CHAPTER X.

A BREEZE FROM THE WEST.

They were rather late with their coffee the next morning, and while they were taking it the bells of Santa Pudentiana, close to them, were ringing a _morto_――one, two, three, and again one, two, three――with a mournful persistence.

“It is just what we need,” the Signora said. “Our danger, at this moment, is that we may be too lightly happy. Those bells mean that a nun is dead, and that there is to be a High Mass for her in half an hour or so. Shall we go?”

Marion, who had joined them, and was sitting beside Bianca, said to her: “We are not afraid of seeing death, are we?”

“But we might be better for being reminded of it,” she said.

The ladies followed the people’s pretty fashion of putting black lace veils on their heads instead of bonnets, and had the good taste, too, to exchange their gay morning house-dresses for black ones before going to the church.

“It is the one thing in which I would have my country-women imitate the Roman ladies,” Mr. Vane said―― “in their sober costume for the church.”

The sun was scorching when they went out, and shone so brightly on the gold ground of the mosaic front of Santa Pudentiana that the figures there flickered as if painted on flame. But the sunken court had a hint of coolness, and when they entered the church they were very glad to have the light wraps the Signora had told them to bring; for the air was chilly and damp, the floor being a full story below the level of the modern street, and not a ray of sunshine entering, except what got in by the cupola. This was enough to light beautifully the mosaics of the tribune, where it is hard to believe one does not see a balcony, with the Saviour and the saints looking over, so real are the forms.

The Mass which they had come to hear was, however, nearly ended, having begun with a promptitude unusual in Rome. In a few minutes the priest left the altar, the people went away, and the lights were put out. Seeing two or three persons enter the sanctuary, and go to look through an open panel in the side wall, our party followed them, and found that the panel opened into a chapel, or chamber, beside the grand altar. This chamber was so draped as to be perfectly dark, except for the candles that burned at the head and feet of the dead nun lying there. She lay close to the open panel, and in sight of the altar where the divine Sacrifice had just been offered for her, if her eyes could have seen it. It was the emaciated but beautiful form of a woman of middle age, dressed in her religious costume, with her hands crossed on her breast, the face composed into an expression of unspeakable solemnity and peace. Awe-stricken and silent, they stood and gazed at her. They had come here from charity, indeed, but rather to temper their too earthly happiness with a merely serious thought, as one cools a heated wine with ice, making it more delicious so, than from any profound recognition of the dreadfulness of death and the perils of life. But these sealed lips spoke volumes to them, and the dark and silent church, now quite deserted, chilled them like the valley of the shadow of death through which this soul had passed――whither? It was a life dedicated to God, and given up assisted by all the sacred rites of religion; yet that face told them that death had not been met with any presuming confidence, and that before the soul of the dying religious the stern simplicity and clearness of the primitive Christian law had stood untempered by any glozings.

Marion was the first to move. Seeing Bianca look very pale, he drew her away, and the others followed.

How strange the gay sunny world looked to them when they went out! The unexpected solemnity of the scene had so drawn their minds from everything else that they had been chilled and darkened in soul as well as in body. Yet, though the warmth and light were grateful to them, they had no wish to cast entirely off that sombre impression, and would have remained in the church to pray awhile, but for the imprudence, in a sanitary point of view. Seeing, however, the door of the little church opposite, the Bambino Gesù, open, they went in there a few minutes. This church of the Infant Jesus is attached to a convent of nuns, and a company of young girls were just entering from the sacristy to make their First Communion, ranging themselves inside the sanctuary. They were dressed alike in white cashmere robes, and long silk veils in such narrow stripes of blue and white as to look like plain blue, fastened with wreaths of red and white roses. Floating slowly in with folded hands and fair, downcast faces, they knelt in a double ring about the sanctuary, leaned forward on the benches set for them, and remained motionless as statues, awaiting the coming of the Lord for the first time into their innocent hearts, as yet uncontaminated and untried by the world. At each end of the line a little boy, dressed as an angel, stood bearing a torch. For a week or ten days these girls had all been in retreat in the convent, instructed by the nuns; and when the Mass and their last breakfast together should be over, they would separate to their own homes, never to meet again, perhaps. Their parents and friends awaited them now in the church.

When the household of _Casa Ottant’-otto_ went home, they found a pile of letters and papers from America awaiting them, which they read and talked over in pauses of the dinner. There were business letters――short, if not sweet; long family letters, such as make one feel at home again, with all their familiar details and touching reminiscences; there were items of public news, descriptions of pageants in which the New World had rivalled, or surpassed, the Old; of fierce storms that had found the western continent a fitting stage to sweep their tragic skirts across; and of inundations from great crystalline rivers to which the classic Tiber is a mere muddy sewer. There was nonchalant mention of immense frauds, of fires that had devoured whole streets and squares, and reduced scores of persons to penury in a few hours, and of gigantic schemes for building up or pulling down. There were accounts of some popular indignation, in which the people had spoken without riot and been listened to, and of authority enforced, where law had conquered without bloodshed or treachery; of public sympathy with great misfortunes where no calculation of merit or reward cramped the soul of the givers, but the heart overflowed generously into the hand. In fine, there was a month’s summary of such events as those with which America, the fresco painter of the age, sketches her long, bold lines and splashes her colors on the page of time.

“America for ever!” cried Isabel, swinging a newspaper about with such enthusiasm that she nearly upset the vinegar and oil bottles at her elbow. “Do you know, my respected hearers, that at this instant my country is looking across the ocean at me with a pair of eyes like two suns. There isn’t another nation on earth that she couldn’t take between her teeth and shake the life out of. Will you excuse me while I go into the other room and play and sing just one stanza of the ‘Star-spangled Banner’?”

The Signora, who was breaking lettuce in the snowy folds of a towel, smiled beamingly on the speaker, at the same time making haste to save the imperilled cruets. “Season your admiration for a while till I have made the salad,” she said. “I would rather not have my attention distracted by patriotic music. Besides, nobody sings at noon. The birds are taking their nap, and you might wake them. Besides, again, I want you to save your voice for this evening. Some American people are coming here, and it might please them to hear the songs of their country in a strange land.”

The Americans who came that evening belonged to a party which was making a flying tour of Europe, and two of them were representatives of two distinct and extreme classes――that which scoffs at everything foreign, and that which is enchanted with everything foreign. Both were young, pretty, clever, and fairly educated, had gone through very nearly the same training, and the one had come out almost, or quite, a girl of the period, the other a girl of the past. The Signora found herself obliged, as it were, to use the curb with one hand and the whip with the other while talking with the two.

“Josephine and I are the best of friends,” said Miss Warder in her free, rapid way, “and we prove it――I by being patient with her, and she by trying my patience. The number of times in a day that girl goes into raptures over things scarcely worth looking at is almost incredible. I caught her yesterday filling a bottle with Tiber water to carry home. I believe she thinks that brook is larger than the Mississippi.”

“So it is, in one sense,” responded Miss Josephine in a soft and tranquil voice. “If you should see a little river all of tears, wouldn’t you think it more wonderful than a big river all of water?”

The Signora suggested that both might be excellent in their way.

“Then,” pursued the other, “she looks upon old families as she does on attar of roses and sandal-wood――a condensation of all that is exquisite, the rest being the refuse. Tell her that a vulgar soul often gets itself into a privileged body, and she is shocked at you. It is all I can do to keep my hands off her when I see her watching with admiring awe the affected grandeur of these little great people. For me, I laugh at them.” And she tossed her head with the scornful laugh of the democrat, at which coronets tremble.

“My dear Miss Warder,” said the Signora in her gentlest manner, “a great many wise people have looked at these things seriously.”

“Owls!” she pronounced with an air of great satisfaction. “Indeed,” she owned with a little compunction, “I hope it isn’t very bad of me, but I can’t be serious at anything I see here. To-day I nearly had a fit over a fire-engine that passed our place. It was a little sort of handcart affair with four small wheels, and a box bottom that might hold half a barrel of water. A bar at each side supported seven painted tin pails, holding about two quarts each, and there was a small brass pump in the middle of the carriage. This machine was wheeled along by five men dressed in gray pantaloons with stripes down the sides, dark blue jackets, and blue caps with a gilt band. I presume they all go home and put on that costume after the bell rings, or whatever alarm they have is given. The arrangement was just about suited to put out a bundle of matches, only the engine would be too late. The matches would be burned before it got there. I wish they could hear our electric fire-alarm once, and see our beautiful engines come flying out of their houses before the first number was well struck.”

“I am proud of our fire-engines and companies,” the Signora said; “but they do not prevent our having conflagrations such as are never known here. The little thought given to fire-extinguishing here proves the little danger there is of fires. In judging of what people do it is always well to take into consideration what is necessary to be done. One would hardly find fault with the Greenlanders for not having large ice-houses.”

“Their very _scirocco_ disappointed me,” the young woman went on, unabashed. “I had the impression that it was a tearing high wind, like a blast out of a furnace. Instead of that, it is only a warm and unwholesome breath. How different from our sweet south winds at home!”

“Speaking of winds,” said Miss Josephine, “reminds me of the trumpet-bands. How wild and stirring they are! They make on me an impression as of mingled wind and fire.”

The Signora smiled on the gentle enthusiast.

“Then,” pursued Miss Warder, “the pokey, slow ways of these people, and their ceremonies, and their compliments, and their relics――” She stopped abruptly here, recollecting that she was in a Catholic household, and had the grace to blush slightly.

“A little more ceremony and politeness would do our people at home a great deal of good,” the Signora replied coldly. “As to the relics, it need not, I should think, surprise even an unbeliever that faith should preserve her mementos as jealously as art has preserved hers, and that objects which belonged once to beings who now are the companions of angels, and see God face to face, should have been held as precious as those which have nothing but a physical beauty. Or even if the relic should be of doubtful authenticity still a thing worthless in itself, but which has been touched by the sincere veneration of centuries, has a sort of venerableness not to be mocked at. It is like the iron which has been touched by the lodestone, and so magnetized, or the dull gray mist kissed by sunbeams till it becomes beautiful and luminous. I do not know,” she added, smiling, “but you have all heard the story I am going to tell you apropos of false relics, but it was new to me when I heard it a few days ago from a clergyman. Many, many years ago a man who was going to the East was begged by a pious friend to bring him back a piece of the true cross. The voyager promised, but forgot his promise till he was near home. He did not wish to disappoint his friend; though, at the same time, he had no faith whatever in relics, or, indeed, in anything supernatural. So, after considering a while, he cut a tiny piece out of the mast of the ship in which he was returning homeward, enclosed it in a reliquary, and in due time presented it to his friend, who received it without a doubt, and, of course, told everybody what a treasure he had become owner of. The news, after awhile, reached the ears of a man possessed by a devil, and he immediately begged that the sacred relic might be brought to deliver him. The bit of the ship’s mast was, accordingly, brought with all ceremony and reverence, the devil in possession――who, of course, knew the trick that had been played――laughing, undoubtedly, at the efforts about to be made to drive him away. But when the necessary prayers had been said, no sooner did the supposed relic touch the possessed man than the devil felt himself thrust violently out and forced to fly. But he cried out in parting: ‘It is faith that drives me away, and not your chip of the old mast.’”

“That all answers perfectly, as far as the believers are concerned,” Mr. Vane said. “But I would like to know what became of that Eastern traveller.”

“The principal _dénoûment_ so overflowed and hid him out of sight that I did not ask, or have forgotten,” the Signora said. “Girls, what should have been done to the man who made the relic? Isabel?”

“He should have been at sea again in that very ship, at the time of the miraculous cure,” Isabel said. “He should have been standing by the very mast he had cut the bit out of, and a flash of lightning should have struck him dead.”

“Oh! no, Bella,” said her sister. “He should have been standing by the possessed man when he was cured, and should have been stricken with compunction, and should have confessed, and been forgiven, and been, for all the rest of his life, a model of faith and reverence.”

“Suppose,” Mr. Vane suggested, “that we should choose a medium between extreme justice and extreme charity, and say that the devil which left the possessed man entered immediately into that Eastern traveller, and tormented him by taking him on constant voyages to Jerusalem, swinging him to and fro like a pendulum, always in the same ship, till at last, after many years, his victim was enabled to make an act of perfect faith in the power and mercy of the God crucified, and so be freed from his tormentor.”

Meantime, Mr. Coleman approached Miss Warder, timid but admiring, much as one might approach a beautiful panther, and seated himself on the edge of a chair near her.

“You like Rome?” he inquired in a conciliating voice, not meaning anything whatever by the question, except to open a conversation. That was always the first thing he said to a foreigner.

The bright, laughing eyes of the girl flashed over him in one scathing glance. “It’s charming!” she said with enthusiasm. “One can ask so many questions here without being thought inquisitive. To be sure, one doesn’t always get answers to them. I asked to-day a very accomplished Monsignore the meaning of the broken arch that one sees over nearly all the altars, and he couldn’t tell me. May be you can.”

Mr. Coleman believed that it was an architectural corruption that came in with the decline of art, but could not be positive.

“I wouldn’t mind so much,” she went on, “if only they did not set on the sides of it a hu――an inhuman being, who would naturally be sure to slide off if he weren’t nailed on, as, indeed, he is. It makes one feel uncomfortable!”

The gentleman descended into the depth of his consciousness for some other subject, and came up with――

“Have you ever been to Bologna, ma’am?”

“No,” she replied; “but I have eaten Bologna sausage.”

There was another silence. The young woman folded her hands, looked modest, and awaited the next remark. It was rather slow in coming, and feeble when it came. “There are a great many Americans in Rome this winter, I believe.”

“Oh!” she said confidentially, “nothing to what there are in the United States. The country is full of them. They bother the life out of the foreigners.”

Mr. Coleman contemplated his companion’s serious face for some time with bewilderment, and at length bethought himself to smile.

“I beg your pardon!” she said, looking at him inquiringly, and with a mild surprise.

He instantly became crimson.

“I――that is, excuse me! I did not speak,” he stammered.

“Oh! you’re very excusable,” she replied, with an emphasis which gave an exceedingly doubtful meaning to the words.

In the midst of the dreadful pause that followed a polite voice was heard at the other side, where a second moth had approached this flame. It was a young Italian who was learning English with such enthusiasm that he would almost stop strangers in the street to ask definitions from them. “Would you have the gentility to do me a favor, miss?” he asked.

