden creations and removed by sudden extinctions?’ Simply for this reason: The new groups make their appearance while yet their predecessors are in full vigor. They come under an imperfect model which very gradually improves. Evolution implies such lapses of time. Creation is a sudden affair.”
O admirable philosophy! The predecessors were still vigorous when the successors made their appearance; _therefore_ the former were the progenitors of the latter! And why so? Because “evolution implies lapse of time,” whilst “creation is a sudden affair”! Even a child, we think, would see that such reasoning is deceptive. But, since Dr. Draper is bold enough to take his stand upon it, we must be allowed to ask him two questions.
First, admitting that “creation is a sudden affair,” does he believe that God could not create the successors before the disappearance of their predecessors? If God could do this, what matters it that creation is “a sudden affair”? And if God could not do this, what insuperable obstacle impeded the free exertion of his power?
Secondly, is there no alternative between genetic evolution and creation strictly so-called? If between these two modes of origination a third can be introduced, the doctor’s argument falls to pieces. Now, “production” from pre-existing materials (earth, water, etc.) in obedience to God’s command is neither genetic evolution nor creation strictly so-called, and need not be “a sudden affair.” And this mode of origination is just the one which seems more clearly pointed out by the Sacred Scriptures;[181] and therefore it should not have been ignored by the lecturer, if he wished to argue against the Scriptural record. Why did he, then, keep out of view this excellent explanation of the origin of species? Is it because it was convenient to conceal a truth which could not be refuted?
Thus the only reason by which Dr. Draper attempts to prove the theory of evolution is a demonstrated fallacy, and the theory falls to the ground, in this sense, at least: that it remains unproved. But if every attempt at proving it involves some logical blunder, if it implies contradictories, if it is based on unscientific assumptions, as is evident from the argumentations of Darwin, Huxley, Youmans, and other advanced writers on evolution, and if history, geology, and philosophy unitedly oppose the theory with arguments which admit of no reply, as is known to be the case, then we must be allowed to conclude that the theory, besides being unproved, is fabulous and absurd.
Dr. Draper, after citing some controvertible facts, of which he gives a yet more controvertible explanation from the Darwinian assumptions, says:
“Now I have answered, and I know how imperfectly, your question, ‘How does the hypothesis of evolution force itself upon the student of modern science?’ by relating how it has forced itself upon me; for my life has been spent in such studies, and it is by meditating on facts like those I have here exposed that this hypothesis now stands before me as one of the verities of Nature.”
Yes. The student of modern science, if he is unwilling to admit creation, must appeal to evolution, and call it “one of the verities of Nature”; but, though he may call it a “verity,” he also admits that it is a mere “hypothesis,” by which the origin of organisms cannot be accounted for and against which a host of facts and reasons are daily objected by science and philosophy.
“In doing this I have opened before you a page of the book of Nature—that book which dates from eternity and embraces infinity.” Is this a “verity,” a hypothesis, or an imposture?
“No council of Laodicea, no Tridentine Council, is wanted to endorse its authenticity, nothing to assure us that it has never been tampered with by any guild of men.” This is an allusion to the declarations of councils regarding the authenticity of the Bible. Does, then, modern science transform educated men into sorry jesters? If so, why does not Mr. Draper derive the monkey from the gentleman?
“Then it is for us to study it as best we may, and to obey its guidance, no matter whither it may lead us.” Yes, it is for us to study the book of nature as best we may; but we must not forget that the author of this book is God, and that God does not contradict in the book of nature what he teaches in the book of Genesis. It is for us “to obey its guidance.” Yes; and therefore it is not for us to pervert its evidences, as Dr. Draper does, in order to exclude “the intervention of the divine power.”
As to “whither it may lead us” we have no doubts; but the lecturer seems to believe that it may lead in two opposite directions. Here are his words:
“I have spoken of the origin and the progress of the hypothesis of evolution, and would now consider the consequences of accepting it. Here it is only a word or two that time permits, and very few words must suffice. I must bear in mind that it is the consequences from your point of view to which I must allude. Should I speak of the manner in which scientific thought is affected ... I should be carried altogether beyond the limits of the present hour. The consequences! What are they, then, to you? Nobler views of this grand universe of which we form a part, nobler views of the manner in which it has been developed in past times to its present state, nobler views of the laws by which it is now maintained, nobler expectations as to its future. We stand in presence of the unshackled, as to Force; of the immeasurable, as to Space; of the unlimited, as to Time. Above all, our conceptions of the unchangeable purposes, the awful majesty of the Supreme Being become more vivid. We realize what is meant when it is said: ‘With him there is no variableness, no shadow of turning.’ Need I say anything more in commending the doctrine of evolution to you?”
