CHAPTER XIX.

Winny and Kate had agreed to take a long walk after mass on the day in question. This was not a mere trick of Winny's to get rid of Tom Murdock. Certainly they had not agreed that it should be "their lone;" this was as chance might have it; and it was a gratuitous addition of Winny's, as calculated to attain her object; and we have seen how promptly she succeeded.

The day was fine, and they now wandered along the road, so engaged in chat that they scarcely knew how far they were from home. They had turned down a cross-road before they came to Shanvilla, the little village where Emon-a-knock lived. Kate would have gone on straight, but Winny could not be induced to do so. Kate had her own reasons for wishing to go on, while Winny had hers for being determined not; so they turned down the road to their left, intending, as they had Bully-dhu with them, to come home through the mountain-pass by Boher-na-milthiogue. They had chat enough for the whole road. Prayers had been over early, although it was second mass; and the country people generally dine later on a holiday than usual. It gives the boys and girls more time to meet and chat and part, and in some instances to make new acquaintances. But whether it had been agreed upon or not, Winny and Kate appeared likely to have their walk alone upon this occasion; and as neither of them could choose their company, they were not sorry to find the road they had chosen less frequented than the one they had left. Bully-dhu scampered through the fields at each side of them, and sometimes on a long distance in front, occasionally running back to a turn to see if they were coming.

They were now beyond two miles from home, and two-and-a-half more would have completed the circle they had intended to take; but they were destined to return by the same way they came, and in no comfortable or happy plight.

They were descending a gentle hill when, at some distance below them, they perceived a number of young men engaged playing at what they call "long bullets." They would instinctively have turned back, not wishing, unattended as they were except by Bully-dhu, to run the gauntlet of so many young men upon the roadside, most of whom must be strangers; but the said Bully-dhu had been enjoying himself considerably in advance, and they called and called to no purpose. They could not whistle; and if Bully heard them call, he did not heed them. He had seen a large brindled mastiff coming toward him from the crowd with his back up, and a growl of defiance which he could not mistake. Bully was no coward at any time; but on this occasion his courage was more than manifest, being, as he considered, in sole charge of his mistress and her friend. He was not certain but his antagonist's attack might be directed as much against them as against himself; and he stood upon the defensive, with his back up also, the hairs of which, from behind his ears to the butt of his tail, bristled "like quills upon the fretful porcupine." An encounter was now inevitable. The mastiff had shown a determination that nothing but a death-struggle should be the result, and rushed with open mouth and a roar of confident superiority upon his {382} weaker rival. It was no even match; nothing but poor Bully-dhu's indomitable courage and activity could enable him to stand a single combat with his antagonist for five minutes. The first snarling and growling on both sides had now subsided, and they were "locked in each other's arms" in a silent rolling struggle for life or death. A dog-fight of even the most minor description has charms for a crowd of youngsters; and of course the "long bullets" were left to take care of themselves, and all the players, as well as the spectators, now ran up the road to witness this contest, which was, indeed, far from a minor concern. Poor Winny had screamed when she saw her dog first rolled by so furious and, as she saw at once, so superior a foe. She would have rushed forward but that Kate restrained her, as both dangerous and useless. She therefore threw herself against the bank of the ditch by the roadside, continuing to call out "for God's sake for somebody to save her poor dog. Was there no person there who knew her, and would save him?"

The crowd had by this time formed a ring round the infuriated animals. Some there were who would have been obedient to Winny's call for help; but the case at present admitted of no relief. Notwithstanding poor Bully-dhu's pluck and courage, he had still the worst of it; in fact, his was altogether a battle of defence, while that of the mastiff was one of ferocious attack. He had seized Bully in the first instance at an advantage by the side of the neck under the ear, meeting his teeth through the skin, while the blood flowed freely from the wound, coloring the mud of the road a dark crimson round where they fought, and nearly choking the mastiff himself, as he was occasionally rolled under in the strife. Now they were upon their hind-legs again, wrestling like two stout boys for a fall; now Bully was down, and the mastiff rolled his head from side to side, tightening his grip, while the bloody froth besmeared himself and his victim, as he might now almost be called.

Some men at this point, more humane than the rest, took hold of the mastiff by the tail, while others struck him on the nose with a stick. They might as well have struck the rocks love Slieve-dhu or Slieve-bawn. The mastiff was determined upon death, and death he seemed likely to have. His master was there, and seemed anxious to separate them. He even permitted him to be struck on the nose, claiming the privilege only of choosing the thickness of the stick.