“That depends quite on what the favor may be,” she replied, looking at him with surprise; for the gravity and ceremoniousness of his demeanor were such as to imply that a very serious matter was in question. “I’m sure I shall be very happy to oblige you, if I can.”

“Thanks!” he said, bowing. “I learn now your beautiful and noble language, the which is also much difficult. To-day of it I have seen a phrase, the which entangles me. At first I it believed to be a beast. But in the dictionary I found another signification, but without to be able to comprehend it. The phrase is ‘Irish bull.’ Will you do me the favor to explicate me the expression?”

“Irish bull,” Miss Warder said, “means no thoroughfare. The sense goes into the sentence and sticks there; it never comes out.”

The young man looked deeply interested, but not enlightened. He did not dare to ask more, for his teacher looked at him with an air of having made a lucid explanation which any one with common sense should understand at once.

“It is a very noble language, the English,” he repeated faintly.

“I saw a perfect example of it this morning in a place the other side of the Corso,” she resumed. “A man with a donkey-cart got out of a great crowd into a place between two rows of houses, evidently expecting to find an outlet at the other end. There was none, and the passage was so narrow that to turn was impossible. Now, imagine that man with his donkey-cart to be an idea, and the houses to be words, and you will understand perfectly.”

“Oh! certainly. It is clear!” her pupil replied. “Thanks!” His eyes twinkled, though his mouth was perfectly grave. “It is, then, something that diverts. You hear the words spoken, you listen at the other end for the signification to come out, you hear it moving about here and there inside, but you never receive it. It is excellent. It would be a good fortune for the world if the people who speak and write foolish or wicked thoughts should serve themselves always of this mode of expression.”

Isabel interrupted this lesson by coming to make some friendly inquiries of her young country-woman, who, after a short conversation, gave a slight sketch of her life and adventures, speaking with the most entire frankness.

Meanwhile, Miss Josephine was talking to the Signora, who was charmed by her looks and manner, both the essence of soft and graceful beauty. She was fair, rather small, and plump, with the whiteness of an infant, and pure golden hair in thick waves fastened back from a low forehead and the most exquisite of ears with a long spray of myrtle. Her dress was of the softest gray color, close at the wrists and throat, where delicate laces turned out like the white edges of a gray cloud. The only light to this tender picture was the hair, the blue eyes, and an emerald cross, her only ornament.

“I have been to-day to see the relics of Santa Croce,” she said. “I coaxed Miss Warder not to go, though the permission included her; for she is such an unbeliever that she spoils all my pleasure in seeing such things. I am not formally a Catholic, you know, but I more than half believe. My heart is all convinced, but my head holds out yet a little. Perhaps that is because I am not well instructed. Well, I started early, so as to have a walk alone from St. John Lateran across to Santa Croce. I loitered along under the trees, perfectly happy, looking about, telling myself over and over again where I was, and gathering daisies. I looked at those daisies before I came here this evening, and every one of them had curled its little petals in, and gone to sleep, like a company of babies. In the morning they will open their eyes again. Well, I reached Santa Croce, and stood on the steps there. Everything was so quiet and beautiful, with nature so sweet, and art so magnificent. No one was near but two or three soldiers about the convent door. I knew before that the government had taken nearly all the convent. After a while I heard a trumpet-call inside, and presently company after company of soldiers, half a regiment certainly, came out and marched off to the avenue to drill. They were dressed in gray linen and white gaiters, and looked like a crowd of great moth-millers.

“A nice, bright-faced young officer was walking to and fro near me, and I spoke to him, and asked some questions. He seemed pleased to talk――I suppose he felt dull there; and when I told him about our army, and what I had seen during the war, he asked me if I would like to go in and see their quarters. Of course I said yes. So he led me in, and over the two stories, and showed me the gardens and courts at the back, and the splendid view from the south windows. What halls they were!――long, wide corridors, arched, and bordered with pilasters, with a grand stairway climbing up from one side. Unless for hospital or barracks, with long rows of beds at the sides, I cannot imagine what they were made for, except simply to look at, to walk through, and to make a great pile on the outside. It seemed building for the mere sake of building. All the beds had the mattresses folded up, with gray blankets laid on them, and a little shelf of things over the head. One room, occupied by two officers, was almost as simple. There were none of the luxuries we have. Then the view! I fancied I could see half of Italy spread out before me. ‘But I pity the poor _frati_ who have been turned out,’ I could not help saying to my guide. ’So do I,’ he answered. The soldiers are not to blame, you know. They must obey. Then I went out, and the others came, and we went up to the relic chamber. You go up a good many stairs, and through a chapel hung round with paintings, and then through low-vaulted stone passages, not high enough for a tall man to stand up in. I should think that the shape of the way we went would be like a great letter C. At the last turn we found ourselves in the little chamber, where the great relics had been set out on the altar. Behind the altar were the strong doors of the closets in the wall where these relics are kept. On the wall at the right of the door was the relic-case of Gregory the Great, about two feet square, with a glass cover, and filled with an innumerable collection of tiny relics. But all eyes were turned to the altar.

“The _frate_ who came with us put on a stole, after lighting the candles; then we all knelt while he said a prayer. And then, one by one, he brought forward the relics, and showed to each, and gave each one to kiss and touch their beads or crucifixes to, if they wished. I looked at them with wonder, and neither believed nor disbelieved. It is so hard for us Americans, you know, to believe in the antiquity of things, unless we have material proofs. The bone of the finger of St. Thomas, the thorn from the crown of thorns, the nail――they were impressive to me chiefly because saints had believed them authentic, and centuries of Catholics had venerated them. But when, at last, he took down the crystal cross from the centre of the altar, my heart melted. I felt that it was real. I wanted to snatch it, and run away by myself, and cry over and kiss it. I wished the others would kneel, but they didn’t. They looked at the relic, and kissed it, and that was all. Perhaps they were each wishing that some one else would kneel and set the example. At length, when the last one had kissed it, I dropped on my knees, and the others did the same, and the _frate_ gave us benediction with the famous old relic of the true cross that Santa Helena brought from Jerusalem. Then he put the lights out, and we came away, and some of them bought fac-similes of the nail and the inscription of the cross, and we came down all the passages again, and the painted cardinals on the walls of the upper chapel looked at us as we passed, to see if we were any better for the privilege we had received, and so down through the quiet church, and out into the sunshine again. But that crystal cross, with its three pieces of dark wood inside, has been before my eyes ever since. It must be real, for it speaks. When I think of it, I can hear all the centuries weep over it.”

She stopped, smiling but choked a little.

“Dear child!” said the Signora, and pressed the girl’s hand. “You should enter the church at once.”

There was no answer in words, but the eyes spoke in an earnest gaze, half pleading, half inquiring.

“My dear,” her friend pursued hastily, “this is no time for us to talk over such a subject; but if you would like to speak with me, and if I can do anything for you, I shall be very happy, and you can come to me quite freely at any time.”

“I shall come, then, very soon,” the girl replied, and kissed the Signora’s hand.

She had another pleasant incident of the day to tell; for she had been with a Catholic friend to see Monsignor Mermillod, who was visiting Rome, and the celebrated Archbishop of Geneva had spoken some kind words to her, and allowed her to look at his ring, in which was set a relic and an exquisite tiny painted miniature of St. Francis of Sales.

“He spoke to us of the mission of women,” she said, “and of what power women have for good and evil, and his illustration was from Dante, and Beatrice was woman leading man to Paradise. He spoke so that all my former life seemed to me trivial, and worse than lost. O dear Signora! if all men whom we wish to respect would speak so! But it really seems that to please them, and win an influence over them, to have even their respect, we must be mean. Such a man as Monsignor Mermillod requires our noblest qualities, and encourages us to be true. One doesn’t need to be blatant in order to be kindly noticed by him, nor to boast in order to be appreciated. He is so noble and clear-sighted, and his very atmosphere is charity.”

“Yes, he practises what he preaches,” the Signora replied.

When the visitors were gone, the family had a little quiet talk before separating for the night. The influence of the Signora and of Bianca, falling on minds already prepared to receive it, had been such that they took happiness, and all the delights of their daily life, not as a wine that intoxicates to forgetfulness of duty, but as an incentive to quicken their sense of duty, and a balm to alleviate the pains to come in the future. Every new pleasure that the Heavenly Father’s bounty lavished on them, day after day, was welcomed generously, but with a tender fear. Amid all this constantly-recurring beauty and sacredness they walked as among angels, hushing themselves.

A quiet word touched the key, and found all in tune; as, striking but the rim of a true bell, we hear the chord float softly up from turn to turn. Tacitly the first hesitating motion to separate was abandoned, and they drew nearer together instead, and presently made a close circle around the Signora’s chair.

“It gives the mind a stretch to hear different nations talking together, by even their feeblest representatives,” Mr. Vane had observed.

“Yes,” Marion replied, lingering, hat in hand. “It always gives me the same feeling of space and grandeur that I have at sea, when I watch the waves meet, as if the East and the West were rushing together to kiss or to tear each other.”

“I wonder,” said Bianca, “if all our national differences are to be obliterated in heaven, and if we shall have no more those little piquant characteristics and discussions which make us like each other even better here.”

The Signora sank into her armchair, quoting the famous recipe for cooking a hare: “‘First catch your hare.’ My dear friends, we are not yet in Paradise, and we have a good battle to fight before we shall get there, and I move that we look to our armor. At all events, heaven has been described for us by Him who makes it what it is.”

And then Mr. Vane came and stood at the high back of her chair, and a little beside her, and Isabel took a footstool at the other side. Marion and Bianca slipped into the sofa opposite.

“I have been thinking to-day,” she continued, “that, when we go to hear Mass in the Crypt of St. Peter, as it is not probable we shall ever meet there, all of us, again in this life, we ought all to think it a duty to receive Holy Communion, if we can. It seems to me that the special virtue we are to seek there is a stronger faith. I have been there before, but it was in the company of strangers. We are a company of sympathizing friends. I think we should look forward to that visit as a call to make a profession of faith more resolute, if possible, than we have yet made.”

A silence followed her little speech, which had struck deeper, perhaps, than their expectations.

“Has no one anything to say?” she asked smilingly. “This is not a lecture, but a _conversazione_. Are we always to skim the surface in our talk?”

“You are quite right, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, “and the same thought has passed through my own mind. I do not know if I shall be thought prepared to receive so soon, but will ask. It would be something for me to remember all my life that I had made my first communion there, and in company with all my family.”

The daughters were silent, both looking down, touched and awed by their father’s words. With all their affection and confidence, they never had known anything of his deeper feelings or more serious intentions than what their intuitive sympathy had divined. Some things they tacitly guessed, some he tacitly acknowledged; but for a spoken confidence, either given or demanded, they had each and all been more free, sometimes, with strangers. And so accustomed had the girls become to this real reserve under an appearance of perfect ease that they listened at first almost with terror to the Signora’s challenge.

“I think the children would be pleased,” Mr. Vane added gently, understanding their silence.

Then they both looked up with a quick smile and a simultaneous “Oh! yes, papa,” but said no more.

There was still another thin ice that the Signora had to break. She understood quite well the disposition and habits of Bianca’s lover, and wished particularly to bring him in with them on this occasion. A man of a noble and poetical nature, he was, perhaps, in danger of resting contented with a religious feeling born of an enthusiastic appreciation of the beauty of the church, and, while obeying its express commands in the performance of duty, of waiting for the command to be given. He watched with delight the steps of the Prince’s Daughter, his loyal word or blow was always ready for those who attacked her; but he seemed to prefer to be an admiring spectator rather than an actor, and to do only so much as would keep him in the acknowledged number of her followers. The Signora suspected that he contented himself with an Easter Communion, and that there was many a night when he lay down to sleep without recommending himself to God, and many a morning when he rose without giving thanks for another day. If he looked out at the early dawn with delight in its beauty, he felt that he had praised God; and if, gazing up into the starry midnight, he thought of the shadowy earth as a hammock swung by invisible cords from a thick tree full of golden blossoms, it seemed to him that he had kissed the hand that rocked him to sleep. Intoxicated by the beauty of the works of God, he exulted in the freedom from baseness which the magical draught gave him, and could scarcely believe that in some unwary hour he might draw in a drop of poison with the honey. He had been wont to say that the virtue of the long-suffering Job had been preserved, not so much by shutting his bodily eyes and praying, as by opening his eyes, and looking about where flood and stream, and snow and hail and dew taught each its lesson, unmarred by earthly glosses; that that man was surer to fear God who looked at the leviathan making the deep boil like a pot, leaving a shining path behind him over the waters, and saying this is the work of God, than the man who, when he would raise his soul, left his senses behind, and strove to climb to a knowledge of the power of God without them.

The Signora knew all this, and admired Marion, winged creature that he was; but she wished him to practise a little more the plain and simple duties of religion. She observed that he made no motion to assent to her proposal, and made haste to take for granted that he would assent, and spare him a promise.

“Then,” she said, “since we are to have this heavenly audience together, let us make a small part of the preparation together. How lovely it would be if we could every night say our prayers together, or a part of them, at least! We will not have company late, and Marion lives near us, and can take his little starlit walk half an hour later without any inconvenience. Let us say certain prayers together expressly in preparation for this communion. We are five. Each one shall choose a prayer.”

She scarcely paused, feeling that there was still a shyness to overcome, and that her proposal had been bold and unusual. The thought fired instead of checking her.

“However closely we may be bound, however sure in our own minds to spend many years together,” she added hastily, “we may be scattered like the dust before another day passes. Till we, as closest and dearest of friends, have prayed together, we have not well deserved the power of speech nor the consolations of friendship.”

“I choose the Acts of Faith, Hope, Love, Thanksgiving, and Contrition,” Mr. Vane said.

“I choose the Salve Regina,” Marion added.

Bianca named the Memorare, and Isabel three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and three Glorias.

“And I choose the prayer to the Five Wounds,” said the Signora. “We each will say our own prayer, and the others answer Amen. Mr. Vane shall begin.”

They were astonished, not only into compliance, but into willingness and pleasure. The Signora’s will and enthusiasm blew away all the foolish scruples and false delicacy which would have for ever prevented the others making such a proposition, and the five Catholics knelt together in the room softly lighted by the night and the Virgin’s lamp, and said their prayers together.

It was a strange yet sweet experience for all, this first union in family prayers. Mr. Vane, uttering his prayers with an earnest gravity, gave the tone to the others; and when Marion called on the Queen of Heaven to hear their cry, as that of the poor exiled children of Eve coming up from a valley of tears, the Signora’s proposition showed no more an extraordinary one, but altogether proper and necessary.