These are, then, the consequences “from the point of view” of the Unitarian ministers, as the lecturer very explicitly declares As to the consequences “from the point of view” of advanced scientists, the lecturer gives only a hint, because, had he spoken of the manner in which scientific thought is affected, the lecture would have proved rather too long. It is apparent, however, that the “verity” or the “hypothesis” which leads the Unitarians to a “Supreme Being” can lead Dr. Draper and the scientific mind to something different, according to the manner in which scientific thought is affected. We may well say, although Dr. Draper preferred not to say it, that it leads to atheism or to pantheism; for the new “verity” was invented with the aim of escaping “the intervention of the divine power” and of subjecting everything in the world to the “universal reign” of an abstraction called “Law.” Dr. Draper himself tells us, as we have just seen, that the book of Nature (with a capital N) “dates from eternity and embraces infinity”; and surely, if the world is eternal and infinite, Nature is everything, and a personal God becomes an embarrassing superfluity. It seems, then, that Dr. Draper, when he mentions the divine power or the Supreme Being, does not speak the language of his “scientific” conscience, but the language which he considers to express the convictions of the Unitarian body. Perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the requirement of the subject, if he had frankly stated the “consequences” which he, as a scientist, would draw from the “verity” he had proclaimed; but, as he may have feared that a frank statement would have created a little scandal, we are inclined to acquit him of the charge of “scientific” dishonesty—the more so as the consequences which he deduces, taken in connection with the rest of the lecture, give a sufficient clue to the private views of the speaker.
It is difficult, however, to understand how the acceptance of the theory of evolution can lead to “nobler views of this grand universe,” or to “nobler views of the manner in which it has been developed,” or to “nobler views of the laws by which it is now maintained.” To us these “consequences” are incomprehensible; for is it nobler to view this grand universe as a mere mass of matter than to view it as full of the divine power of which it is the work? or is it nobler to derive man from the brute than to view him as the son of God and the image of his Creator? On the other hand, the laws by which the universe is now maintained are in direct opposition to the theory of evolution, as all men of science confess; hence a view of such laws suggested by the theory of evolution must be a false and contradictory view, and Dr. Draper, when calling it a “nobler view,” amuses himself at the expense of his audience. Fancy an assembly of grave men listening in silence to such rhetoric! and fancy a professor of materialism seriously engaged in the highly scientific business of beguiling such a grave audience!
It is no less difficult to understand how the theory of evolution makes us “stand in presence of the unshackled, of the immeasurable, and of the unlimited.” These epithets do not designate God, for it is manifest that the theory of evolution has no claim to the honor of showing God as present in his creatures; nor can they be applied to the universe, for it is not true that the universe is “unshackled as to Force, immeasurable as to Space, and unlimited as to Time”; and, even were it true, it would not be a “consequence” of evolution. What do they mean, then?
But the most unintelligible of all such “consequences” is that by the acceptance of the theory of evolution “our conceptions of the unchangeable purposes, the awful majesty of the Supreme Being become more vivid.” What “purposes” can the Supreme Being have formed with reference to a universe which is not subject to “the intervention of the divine power”? Is it wise to entertain purposes which one has no power to carry out? Or is the “Supreme Being” of Dr. Draper so unwise as to cherish purposes which must be defeated by “universal, irreversible law”? We strongly suspect that his “Supreme Being” is nothing but the universe itself, and that it is for this reason that he writes _Force_, _Space_, and _Time_ with capital letters, thus forming a mock Trinity “unshackled, immeasurable, and unlimited,” but consisting of material parts and controlled by the laws of matter, with which “there is no variableness, no shadow of turning.” If so, then Dr. Draper has no God but the universe, the sun, the moon, and the stars, light, heat and electricity, gravitation, affinity, and motion; and this is “the awful majesty” before which he bends his knee in scientific adoration.
Having drawn these devout “consequences” for the edification of the meeting, the lecturer, with a happy stroke of audacity, asks his hearers: “Need I say anything more in commending the doctrine of evolution to you?” As if he said: “Do you expect that an infidel has anything more to say in favor of _your_ Supreme Being? Have I not given you a sufficient proof of deference and self-abnegation by putting together a few equivocal phrases in honor of _your_ divinity? Need I torture my brain any longer for the sake of a view which is not mine?” But, fortunately for Dr. Draper, a sudden recollection of the fact that Unitarianism and infidelity agree in rejecting the authority of the _Index Expurgatorius_ suggested to him the following words:
“Let us bear in mind the warning of history. The heaviest blow the Holy Scriptures have ever received was inflicted by no infidel, but by ecclesiastical authority itself. When the works of Copernicus and of Kepler were put in the Index of prohibited books the system of the former was declared, by what called itself the Christian Church, to be ‘the false Pythagorean system, utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures.’ But the truth of the Copernican system is now established. There are persons who declare of the hypothesis of evolution, as was formerly declared of the hypothesis of Copernicus, ‘It is utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures.’ It is for you to examine whether this be so, and, if so, to find a means of reconciliation.”
We do not doubt that the lecturer honestly believes what he says about the “heaviest blow” inflicted on the Holy Scriptures. But we would inform him that the Congregation of the Index does not make definitions of faith, and that its authority, however respectable, is disciplinary, not dogmatic. If he consulted our theologians, he would learn that not even œcumenical councils are considered infallible as to the _reasons_ by which they support their decisions, but only as to the decisions themselves. Much less can the theologians of the Index bind our judgment by giving expression to their theological views. The books which they forbid are forbidden; but the _reasons_ for which they are forbidden are not all necessarily incontrovertible, and this suffices to show that it is not “the Christian Church” that declared the Copernican system contrary to the Holy Scriptures, for the church never defined such a point; such a declaration was the expression of a theological view which was then common, but which had no dogmatic consequences and could give no “blow” to the Holy Scriptures. Dr. Draper remarks that evolution, too, has been declared to be “contrary to the Holy Scriptures.” The fact is true; but he should have added that the same hypothesis has been refuted by philosophy as a logical blunder, and rejected by science as a monstrous falsehood. Hence the two cases are not similar.