"He's loosening, boys!" said one fellow; "he's tired of that hoult, an' can do no more with it; stan' back, boys, an' give the black dog fair play, he's not bet yet; he never got a grip iv th' other dog yet; give him fair play, boys, an' he'll do good business yet. There! Tiger's out iv him now, and the black dog has him; be gorra, he's a game dog any way, boys! I dunna who owns him." This man seemed to be an "expert" in dog-fighting. Tiger had got tired of the hold he had had, and, considering a fresh grip would be better, not by any means influenced by the blows he had received on the nose, had given way; believing, I do suppose, that he had already so mastered his antagonist, that he could seize him again at pleasure. But he had reckoned without his host. Bully-dhu took advantage of the relief to turn on him, and seized him pretty much in the same way he had been seized himself, and with quite as much ferocity and determination. Hie fight did not now seem so unequal; they had grip for grip, and there was a general cry amongst the crowd to let them see it out. Indeed, there appeared to be no alternative, for they had both resisted every exertion to separate them.

"It's no use, boys," said the expert; "you might cut them in pieces, an' they wouldn't quit, except to get a better hoult; if you want to part them, hold them by the tails, an' watch for {383} the loosening of wan or th' other, an' then drag them away."

"Stan' back, boys," said another. "The black dog's not bet yet; stan' back, I say!"

Bully-dhu had made a great rally of it. It was now evident that he would have made a much better fight from the first, if he had not been seized at an advantage which prevented him from turning his head to seize his foe in return. They had been by this time nearly twenty minutes in deadly conflict; and the mastiff's superior strength and size began now to tell fearfully against poor Bully-dhu. He had shaken himself completely out of Bully, and made a fresh grip, not far from the first, but still nearer the throat. The matter seemed now coming to a close, and the result no longer doubtful. Every one saw that if something could not be done to disengage Tiger from that last grip, the black dog must speedily be killed.

Here Winny, who heard the verdict from the crowd, could be restrained no longer, and rushed forward praying for some one, for them all, to try and save her dog. They all declared it was a pity; that he was a grand dog, but no match for the mastiff. Some recommended one thing, some another. Tiger was squeezed, and struck on the nose; a stick was forced into his mouth, with a hope of opening his teeth and loosening his hold; but it was all useless, and poor Winny gave up all for lost, in a fit of sobbing and despair.

Here a man, who had not originally been of the party, was seen running at full speed down the hill. It was Emon-a-knock, who at this juncture had come accidentally upon the top of the hill immediately above them, and at once recognizing _some_ of the party on the road, rushed forward to the rescue. He cast but a glance at the dogs. He knew them _both_, and how utterly hopeless a contest it must be for Bully-dhu. Like an arrow from a bow, he flew to a cabin hard by, and seizing a half-lighted sod of turf from the fire, he returned to the scene. "Now, boys," he cried, "hold them fast by the tails and hind-legs, and I'll soon separate them." Two men seized them--Tiger's own master was one. Although there were many young men there who would have looked on with savage pleasure at an even fight between two well-matched dogs, even to the death, there was not one who could wish to stand by and see a noble dog killed without a chance by a superior foe, and they all hailed Emon-a-knock, from his confident and decisive manner, as a timely deliverer. The dogs having been drawn by two strong men to their full length, but still fastened by the deadly grip of the mastiff on Bully-dhu's throat, Emon blew the coal, and applied it to Tiger's jaw. This was too much for him. He could understand squeezes, and even blows on the nose and head, or perhaps in the excitement he never felt them; but the lighted coal he could not stand, and yielding at once to the pain, he let go his hold. The dogs were then dragged away to a distance; Emon-a-knock carrying poor Bully-dhu in his arms, more dead than alive, to where Winny sat distracted on the roadside.

"O Emon! he's dead or dying!' she cried, as the exhausted animal lay gasping by her side.

"He's neither!" almost roared Emon; "have you a fippenny-bit, Winny, or Kate? if I had one myself, I wouldn't ask you."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed Winny, taking an old bead-purse from her pocket, and giving him one. She knew not what it was for, but her confidence in Emon's judgment was unbounded, and her heart felt some relief when it was not a needle and thread he asked for.

"Here," said Emon to a gossoon, who stood looking at the dog, "be off like a hare to Biddy Muldoon's for a naggin of whiskey, and you may have the change for yourself, if you're back in less than no time; make her put it in a bottle, not a cup, that you may {384} run the whole way without spilling it."

The boy started off, not very unlike--either in pace or appearance--to the animal he was desired to resemble, for he had a cap made of one of their skins.

Emon-a-knock, although a very steady, temperate young man, was not altogether so much above his compeers in the district as not to know "where a dhrop was kept," which, to the uninitiated (English, of course), means a sheebeen house. Perhaps, _to them_, I am only explaining one thing by another which equally requires explanation.

During the interval of the boy's absence, Emon-a-knock was examining the wounds in poor Bully-dhu's neck and throat. The dog still lay gasping, and occasionally scrubbling with his fore-legs, and kicking with his hind, while Winny reiterated her belief that he was dying. Emon now contradicted her rather flatly. He knew she would excuse the rudeness from the hope which it held forth.

"There will be nothing on him to signify indeed, Winny, after a little," he said kindly, feeling that he had been harsh but a moment before; "see, he is not even torn; only cut in four places."