They rose when all was over, and stood silent a moment. It was a silence full of peace and of a new sense of union.

Marion was the first to speak. “You have strung us to-night like beads on a corona, “he said, taking the Signora’s hand. “May the chain endure for ever!”

They parted very quietly, and for the first time Bianca and Marion said good-night to each other without appearing to remember that they were lovers, or remembering it so seriously that no one else was reminded of it.

The Signora went to her room thankful and contented. In spite of her courage, what she had done had been very difficult for her, and nothing but her position toward the others of hostess and _cicerone_ had made it seem proper to her. The ice was broken, however, and successfully; they had gone together to their Heavenly Father, and they could never again be strangers to each other nor to him. She was thankful and contented.

TO BE CONTINUED.

SOME QUAINT OLD CITIES.[195]

The Zuyder-Zee will soon be a thing of the past, and in the meanwhile it is but little known. M. Henri Havard, known as an art-critic, has given us a glimpse of it, with its decaying ports, its old-fashioned population, its wonderful atmospheric “effects”; and his book is, strange to say, newer to most readers than one treating of the South Sea Islands or the Japanese Archipelago. Not only is the Zuyder-Zee comparatively unknown to foreigners, but, according to Havard, “it is more than probable that not ten people in Holland have made this voyage, and among writers and artists I do not know a single one.”

The navigation of this sea is difficult and dangerous; narrow channels run between enormous sandbanks hardly covered with water. Tales of shipwreck abound in every page of the history of the Zuyder-Zee, and great carcases of ships, breaking up or rotting away, call to mind its dangers. There is no regular communication between the various ports, and M. Havard and his companion, M. Van Heemskerck, had to hire a vessel, engage a crew, and purchase provisions for the voyage. The vessel was called a “tjalk,” and drew only three feet of water; her burden was sixty tons. The crew consisted of the “schipper,” one sailor or “knecht,” and the wife and child of the former. The travellers put up partitions forming kitchen, dining-room, and bed-room, and did the cooking by turns. They started in June, 1873, leaving Amsterdam in the early morning; and, says the author, after a minute description of the Preraphaelite country surrounding the principal sea-port of Holland, “the sun which brightened this magnificent spectacle rendered the atmosphere clear and of a silvery transparence; reflected by the water, the effect was splendid.” The first object of interest which they met with were the sluices at Schellingwoude. “These blocks of granite, imported from distant countries, massed one upon the other, form an immovable mountain; the great gates, which allow five ships to enter abreast, have something majestic about them which impresses the beholder. I know nothing finer than these sluices, save, perhaps, those of Trolhätten in Sweden.”

The drowsy, pleasant, monotonous impression of the interminable green meadows, or _polders_ (reclaimed from the sea), the huge windmills, the few church-steeples of fantastic shapes and varied colors, the yellow sand-banks, is minutely described, and then the travellers come upon the island of Marken, like “a green raft lost in a gray sea.” Seven villages are built on as many little mounds, with a mound used as a church-yard. The wealth of Marken is in hay and fish. The meadows are flooded once a year. Trees never grow on the island, and most of the houses are raised on piles, and look like “great cages suspended in the air.” There is a peculiarity about the bed-rooms which remind us of the cupboard-beds common among the poorer classes in Scotland: “The ground-floor is one large room divided into as many parts as may be required by wooden partitions without ceilings; the roof――which is, of course, leaning at an angle――is hung with nets and fishing utensils.… The bed is the important article of furniture; this is let into the wall in a kind of cupboard, into which are thrust the mattresses and other necessary articles. Two little curtains are drawn across.… It looks as much as possible like a large drawer. Sometimes considerable luxury is displayed in the bed; the pillow-cases and the sheets are embroidered with open-work, which is a special fabrication of the women at Marken――white and yellow threads crossed, something in the fashion of guipure.” The walls or partitions are mostly painted blue, the shelves are heaped with common crockery and Japanese porcelain, for which there is an extravagant demand all over Holland; a Friesland cuckoo-clock stands in one corner, a carved oak chest in another, and on this are tall glasses, bulging mugs of delf, and miraculously-polished old candlesticks of yellow metal. One of the chief worthies of Marken, Madame Klok, has the richest collection in the island: china of all sorts (Dutch and Japanese) and all colors, pictures, foreign curiosities such as sailors always fill their houses with, are there in profusion; but what she is most proud of is her carved oak chests, all of Dutch make, their panels sculptured with great art, and seeming only just to have left the hands of the artist. The women of Marken have clung to their distinctive dress, and, partly on that account, are thought very uncivilized by the young Hollanders, to whom freedom and Paris fashion have become synonymous terms. This dress is very peculiar, and Havard says very picturesque. Here is part of his description:

“The head-dress is composed of an immense cap in the form of a mitre, white, lined with brown, to show off the lace and embroidery; it is tied close under the chin, pressing closely over the ears.… Long ringlets of blonde hair fall down to the shoulders or back, and the hair of the front is brought forward and cut square along the forehead a little above the eyebrows. The gown has a body without sleeves, and the skirt or petticoat is independent of it, and always of a different stuff. The body is brown, and generally of cloth covered with embroidery in colors, in which red predominates.… This requires years of labor. A _corsage_ well embroidered is handed down from mother to daughter as an heirloom; the sleeves are in two unequal parts: one, with vertical lines of black and white, reaches the elbow, and the other, almost to the wrist, is of dark blue, and is fastened above the elbow.… The skirt is also divided into two unequal parts: the upper, which is about eight inches wide only, is a kind of basque with black lines on a light ground; the rest of the skirt is dark blue, with a double band of reddish brown at the bottom.… Such is the female costume of Marken, … so singular that no other costume is like it, or even approaches its bizarre appearance.”

These old Dutch settlements all possess many churches, but most of them disfigured by paint and other monstrosities. The Premonstratensian monks had a monastery at Marken, having come there from Leeuwarden; but the old Marienhot, turned to other uses, was pulled down in 1845 on account of its ruinous condition. At Monnikendam, “the town of the monks,” one of the dead cities――for Marken is only a cluster of villages――there is what is now called the Great Church, but was originally the Abbey of St. Nicholas. It has eighty great pillars in the nave alone, and was built in the fifteenth century, though according to the style of an earlier day. It is now a “_temple_” (Calvinist meeting-house); the columns are whitewashed, there is a modern, bulbous pulpit with green curtains, and the nave is full of ugly, closed pews in the taste of the eighteenth century.

Havard describes Monnikendam as having a Chinese appearance through its “green trees, the red and green coloring of the houses and roofs, and the little gray wooden bridge.” In 1573 it had the honor of taking a prominent part in the great naval battle of the Zuyder-Zee, when Cornelius Dirkszoon, a native of Monnikendam, destroyed the Spanish fleet and took the admiral, Count de Bossu, prisoner. The town kept the count’s collar of the Golden Fleece as a trophy. Though the monks have disappeared, the town still preserves its arms――a Franciscan monk, habited sable (black), holding a mace in his right hand, the shield being _argent_, or white. The tower of the Great Church is of enormous height, and Havard, as he looked down on the rich plains below, wondered at the insensibility of the inhabitants to the treasures of nature and art within their reach. This deserted place――where the arrival of two strangers was an event of universal importance, to be talked of at least a month after they had gone, and where the old office of town-crier was discharged by a wizened individual in a black dress-coat, knee-breeches, and three-cornered hat, whose duty of fixing notices to the doors of such houses as contained patients attacked by a contagious disease reminds us of the seventeenth century――was once “a flourishing commercial city, one of the twenty-nine great towns of Holland, when the Hague was but a village.”

Between Edam and Hoorn (the latter being the pearl of the dead cities) the tjalk encountered a terrible storm of wind, which was succeeded by as wonderful a calm. The author says:

“I turned my head (towards the eastern horizon) and saw one of the most curious spectacles I ever contemplated in my life. From the hull of the boat to the top of the mast, from the zenith to the nadir, all was of the same tint. No waves, no clouds, no heavens, no sea, no horizon were to be distinguished――nothing but the same tone of color, beautifully soft; at a short distance a great black boat, which seemed to rest on nothing, and to be balanced in space. The sea and the sky appeared of a pearl-gray color, like a satin robe; the boat looked like a great blot of ink. Nothing can give an idea of this strange spectacle; words cannot describe such a picture. Turner, in his strangest moods, never produced anything so extraordinary.”

The harbor of Hoorn is now “bordered by masses of verdure, great trees, and flowers. The place of these charming plantations and gardens was once occupied by ship-building yards, from whence sailed annually whole fleets of newly-constructed ships. Hoorn is really one of the prettiest towns which can be found, and at the same time the most curious. It is entirely ancient. All the houses are old and attractive, covered with sculptures and charming bas-reliefs――every roof finishing in the form of stairs. Everywhere wide _auvents_ jutting out over doors and windows; everywhere carved wood and sculptured stone. The tone of color of the bricks is warm and agreeable to the eye, giving these ancient habitations an aspect of gayety and freshness which contrasts in a singular manner with their great age and ancient forms.… It seems almost ridiculous to walk about these streets in our modern costumes. It almost appears to me that there are certain towns where only the plumed hat, the great trunk-hose and boots, with a rapier at our side, are in keeping with the place; and Hoorn is one of these places.”

The emptiness of the streets, the want of all animation, is the shadow of the picture, and the author brings to mind the former bustling prosperity of Hoorn, “filled by an active population, covering the seas with their fleets and the Indies with their counting-houses. Every week a thousand wagons entered the markets, bringing in mountains of cheese from the rich countries around.… Each year there was a bullock fair, first established in 1389, which drew visitors from all corners of Europe. Frenchmen, Danes, Frisons, Germans, and Swedes flocked into the town, and thus augmented its astonishing prosperity. Hoorn then counted twenty-five thousand inhabitants.” It had “massive towers and monumental gates,” and bastions and ramparts, whose place is now occupied by beautiful gardens, shaded by fine trees, and boasting of the few remaining ruinous towers and gates as of picturesque adornments――nothing else. The gate at the entrance of the harbor is of “magnificent proportions and superb in its details.… Among the sculptures I remarked a cow which a peasant-girl is seen employed in milking――a homage to the industry of the country which once enriched the town.” On the top of the other old gate――the Cowgate――is a group of two cows, and on the side facing the town four cows are represented standing, while the heraldic lions by their side support the escutcheon of the town, the arms being a hunting-horn. The remains of the old commerce of Hoorn may be seen on Thursdays, when a market is held in the town, and quantities of cheeses still arrive.

“The numbers of people on foot who pour into the town, the carved and heterogeneously-painted wagons, carts, tilburies, and all kinds of old-fashioned conveyances passing through the east gate, almost incline one to believe that the good old times have once more returned to this city. Farmers and cattle-dealers and their wives arrive in the carriages, for the market-day is a holiday; … they sit stolidly in or upon these antediluvian vehicles. I say stolidly; for I do not know a better term to express the calm, silent, reflective look of both husbands and wives.… At ten o’clock the market-place resembles a park of artillery whence the guns have been withdrawn. The red cheeses piled up by thousands represent to the life the cannon-balls rusted by exposure to the air and rain.”

In the Guildhall is preserved Count Bossu’s silver-gilt drinking-cup; he was a prisoner in Hoorn for three years after his defeat and capture by the insurgent Dutch. The churches are inferior to the dwellings, having been spoilt by whitewash and plaster and absurd Greek peristyles, perhaps supposed at the Reformation to chase away the evil spirits of an age of superstition. The result is deplorable, and has unfortunately outlasted the fanaticism of the moment, which was responsible for these disfigurements. Although the people of Hoorn claim that their town was rich and famous at the end of the thirteenth century, the first authentic documents point to the middle of the fourteenth as the date of regular municipal incorporation, and the walls were not built till 1426. Hoorn has produced many distinguished men――Abel Janzoon Tasman, who discovered Van Dieman’s Land and New Zealand; Jan Pietersz Kœn, who founded Batavia (Java) in 1619; Wouter Corneliszoon Schouten, who in 1616 doubled Cape Horn, which he named after his native town; Jan Albertsz Roodtsens, a portrait-painter known to art-critics as Rhotius, according to the foolish fancy of the Renaissance for Latinizing one’s “barbaric” name, and others less well known――doctors and lawyers with Latinized names, honorably mentioned as learned men in the archives, and brave seamen, patriotic and enterprising, the Sea-Beggars of the War of Independence against Spain, and successful explorers in tropical seas.

Having passed through Enkhuizen, the birthplace of the painter Paul Potter, Havard goes on to Medemblik, the former capital of West Friesland, and the seat of King Radbod’s power. Here, like a true artist, he was struck by a beautiful scene painted by nature, who in these regions, as everywhere else, has so many changing beauties to offer, to distract one’s attention from even the most perfect human works of art. “The town, with its towers and steeples and with its ancient castle, rose up before us against a background of sky of a rosy tint, fading into lilac-gray and a variety of tints; the town itself appearing of a blackish green, while over our heads the sky was of celestial blue; at the very foot of the town the sea repeated all these splendid colorings and completed the picture. A painter who should reproduce this scene without alteration would not be believed; it would be said he had invented the coloring.” Then follows the same story of desertion, emptiness, and decay, that mark the “dead cities,” of which this is perhaps the oldest of all. For the well known incident of King Radbod (repeated seven centuries later by a cacique of Mexico), and his choice of eternal torments with his forefathers rather than heaven with strangers to his blood, we have no room. It illustrates the clannish qualities of the old Teutonic stock. Crossing part of the peninsula least tainted by “improvement,” the author, on his way to Texel, passed through many villages such as we have heard about, but the accounts of which we have believed to be exaggerated. But these are not to be found on the beaten track, and he who has seen the typical Brock has only seen an artificially-preserved specimen, handy and hackneyed, kept on exhibition with the avowed consciousness of its attraction to strangers. “Every one has heard of the marvellous cow-houses, paved with delf-tiles and sanded in different colors, cleaner even than the rooms, where one must neither cough, smoke, nor spit; where one must not even walk before putting on a great pair of _sabots_, or wooden shoes, whitened with chalk――cow-sheds in which the beautiful white-and-black cows are symmetrically arranged upon a litter which is constantly changed, and whose tails are tied up to the ceiling for fear of their becoming soiled. Well, it is in these hamlets that one meets with all this.… Sometimes at the end of the stable or cow-shed one sees a parlor with a number of fresh young girls, with their high caps and golden helmets, working at some fancy work or knitting all sorts of frivolity; the fact is that many of these peasants are millionaires living among their cheeses with the greatest simplicity.”