“Let us not be led astray,” continues Dr. Draper, “by the clamors of those who, not seeking the truth and not caring about it, are only championing their sect or attempting the perpetuation of their profits. My friends, let me plead with you. Don’t reject the theory of evolution. There is no thought of modern times that more magnifies the unutterable glory of Almighty God!”
How edifying! how pathetic! but how ludicrous on the lips of an unbeliever! For the God of the lecturer is no creator, as creation is inconsistent with the pretended eternity of matter; he is not omnipotent, for he cannot work miracles; he is not provident, for Dr. Draper rejects all intervention of the divine power in the government of the universe, and says that “the capricious intrusion of a supernatural agency has never yet occurred”; whence we see that God, according to him, would be an intruder, and even a capricious one, if he dared to meddle with the affairs of the material, moral, or intellectual world. Such being the God of the evolutionist, who does not see that the only meaning which can be legitimately attached to Dr. Draper’s words is that the theory of evolution “magnifies the unutterable glory of almighty matter” and does its best to suppress Almighty God?
He gives another grave warning to his clerical hearers:
“Remember, I beseech you, what was said by one of old times: ‘Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do. And now I say unto you, if this counsel be of men it will come to naught; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found to be fighting against God.’ Shall I continue the quotation?—‘And to him they all agreed.’”
This quotation from a speech of Gamaliel in the Jewish council would be appropriate, if the evolutionists, like the apostles, had wrought public miracles to prove their divine mission. In the case of the apostles all tended to prove that they were right, and that God was on their side. They spoke languages that they had never learned, they cured the sick without medicine, by a word or by their shadow, and filled the city with wonders which their enemies could not deny. When Mr. Darwin or Dr. Draper shall give us like evidences of their divine mission, we will “take heed to ourselves what we intend to do” with their doctrine; but, as things are now, everything compels us to look on them as emissaries and ministers of the kingdom of darkness. We cannot put in the same balance evolution and creation; for all the weight would be on the side of the latter. A dream, a nonentity, an unscientific fiction, a paralogism, have no weight; whilst effects without causes, conclusions without premises, phrases without meaning, weigh only on the conscience of modern thinkers, but without affecting in the least the balance of truth. Thus we are not afraid that we “be found fighting against God” while fighting for creation against evolution. The matter is too evident to need further explanation.
We are tired of following Dr. Draper through his tortuous reasonings, and the reader is probably equally tired. On the other hand, there is little need of exposing the mischievous glorification of modern science in which the lecturer indulges in the interest of his materialistic views. When we are told that “profound changes are taking place in our conceptions of the Supreme Being,” or that “the doctrine of evolution has for its foundation not the admission of incessant divine intervention, but a recognition of the original, the immutable _fiat_ of God”—of a God, however, who did not create matter, and who must respect the dominion of universal and irreversible law under pain of being stigmatized as a “capricious intruder”—or when we are told that “the establishment of the theory of evolution has been due to the conjoint movement of all the sciences,” and that “Knowledge, fresh from so many triumphs, unfalteringly continues her movement on the works of Superstition and Ignorance,” we need no great acumen to understand the meaning of this “scientific” slang. Declamation is the great resource of demagogues and charlatans. Unfortunately, there are charlatans and demagogues even among the doctors of science, and their number, though small, is apt to increase in the same proportion as their vagaries are diffused among the rising generation. Catholics, thank God! are less exposed to seduction than sectaries who have no guide but their inconsistent theories; but even Catholics should be on their guard lest they, too, be poisoned by the foul and infectious atmosphere in which they live. Indeed, all the modern errors have been refuted; but when a taste for error becomes predominant, and such fables as evolution are styled “science,” then human weakness and human pride are easily drawn into the vortex of scepticism; and then we must be watchful and pray, for the time is at hand when _even the elect_, as the Gospel warns us, shall be in danger of seduction.
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AFTER CASTEL-FIDARDO.
A SOLDIER’S LETTER.
FROM THE ITALIAN.
Wounded, my friend, and dying, Waiting the end, I lie— A sword-cut in my right leg, A ball in my left thigh;
Dying, and ever hoping— And in that hope I die— One day—not here—to see you, But in our home on high.
Of this our earth all thought now For me has useless grown, All its bright days are ended, Its last dark shadow thrown.
For my dear faith so freely My blood with joy I gave, And for the Holy Father, His earthly realm to save.
Content am I, and fortunate, My duty to have done; And valorous too, as truly Became the church’s son.
Yet now our dear Lord calleth, And in his hands I leave My cause so dearly cherished: May he all loss retrieve
Who will not me abandon, Nor valiant comrades mine, Nor yet his church, nor Vicar Who guards his spouse divine!
Dear friend, to me be pitiful; Pray unto God for me; Leaving the world, this charity I beg so earnestly.