"In four places! O Emon, in four?"

"Yes; but they are only where the other dog's teeth entered, and came through; see, they are only holes; the dog is quite exhausted, but will soon come round. Come here, Winny, and feel him yourself."

Winny stretched over, and Emon took her hand to guide it to the spots where her poor dog had been wounded. Poor Bully looked up at her, and feebly endeavored to wag his tail, and Winny smiled and wept together. Emon was a very long time explaining to her precisely where the wounds were, and how they must have been inflicted; and he found it necessary to hold her hand the whole time. Whether Winny, in the confusion of her grief, knew that he did so, nobody but herself can tell. Three or four persons who knew Winny had kindly come up to see how the dog was, and the expert amongst them, with so much confidence that he was going to set him on his legs at once. But Emon had taken special charge of him, and would not suffer so premature an experiment, nor the interference of any other doctor.

But here comes the gossoon with the whiskey, like a hare indeed, across the fields, and his middle finger stuck in the neck of the bottle by way of a cork.

Emon took it from him, and claiming the assistance of the expert, whom he had just now repudiated, for a few moments to hold his head, he placed the neck of the bottle in Bully-dhu's mouth. He poured "the least taste in life" down his throat, and with his hand washed his jaws and tongue copiously with the spirits.

With a sort of yelp poor Bully made a struggle and a plunge, and rose to his feet. Winny held out her hand to him, and he staggered over toward her, looking up in her face, and wagging his tail.

"I told you so," said Emon; "get me a handful of salt."

The same cabin which had supplied the "live coal" was applied to by the gossoon (who kept the change), and it was quickly brought.

Emon then rubbed some into the wounds, in spite of Winny's remonstrances as to the pain, and the dog's own unequivocal objections to the process.

Matters were now really on the mend. Bully-dhu shook himself, looking after the crowd with a growl; and even Winny had no doubt that Emon's prescriptions had been necessary and successful.

"The sooner you get home now with him, Winny, the better," said Emon.

"You are not going to leave us, Emon?" said Winny, doubtingly.

{385}

"Certainly not," he replied; "the poor dog is still very weak, and may require rest, if not help, by the way." He then took a red cotton handkerchief from his pocket, and tying it loosely round the dog's neck, he held the other end of it in his hand, and they all set out together for Rathcash.

The handkerchief, Emon said, would both keep the air from the wounds, and help to sustain the dog on his legs. But he may have had some idea in his mind that it would also serve as an excuse for his accompanying them to the very furthest point possible on their road home.

TO BE CONTINUED.

From London Society.

TENDER AND TRUE AND TRIED.

Tender and true. You kept faith with me, As I kept faith with you;-- Though over us both Since we plighted troth Long years have rolled:-- But our love could hold Through troubles and trials manifold, My darling tender and true!

Tender and true, In your eyes I gazed, And my heart was safe, I knew! Your trusting smile Was pure of guile, And I read in sooth On your brow's fair youth The earnest of loyal trust and truth, My darling tender and true!

Tender and true. All my own at last! My blessing for all life through-- In death as life My one loved wife-- Mine--mine at last, All troubles past-- And the future all happiness, deep and vast. My darling tender and true!

{386}

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

A RIDE THROUGH CALCUTTA AND ITS VICINITY.

LETTER FROM A FATHER OF THE PROVINCE OF BELGIUM, MISSIONARY AT CALCUTTA.

You ask me for a little information concerning this country and our ordinary life in this climate. I am entirely at your disposal for this whole afternoon, if you will come and join me at the college of St. Francis Xavier, No. 10 Park street, Calcutta.