Of Texel and Oude-Schild the author says:

“When you land, it seems as if you entered a great round basin lined with a thick carpet of verdure; an endless prairie with a few trees … all the country surrounded by high dikes and dunes, which limit the view.… We felt as if we were in an Eden under the waters, with the heavens open above――a bizarre sensation difficult to describe, but which is very strange and original. The dike that protects the south of the island is almost as grand and important as that of the Helder.… At the place from whence these works spring it was necessary to work under water at a depth of above one hundred feet.… On the North Sea side are moving sands, which, from their desolate aspect, contrast with the rich and verdant meadows they guard from the encroachments of the sea. These dunes are certainly not the least interesting part of the island; they can be entered only on foot or on horse-back. The feet of the horse or man who attempts to cross them sink either to the ankle of the man or the fetlock of the horse. The green meadow suddenly ceases at their edge, and an arid solitude, burnt by the sun, extends beyond our view――we should say a strip of the African desert rather than of the soft and humid soil of Holland.”

This passage into the North Sea has seen some of the largest flotillas in the world leave its shelter, and not only great commercial fleets and war fleets, but hardy expeditions of scientific discovery, such as that of the first explorers who sought for a Northwest Passage through the ice of the Pole. Although it failed in this, it discovered Nova Zembla. Twice did the brave William Barends attempt this journey, and the second voyage was his last, while his associate, Jacob Van Heemskerck, returned to Holland to be invested with the command of the navy in 1607, and to attack, under the guns of Gibraltar, the large Spanish fleet commanded by Alvarez d’Avila. Like Nelson, he died in the moment of victory, and fifty years later almost the same fate befell the indomitable Van Tromp. Space forbids to more than mention Harlingen, a resuscitated city, which has managed to regain much of its old prosperity, but is not architecturally very interesting. One of its claims to present attention is the picture-gallery of a self-made man and discriminating amateur――M. Bos; and one of its historical claims dates from 1476, when Menno Simonsz, the founder of the sect of Mennonites, of whom some thousands lately emigrated to this country, was born within its territory, in the province of Witmarsum. From this place the travellers started by canal-boat, or _treckschuit_, a barge drawn by a trotting horse through a level, productive country. The boat has a first-class and a second-class compartment, long seats well cushioned for sleeping, a large table for meals, and, as there is no vibration, it is the laziest, pleasantest way of travelling, if one is not in a hurry. The breeding of those splendid black horses, whose long tails sweep the ground, well known throughout Europe, is still one of the sources of wealth of this Frison land, and much of the marvellous wood-carving now stored up in English collections comes from the Frison villages; but of the old costume of the women nothing remains but the golden helmet. Circumstances, however, have preserved the old fashion of skating races, which take place every winter, and are the occasion of regular festivals. The youth of a whole neighborhood gathers together, and the prizes are handed down as heirlooms in the families of the winners. In old times military manœuvres used to be gone through on skates, and these “reviews” were well worth seeing. The Frison skate is a straight iron blade, with which, though you cannot go in any other than a straight line, you can glide along with much greater speed than with the ordinary curved one we use. The only skating ground of Holland――the straight canals――are a sufficient explanation of the difference.

On Leeuwarden we will not dwell, as it is an inland city and by no means dead, but must notice a funny item in one of its collections of curiosities――that is a “landdagemmer,” or small pail that state members used to carry when going to council, and in which they put their bread and butter or whatever else they had by way of a luncheon.

From Leeuwarden the traveller carries us with him to Franeker, “well built, well lighted, and certainly one of the cleanest and best-kept towns in Friesland,” formerly a famous centre of learning. “Such men as Adrian Metius, the mathematician; Pierius Winsemius, the historian; Sixtus Amama, the theologian; Ulric Huberus, the jurist; and George Kazer, who knew every subtlety of the Greek language, with a mass of other learned scholars, indoctrinated the youth of that age in the sciences, theology, law, history, and dead languages. The spirit of learning became contagious, and the whole city was seized with a desire to acquire knowledge. The students imbued the citizens with a love of the sciences, and the inhabitants, not content with imbibing learning themselves, spread it about on the public walls; and one can still see on the front of the houses, over the doors, and even on the walls of the stables, numbers of wise inscriptions, moral precepts, and virtuous sentences” in Latin, signifying, for instance, “Know thyself”; “Well, or not at all”; “Nothing is good but what is honest,” etc. The Guildhall, built in the same style as the Leeuwarden Chancellerie, but daubed over with paint, contains two or three rooms with their walls literally hidden by gloomy old portraits, said to be those of the professors of the old academy. Among them is that of a woman, Anna Maria Schaarman, called by her contemporaries the modern Sappho, and who, besides poetry, music, painting, engraving, and modelling, was a proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Ethiopian. Her works were published at Leyden in 1648.

Franeker has a unique exhibition in the shape of a _Planetarium_, or a small blue-room, with a movable ceiling, representing the vault of heaven, where the planets, in the form of gilded balls, and by means of a mechanical process, rotate around the sun, which stands in the middle of the room in a kind of half obscurity. The room itself is only lighted by one candle. The whole apparatus is shown by a woman, said to be the grand-daughter of the great mathematician, Eise Eisinga, who devoted seven years of his life, from 1773 to 1780, to making this planetarium.

The tjalk, which the travellers had left at Harlingen, now carried them over to Hindeloopen, a sea-port and ancient city, but not one of those which have to complain of the whims of fortune; for it never rose to great importance at any time of its thousand years of existence. Just outside the harbor “the wind suddenly lulled, and one of those dead calms peculiar to these curious shores overtook us. The clouds seemed to stand still in the heavens, the very water lapping against our bows grew still, and, but for a bird skimming the horizon, a sea-dog touching the surface of the waves, or some _bruinvisch_ leaping in pure joy under the calm waters, all nature appeared as if wrapped in a deep sleep.” The town began by being a hamlet in the huge forest of Kreijl (most of whose area is now the bottom of the Zuyder-Zee), and its name signifies “the hind’s run,” while a running hind forms the municipal arms. The harbor, which in 1225, three hundred years after the origin of the town, was endowed with certain privileges, was never large enough for heavily-freighted ships; and though the inhabitants praiseworthily tried to enrich themselves by forming fishing companies, the boats had to be built in other ports, and the interest of Hindeloopen in these expeditions had always more or less of an artificial character. Notwithstanding the real claims of the town to notice, it has escaped the mention of historians; Cornelius Kempius ignores it altogether; Guicciardini merely refers to it; Blaeu the geographer, in spite of his minute exactitude, only gives it a dozen dry lines; and a later writer, the author of _Les Délices des Pays-Bas_ (1769), is not more complimentary, though he allows it some “commercial interest.” It often needs an artist’s eye to look with favor on these world-forgotten places, and draw out details which make us wonder how it was possible that they have been hitherto so persistently overlooked. It is often a greater pleasure, we confess, to read of such places than of those greater ones, the pilgrimages of the world, where each successive generation of scholars and explorers flocks to bring to light some fact or some stone, and where, when all that is likely to be important has been found, they still pore devotedly over dust and fragments, eager to tell the world how the ancients ate or dressed, and how their present descendants retain or have lost or modified the old manners and customs. Havard, accordingly, says of Hindeloopen:

“Small as it was, it had its arts, its special costume, a style of architecture, and a language only spoken within its walls――which is a fact so singular that it would appear incredible were it not for traces and incontestable proofs of their existence.[196] The most remarkable of its peculiarities was, and is still, the costume worn by the women.… Not content with having a dress different to other nations, the inhabitants of Hindeloopen regulated the style of their costume, and adjusted it according to the age and position of the woman in its smallest detail. From its very birth a child is put into the national costume: its little legs are wrapped in the usual linen, but the upper part of its body is subjected to the prevailing habit of the country. Its head is covered with a double cap――one of linen, the other of silk garnished with the usual kerchief; above this again is placed another calico kerchief, and on that again a third of larger dimensions, scarlet in color and trimmed with lace. The tiny body is cased in a close-fitting jacket, over which is an embroidered bib, and the baby’s hands are put into calico mittens.”

Then follows a description of the changes of, or rather additions to, the costume from the age of eighteen months upwards. The marriageable girls wore the most complicated, everything, even the “floss-silk stockings,” being of a certain regulation make, color, and stuff. Married women wore their hair entirely covered by the headdress of square pieces of red cloth embroidered in gold, above the cap itself. Widows wore the same articles, but all black and white; and, besides this daily costume, there were others worn on festival days, chiefly distinguished by a cape or overall, with other details yet, belonging some to Whitsuntide, some to Corpus Christi, and others to betrothed girls, and relating to circumstances, weddings, and funerals, to the length of time a woman had been married, and if she was a mother, etc., etc., in endless and minute array. The town women have already discarded their costume, but it is still universally worn in the country round about. The ancient industries of Hindeloopen――alas! very degenerate nowadays――included a _spécialité_ in furniture. It was of carved wood painted, and many specimens in Dutch and foreign collections still exist. Havard says of it:

“Its general forms have a very decided Oriental cast. Its decorations of carved and gilded palms and love-knots, relieved by the strangest paintings it is possible to imagine, have no equal except in Persian art. As a rule, the colors are loud and gaudy――red or pink, green or blue――but, strange to say, the whole appears harmonious. It is peculiar and striking but not disagreeable to the eye. Most of the single pieces of furniture, such as tables and stands, and sledges are ornamented with red and blue palms, around which are interlaced numbers of Cupids of dark rose-color, the whole on a red ground. Sometimes these constantly-recurring Cupids (always in dark rose-color) are placed among a bed of blue flowers against a background of red, lightened here and there by white dots and touches of gold. But this medley of discordant colors produces a harmonious and dazzling effect, which I can only liken to the cashmeres of India. This same style of ornamentation is adopted in private houses, though the colors are somewhat modified. Red yields to dark blue, and flowers, love-knots, and palms are toned down into soft blue, green, and white, on a background of the finest[197] shade of indigo. The effect thus produced is very curious. I cannot say it is fine or pleasant, but it is not disagreeable to the eye, and certainly possesses the advantage of not being vulgar or common.”

Stavoren, the former capital of Friesland, is one of the towns whose traditional annals, like those of Medemblik, reach back into unhistorical times, and whose founder, Friso, a supposed contemporary and ally of Alexander the Great, built here a temple to Jupiter, and adorned his town with walls, palaces, and theatres. The fifth century of our era is its real earliest date, and then it was only what the first settlement of a barbaric clan always is――half-camp, half-village――but it had gained a footing which it never abandoned since. As the centuries passed, we find this town, at the mouth of the Flevum, “the capital and royal residence of Friesland,” and with a “considerable commercial and industrial reputation. Treaties of alliance and trade were entered into with the Romans, Danes, Germans, and Franks, who came to Stavoren to barter their goods.… The Flevum was easy to navigate, thus rendering the port convenient for commerce; able to hold a large fleet whose intrepid sailors explored distances in the North inaccessible to the vessels belonging to other nations. At this epoch the Zuyder-Zee was not in existence, and one could walk on dry land from Stavoren to Medemblik.… A palace was built at Stavoren (by Richard I.) which later on became the sumptuous residence of the kings, his successors,” and Charles, Duke of Brabant, journeyed to Stavoren with a numerous suite to see and admire its wonderful splendors. This was burnt in 808, but in 815 a still more splendid church was built by Bishop Odulphus. It was some Stavoren sailors who first passed through the Sound and opened the way into the Baltic, and the King of Denmark rewarded the town by exempting its ships from dues on entering Dantzic. Treaties with Sweden and Scotland conceded to the town similar privileges, rendering the merchants of Stavoren able to enter the lists with those of the richest and most influential towns in the world. A sixteenth-century chronicler[198]――though we incline to take the statement as typical of the prosperity of the town rather than in its literal sense――says “the vestibules of the houses were gilded, and the pillars of the palaces of massive gold.” This, however, applies to the thirteenth century, the age of Marco Polo and general redundancy of imagination, colored by the traditions of the _Arabian Nights_. But it is true that Stavoren was one of the first towns forming part of the Hanseatic League, and even in the sixteenth century she still held the third rank. Her downfall was due as much to the nature of things as to adverse circumstances. Prosperity spoiled the haughty town: “Her inhabitants had become so rich and opulent that they were literally intoxicated with their success, and allowed themselves to grow insolent, exacting, and supercilious beyond endurance. They were called the spoiled, luxurious children of Stavoren――‘_dartele ofte vervende Kinderen van Stavoren_.’ Strangers ceased to trade with them, preferring the pleasanter manners of the inhabitants of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bruges. In proportion as trade declined the spirit of enterprise forsook the population, and the town, once so rich and flourishing, now found herself reduced from the first to the tenth rank.” This happened in the fourteenth century, and by the sixteenth “there were scarcely fifty houses in a state of preservation in this city, which formerly was the highest and noblest of all.” Its appearance at the present time is still more sad: “There are about a hundred houses, half of which are in ruins, but not one remains to recall in the vaguest manner the ancient glory of its palaces. It would be difficult to call the place a village even; it is more like one large cemetery, whose five hundred inhabitants have the appearance of having returned to earth to mourn over the past and lost glories of their country and the ancient splendor of their kings.” Outside the harbor is a large sand-bank, called the “Lady’s Bank,” which for several centuries has blocked up the entrance so that no great ships can enter, and tradition has seized upon this to point a moral eminently appropriate to the former proud merchants of this hopelessly dead city. It is said, and repeated by Guicciardini, that a rich widow, “petulant and saucy,” freighted a ship for Dantzic, and bade the master bring back a cargo of the rarest merchandise he could find in that town. Finding nothing more in requisition there than grain, he loaded the ship with wheat and returned. The widow was indignant at his bringing her such common stuff, and ordered him, if he had loaded the grain at _backboort_, to throw it into the sea at _stuerboort_, which was done, whereupon there immediately rose at that place so great a sand-bank that the harbor was blocked; hence the bank is still called “_Le Sable_,” or “_Le Banc de la Dame_.”