This world I leave untroubled, Save by this one regret: That none of mine are near me— Kind eyes that would be wet
With tears of long-tried loving. My friends, in mercy pray For my poor soul, that draweth So near eternal day!
A kiss my blood has tinted I beg each one receive That now I send you, waiting From life a last reprieve;
Hoping one day to give you The blessed kiss of peace In our dear, common country— Fair-shining Paradise.
E’en as I am, earth leaving, Your true and loving friend, So shall I be in heaven With love that knows no end.
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MICHAEL THE SOMBRE.
AN EPISODE IN THE POLISH INSURRECTION, 1863–1864.
CONCLUSION.
On my arrival at the camp I found Father Benvenuto already installed as head chaplain and everything prepared for my reception. The poor general had died only two hours after my departure. He had been buried at Gory; but his soldiers, having heard that the Russians intended to dig up his body in order to mutilate it in their barbarous fashion, dug up the coffin and carried it to Koniec-Pol.
The Russians, furious at finding the grave empty, hanged the parish priest of the village for having given permission for the removal of the body. The mother of the priest, who was seventy-five years of age, was dragged to the foot of the gibbet, and, like the Mother of Dolors, was made to assist at the execution of her only son. When they tried to remove her she fell down dead. Her soul had flown to heaven after that of her boy.
No sooner had I entered on my new duties than I determined to start immediately with my squadron to protect Countess L——’s flight. But General C——, at the head of the Russian garrison from Kielce, never ceased pursuing and attacking us, harassing our march day and night; so that it was not for fifteen days after my departure from the castle that I was enabled to carry out my plan. My troops, who always saw me with a frown, which I had adopted to keep them at a greater distance, had nicknamed me “Michael the Sombre,” and I signed all orders in that name.
After repeated marches and counter-marches we managed at last to escape from our enemies, and arrived one evening at Syez after a forced march of ten hours, I encamped my men in a field about twenty minutes from the castle, whither I galloped, accompanied only by my orderly, whom I left at the outer gates to keep watch, while I asked an audience of Countess L—— for “Michael the Sombre.” A footman admitted me directly without recognizing me in the least, and took me into a room where a lamp with a dark-green globe prevented any object from being easily distinguished. Overcome with fatigue, I threw myself into an arm-chair. I was full, however, of thankful emotion. God had indeed heard my prayer and brought me back in safety to be the preserver of those whom I held so dear. The door opened; the countess and her sister appeared, and began by the usual formal words of welcome and courtesy, asking me to be seated—for I had, of course, risen on their entrance. As I did not answer, and continued looking at them with my eyes full of tears, they suddenly looked up too, and, with a joint cry, threw themselves into my arms. I had suffered terribly from hunger, cold, and fatigue during the past fortnight; but that moment of intense joy made me forget everything. Five minutes after I was surrounded by all the children; the youngest had scrambled up on my knees and thrown her arms tightly around my neck; Sophia had seized my helmet, and, putting it on before the glass, compared herself to Minerva. Stanislas had unhooked my sword, and Stephen was trying to take off my spurs. Half the night was spent in telling one another all that had passed in that eventful fortnight; and although I made light of my difficulties and position, yet I saw that the poor countess could hardly bear to realize what I must still go through before I was released from my command.
This, however, was not a moment for doubt or hesitation. It was necessary to move immediately before the Russian spies could give the alarm; so that by daybreak the following morning the countess’ carriage, escorted by my flying column, started on the road to the frontier. Fortunately, we were not molested on the way, and, when we arrived at about a quarter of a mile from Myszkow, I halted my soldiers, and, putting on the ordinary dress of a civilian, I accompanied the ladies to the station and busied myself with their passports, tickets, and baggage with all the feverish anxiety of one who strove to forget the terrible ordeal through which I had yet to pass before I should be able to rejoin them. When the train came up I brought the ladies out on the platform, and, having procured a special compartment for them, made them get into it with the children. Then at last I could breathe freely. No one had discovered them—they were safe! “Adieu!” I exclaimed, as I shook hands with them at the carriage-door. “You are now out of danger, for which I thank God with my whole heart. You will tell the count that I have fulfilled my promise to him, will you not? And you will not forget me?” I added with a faltering voice.
They looked at me as if stupefied. “But, Mika,” exclaimed the countess, “we cannot go without you! You must be joking. It is not possible for you to stay behind. What on earth is there to detain you?”
“You forget,” I replied as calmly as I could, “my promise to the dying general; my vow to remain with his troops until replaced, if he would only grant me this escort; Poland, which I have sworn to defend.”
“But this is dreadful!” murmured the poor countess. “How can we enjoy our liberty, purchased at such a price?”
Mme. de I—— said nothing. She was as white as a sheet; her hand tightened on mine, and she fixed her eyes on me as if she were turned into stone. More fully than the countess did she realize the full peril of the position. I was broken-hearted; but, fearing lest this scene should attract the attention of the officials or of any Russian spies, I left the carriage-door under pretence of having forgotten something. When I returned the train was already moving out of the station. The countess rushed to the window and wrung my hand convulsively for the last time. She could not speak. My eyes followed the receding train with a feeling of despair in my heart. It was carrying off all I loved best on earth, and I was alone. All of a sudden I heard my name called out with a cry of anguish from the carriage, and then, I think, for a moment I lost consciousness, as if struck by lightning, and remained motionless and stunned. Till that moment I had not realized the full bitterness of the sacrifice. I woke from this kind of stupor to hear voices in hot dispute behind me. I turned round and saw a Polish soldier, covered with dust and in a tattered uniform, struggling with two of the porters of the railroad, who were trying to stop him.