It is warm there. The thermometer I have just consulted stands 37° centigrades in the shade. Look where you may from my windows, you see nothing but white houses which, turned toward the four winds of heaven, have no other shade but that of their cornice; and a little further on, in an old cemetery, some fifty obelisks lit up on their four faces, so vertical is our sun! Hence, though lightly clad--a white calico soutane, without buttons, a white girdle, white pantaloons, and white shoe--we still feel enough of the tropical heat of the dog-star. Happily, we have the breeze, which, although it does not lower the thermometer any, refreshes us considerably. But it does not always blow; and when it stops, the floor is watered with drops of perspiration as big as two-franc pieces. Those who would then make up for the breeze have themselves _ponka-ed._ _Ponka-ed?_ what is that? To understand it, you will enter Father Stochman's abode. He is seated all in white, at his desk, in the middle of a large room; over his bald head, at a little less than a metre, is hung a large white triangle, three metres long horizontally, and one metre in height; a cord is fastened to it there, passes into the hollow of a pulley fixed to the wall, and terminates at a crouching Indian, clad in his dusky skin and a strip of stuff around his loins. This human machine has no other occupation than to pull the cord which balances continually over Father Stochman's head the other rectangular machine that I have described to you, which is called a _ponka_. Now, do not suppose that Father Stochman is a Sybarite. There are _ponkas_ here everywhere: in the parlor, in the refectory, and many persons have themselves ponkaed in their bed the whole night long. These instruments are not in use in Catholic churches, but every parishioner, male and female, continually uses the fan, which by extension is likewise called a _ponka_. Other countries, other customs; a _ponka_ is here more necessary than a coat; whereas, on the other hand, there is not a single chimney in the whole house. No chimney, you will say; do you, then, eat your rice quite raw? To that question I have two answers; first, the kitchen, with us as with our neighbors, is not in the house, but in the _compound_--that is to say, in the vast inclosure that surrounds the dwelling. Then I will furthermore observe, that even in the kitchen there is no chimney. These black Indians, who are our cooks, are accustomed to make fire without troubling themselves about the smoke, which escapes wherever it can, through the windows, through the crevices, anywhere and everywhere. If you were, like me, philosopher enough to eat whatever comes before you, I would introduce you into that kitchen; but I think you would not care to enter that dingy {387} hole, lest you should for ever lose your appetite. Let us leave the Indians in their den, and go sit down under the _ponka_ in the refectory. To-day they will serve us with mutton and fowl; to-morrow with fowl and mutton; now and then with fowl only. As regards vegetables, yon shall see them successively of all kinds; but, if you take my advice, you will not touch them; they have no other taste than that of stagnant water. Beside the morning repast and the dinner, which is at half-past three o'clock, we have two other meals a day. One at noon, under the name of _tiffin_, is composed, in the maximum, of a glass of beer, a crust of bread, and some fruit; for some amongst us, it is reduced to but one of those three things; for many others, and myself in particular, to nothing at all. The other repast, at eight in the evening, consists of a cup of coffee, with or without bread.

And now let us quit this abode of misery, no more to return. Come and see my chamber. It has no _ponka_, but four windows, open day and night; two to the south, where the sun does not enter, and two to the east, where the Persians forbid him access in the morning. My bed is a species of large sofa, upon which there is a nondescript article, that is neither a pattiass nor a mattrass. It is a flat sack, eight or nine inches thick, and stuffed with hair; over it two linen sheets (a luxury here, where most people use but one) and a pillow as hard as the mattrass. But best of all are the four posts supporting a horizontal rectangle from which is hung the mosquito net. The mosquito net is used here all the year round. It is a piece of net fastened below the mattrass. Behind, that frail rampart, if happily there be no rent in it anywhere, you enjoy the pleasure of hearing the mosquitoes buzzing about powerless and exasperated. In December and January, there are clouds of them; but, hearing them, you appreciate that verse of Tibullus: _Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem!_ What is a mosquito? It is the cousin-german of your gnats in Europe, generally a little smaller, but quite the same in form; it _sings_ and stings like them; only its sting is a little more painful, and is followed by a larger and more lasting tumor. Nothing can secure you against its attacks; it can dart its sting even through a double covering of linen.

These insects are not my only room-mates. There are now, in addition thereto, some millions of red and black ants, hundreds of which I every day crush, but all in vain; there are lizards, which are not dumb as in Europe, but give utterance, now and then, to a short song. These lizards apply themselves to hunt the insects, so that I am very careful not to hunt themselves. In my chamber, moreover, there are horrible beetles--large insects of a dark brown color, four or five inches long, which have the privilege of inspiring universal disgust. To love them, one should be as poetical as M. Victor Hugo, who had an affection for "the toad, poor meek-eyed monger." There are little _white fishes_, insects that do not live in water, but are particularly abundant during rainy weather. These _fishes_, little as they are, contrive to make large holes in cloth and in stuffs. During the night I sometimes hear rats and mice prowling around; the mosquito net protects me from their assaults. As for bats, owls, and other such nocturnal visitors, I do not think they ever come in through our open windows.

Birds of prey are very numerous here, and wherever I am in my chamber, I know not how many are watching me from the top of the adjacent buildings. Crows are another species of bird as interesting as they are dreary. They inhabit the riversides where the Indians throw their dead; two, three, or more of them are often seen in the water, looking as though they were sailing on some invisible bark; that bark is a dead body, which they slice amongst them as they {388} go. Sometimes the jackals, along the river, dispute this horrible prey with them, and you might see these animals, at some distance from the city, trotting along with human limbs across their mouth. In the city, the crows live on offal of all kinds; they are often found assembled round kitchen doors; during our meals there are always twenty or thirty of them before our refectory. There they seem to beg for crusts of bread, bones, etc, and willingly receive whatever is thrown to them. The kites, less numerous and less bold, but much more voracious, mount guard with them, and often fly away with what the poor crows had picked up from the ground. In revenge, it is really a pleasure to see a kite gnaw a bone which he has thus purloined. If he does not take care to perform that operation high up in the air, he is invariably flanked by two crows, one of which keeps constantly pulling him behind to make him angry, whilst the other avails himself of this artifice to peck at the bone in the very claws of the kite. After a while, the crows change parts, and each in his turn becomes the assailant. I perceive at this moment in our court another bird, less common than the two preceding species, but still not at all rare. The name it usually bears here is that of _adjutant_; in other places the much more picturesque name of _philosopher_ is given to it. In order to form an idea of it, give an ordinary heron the size of a small ostrich; the bill is ten inches wide and from fifty to sixty long; the claws and the legs, white and thin, are more than three feet high; the neck almost always bent, and forming a crop, has a development of from sixty to seventy inches. Between these two extremities place a big white body with large wings of a dark-gray color, and you shall have pretty nearly the _adjutant_ or _philosopher_.