At Urk, a truly patriarchal fishing village, where “every one, as at Marken, wears the national costume, from the brat who sucks his thumb to the old man palsied with age,” and where the inhabitants “consider themselves related, forming one and the same family,” and are “just as hospitable and polite as at Marken,” Havard spent a few very pleasant hours. This place is anterior to the Zuyder-Zee, and was already, in the ninth century, a fishing settlement on one of the islands in Lake Flevo. Havard thinks that the women, with their healthy beauty and graceful but evident strength, are good samples of the race that inhabited these lands a thousand years ago.

On entering the mouth of the Yssel the travellers left the tjalk and went across country to Kampen, admiring on their road the beautiful fields with the cows almost hidden in the long grass, the farms on little hillocks looking like miniature fortified castles, and the other farms surrounded by tall trees, where all is of a blue color, from the small milk-pails to the wheelbarrow, and the ladder leading to the loft. Kampen dates only from the thirteenth century, but it grew rapidly, and two hundred years later became an Imperial town, governed itself, and had the right of coining money. At the Reformation there was no breaking of images or destruction of works of art, neither was there any outbreak against the religious orders. Large, massive towers with pointed roofs overhang the quay and flank an enormous wall, through which an arched doorway leads into the town. The Celle-broeders-Poort dates from the sixteenth century, and is built of brick and stone, with octagonal towers, oriel windows, and carved buttresses, besides a gallery projecting over the door. This gate was named after the convent of Brothers of the Common Life, formerly situated in the street leading to the Poort. The order has been made famous by the author of the _Imitation_. It was one of the most popular in the Low Country, and was founded at Deventer by Gerhard Groot, a young and luxurious ecclesiastic, whose life reminds one of De Rancé, and who, giving up his preferments, retired to his own house, where he lived with a few other men in apostolical simplicity. The services of his followers were invaluable during the plague, or Black Pest, in the fourteenth century. His successor was Florent Radewyns, a learned priest, also in high ecclesiastical favor, but who gave up his canon’s stall at Utrecht to embrace the life of a Brother of the Common Life. This institute is not unlike the original one of St. Francis of Assisi, founded in Italy a hundred years earlier; only these brothers lived by the work of their hands, mostly as copyists, and as revisers of the manuscripts scattered over the town, comparing them with the originals and rectifying the mistakes of inexperienced or careless copyists. Pope Gregory XI. sanctioned the regulations of the order in 1376, and in 1431, 1439, and 1462 Eugenius IV. and Pius II. confirmed the privileges of the rapidly-growing community, which counted convents by the score all over Holland. About this time they opened schools for the young, and “their instruction was everywhere courted, and their virtues, as well as their great talents, made them welcome even in the most distant countries. Their colleges were dedicated either to St. Jerome or St. Gregory, and multiplied with astonishing rapidity.… In their convent (at Brussels) they had a printing-office.” Their devotion to the poor and uneducated, and their endeavors to counteract the progress of the Reformation by expounding to the people the authorized version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and also uniting their hearers in prayers and offices in Dutch, Flemish, and other vernacular, were misrepresented by their enemies, and twisted into evidence of their heretical leanings.

Kampen was rich in religious orders; there were the Minorites (Franciscans), whose church was built in the fourteenth century, and is still the most ancient monument in the town, but is now used as a school; the Recollects, the Carthusians, the Alexians, besides six convents for women. The church of St. Nicholas, with its double aisles and its grand simplicity, its beautiful antique pulpit and Renaissance panelling in the choir, is well worth a visit, were it not for the detestable impression likely to be made on the visitor by the excesses in plaster and paint that disfigure the building. Notre Dame, a church almost as large and as old, has been restored, and its sombre, simple, and grand decoration, its panelling in imitation of the Gothic, and its careful imitation of the spirit of ancient ornamentation make it a more satisfactory object of pilgrimage. But the pearl of Kampen is the _Stadhuis_, or Guildhall――or rather what remains of it; for part of it was destroyed by fire in 1543. The façade is very much like the Chancellerie at Leeuwarden, and the niches still contain their original statuettes of the sixteenth century. “This corner of the townhall is a real delight to behold, and to come upon a relic of this sort, religiously preserved from ancient times, is a great source of joy to an artist.” But the special attractions are in the interior, especially in “two rooms, unique in their way, … decorated with carved wainscoting, which have remained intact from the early part of the seventeenth century, when they were used as the council-chamber and judgment-hall.… The walls are furnished with flags, standards, halberds, pikes, … and above the door I noticed some formidable-looking syringes in polished leather, shining like gold, which were used in former times to squirt boiling oil on those of the assailants who approached too close. A magnificent balustrade, crowned by an open gallery with columns supporting arched openings, separates this hall from the other, through which the persuasive eloquence of the advocates penetrated the council-chamber.… Running round the chamber is a huge carved bench, divided into stalls by jutting pedestals which support a pillar of Ionic base and Composite capital. An entablature also running the round of the room, projecting above the pillars, but receding over the stalls, completes this kind of high barrier between the councillors, and adds considerably to the majestic elegance which charms and impresses one. At the end of the hall there is a fine chimney-piece, comprising four divisions. To mention its date, 1543, is quite enough to give an idea of the beauty of its workmanship and the elegance of its curves.” Among its curiosities are some fine silver goblets given to the town, and some pieces of gold-plate belonging to the old guilds, as well as the _box of beans_, which served to determine the election of the municipality. It is a small _bonbonnière_ holding twenty-four beans, six silver-gilt and eighteen of polished silver. “When it was a question of deciding which of the members of the council should be chosen for the administration, the beans were put in a hat, and each drew out one by chance, and those who drew forth the silver-gilt beans immediately entered on their new functions. This custom was not confined especially to Kampen, as it was formerly in vogue in the province of Groningen.”

Zwolle (not a sea city) is a very old town, but has a modern life tacked on to it, and few of its public buildings, churches included, are worth commenting upon at length, though its history is interesting and stirring. It was the birth-place and home of Thomas à Kempis, known in his own day as Hamerken, but the convent where he lived has unfortunately disappeared.

Harderwyk, on the Zuyder-Zee, or the “Shepherd’s Refuge,” was founded at the time of the disastrous flood which made the present sea. Some shepherds collected there from the flooded meadows, and were joined by a few fishermen. A hundred years after its incorporation as a town, it was already prosperous enough to be named in the Hanseatic Union by the side of Amsterdam, Kampen, and Deventer; but it can boast of a better claim to notice than its material prosperity alone, for it had a famous academy, founded in 1372, and specially devoted to theology and what was then known of physical sciences. Except during an interval of half a century, after an inundation that devastated and unpeopled the little city, this school existed uninterruptedly till the French occupation, a little less than a hundred years ago, and among its native scholars, many of whom are honorably known in the history of science, it reckons the botanist Boerhaave. Linnæus spent a short time there in study and research, and the town is not a little proud of having been sought out by distant scholars as a centre of the natural science of that day. Both these famous men have a memorial in Harderwyk, the former a bronze statue, and the latter a bust in the public gardens. One of the few interesting remains of the old town is the square tower of Notre Dame, where fires were burnt, by way of a beacon, to guide fishermen and sailors out at night, and indicate the position of Harderwyk. “The sea,” says Havard, “is very wayward in these parts. Formerly it was at some little distance from the town, but gradually it advanced, and ended by washing its walls; now, however, it has in some measure receded.… When the tide is low, fishermen often discover under the sand roads washed up by the waves, paved with stones and bricks, which prove that at some distant period streets existed where now the sea rules.” At present Harderwyk is the depot of the troops intended for the Indian and colonial army of Holland, and is, in consequence, rather a gay little place.

The charming, antique, and formerly turbulent town of Amersfoort, the birth-place of the heroic Jan van Olden Barneveldt, truly the “father of his country,” was the last comparatively forgotten place where our author passed before he got back to the beaten track of travel, through Utrecht down the Dutch Rhine to Amsterdam. Of this hardy, learned, and brave people of the Netherlands he says but too truly that they are unknown outside their own frontiers. “Nobody outside” (of course he speaks of popular, world-wide reputation; for they are known in scientific and literary circles) “knows that among the Dutch are to be found honesty, cordiality, and sincere friendship; they do not know that the language of Holland is rich and poetic; that the Netherlanders have exceptionally fine institutions, sincere patriotism, and absolute devotion to their country.” He complains, however, that the country or its representative, the government, does not sufficiently encourage native artists, authors, and _savants_, and forces her statesmen to “submit to paltry coteries.” He also says that the decay of trade in the “dead cities” is partly attributable to the supineness of the inhabitants themselves, though that certainly does not tally with their enterprising spirit of old, and adds that Amsterdam, when threatened with the same danger――the moving sands and the encroaching waters, which have turned the harbors of the once wealthy Hanseatic cities into deserts――did not “sleep,” but “with all their ancient energy, not fearing to expend their wealth,” the inhabitants “cut through the whole length of the peninsula of Noord Holland, and created a canal 40 miles long and 120 feet wide, wide enough for two frigates to pass one another”; and when that was found insufficient for their commerce, “they again cut through the width of the peninsula, as they had cut through its length, giving to ships of the heaviest tonnage two roads to their magnificent port. This was how the sons of old Batavia fought against the elements――nothing stopped them; and we see that the generations which succeed them are animated by the same spirit, the same firm will, the same calm energy, never to be beaten by difficulties.” And now the last news of importance from the same spot is that of the projected draining of the Zuyder-Zee, which is a plan of gigantic magnitude, the cost being estimated at £16,000,000 sterling――_i.e._, not far from $100,000,000――but the allotted time scarcely more than two years. The Dutch is a race tenacious of vitality and power, and its future in its colonial empire, which it is now thoroughly and scientifically surveying, bids fair to rival its past. Even these “dead cities,” when they cease to be fishing hamlets and relic-museums, and, by the draining of the inland sea, have to turn for their support to new industries, have a chance of revival. The last marvellous Dutch work――the completion of the North Sea Canal――is a proof that the old energy is yet there, and that great things may yet be expected, nautically, scientifically, commercially, and even agriculturally, of the sturdy old stock of the “Sea Beggars.”

[195] _The Dead Cities of the Zuyder-Zee_: A voyage to the picturesque side of Holland. By Henri Havard. Translated by Annie Wood. London: Bentley & Son.

[196] The author has unfortunately omitted to give some of these proofs, and we have only his word for this assertion.

[197] Probably _lightest_.

[198] Cornelius Kempius.

THE GREAT STRIKE AT ERRICKDALE.

Errickdale is famous for its coal-pits. It has dozens of them. All night long their fires glow red through the darkness, and all day the sound of pick and hammer, and the creak of rusty iron chains dragging heavily-loaded cars up the slope of the mines into the light, and the cry of the miners, and the tramp of their hob-nailed shoes as they come and go, fill the place with noisy life. It is a lonely place otherwise, close to the sea-coast. A ponderous stone wharf juts far out into the water, and a tramway runs down to it for the use of the cars which take the coal to the vessels that are constantly loading.

The village of Errickdale, at the time of our story, consisted of the black buildings connected with the mines, the rows of tumble-down tenements where the miners lived, and one spacious, rambling, old-fashioned dwelling, built a century previous by the first owner and opener of the mines, and preserved intact ever since, in its antique and solid elegance, by each new owner of the place. Eight months of the year it was closed, with the exception of a few rooms occupied by the agent, the old housekeeper, and two servants; one other apartment being always kept in readiness to receive the master whenever, for any reason, he chose to make his appearance.

But for four months, from June to October, the whole house was thrown open and filled with a brilliant company, who spent the summer days in merry idleness, and made Errickdale a scene of delight. Beautiful it was always, in spite of its loneliness――a loneliness so extreme that not another town or village, or house or hut, was to be met with for a dozen miles around it, except Teal, lying hidden from sight behind the hills, and five good miles away at that, and the lighthouse which rose up eerily on the summit of the dangerous, ugly rock-ledge in the centre of Errick Bay. That bay gave ample opportunity for sailing, rowing, bathing, fishing; the beach was firm and good for those who cared to walk; the rocks were bold and tempting for those who cared to climb. In the fields the wild pink roses bloomed, and strawberries, raspberries, baked-apple berries, and blueberries followed one upon the other in superabundance. The heaps of coal-dust, the begrimed men, the care-worn women and dirty children, the comfortless dwellings, marred very much the beauty of the place; but what would be the place without them? The guests who came there soon forgot such trifles as the days sped by in merry-making; and in the city of Malton a summer at Errickdale was spoken of as a season of unrivalled pleasure.

It was in Malton that John Rossetti, the present owner of Errick mines, had his palace-like city home. There he had collected such treasures as few men could boast, even in that city, famed for its eager pursuit of the beautiful and the costly; and all of them he lavished upon the only being who made life dear to him――the daughter whom his idolized young wife had left to him when, at the child’s birth, she died.

It is a marvel that Eleanora Rossetti grew up as amiable and gentle as she was; for she scarcely knew what it meant to have a wish thwarted or the merest whim of her fancy ungratified. Delicate and fair like some sheltered plant, she won love and tenderness wherever she went, and it seemed to her only as the air she breathed――she knew nothing else. That she should yield her will to another’s never entered her mind; that she was to do anything for others was an idea quite unknown to her. Life was hers to enjoy; hearts were hers to command; let her do what she would, no one wished to hinder her. She saw the beggars in the streets of Malton, she saw the poorly-clad people in Errickdale, but they never weighed upon her heart in the least. They must be very lazy or very shiftless, she thought――if she ever thought of them at all.

With the approaching winter of her eighteenth birthday――the winter of that great strike at Errickdale which was to set the country ringing――there came many prophecies of want and famine, but Eleanora did not heed them. She had a little dinner-party one evening. They were sitting around the table loaded with costly silver and delicately-painted china and rare viands. “Papa,” cried Eleanora from the head of the board, where she presided in girlish state, her clear voice ringing down to him like a flute and attracting every one’s attention――“papa, I mean to keep my eighteenth birthday by a masque-ball at Errickdale.” And then, glancing along each file of delighted and expectant guests with her brightest smile, “You are all invited at once,” she said, “without further ceremony. The night of the 20th of January, remember. How I hope there will be snow underfoot and stars overhead and a biting frost! There will be bed and board for all, though some of the beds may have to be on the floor; and sleighs or carriages will be waiting at Teal station. Oh! how delightful it will be!”

Nobody waited to see if permission would be granted her. Eleanora Rossetti always had her way. At once a Babel of voices arose.