“What do you want to do?” I exclaimed. “Who are you looking for?”
“Michael the Sombre,” replied the soldier.
“I am the man,” I replied quietly, drawing him aside out of the station to a part of the road where we could talk without being heard.
“O sir! make haste,” the poor fellow cried. “Generals O——, De la Croix, and Zaremba are fighting at Koniec-Pol and are being overwhelmed by the superior forces of the enemy. If they be not reinforced by two o’clock they will all be cut to pieces.”
I instantly sent off a messenger to General Chmielinski to warn him of the danger; and then, without giving myself time to put on my uniform, I buckled my sword over my black coat, and galloped as hard as I could to the scene of action. I divided my squadron into three columns, and sent each, under the command of an officer, in three different directions. The Russian sentinels consequently gave the alarm on three sides at once, and the Russians, fancying themselves surrounded by a large force, were seized with an uncontrollable panic and fled in the direction of Shepca; Chmielinski’s column, advancing exactly in that direction, met them, and the three infantry companies of which they were composed were literally cut to pieces. During the charge a ball had passed through my boot and wounded me in the right leg. Father Benvenuto was at my side in a moment and had me removed to Chezonstow, where the good Mother Alexandra, of whom I have before spoken, was at the head of the ambulance. She gave me up her own cell and would allow no one but herself to nurse me. During my illness a division arose among my troops. They dispersed; some went home, others joined a corps under the orders of Langewiecz, while the remainder followed Norbut. When sufficiently recovered from my wound, finding I was still too lame for active service, I accepted a mission for the Central Polish Committee at P——, but was unable to obtain my release. From thence I started for N——, where I made my will and a general confession, and then started again for the front, having my passport drawn up under the name of Michael L——. This time I enlisted as a common soldier under the orders of General Sokol. After the first engagement I was appointed quartermaster and interpreter to a French officer, Ivon Amie, _dit_ De Chabrolles. On the next brush we had with the enemy I was promoted to be sub-lieutenant for having rescued the national flag from a Russian. Between Secemin and Rudnick we were attacked by six hundred Russians with two field-pieces. We were only two hundred and fifty men, with no cannon. Chabrolles, in his mad zeal, rushed forward, pistol in hand, and fired straight at the men who were loading their guns at only twenty paces off. Then he turned to give an order, and the enemy’s fire (both pieces being pointed in his direction) carried off part of his shoulder. Regardless of his wound, he cheered on his men by word and deed, and they were on the point of capturing the guns when a Cossack thrust him through and through with his lance. I was by Chabrolles’ side and fired at his adversary, who fell before he had had time to draw out his weapon. This sad office devolved upon one of our own men. Chabrolles, when falling, gave me his hand. “My brother,” he said faintly, “if you get back to France go to Paris and see my mother. She is at 37 Rue Clerc au Gros Caillou. Tell her that her son has died as a brave Christian should die.” Unable to reply, I tore my crucifix out of my breast and presented it to him. He made a last effort, kissed it with fervor, made the sign of the cross, and expired, his eyes raised to heaven.
Our detachment was then entirely defeated. In vain I tried to rally our men; they fled in the utmost disorder. With a few braver spirits than the rest I managed, at least, to protect our retreat. I was just beginning to congratulate myself on our escape when a Cossack, with his lance at rest, rode straight at me. I had fired off my last pistol. With one hand I seized my sword to parry the charge; with the other I pressed my crucifix to my breast. The lance turned aside, went through the sleeve of my uniform and out at my back without touching my flesh. If I never believed in a miracle I should at this moment, when I realized that I was really unhurt, although death had seemed so inevitable. In this terrible fight we lost, besides Chabrolles, Major Zachowski and Captains Piotraszkiewicz and Krasmicki. At the close of the day I was promoted to be lieutenant of the Uhlans.
One day I was ordered to convey some arms and ammunition to a distant outpost, and loaded the bottom of a britzska with about twenty guns and swords and fifty revolvers. I was in plain clothes, and my orderly, Badecki, acted as coachman. The road was supposed to be quite safe. Judge, then, of our fright when we discovered a large body of Russian cavalry riding directly towards us. It was too late to think of beating a retreat. A shudder passed through me; for it was the worst kind of death which threatened us—not a glorious one on the field of battle, but a slow torture, or else to be hanged on the nearest tree. I prayed with my whole heart for deliverance, and felt that the hand of God alone could save us. After this moment of recollection calm again fell upon me and my presence of mind returned. The officer who commanded the corps came up a few seconds after and asked me who I was and where I was going. I replied “that I was the German tutor of Princess Ikorff (a Russian lady), and that I was going to Kielce to buy books.” My story was confirmed by my Berlin accent; and as at this moment the Prussians were in odor of sanctity with their brethren, the Russians, the officer simply bowed and let us pass without interruption or suspicion. But the last Cossack of the band drew near to the carriage-door. “Noble Sir!” he exclaimed in that cringing voice which is natural to the race, “give me some kopecks to drink your health.” In the state of excitement I was in I did not think of what I was doing, and threw him three ducats instead of kopecks. The poor fellow was so amazed that he hastened to show his gratitude after the Cossack fashion—that is, by kissing my feet—and calling me by every imaginable title: prince, duke, etc. This was a terrible moment for me. The guns were under my feet, only hidden by a slight covering of hay, the least displacement of which would have exposed them. God, in his mercy, did not allow it, and my Cossack, after a thousand obeisances and calling down on my head every blessing from St. George and St. Nicholas, left me and rejoined his companions. I arrived at my destination without further alarms, my heart filled with thankfulness to Him who had so mercifully preserved us from the worst of deaths.