_Apropos_ to the description of my domicile, I have been led to give you a course of natural history; let us go on to something else. There is no other curiosity in my chamber, if it be not the two partitions which, with the walls of the house, form the inclosure. These partitions are but two yards in height, whilst the ceiling is more than five; they are generally arranged in this way, so as to give a free passage to the breeze.

In descending, let us take a look at the bathing rooms, about a dozen in number, in which there is not a single bath, but large vases of baked clay, always full of water, and small copper vases, that contain about a quart. You stand on the pavement, and, dipping the small vase into the larger one, pour the contents of it fifty times or so on your head. This is called taking a bath. It is said to be very wholesome; every one in this country takes their daily bath--except me, who have no time; so every one has been more or less sick, except me, for the same reason.

Before going out, a word on the pupils of our college. They are two hundred and twenty, the great majority of whom are Catholics. Most of the names have an English aspect; but you will also hear Portuguese, French, and Armenian names, borne respectively by white, black, bronze, and brown skins. English is the common language; the French pupils themselves speak it more fluently than their mother tongue, and most of them know only as much of Bengalese and Hindostanese as is necessary to make themselves understood by their Indian domestics. The costumes are varied enough; but as for the Indians, one may say that white, and especially white calico, constitutes their wardrobe, notwithstanding that some dark or pale colors are seen here and there.

Let us set out. Here are our young people coming in for recreation, and I would spare your ears one of my daily torments. It were impossible to find on the European continent people more destitute of all musical judgment than our pupils. It is not taste they want, but _good_ taste. Several of them have an instrument like the {389} accordeon which is called the _concertina_. They have the courage to spend all their recreations, for three months and more, playing always the same air. I have thus heard "God save the Queen" thousands of times. Once would have sufficed to disgust you with it for ever; you may just imagine what liking I have for it. But it is time to go for our walk.

The English took a very simple way of making Calcutta. They marked out a broad circular road, to fix its boundary. Three Hindoo villages, Fort William, and some European factories, were inclosed within it; time has done the rest. Within the inclosure, the construction of the houses is subject to police regulations; straw roofs are prohibited, tiles required, etc; all that annoys the Hindoo, who likes better to take up his quarters on the other side of the circular road; and in this way the suburbs are formed. The European city, on its side, has grown larger every day. Five years ago, our college was at the very extremity of the city; now, it is nearly in the centre; the new houses have occupied all the free space, and, in some places even go beyond the circular road. A year and a half since, a group of Hindoo huts, situate about one hundred paces from the college, disappeared to make place for a public tank, which furnishes us with water. The transformation is slow, but sure. So much for English tact; they have made Calcutta a palatial city, and such its name implies--_the city of palaces_. It is, moreover, an immense city; the streets are of fabulous length, thanks to the mode of construction employed here. I believe, indeed, that if Paris were built on the same system, it would extend itself as far as the _natural frontiers_.

In those long streets circulates a numerous and very mixed population, as in all great maritime places. If you please, we will busy ourselves to-day with the Indians only.

We distinguish them here into two great classes; the Mohammedans and the Hindoos. They are easily recognized in the streets. The Mohammedans wear a beard; they have usually on their head a cap a little larger than that of the priests in Belgium, but which, having only one seam forming an edge, is a little less spherical. The rich have caps embroidered with gold and silver, often very costly; the poor make theirs of two pieces of grayish-white calico. As for the women, I know not by what sign to recognize them, unless, perhaps, by the seams of a portion of their garments. For the rest, no Indian woman, poor or rich, appears in the streets. The Hindoos, all idolaters, wear no beard on their chin, but only moustaches and sometimes whiskers. In case of mourning for the death of a parent, they shave all, and even the hair from the fore part of the skull. The rest of the hair is generally drawn back and gathered in a knot. The men go almost always bareheaded; sometimes they make themselves a turban of a large piece of calico gracefully enough wound around. The rich dress in muslin; unbelievers wear leather shoes, [Footnote 55] the others wooden sandals. The poor have a cord around their loins, which the rich replace by a silver chain, that they never leave off. One or more keys are usually attached to it. Between this cord and the skin they thrust the edge of a piece of calico as long and as wide as a bed-sheet, and which goes first round and half round the legs; the men pass between their legs what remains of the sheet and fasten the end of it to the cord or to the silver chain; the women throw this same remainder of the stuff over one shoulder and the head, so as to cover the chest. All go barefoot; many men have necklaces, the women wear on their ankles two large rings of copper or silver; they have, beside, a profusion of necklaces, bracelets, rings in the ears and even in the {390} nostrils. This costume forms their essential and ordinary apparel.