“We will make summer of winter,” Eleanora said. “The whole conservatory shall be sent down. It shall be a ball of the old _régime_; and mind, all of you, no one shall be admitted who does not come dressed as a courtier of some sort to grace my palace halls. I shall never be eighteen again, and I mean to celebrate it royally.”

“She looks like a princess this moment,” said a youth on her right, loudly enough for her to hear, and to make her blush with pleasure; and like a princess she looked indeed, slender and tall and stately, in her heavy purple robe, with ermine and rare laces at the neck and wrists, and diamonds in her ears that sparkled no more brightly than her eyes.

Down in Errickdale that night a northeast gale was blowing, the waves were dashing their spray high up over the wharf and against the cliffs, and the rain drove in slant sheets across the bay, where the red eye of the lighthouse glared steadily.

In a cottage of three rooms, apart from the tenements, yet little better than they, another John is sitting. John O’Rourke this, an Irishman, come eighteen years since from the old country; and with him sits his only daughter, who will be eighteen in February. Bridget O’Rourke has no need to fear the verdict if she is compared with the heiress of Errickdale; she is full as tall and stately, and her dark, severe beauty would be noticeable anywhere. But there is no sparkle in her eyes, that are heavy with unshed tears, and no smile is on her lips.

These people are not poor, as Errickdale counts poverty. It is much, very much, to have a house to yourself, even though it be of three rooms only, and floor and walls are bare. It is much to wear whole clothes, though the dress is cotton print and the coat is fustian. It is much to have plenty of bread and cheese and a bit of cold meat on your table, and to have a decent table to sit at. Errickdale counts these things luxuries. John O’Rourke is a sort of factotum for the agent, and, next to him, has higher wages than any other man on the place; but, for all that, his brow is lowering to-night, and as he sits in moody silence his fingers work and his hands are clenched, as though he were longing for a fight with some one.

“You’re not eating, Bridget, my girl,” he said at last, draining the last drop of his cup of tea. “You’re not as hungry as I.”

She pushed her plate away. “I can’t eat, father,” she said. “Down in the hollow Smith’s wife and babes are crying with hunger, and over at Rutherford’s the girls haven’t a shoe to their feet in this bitter weather.”

“And so you must go hungry too, girl?” he asked.

“I can’t eat,” she said again. “It chokes me. Why should I have good things, and they go starving? I wish I was starving with them!”

“Tut, tut, girl! What help would that be? And what’s Smith, anyhow, and Smith’s boys, but Orangemen, that hoot at ye Sundays, and laugh at your going ten miles, all, as they say, to worship images?”

Bridget smiled faintly. This righteous John O’Rourke was no very fervent Catholic in his deeds, whatever his words might go to prove. It was seldom that he found himself able to foot those good ten miles with her, though she did it regularly, in spite of ridicule and difficulty.

“Orangemen or not,” she answered, “they’re flesh and blood like me. God made ’em. If I try to eat, I think I see them with nothing, and I long to give all I have to them.”

“I tell ye,” O’Rourke exclaimed, “times are bad enough now, but they’ll be worse soon, if master don’t take heed. There’ll be a strike in Errickdale before the winter’s out.”

“O father! no. I hope not. Nothing like that would ever move the master. He’s that set in his own way, he would only hold out stronger against ’em――he would.”

“I think so myself, girl――I think so myself. I’ve known him well these eighteen years; he’s firm as rock. But the men don’t credit it. They are murmuring low now, but it will be loud shouting before we know it. Bridget, I’ll to Malton and see the master myself, come morning.”

“Yes, father,” said Bridget; “and I’ll go with you and speak with Miss Eleanora.”

A few hours later, the city lady and the Irish girl stood face to face in Eleanora’s boudoir. There was a startled look in Eleanora’s eyes. What strange story is this which Bridget tells her? There must be some mistake about it.

“They are very poor in Errickdale,” Bridget said slowly, keeping down the quiver from her voice and the tears from her eye. “House after house they have nothing but potatoes or mush to eat, and nothing but rags to wear. I don’t think it’s the master’s fault maybe. Sometimes I fear the agent is not all he should be, miss.”

As if John Rossetti did not know the character of the man whom he had left in power among his miners! Alas for Bridget! and alas for Errickdale!

“But do _you_ suffer, Bridget?” and Eleanora looked at her compassionately, and then with deep admiration. She had let her talk, had let her stay, where carelessly she would have sent off any other, because it was such a delight to her to see that face in its grave and regular beauty, and to hear the rich voice with its sorrowful cadence like the minor note of an organ chant. Even had she been of like station and wealth with herself, Eleanora would have felt no pangs of jealous fear; for her own beauty and that of Bridget were of too perfect and delicious a contrast for that, and her trained artistic taste was considering it with pleasure all the while that their talk went on.

“Not that way,” Bridget answered her. “I’ve food and clothes a plenty myself. But it’s as if the hunger and want were tugging at my heart instead of my body, by day and by night. The lean faces and the wailing come between me and all else. Miss Eleanora, I wish you could once see them――only once.”

“What’s this! Bridget O’Rourke here too? A well-planned plot, truly.” And John Rossetti strode into the room as though on the point of turning the girl out from it, only his daughter, coming to meet him, stepped unwittingly between.

“Yes, papa,” she said, “it’s Bridget, come to the city, I suppose, for the first time in her life. And, papa, she tells such a sad story about Errickdale. Will you please send them some money at once?”

“Not a penny,” her father answered. “Not one penny of mine or yours shall they have. These people think to force me to their will by a strike! They shall learn what manner of master they have. Do they not know that Errick mines might lie idle a year, and I hold my head above water bravely? And do they dream there are no men willing and glad to be hired for the price they cavil at? Let them strike when they please. That is the only message John O’Rourke has to carry home with him for his pains, and all that you shall have either, Bridget. Take it and be gone.”

“Oh! no, Bridget, not yet,” Eleanora cried. “I am not ready. Papa, what can you be thinking of――sending her away when I am not ready to have her go? Let us consider for a minute, papa. She is so troubled”; and, indeed, Bridget’s face was livid in its distress, and when she strove to speak her voice died away in a moan. “How much do the people want, papa?”

He laughed grimly. “I shall grant them nothing,” he said. “However, since you are curious, they do not want as much as your ball will cost me, my love. How would you like to give that up for them?”

“My ball! Of course not. What a ridiculous idea! All Malton knows of it by this time, and twenty people are invited already, and I have sent for my dressmaker. Of course I could not give that up for anything! But you were only jesting, papa dear. I know you could not mean it. Bridget, papa knows best, you may be sure. I never trouble my head about business. But I will tell you what you shall do. I am going to have a masque-ball at Errickdale in January――such grand doings as were never known there before――and you shall come to it! You shall be where you can see the splendid court-dresses and the flowers and the feast, and hear the music――the very best music that Malton can furnish. So don’t worry any more, Bridget, and you shall surely be there.”

Bridget looked slowly round the room, full of warmth and light, and comfort and beauty. From the picture-frames haggard eyes seemed to stare at her; in the corners, and half hidden by the velvet hangings, figures wasted by want seemed to stretch their bony fingers towards her; through the canary’s song and the splash of the scented fountain voices weak with fasting seemed to call on her for aid. But it had become impossible for her to utter another word in their behalf. A plan, a hope, flashed through her mind.

“Yes, Miss Eleanora,” she said, “I will come to your ball.” And waiting for no more words, she went away.

“She is worrying her life out,” Eleanora said pityingly. “I don’t believe she eats properly.” And taking more trouble for a poor person than she had ever done before, she wrote to the housekeeper at Errickdale to send Bridget O’Rourke every day substantial and tempting food enough for an entire meal. Then she dismissed the whole matter; or rather the dressmaker was announced, and the important question as to whether her balldress should be of velvet or satin drove all minor subjects, such as hunger and cold and nakedness, from her mind.

Meanwhile, Bridget strove to calm her father’s wrath, which he poured forth volubly as the train carried them home; and when he was still, she thought out to its full scope the plan which had occurred to her. She would go to the ball, and, when the guests were assembled, she would step forth from her hiding-place, and stand before them all, and plead the people’s cause. But the more she thought of it the more her heart misgave her. Why should she hope they would heed her then rather than to-day? Would not the master only be the more incensed against his miners, because of the shame to which he would be exposed? Yes, she felt sure that this would be the result. And then the long, long days and weeks which must elapse before the chance would come at all! How could she endure it? She put that sudden hope and plan away. Instead of it, she prayed again and again with smothered sobs: “O Christ! who for love of us died for us, save thy people now.”

But she walked the long walk home from Teal station without fatigue, and came into Errickdale strong and well, to meet the woes she yearned to heal. The children had learned to understand her pity for them. They welcomed her return with cries for food; she gave them what she could, and lay down supperless herself that night to rest. After that, each day brought her a full meal from the great house, but she never tasted of it; there were those who needed it more, she said.

Once, on her way to a poor family with a basket of these provisions, the smell of the well-cooked food produced such a violent craving that it seemed to her for a moment that she should go mad. With a great effort she controlled herself and stood still. “Christ,” she prayed, “have mercy! Shall I eat dainties while the children starve?”

The craving did not cease, but strength to resist it came. She entered the wretched room to which she was bound, and fed the inmates who crowded around her; then she hurried home. In the cupboard were a few crusts and a bone already well picked. How sweetly they tasted! And while she feasted on them a woman crawled feebly in. “I’ve fasted long,” she said, and quietly Bridget gave her all she had.

Twice afterward she felt that horrible craving, and then it ceased. Her father saw that she ate little, but never guessed how little it really was; he saw that she grew pinched and pale, but fancied it was grief alone that caused it. He did not know, and no one knew, that, with what Errickdale counted “plenty” at her command, Bridget was living like the poorest. The thirst for self-sacrifice, the thirst of a supernatural love, consumed her. “HE did it,” she used to say to herself. “He was poor for us, and he died for us.” From her room one by one her possessions departed; she carried them to those who, as she thought, needed them more, or she disposed of them for their use. Soon the attic room, which no one but herself ever entered, held literally nothing but the crucifix on the wall. Laying her weary limbs on the hard floor at night, she thought of the hard cross whereon her Lord had died. “Mine is an easier bed than his,” she said, and smiled in the darkness. “May he make me worthier to share his blessed pains!”

But the nights were few that she spent on even so poor a couch as this. There was sickness in Errickdale as well as want, and Bridget was nurse, and doctor, and servant, and watcher beside the dead. And in her princess life at Malton Eleanora Rossetti counted the same long hours blithely, eager for her festival to come.

* * * * *

The 20th of January! Stars overhead, and snow underfoot, and a biting frost to make Errickdale as merry as its heiress wished. Winter without, and want and woe perhaps; but who needed to think of that? In the old mansion summer itself was reigning. Orange and lemon trees mingled their golden fruits and spicy bloom in the corridors and halls and up and down the winding stairs. Lamps burned some faintly-scented oil, that filled the warm air with a subtle, delicious odor, and lamps and tall wax tapers flooded the room with golden but undazzling light. Fountains played among beds of rare ferns and exotics; and magnificent blossoms lay in reckless profusion upon the floor, to be trodden upon, and yield their perfume, and die unheeded. And in doublet and hose and cap and plume, and all the gay festival gear of a king’s court of mediæval times, hosts of servants waited upon Eleanora’s word.

The winter twilight fell soon over Errickdale. In its gathering shadows John Rossetti was galloping home from Teal on his swiftest horse, when the creature shied suddenly, then stopped, trembling all over. A woman stood in the path, ghostly and strange to see through the gloom. Fearless John Rossetti started at the unexpected sight. “What do you want of me?” he asked.

“Food,” the woman answered, in a voice that thrilled him with inexplicable awe; from some far-off land it seemed to come――a land that knew nothing of ease and joy. “Your people die of want, and cold, and pain,” it said. “In the name of God Almighty, and while you have time, hear me and help them.”

Then this fearless John Rossetti sneered. “While I have time?” he said. “I have no time to-night, I warrant you. Choose better seasons than this for your begging, Bridget O’Rourke.”

He struck the spurs into his horse, but, though it quivered all over again, it would not move an inch. The woman lifted her hands to heaven. “God, my God! I have done all I can,” she said. “I leave it now with thee.” And so she vanished.

In Errick Hall Eleanora was speaking to a servant. “Make haste,” she said. “I had almost forgotten it. Make haste and bring Bridget O’Rourke to me. I promised she should see it all.”

The servant hurried obediently to John O’Rourke’s cottage. Its owner was crouching sullenly over the fire. “Where’s my girl?” he said. “Miss Eleanora wants her to see the sights? See ’em she shall, then. It’s little she gets of brightness now, poor thing. Bridget! Bridget!”

But though he called loudly, no one answered. He climbed the stairs to the dark attic, and still no reply.

“Give me the light, boy,” he cried, with a dull foreboding at his heart, and he and the servant entered the room together.

She was not there. What was more, nothing was there――literally nothing――except the cross of Him who gave his all, his very life, for men.

“I fear, I fear,” this John said, trembling; and he took the crucifix down, and carried it with him for defence against invisible foes whom he dreaded far more than anything he could see.

“We will go look for her, O’Rourke,” the servant said. “I must find her for Miss Eleanora, if not for her own sake.”

In the kitchen supper was on the table, and the fire crackled on the hearth. Her loving father had been waiting long for her. Where was the child?

They asked the question at every tenement and every room. The people joined them in the search for her whom they all held dear. On the outskirts of the place, and where the road stretched out without another sign of habitation for five miles to Teal, was a lonely hovel.

“She’s there,” one woman said to another. “’Course she’s there. Might ’a’ known it. Jake Ireton’s wife had twins yesterday, and it’s little else they have. She’s there, caring for ’em.”

Yet they paused at the door, as if loath to open it. The whole throng seemed to feel that vague foreboding which John O’Rourke had felt; those who were able to crowd into the narrow room entered it timidly. What was it that they dreaded?

In the grand saloon of Errick mansion, decked like a regal ballroom, John Rossetti’s daughter, attired gorgeously like the French queen in the famous painting which is Malton’s pride, received her courtiers; and the band played the gay dance-music, and the light feet of the dancers glided over the floors.

In the poorest hut of Errickdale John O’Rourke’s daughter received her courtiers, too, in regal state.

It was dark and silent there before the torches were brought in. By their flaring light the people saw the poor mother on a bed of rags and straw.

“Be still as ye can,” she said softly. “Is’t thee, O’Rourke? Thy good girl’s been wi’ me this four hours. One o’ my babbies died, thank God! She laid it out there all decent.”