About the beginning of September Gen. Iskra was attacked by a strong corps, and I was sent off to his relief with about one hundred men. The Russians were repulsed; but we lost in this skirmish our Italian doctor, M. Vigani, and M. Loiseau, a French officer of artillery. During the night the Russians, having received reinforcements, returned to the attack. We were too few in numbers and too exhausted to attempt to fight, and retreated on Pradla. During this retreat my horse, which belonged to a private in the corps, made a false step and fell. I had fired the last barrel of my revolver, and one of my legs had got doubled up under my horse, which made me powerless. At this moment a Cossack galloped straight at me. I felt that my last hour was come, and recommended my soul to God.
“Yield thyself, rebel!” he cried out in bad Polish.
“A Frenchman dies, but never yields,” I replied.
My enemy hesitated for a moment, and then lowered his sword, which he had already raised to cut me down.
“Listen,” he said: “In the Crimea a Frenchman who had me at his mercy spared my life; for his sake I will spare thine. But give me all the money thou hast.”
I threw my purse to him, which contained about twenty roubles. The Cossack helped me to rise, and then said:
“Now fly for thy life; for my comrades are at hand, and they will not spare thee!”
During the whole war this was the only instance of humanity I ever heard of on the part of the Cossacks, and I gladly record it here.
The following day Princess Elodie C—— came to the camp, at the head of a deputation of Polish ladies, to thank me for my devotion to the cause of Poland.
One day I was sitting, sadly enough, under a pine-tree. My troops, silent and sombre, were warming themselves by a great fire. For two days we had eaten nothing. As for me, I was thinking of the absent, and felt terribly lonely. When I looked up I saw two beautiful, intelligent heads watching me, as if saying: “Are we, then, nothing to you—we who have shared all your sufferings and dangers?” They were my two only friends and companions: Al-Mansour, my Arab horse, and Cæsar, my faithful Newfoundland dog. I got up and caressed them both. “O my best friends!” I exclaimed, “you will be with me till death, and if you survive me you will mourn for me more than any one else.” And as I kissed them my eyes filled with tears. Al-Mansour laid his head on my shoulder, and Cæsar licked my hand. They were my only comfort. One minute after a courier arrived to beg for reinforcements. Gen. Iċzioranski was fighting `c at Piaskowa-Scala. I whistled to Cæsar, who was an excellent bearer of despatches, and would even fight to defend them, and fastened a note under his collar. Then, showing him the direction he was to take, I cried: “Hie quickly, Cæsar! and return as soon as you can.” And the dog started off like a shot.
We mounted and galloped to Piaskowa-Scala. The action was short, and we managed to free Iċzioranski, who was surrounded on all sides. At the very moment when the Russians were giving way Al-Mansour bounded with me up in the air, gave a terrible cry, and fell. I had hardly time to get my feet out of the stirrups. He had been shot by a ball in the chest. The poor beast had a moment of convulsion, and then turned his beautiful, soft eyes towards me, as if to implore my help; then his legs stiffened and he trembled again all over. I bent over him and passed my hand through his thick and beautiful mane, calling him for the last time; and then ... I covered my face with both hands and sobbed like a little child. Al-Mansour had been a real friend to me. I had had him when quite young and unbroken; I had trained him entirely myself, and from Breslau to Warsaw I defy any one to have found a more beautiful or intelligent animal. I alone could ride him; he never would allow any one else on his back. For four years I had ridden him every day. The countess had given him to me, and I had brought him with me to the camp. Alas! he was no longer the splendid beast which used to excite the admiration of everybody in the castle stables. Fatigue and privations of all kinds had reduced him to a skeleton, so that his old grooms would not have known him again. I only loved him the more; and it used almost to break my heart when I saw him, for want of hay, oats, or even straw, eating the bark of trees to deaden the pangs of his hunger. He loved me as much as I loved him. I used to talk to him, and he understood me perfectly and answered me after his fashion. Although people who read this may laugh at me, it was yet a fact, which I am ready to maintain, that when I was wounded Al-Mansour had tears in his eyes; and nothing on earth will ever efface his memory from my heart.