[Footnote 55: Leather is an abomination to a devout Hindoo.]

From the month of November till the month of March, the Indians have a season which they call winter. At 20° they are cold, at 15° they shiver, at 12° or 13° they are frozen. You should see, in the morning, the masons, carpenters, and other workmen, residing usually in the country, coming into town all muffled up in one or two extra bed-sheets, their mouth and nose completely hidden, and looking so much like being cold, that after some years the Europeans themselves (sad effect of bad example!) end by persuading themselves that it is cold here in winter, and even catch a little cold here and there. The domestics also try then to obtain some cast-off garments, in which they wrap themselves up without any regard for aesthetics. The porter of the college, who may be recognized by his red skull-cap and small white band worn as a shoulder-belt, characteristic of the caste of Brahmins, asked Father Stochman last year for one of his old soutanes. A little _bera_ (servant) strutted about the other day in his master's old _paletot_. The master is thirty-five, the _bera_ seven. The _meteurs_ (room sweepers, etc) cover themselves with everything: packing-linen, palliasses, etc., etc. The _bossartchi_ (cooks) are the best off in winter; they keep themselves warm with their masters' wood.

Now that you have my Indians more or less dressed, let us see how they act. The best way to do that will be to go in a palanquin from our college to the railroad station. If we arrive in time for the train, we shall make a little excursion as far as Serampore or even to Chandernagor. Here is the palanquin that is waiting for us at the door: it is a wooden box, about four feet long; two poles a little bent, and fastened one before, the other behind, seem to be the continuation of the axle of the parallelepiped (excuse the word: I teach geometry). Two individuals, clothed just so far as it is absolutely necessary, place themselves under the front pole, so as to lay it one over his right shoulder, the other over his left shoulder; they press one against the other, because union makes strength. Two other Indians similar to these do as much for the back pole; the palanquin is raised. I slide the doors sideways, seat myself on the edge, and with all the elegance given by gymnastic habit I dart in backwards. The bottom is a sort of mattrass, on which one lies down at full length: the shoulders are then supported by a back-cushion, the feet are in front; you cry _Djas!_ and the four _palki-bera_ start off. Usually, to mark the way, the most intelligent of the bearers throws out phrases of four or six syllables, in a very monotonous tone quite unknown in Europe; the other answers, repeating the phrase in the same tone. In town, they go at the rate of at least six miles an hour; in longer journeys they go more slowly.

I have already made a journey of five leagues twice in this kind of box. The first was poetical enough. It was more than fifty leagues from Calcutta. We were three Europeans; a very light Frenchman (not in body, but in mind), an Irishman, and myself. The Frenchman had a considerable sum about him, and the country being in his opinion somewhat dangerous, he had brought to the starting station arms of every kind. I had with me in my palanquin a double-barrelled carabine, a case of ammunition, and a large hunting-knife. To prevent any one from robbing me of all this, I partly lay down on the carabine, made a pillow of the case, and slept with the sheath of my knife in one hand and the handle in the other. The Irishman, travelling on horseback, with pistols, served us as a scout; but his pistols did not prevent him from being struck on the face and arms by the greatest brigand in India: I mean the sun. He had his skin red for several days. For us, who were shaded in our palanquins, we had, of {391} course, no adventure; were it not that I dreamed sometimes of brigands and the Black Forest, crossing a vast desert plain, all white with light. So, when we came back the same way a fortnight after, we took with us no other fire-arms than a box of matches and cigars. But this is a digression; let us continue our journey.

_Daina péro!_ (turn to the right). It is not the ordinary way; but instead of passing by the broad European thoroughfare, Park street, we shall turn aside into the dark and winding passages of an Indian bazaar. A bazaar is a multitude of lanes, exclusively composed of miserable huts, and blocked up with all sorts of merchandise. You rarely meet any one there but men; the shop-girl and the "young lady" of the store are equally unknown here; but in it is found every form of misery.

See there below that beggar of eighteen or twenty years, scarce half covered, and without even a rudiment, a shadow, of an arm. He is long and thin, but appears to be in good health. A French physician told me that, very probably, his parents cut off his arms when he was a child to secure him a livelihood. Whilst we are looking at him, a gigantic hand is thrust trough the opposite door of the palanquin. The fingers are as big as the arms of a two-year old child; they are long in proportion. That hand is soliciting alms. We raise ourselves up a little to see this needy giant, and our eyes fall on a wretched, emaciated Indian; the rest of his body can weigh but little more than his two hands, for the left is like unto the right. This case of hypertrophy is, I think, isolated here; but another very common one, which is met in every street, is _Elephantiasis_, hypertrophy of the legs. The unhappy creatures attacked by this malady have, from the knee to the end of the foot, one, or sometimes two, elephant's legs, cylindrical, enormous, and seeming to draw to them the nourishment of all the rest of the body.