And then, in the dim light, they saw the outline of a tiny form beside the bed; such being the roses and adornings of Bridget’s court.

“She heard a horse go trampling by, and went to see ’t,” the woman said. “When she came back, says she: ‘’Twas master. I’ve pleaded my last plea for my people. My heart’s broke.’ Then t’other babby cried, and she took’t to still it, and she lay down wi’ it, and, ever since, they’ve both been still, and I hope she’s sleepit and forgot her woes awhile, God bless her!”

Sleeping on the hard floor, but she does not feel it. They bring the torches near her; she does not heed the glare, though the baby on her bosom starts and wakes and weeps. She does not hear it weep. In truth, this queen has forgotten her woes in a dreamless slumber, and truly God has blessed her; but with bitter wailing her courtiers kneel before her in the court of Death, the king.

There is food on the table which her own hands had placed there; there is fire on the hearth which her own hands kindled. She who lies there dead has not died of cold or hunger; she has died of a broken heart.

And the viol and flute and harp ring sweetly, and the trumpet and drum have a stately sound in Errick Hall, and youths and maidens dance and make merry. The great doors were flung open, and in long procession the guests passed into the banqueting-hall, where was room for every one to sit at the magnificent tables, and Eleanora was enthroned on a dais, queen of them all. Reproduced as in a living picture was a ball of _Le Grand Monarque_. “John Rossetti has surpassed himself,” his guests said with admiring wonder. In a pause of the music Eleanora’s silvery laugh was heard; she looked with pride at her father, and spoke aloud so that all might hear: “Yes, there never was such a father as mine. His birthday gift is beyond my highest expectations.”

“_Rossetti of Errickdale!_”

From above their heads the strange voice came. Far up in the embrasure of a window a man with a lighted torch was standing. John O’Rourke’s eyes met John Rossetti’s, and commanded them, and held them fast.

“We mean no harm,” he said. “We come peaceable, if you meet us peaceable; but if not, there’s danger and death all round ye. I warn ye fairly. Miss Eleanora bade my Bridget come to see her feast, and we’ve come to bring her. Ye’d best sit quiet, all of ye, for we’ve fire to back us.” And he held his torch dangerously near to the curtains. Errickdale hall and Errickdale master were in his power.

Coming through the hall they heard it――the steady, onward tramp of an orderly and determined crowd; the notes of a weird Irish dirge heralded their coming. Two and two the courtiers of Bridget O’Rourke marched in.

Men in rags, their lips close-shut and grim, a rude and flaring torch borne in each man’s hand; haggard women with wolfish eyes and scantly clad, leading or carrying children who are wailing loudly or moaning in a way that chills the blood to hear, while the women shrilly sing that dirge for a departed soul――would the terrible procession never cease? Blows and clamor would be easier to bear than this long-drawn horror, as two and two the people filed around the loaded tables and gayly-attired guests.

Rising in amazement at the first entrance of these new-comers, throughout their coming Eleanora stood upright, one hand pressed upon her heart, as if to quell its rapid beating. Beautiful, and queenly despite her pallid cheeks, she stood there, yet two and two the people passed slowly up the hall, and slowly passed before her dais, and made no sign of homage. It was another queen who held them in her sway.

Was it over at last?――for the procession that seemed to have no end ceased to file through the lofty doors. The men stood back against the wall, still with their lips close-shut and grim; they lowered their torches as banners are lowered to greet a funeral train. The women flung up their lean, uncovered arms, and shrieked out one more wail of bitter lamentation, then stood silent too. The very babes were still. And all eyes were fixed upon the door――all except John O’Rourke’s, that never stirred from John Rossetti’s face.

Borne in state, though that state was but a board draped with a ragged sheet――her face uncovered to those stars and to that biting frost, her feet bare to those snows for which Eleanora wished; the face marked by a suffering which was far deeper than any that mere cold or hunger causes, yet sealed by it to an uplifted look which was beyond all earthly loveliness; the hands crossed on a heart that ached no longer, over the crucifix which was this queen’s only treasure――so Bridget O’Rourke had come to Eleanora’s feast.

And so they bore her up the hall; and before the regal dais this more regal bier stood still.

Then at last Eleanora moved, and started, and stretched out her hands. “What do you want of me?” she said. “What is it that you want of me? Speak to me, Bridget O’Rourke. Speak to me.”

They were face to face again in their youth and beauty, but the contrast between them now brought no delight. They were face to face again; but let this heiress command as she might or beg as she might, never again would the rich voice speak to her with passionate pleading, or the grave eyes meet her own with a stronger prayer than words. This Queen of Death made no answer to her royal sister, except the awful answer of that silence which no power of earth can break.

“_Rossetti of Errickdale!_”

Once again from far above their heads they heard him calling――the man whose earthly all lay dead before them.

“We threatened to strike for food, and we feared ye. We suffered sore like slaves, for we feared ye. It’s ye that may fear us now, I tell ye, for to-night we strike for a life. Give us my good girl’s life again――my good girl’s life.”

He was wild with grief, and the people were wild with want and grief. Echoing up to the arches, their shout rang loud and long. “We strike for a life,” they cried. “Give us back that life, or we burn ye all together.”

Owner of princely wealth was he upon whom they called. Seven hours ago that life was in his gift――one act of pity might have saved it, one doled-out pittance kept the heart from breaking. Let him lavish his millions upon her now; he cannot make her lift a finger or draw a breath.

“John O’Rourke!”

It was not the master’s voice that answered. For the first time John O’Rourke’s eyes turned from the master and looked upon Eleanora. The queen of a night held out her hands again to her who had gone to claim the crown of endless ages.

“John O’Rourke,” she said, gently and slowly, so that each word carried weight, “what is it that Bridget wants of me? What would she ask if she could speak to me to-night? I will give her whatever she would ask. _Does she want her life back again?_”

The unexpected question, the gentle words, struck home. Suddenly O’Rourke’s defiant eyes grew dim; and through his tears he saw his good girl’s face, with the deep lines of suffering plain upon it, and the new and restful look of perfect peace. It pleaded with him as no words could plead.

“Miss Eleanora,” he cried, “I wouldn’t have her back. Not for all the world I wouldn’t call her back. She’s been through sore anguish, and I thank God it’s over. Give us food and fair wages, miss――that’s all she would ask of ye.”

He paused, and in the pause none dreamed how wild a fight the man was fighting with his wrath and hatred. But still that worn and silent form pleaded with him and would not be gainsaid. At length he spoke, huskily:

“And she would ask of us, miss, not to harm one of ye, but to let master and all go free for the love of God. Shall we do what Bridget would ask of us, my men?”

His strained voice faltered, he burst into loud Irish weeping――a lonely father’s weeping, touching to hear in its patient resignation.

“Yes! yes!” the men and women answered him; and in the hall rich and poor wept and laughed together, for the great strike of Errickdale was over, and peace was made, and want supplied. But through the tumult of sorrow and rejoicing she alone lay utterly unmoved and silent who had won life at the price of life.

The story is often told in Malton of a young girl, very beautiful and much beloved, who renounced the world on the night of her eighteenth birthday, in the very midst of a feast of unequalled splendor, and at the threshold of a future full of brilliant promise. They say she dwelt in lonely Errickdale, among the poor and ignorant, and lived like them and for them. And now and then they add that, when once some one ventured to ask her why she chose so strange a life, she answered that she had seen death at her feast in the midst of pomp and splendor, and had learned, once for all, their worth. But when she was further asked if she could not be willing, like many others present at that feast, to care for the poor and to give to them, and yet have joy and comfort too, the fire of a divine love kindled in her eyes, and she answered that she counted it comfort and joy to live for the people for whom she had seen another content and glad to die.

MODERN MELODISTS.

SCHUMANN.[199]

Robert Schumann was the true successor of Schubert. The impassioned admirer of him whom he designated as “the Prince of Melody,” Schumann, though not equalling his inimitable predecessor, succeeded nevertheless in winning for himself a lofty place among the masters of lyric music.

We say that Schumann has not equalled Schubert; but it must not thence be concluded that he is necessarily inferior to his rival each time that he treats an analogous subject. Schumann has perhaps rendered all the shades of human love with as much truth and depth as Schubert, but scarcely ever has he reached the dramatic power of “The Erl King” and “The Young Nun”; never has he found the brilliant coloring and light which shines out in “The Mariner,” “The Departure,” and “The Stars.” Thus Schumann’s _Hidalgo_ is evidently the same cavalier as he of Schubert’s “Departure.” In Schubert he quits his German Fatherland and hurries forth to seek new pleasures. Schumann takes him into Spain: “Mine be fresh flow’rets rare,” he cries, “the hearts of ladies fair, and mine the combat fierce.” Alas! _Quantum mutatus!_ The beauties of Spain bring small inspiration, and Schumann’s bolero resembles the joyous song of Schubert just as much as a military band of Madrid resembles an orchestra of Vienna. In the same way, in dramatic situations, Schumann is not always well inspired. Instead of being simple, his thought is vulgar (as in “The Hostile Brothers” and “The Two Grenadiers”), or else, in larger works, his search for the dramatic accent gives a strained expression to his style and a wearisome obscurity to his intention. This, however, is not always the case. Who does not know the admirable “Funeral March” of his Quintette, assuredly the most beautiful of his symphonic works, and excelling all the _musique de chambre_ of Schubert?

The overture to _Manfred_ has many sombre beauties; but instead of following these lugubrious accents by a plaint more melodious, more human, and less infernal――instead of letting in a little light to make his “darkness” yet more “visible”――Schumann only quits the shadows to precipitate himself into utter blackness, and horror succeeds alarm.

We find, however, the true note of dramatic inspiration in the _Lied_ “J’ai pardonné,” with its cry of love betrayed and of terrible malediction.

“J’ai vu ton âme en songe, J’ai vu la nuit où sa douleur la plonge, Et le remords à tes pas enchainé. Et ton printemps aux larmes destiné.”[200]

The effect is all the more striking because absolutely new: an harmonic sequence of incredible boldness, resolving itself into fresh discords more audacious still, and, hovering above, a simple phrase of song, which falls cold and solemn, like a malediction from on high!

Towards the middle the discords resolve themselves regularly; and before resuming the original idea, before returning to the expressions of anguish uttered by the first harmonies, Schumann allows us, through eight bars, a breathing-time, on a very simple phrase which he keeps in the proximate keys to the primitive. If, with regard to the overture to _Manfred_, Schumann is to be reproached with having allowed so little light to find entrance among its shadows, he has, at any rate in this case, had the good sense to submit to the necessary laws of contrast, and thus gains much by allowing us to breathe a few moments, that we may realize more fully the depth of despair to which he is about to drag us down. He returns to the first phrase, and we hear again the chords which have already so deeply moved us; still the melodic phrase enlarges and mounts upward, while the discords take a new development. After this tempest of the soul we reach the haven, the key returns to ut on the words _J’ai pardonne_ (“I have pardoned”), and Schumann leaves us filled with admiration, not unmixed with horror.

Strange eccentricity of the human genius! In this sublime _Lied_, perhaps the most powerful page which Schumann has written, we can discover the germ of those defects which too often mar his more extended works, and begin to understand why Schumann has fallen into the obscurities we just now named. What is, in fact, the especial characteristic of this wonderful melody? Despair; but despair under tortuous and exaggerated forms.

If only Schumann would have been content to paint the sufferings of the heart, all might have gone well; but no, he exhausts himself in attempting also to render the tortures of the mind, the anxious doubting of Manfred, the absolute negation incarnate in Faust. Now, if the torments of the heart furnish one of the most powerful elements of the drama (_Orestes_, _Œdipus_, and _Phædrus_ prove this truth), there is absolutely nothing artistic whatever in mental torments, philosophic doubt, and scepticism. The true artist, by his very nature, must believe and love.

If against this assertion Goethe, Byron, and Alfred de Musset are quoted――three great poets, with whom Schumann has some analogy――we would say: All three were poets, not because, but in spite, of doubt; and, what is truer still, they are poets when they cease to doubt, or when they struggle against it. Even Alfred de Musset was no sceptic when he exclaimed in his immortal “August Night” (_Nuit d’Août_):

“O ma muse, ne pleurez pas; A qui perd tout, Dieu reste encore. Dieu là-haut, l’espoir ici-bas!”[201]

Alas! Schumann also knew the evil of our time. Was it not doubt which made him lose his way in the search after some impossible and anti-artistic ideal? Was it not doubt which, by day and night, tortured his sick soul and urged him on to commit suicide? Doubt, in his impassioned mind, engendered madness; need we, after this, wonder that his artistic ideas were confused, his tone unhealthy, and that his music oftener makes us think of death than life, darkness than light? But when Schumann succeeds in tearing himself from the fatal embrace of scepticism, his musical inspirations take sublime flights. When he sang of love he was truly great, because he believed in love.

While Schubert was content to throw off, one by one, without apparent connection, his admirable _Lieder_,[202] Schumann gathered all the shades of tenderness into a marvellous unity――as, for instance, in the “Loves of a Poet” and “Woman’s Love,” in which we are made to traverse all its phases.

Before saying any more about these two important works, we would name several detached _Lieder_ of singular gracefulness: “Désir,” or “Chanson du Matin” (A Morning Song), and “O ma Fiancée.” Nor must we forget a reverie, “Au Loin” (Far Away), on which is the impress of an infinite sadness. We seem in it to be listening, at the dead of night, to the lament of an exile weeping at the thought of his country and all whom he loves. It reminds us of a Daniel singing, on the banks of the Euphrates, the divine plaint of captivity: _Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus_.

The “Loves of a Poet” open with a series of little melodies full of poesy――a little nosegay of fragrant flowers which the poet offers to his beloved. It is when, alas! he has been betrayed by the faithless one that he sings his sublime song “J’ai pardonné”――a pardon which is, nevertheless, worse than a malediction.

If only the “Loves of a Poet” ended with this admirable melody, the work would be complete; and the effect marvellous. But no; Henri Heine, the author of the poem, prolonged in an inexplicable fashion the situation, henceforth without interest, and the betrayed poet comes back to tell us that he is――unfortunate! Did we not know it already? He repeats this stale bit of information _nine_ times over consecutively, in _nine_ “Lieder,” and under _nine_ different forms!――a literary impossibility which inevitably reminds us of the despair of the Cid, persistently offering his head to Chimenes.