Another anecdote which I must relate here refers to a lad—a very child—whom I had in my squadron, and whose name was Charles M——. At fifteen years of age he was a perfect marvel of cleverness, and had received, besides, an excellent education. He was born in Paris, his father being a Polish exile, and his mother, after twenty years’ residence in France, still yearned for the arid plains and marshes of Poland. “_Boze è Polska_!” (God and Poland)—those were the first words she taught her boy to pronounce; and Charles could never separate his worship of one from the other. This double love, strengthened by all the surroundings of his childhood, became in him a kind of fanaticism. When the insurrection broke out in Poland Charles was a boarder in the Polish college of Batignolles. He was just fifteen. From that moment his life became a continual fever. To go to Poland to fight, and, if necessary, to die for the soil of his fathers were the thoughts which took such possession of the lad that they became irresistible. He saved from his pocket-money and from whatever he gained in prizes the sum necessary for the journey, and, when he thought he had enough, he escaped from the college, leaving a note to explain his intentions, and, after many difficulties, arrived at the camp.
I was then in command of the second squadron of Uhlans, under Gen. Sokol. Charles came straight to me to be enrolled. I flatly refused to accept him, saying he was too young and too weak to bear arms.
“What does it matter if one’s arm be weak,” he exclaimed, “if hatred for our oppressors drive my blows home? It is true that I have only the height of a child, but in my love for Poland I have the heart of a man, and I will fight like a man!”
I remained inflexible. At that moment the general came into my tent and asked what was the question in dispute. I told him. After a moment or two of reflection he turned to me and said:
“You must accept him. I am apt to judge of character by people’s heads; and this one is filled with indomitable energy and courage.”
Charles was consequently enlisted, to his intense joy. I got him a little pony, and arms proportioned to his size, and he fought by my side like a lion in every encounter.
After the fight at Piaskowa-Scala we returned to the camp, having fortunately found some provisions. The night was so dark that we were obliged to light torches, which the soldiers carried at certain distances. Passing before a pine-tree, the new horse I was riding suddenly shied and nearly threw me. I looked to see what had frightened him, and discovered a black object hanging from a branch of the tree. I called a soldier to bring his torch, that we might find out what it was. The light fell on the hanging form; it was my dear dog, Cæsar. On the trunk of the tree was fastened a paper with this inscription: “We hang the dog until we can hang his master.” I was thunderstruck. Al-Mansour, Cæsar, both my friends in one day, perhaps at the very same hour! “Nothing, then, is left to me!” I exclaimed with bitterness, feeling that my poor dog was quite cold—“nothing, not even those poor faithful beasts who loved me so much.”
“Yes,” said a voice in my ear, “a countryman is left to you, and, if you will, a friend!”
I turned round; it was little Charles, who was holding out his hand to me with looks full of sadness and sympathy. I pressed the child’s hand. “Charles!” I exclaimed, “we will try and avenge them.” And spurring my horse, I left the fatal spot far behind me in a few minutes.
A day or two later we went to join the larger corps of General Chmielinski at the camp at Tedczyjowa. When I say “camp” I make a mistake. None existed; we had only a few miserable tents and hardly any baggage. The men slept by parties of ten in the woods, on the cold ground, with such coverings or sheepskins as they could get together; many had only cloth cloaks. At break of day the _réveil_ sounded, ordinarily at the entrance of some glade where the vedettes could embrace a wide space. At the first bugle sound the soldiers emerged from the forest. The men were gentle and sad. The indomitable and calm energy of their souls was reflected on their faces, though blanched with cold and worn with hunger and sufferings of every description. They had a kind of interior brightness in their look that cast over them a sort of sacred halo, before which I believe the veriest sceptic would have bowed with reverence. These men were all possessed with one idea: to die for their faith and their country. Nothing else, indeed, was left for them. The struggle was becoming more hopeless every day, and they knew it; yet they never dreamt of giving it up. The roll-call over and the sentries relieved, Father Benvenuto came in the midst of us, and every knee was bowed before the sacred sign he bore—the sign of our redemption. There was indeed something glorious in that prayer in the open air, joined in audibly by all those men, united in one thought and in one wish, who were fighting with the certainty of eventual defeat, but who only asked of God the grace not to falter or turn back from the path which duty and the love of their country had marked out for them, albeit that path might have no issue but exile or death. Happy were those who fell in battle! They went at once to swell the glorious army of martyrs. The others, when not hanged, chained in a long and mournful procession, were sent to Siberia after that terrible word of farewell addressed to fathers and mothers, and wives and children, gathered sobbing by the roadside: “_Do nie widzenia!_”—Never to meet again. Many of these poor fellows were fastened to an iron bar, sometimes ten of them together, and carried off in the direction of Kiew. Those who survived the horrors of the march or the lash of their drivers were taken across Greater Russia. A “soteria,” or company, of Cossacks surrounded these innocent men on every side as they toiled on and on, loaded with chains and treated worse than the vilest criminals. The lance and the whip were the only answer to pleas of exhaustion or sickness. A resigned silence was the sole refuge from the brutality of their escort, whose only orders were _not to spare the blood of those Polish dogs_. Any complaint brought down a hailstorm of blows on the unfortunate victims, even when not followed by death. Truly, the sufferings endured by the Poles will never be known till the day when all things shall be revealed.