But here we are at the _Meïdan_, This is the name given to that immense esplanade on which stands Fort William, and which bounds the governor's palace, the city hall, the Protestant cathedral, the prison, the lunatic asylum, etc. Let us cross it in our palanquin, coasting along the river, and we shall soon reach the vicinity of the station. There we find ourselves besieged by the _couli_ (a sort of porter) of every age. They claim the honor of carrying our travelling-bag fifty paces for a _pais_--about four centimes. Since we are there, before going any further, let us say a word of the _couli_.

Some are in the service of the rich and of Europeans, others are for hire in the streets. The first are always men; amongst the second, there are many children: there are few of them very strong. Indeed, as a general rule, one European has the strength of several Bengalese. Both carry everything on their head, in a great hemispherical basket; there it is that they place the traveller's luggage or the provisions bought in the bazaar. A _couli_ brought me one day two little birds which an Irishman had shot for me, and sent them to me from his residence, three leagues from Calcutta. The birds were in the large basket. On receiving them I wrote a few lines of thanks; the _couli_ put the note in his basket. Here is another anecdote, for the truth of which I can certify. M. Moyne, a Frenchman settled in Chandernagor, had ordered his _couli_ to convey some very heavy materials, of I know not what kind. He saw the poor devil bent under the burden, and as the journey was to be of several days' duration, he went to his carpenter and had him construct a wheelbarrow. That done, he comes back quite pleased with his good work, and, wheeling the barrow himself to the _couli_, gives it to him, shows him how to use it, and goes his ways satisfied that he has caused that man to make one step toward civilization. The pleasure he experiences at this {392} reflection induces him to turn round to enjoy his work. He turns, therefore, and sees the _couli_ walking along, the barrow and the burden all on his head!

We have met by the way a great number of Mohammedans, carrying on their back an enormous leather flask, and dripping wet. These are the _bisthi_, water-carriers. Every house has its own; for people here waste a great deal of water, and there are neither wells nor cisterns. The _bisthi_ go and fill their leather flasks at the river or at the public reservoirs, which are to be found in almost all the large streets, and come and empty it into pitchers of the dimensions of a hogshead. It is filtered for drinking; for other uses it is merely left to settle.

Those other individuals, a little cleaner, who carry on their head large bundles of linen, are _dôbi_, or washers. They wash the linen by soaking it in water, and then striking it with their whole strength against a plank or a stone. Happily, notwithstanding the American war, calico is not very dear here. You understand that in such a mode of washing it is roughly handled, and wears out before it is old. But why not teach the _dôbi_ to wash in another way? Remember M. Moyne's wheelbarrow, when you ask that question!

Mercy on us! whilst we are chatting so about the _couli_, the _bisthi_, and the _dôbi_, we are missing the train. Since it is gone, we shall do as others do who are left behind: we shall take a _Hinghi_, an Indian bark, long, curved, and without a keel. We shall find four or five Mohammedan _mendjié_ (boatmen), one of whom steers with a long oar; the others row with bamboos as thick as one's arm, and terminated by small flat boards. Just as we enter, the crew are finishing their common prayer, in which, with many protestations and gesticulations, they thank God and the Prophet for having helped them to speed well heretofore, and asking them to help them the same for the future.

Allah! Allah! _mendjié_ row strong; if we arrive in time, you shall have two _annas_ (30 centimes). What is this floating three paces from here? The body of a man lying on his back. And yonder? A woman's corpse. And further off? The carcass of a horse. The crows, the kites, the vultures, are much interested in it. But we are landing. The passengers on board the steamboat are not all landed yet. You see there perhaps forty, fifty European dresses, and hundreds of Indian. In the second-class car, which we enter, we shall see Indians in muslin, who are named _babou_ (or townspeople) through politeness. They are clerks in the Calcutta offices; they reside several leagues from here, come every day to town, and return home by the railroad. The compact mass of the poor are penned up in wretched third-class cars. The bell rings, the whistle blows, we are off.

Thirteen miles north of Calcutta in the third station, the first important one; we stop two minutes. Let us go down; we are at Serampore, an old Danish colony sold to England. We shall content ourselves there with a visit to the Hindoo gods, and we shall have enough to do if we see them all. There are, I think, more than fifty temples. Here is one that is no larger than one of the little wayside chapels we often see at home. At the further end, on a scaffold, is a god quite black, almost of human form, holding his two hands as though he were playing the flute. No flute is there, however. The god has the cut of a French conscript; at his feet there is a little woman a foot high, and a little god half a foot, an exact copy of the large one. The priest has observed us, and here he comes to speak to us. He is clad like the poorest of the Hindoos. What is your god's name? Answer unintelligible. Who are those two little personages? His wife and son. What does that god do? He eats. Indeed? Oh yes, _sahib_, he eats much. If you will give him some rice or flour he will be very thankful {393} to you, and it will be of great spiritual advantage to you. Oh! oh! but if we give him rice, will he eat it before us? Oh! of course not. He does not eat in company. I place the rice before him; I close the door carefully, and go away; when I come back some time after to open the door, he has it all eaten up. Thereupon we begin to laugh; the priest smiles, too, and we move away.