At the fourth reapparition Heine seems at last to begin to suspect that the plaintive tone is wearisome; but he finds nothing better, by way of a change, than to throw his hero into the humoristic style――we had almost said the grotesque. Our readers shall judge:

“A man loves a woman, Of whom one, more fortunate, has the love.”

Already we have a trio of lovers. We continue:

“But he who reigns in this heart Fancies another, in _his_ turn.”

Here, then, is an interesting quarternion of people who cannot contrive to come to an understanding with one another; but we are not at the end. Enter another individual――Number 5.

“The fair one, in revenge, Makes choice of an unknown.”

And now, place for the last lover,

Whose “hand and heart alike Will be for the first comer.”

A jurisconsult would simply have told us: _Primus_ amat _Secundam_, quæ _Tertium_, qui _Quartam_, quæ _Quintum_, qui Sextam … (cætera desiderantur)――which, at any rate, would have had the merit of clearness; and, on remarking immediately that the _species_ contained three feminine terminations and three masculine, he would have celebrated three marriages.

Even the genius of Goethe, which imagined the _Elective affinities_, would never have sufficed to create these _Repulsive affinities_. But the one most to be pitied is the unfortunate Schumann, who had condemned himself to set this _theory of Elective Repulsions_ to music. In his place one would have preferred, like Rameau, to seek one’s inspirations fron the _Gazette de Hollande_.

Henri Heine, after this _tour de force_, has nothing left but to kill his poet; and he kills him accordingly. After a few more insipidities which fill the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth _Lieder_, the poet will order his coffin――

“Of wood encircled with iron, Bigger than the tun of Heidelberg, Longer than the bridge of Treves Or that of Frankfort,” etc.

The last feature might have been touching, if it had been better managed. “Know you,” asks the poet, “what makes my coffin so heavy?

“It is that it contains my joy, My sorrow, and my love.”

The music of Schumann is affected by the feebleness of the poem. The melodies which follow “J’ai pardonné” are inferior to the preceding ones. It is only towards the end that the musician escapes from the material hindrances of the subject; the air gains in freedom, the harmonies in richness; the poor poet recovers some of his first accents when he sings: “It is that it contains my joy, my sorrow, and my love.”

“A Woman’s Love.” Here is a little poem far superior to the preceding. The author is Adalbert de Chamisso, well known for his _Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl_. This time poet and musician identify themselves with each other marvellously, and Schumann lives and breathes in every verse of the poet.

In the first song the young girl owns her love:

“Have I, then, had a dream? But him I see!

* * * * *

What makes me tremble thus, And takes my sleep from me, And makes my heart beat fast? ――Yes; it is he!”

Throughout this melody one is conscious of a deep and inward happiness, which is not without a pleasing touch of melancholy.

In that which next follows the young girl sings her beloved. The rhythm is lofty, the melody brilliant. There are, however, in this _Lied_ parts which are not equal to the preceding, and which are wanting in naturalness. But listen; she is loved:

“Why tremble thus? why doubt, my heart? Thou beatest nigh to breaking. Ah! Me has he chosen among all; And thou, my heart, believ’st it not!”

The enthusiasm which fills this melody makes it comparable to the deepest melodies of Schubert. What we feel peculiar in it to Schumann is a feverish tone, a shade of delirium, if we may say so, which we might seek for in yain in Schubert. The ternary rhythm, especially when the measure is rapid, is singularly suitable to impassioned movements. A chord, detached not too strongly falls upon the first beat of each bar; the hurrying melody stops upon the word _Ah_, on a concord of the seventh, very simple, but of a pleasing effect after the regular ascent of the bass. Then it continues, rapid and fevered, and the first phrase closes in C, on the words: “And thou, my heart, believ’st not.”

Then, more slowly, the maiden caresses her precious memories:

“His mouth has said to me: I love thee.”

The melody softens, the phrase is more free and becomes freshly animated on the words, “A dream bewilders me,” then bursts out powerfully when the young girl exclaims:

“O Heaven! if this is but a dream, Then may I wake no more.”

This phrase, by its lofty accent and a certain lyric transport, pleasantly recalls certain movements of Gluck’s.

When, in a low voice, the maiden resumes, “Why tremble thus,” etc., we might think the melody terminated. But the artist has kept us a few last notes, breathed from the depths of his soul. After an eager repetition of the words, “Me has he chosen among all, and thou, my heart, believ’st it not,” she once more utters them, very slowly and very softly, in a melodic phrase full of tenderness and supplication. She is more calm; her heart belies her mouth, and she believes.

The fourth and fifth _Lieder_ are two songs of an affianced maiden. The young girl at first sings to herself of her betrothed, and the sentiment of the music is inward, tranquil, and deep; but on quitting her father’s roof to meet her husband the _fiancée_ sings to her sisters, with a youthful pride and gladness, “If I am fair, I owe it only to my happiness,” and the melody breaks into a song of exceeding beauty.

A wife, she murmurs soon into her husband’s ear, “I hope,” and in the following _Lied_ we see her as a mother. She presses her little one to her heart, and a melody of exquisite sweetness expresses the words:

“Fresh brightness and new love In a cradle are revealed.”

Alas! the eighth _Lied_ recalls us to sorrow, the great reality of life. “O bitter woe! my best-beloved beneath the wing of death is sleeping; forlorn, I shrink within myself, and solace my sad heart with weeping.” Then the veil falls.

“Again I see thee, happiness gone by Of former days.”

So ends the poem. But if the part of the poet is finished when he has made this sorrowful appeal to the past, there is nothing to enchain the inspiration of the musician. From the depth of his grief, at the foot of this coffin, the poet has just evoked the memories of happiness for ever fled. The musician will give a voice to that soul which is called music――O marvellous power! Words would be misplaced; harmonies are more discreet, more silent. There is nothing outward here; it is the soul, contemplating the past, to which music lends its poignant reality.

We cannot quit Schumann without a few words on the wife he so loved, and who has shown herself worthy of his love by a steadfast devotion to the memory of her husband, so long and so unjustly unappreciated. The author of a number of remarkable _Lieder_, Mme. Clara Schumann deserves a place among the most distinguished representatives of the melodic style. Her place should be elsewhere, among living composers, but we could not separate her even in thought from the husband to whom, in death, she proves so faithful.

We have read with exceeding pleasure a little collection of _Lieder_, of which the idea is touching. The husband and wife contributed each their flowers (of melody) to the garland they have woven. We even doubt whether the best page of this collection is not a melody by Mme. Schumann, entitled “Love for Love.”

If we were asked, What is the style of Mme. Schumann? we should answer, That of Robert Schumann. Can we wonder at it? They loved each other so much that their souls must gradually have come to bear a mutual resemblance, and they would have but one inspiration, as they had but one love.

Schubert and Schumann are the two composers of the past who occupy the first rank in the melodic style; they have in common that the _Lied_ has been carried by them to its highest expression, and that in return they owe to it their most lasting renown.

In a complete work we should have now to inquire what the different great composers have been at the time when they were drawn by their inspirations on melodic ground. Without entering into disquisitions which would here be out of place, we ought nevertheless, from the fear of being too incomplete, bring forward certain _Lieder_ which, however small a place they may claim among the works of the masters of whom we are about to speak, none the less reveal an illustrious origin. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven have written a tolerably large number of melodies, very little known until twenty years ago, when an intelligent editor had the happy idea of collecting in one volume forty of these melodies, chosen from the most beautiful.[203] It needs no long examination to show that Haydn and Beethoven, always inspired, but above all symphonists, generally take some large phrase which one would suppose borrowed from one of their symphonies. Thus Haydn’s “Love Song” reminds us of those fine themes with which his andantes open; and in the same manner Beethoven, who, by exception, has found in his charming “Adelaide” the true form of the melody, surprisingly recalls, in the canzonetta, “In questa tomba,” the admirable adagio of the grand Sonata Appassionnata in F minor.

Mozart, who was more of a melodist[204] than these two masters, has composed real _Lieder_, in which, at times, we seem to have a presentiment of Schubert. Thus, “The Cradle Song” might very suitably bear the signature of the author of “The Young Mother.” Elsewhere, on the contrary, in “L’Amour Malheureux” and “Loin de toi,” we find the style and the dramatic accent of the author of _Don Juan_ and _The Magic Flute_.

The _Lieder_ of Weber and Mendelssohn, of Meyerbeer, of Berlioz and Richard Wagner, will not detain us longer. These illustrious masters have cultivated the _Lied_ with too little zeal to have won from it any lasting fame. Even Meyerbeer would gain nothing by our dwelling on this subject in regard to him. He has a certain “Monk” upon his conscience, of which the less we say the better. On the other hand, other artists, greatly inferior to those just named, have given in their melodic compositions the full measure of their talent. We may quote, as examples, Niedermeyer, an accomplished musician, whose “Lake” has obtained a great and deserved success; Monpou, the author of “Castibelza,” whose merit must not be confounded with that of such contemporaries as Abbadie, Arnaud, and Loïsa Puget.

In Italy Rossini and Donizetti have left melodies to which they have given the singular name of _Soirées_. Our readers will recall Rossini’s “Mira la bianca luna,” which has a real charm, but which reminds one rather of the author of the “Gazza ladra” than of the inspired singer of “William Tell.”

In the “Abbandonata” Donizetti reaches a truth of expression of which, unfortunately, he has not been too lavish. In listening to those prettinesses, written chiefly to obtain pleasing vocal effects, and which, in the hands of writers like Bordogni, Gordigiani, and their compeers, have been lowered to the level of the most vulgar vocalization, we find ourselves regretting the old masters of the Italian school――Scarlatti, Lotti, Marcello, Durante, whose melodies are incontestably more youthful and fresh than the romances of the modern Italian composers.

[199] See “Les Mélodistes,” by M. Arthur Coquard in _Le Contemporain_ for Nov. 1, 1872.

[200] “In dreams I have seen thy soul; I have seen the night in which she hides her woe; I have seen remorse to thy footsteps chained, and thy springtime doomed to tears.”

[201] “Weep not, my Muse; oh! weep no more. God stays with him who loses all beside――God on high, and hope below!”

[202] We hope that in a former notice we have shown that there is an artistic connection between them. (See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1877.)

[203] _Quarante Mélodies de Beethoven, Mozart, et Haydn, chez Flaxland._

[204] We say _melodist_, and not _melodic_. One may be a musician of the first order without being a great melodist. Thus Meyerbeer, so great in other respects, is a poor melodist; but will any one say that he is not melodic?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE BROWN HOUSE AT DUFFIELD; or, Life within and without the Fold. By Minnie Mary Lee. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

A good Catholic novel is still, we fear,

Nigro simillima cygno.

The great majority of semi-controversial tales which have been written during the last twenty years, by well-intentioned but injudicious writers of our faith, have no claim to be recognized as works of art; for their execution has been in general too hasty to admit of that careful study and elaboration indispensable to the production of an enduring work. Neither can they be fairly considered as natural or practical illustrations of the influence of our holy religion in social and domestic life, still less as successful means of initiating outsiders into the beauties of the church’s doctrines. It is not the legitimate aim of a novel to be prosaically didactic. One page of Bellarmine or Petavius contains more sound doctrinal position than the fresh cut leaves of any modern controversial tale. Of course in master-hands the difficult task of blending narrative and dogma has succeeded, but it took no less a writer than Cardinal Wiseman to render _Fabiola_ interesting, and it required the pen of Father Newman to write _Loss and Gain_. Narrative is better suited than controversy to most of our lay writers. In every case the silent example of a noble character is more potent for good than the most ingenious arguments or most earnest exhortations. The book before us is not free from the strictures we have passed on its numerous train of companions. There is much improbability in the plot, and a decided lack of naturalness in the characters. It is a mistake to elevate an ordinary heroine to the highest plane of wisdom; she ceases to be flesh and blood, and then our interest in her ceases likewise.

The tale is replete with the holiest examples for imitation and the highest lessons in self sacrifice, devotion, and duty.

FRANK BLAKE. By Dillon O’Brien. St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co. 1876.

So long as works of fiction constitute an important department of literature of which the supply is rarely in excess of the demand, it is well for critics to insist that at least no morbid products of fancy tinged with a vile pruriency be admitted to take rank under this head. We are glad that the author of _Frank Blake_ has appreciated this truth; for though he has worked up some delicate situations, he has been a most strict observer of propriety and has tempered sentiment with sense. _Frank Blake_ is an oft-told Irish story. The incidents are not such as we meet in _Orlando Furioso_, but still such as are calculated to enlist a sober interest. The plot is natural and ripens with ease. For once the Irish peasant is represented as though seven centuries of English misrule had at least enabled him to acquire a decent knowledge of the language of his subjugator. But he is not by any means Saxonized, as is made evident by his unmistakable Celtic wit and adequacy to meet and make the best of sudden emergencies.

THE WISE NUN OF EASTONMERE, AND OTHER TALES. By Miss Taylor. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

This unpretentious volume derives its chief attraction from the fact that every line bears testimony to the modest estimate the writer has formed of her powers. We will not vouch for the amount of instruction to be derived from Miss Taylor’s little book, but there can be no doubt that it is edifying, and in a wise, sober sense. Its simplicity in style and construction makes up for the absence of more conspicuous qualities.

“And few, of all, at once could make pretence To royal robes and rustic innocence.”

Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Dialect, obsolete, alternative, and misspelled words were not changed.

Obvious printing errors, such as duplicate words, backwards, upside down, unprinted, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were completed. Letters were added that had been dropped in typesetting when a word was hyphenated and split between two lines. Final stops missing at the end of sentences were added. Missing punctuation was added or corrected at beginning and ends of sentences, lines of poetry, and abbreviations.

The copyright line at the bottom of the first page of each monthly volume was moved to follow the volume number and date. Footnotes were numbered sequentially and moved to the end of the article in which the related anchors occur.

The following were adjusted:

added anchor for Footnote [188] added hyphens: bare-headed, … waits bare-headed … sister-in-law, … her sister-in-law, and other … Fitz-James, … said Sir John Fitz-James in a low voice … added close parenthesis, … (Ps. xc. 11, 12.[87]) … changed accent marks: Ou to Où, … Où allons nous … Hyeres to Hyères, … wishing for news from Hyères … caléche to calèche, … return in the calèche … Châteaubriand to Chateaubriand, … in his mouth by Chateaubriand.

Noted, left unchanged: there is no decimal between dollars and cents in price of books in New Publications sections.