When we arrived at the camp we found that Father Benvenuto had preceded us by four or five hours. He had been commissioned to receive about one hundred volunteers who had arrived that morning from Galicia. The greater part of them were dressed in the gray _kontusz_ (or Bradenburg greatcoat), with the large leathern girdle of a _géral_ (a mountaineer). On their heads they wore the _roqatka_ (a kind of square cap, something like the _czapka_ of the Lancers). They generally had a common fowling-piece with two barrels, and a little hatchet in their waistbands. Each had a canvas bag and a hunting-pouch. These might be considered as the flower of the flock. They were mostly students from Lemberg and Cracow. Others were peasants dressed in short tunics with scythes in their hands. These were the _kopynicry_ (or mowers), half-soldiers, half-peasants, and famous in all the struggles of Poland. Besides these there were men of every age and condition of life, but all animated with the same patriotic spirit: citizens, villagers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews even, some wearing black coats, others workmen’s blouses. Their arms were as varied as their costumes: parade swords, sabres blunted in the great wars with Napoleon, old muskets of Sobieski’s days, halberds, and even old French weapons. Some had only hunting-knives and sticks. This curious assemblage of discordant elements, which anywhere else would have seemed grotesque, assumed under the circumstances an imposing, and even a touching, character.
At the extreme end of the glade Father Benvenuto was praying before a great Christ stretched on his cross. When he rose he fastened an amaranth and white flag (which was the Polish banner) to the end of a lance. This flag bore on one side the picture of Notre Dame de Czenstochowa, the patroness of Poland; on the other a Lithuanian cavalier with the white eagle. He fixed the lance in the ground before the cross, and then made a sign to the volunteers to lay down their arms and draw near. When each had taken his place the good priest remained for a moment in silent prayer and recollection. His thin cheeks with their prominent cheekbones, his long white beard, his forehead furrowed with wrinkles and glorious wounds, and his tall and commanding figure gave him an appearance of energy, strength, and majesty which impressed the beholders with deep and affectionate veneration.
“Brothers!” at last he said, “it is a holy and yet a fearful cause to which you are about to devote yourselves. It is one beyond mere vulgar or animal courage; and before you enroll yourselves in our ranks—before, in fact, you engage yourselves any further in the matter—it is right you should know and fully realize what awaits you and what is expected of you.”
The patriots listened respectfully, their heads bare, standing before the crucifix and the banner. Around them, and as if to protect them, stretched the virgin forests, those fortresses of the Polish insurgents, while the sun shed its pale rays over the whole scene.
“What you have to expect,” continued the good father, “is this: You will suffer daily from hunger, for we have no stores; you will have to sleep on the bare ground, for we have no tents; you will have to march more often with bare feet than with shoes and stockings; you will shiver with cold under clothes which will be utterly insufficient to protect you from the rigors of this climate. If you are wounded, you will fall into the hands of the Muscovites, who will torture you. If you are afraid and refuse to go forward, your own comrades have orders to shoot you.”
“We are prepared for everything,” they replied simply.
The good father continued:
“Have you a family? They may as well mourn for you beforehand; for we have no leave in our ranks, except to go to the mines of Siberia or to death. Have you reconciled yourselves to God? I can only lead you to death and prepare you to meet it. Are you ready to die for your country?” He paused, and then added: “There is still time to draw back. I can facilitate your return to your homes. Weigh the matter well before you decide.”
“No, no!” they exclaimed with one voice, “we will not turn back. We wish to fight to-day, to-morrow—when you will—but to fight and die for our country. A cheer for Poland! Another cheer for our Mother!”
“My brethren,” began the venerable priest again, “do not give way to illusions. You are lost if you imagine that you can conquer the enemy in a few months. Woe be to us all if we forget that it is a giant’s struggle in which we are engaged, and that a whole generation must perish before we can expiate the sins of our fathers! Therefore I ask you again: Are you ready to march to battle, knowing that in the end you _must_ be defeated, that you _must_ be overpowered by numbers, and that you have nothing to hope for either in victory or defeat—_nothing_, not even glory, which lays its crowns of laurel on the graves of the brave?”
Here his voice faltered; but, mastering his emotion, the venerable old man, lifting his eyes to heaven and stretching out his hands towards the crucifix, exclaimed with almost superhuman enthusiasm: “O my God! thou who knowest the hearts of all men, give to these thy servants the spirit of courage, self-sacrifice, and faith. Blot out the memory of our beloved Warsaw from their hearts, and with it the remembrance of their mothers, their sisters, their betrothed! Let them henceforth see naught but the glorious army of martyrs and their mother Poland, torn and blood-stained. Let their ears be closed to all whispers of home, and be open only to hear the laments of the widows and orphans, the groans from the depth of the dungeons, the cries which the east wind brings us across Muscovy from the Siberian mines! May they have but one thought, one wish, one will—to pursue and annihilate this Russian vampire, which for nearly a century has fastened on the breasts of our Virgin of Poland, and has become drunk with her tears and with her blood!”
“May God hear and grant thy prayer!” replied the volunteers with one voice. “What thou willest we will; what thou commandest we will do. Lead us to death or to torture; we will not shrink from either.”
A look of deep joy lit up for a moment the old man’s face and made him seem as one inspired. He blessed the banner, and then gave out the Polish national hymn, _Boze cós Polske przesz tak licznie wieki_, of which the following is an English translation:[182]