You meet under almost every large tree four or five of these gods, or even a greater number. Over them the Indians hang cocoa-nuts, full of a water which escapes drop by drop, from a little hole bored in the bottom. It is thus that they keep their gods cool. You often see a regular series of little temples, built one after the other, on the same base. Usually, there are six on one side, six on the other. In the centre of each of them there is a black stone, fairly representing an anvil covered with a hat. That stone is a god. A great number of them are sold in Calcutta at from ten to twelve rupees a piece (twenty-five or thirty francs).

But here is a temple of _Kali_, the terrible goddess of destruction, in honor of whom the sect of _Togs_ has devoted itself to murder for ages long. They say there are still Togs who kill for killing's sake, especially in Bengal. The goddess is standing; she is almost black; has four arms armed with daggers and death's-heads; around her neck is a double necklace, which hangs to the ground, composed of hundreds of little figures also representing death's-heads. The best of it is that her tongue hangs down midway on her chest. To pull the tongue is a sign of astonishment in Bengal. Now Kali, returning one day from the war, with her chaplet of skulls round her neck, met a man, whom she naturally killed first and foremost. That is the dead body that lies under her feet. She asked the name of the individual, and was much surprised to find that she had killed her husband. Then she pulled her tongue, the best thing she could do. Having no other husband to kill, and even deprived recently of human sacrifices by the English government. Kali has enormous quantities of black kids sacrificed to her. I often see flocks of several hundreds of them coming into town; the votaries of Kali have their heads cut off at a celebrated temple we have here in Calcutta. For you must know, Calcutta signifies _temple of Kali!_ I went one day to see these sacrifices. The temple is a small affair; but all around a great number of other gods, attracted, doubtless, by the scent of blood, come to establish their dwelling.

Let us go on. That great straw shed which you see yonder covers an enormous car, having a great number of very heavy wheels. Many a man those wheels have crushed. It is the car of Juggernaut, that devil to whose festivals the English government sent European soldiers only a few years since; not to maintain order, but to take part in the procession. _Djaghernatt_ (the Indian name of this idol) remains with _Bolaraham_ and _Soubâdhra_, his brother and sister, in a temple opposite the straw shed. A great number of the Indian gods have a taste for moving about; hence those kiosks that you see everywhere, and which serve them as resting-places. The prettiest is the shade of a banyan-tree, with about a hundred stems, a whole wood in itself.

But we must leave the Hindoo gods; we have barely time to pay a short visit to Chandernagor. Let us take the railroad again, and go on some minutes' ride further. Another time we shall, if you choose, come by water, ascending the Hoogly to twenty-one miles north of Calcutta. There, on the right bank of the broad river, is a strip of land two miles in length by one in breadth, where some sixty persons live in European style, with some thousands of Bengalese, who live in Indian fashion; it is the French colony.

The Indian _employés_ cry with all {394} their might "Chan'nagore! Chan'nagore!" Let us get down, and out of the terminus, and when we have crossed that ditch, ten paces before us, we shall be in France. As the centre of the European habitations is a quarter of an hour's walk from this point, we throw ourselves here into a four-seated carriage, and thread our way through roads wretchedly out of repair, at the risk of upsetting an hundred times, or of getting sea-sick by the way. I have often passed that place in company with Frenchmen; we endeavored to feel an impression, by humming

"Vera les rives de France," etc. [Footnote 56]

[Footnote 56: "Toward the shores of France," etc.]

One day when I was making ready to brave those perilous roads in company with two Irishmen, there came into our carriage a large gentleman, whose weight would have been formidable to us, had I not managed to balance his pounds by my kilogrammes. [Footnote 57] By his appearance I took him for a _Briton_, and, therefore, took no pains to enter into conversation. But after a little, one of my Irishmen, annoyed by the jolting of the carriage, said to me in English: "Faith! these Frenchmen needn't boast of the way they keep these roads of theirs." At this remark, you should have seen my stout gentleman leap, and with a menacing air reply to my interlocutor: "I warn you to say nothing here against the French. I am a Frenchman."

[Footnote 57: A kilogramme is equal to 2 lb. 3 oz. and 4 drms.]

This was said in English. I had not yet opened my mouth. I thought I would appease my irascible fat man by speaking to him in his own tongue. "Come, come," said I, "no one here has any intention of laughing at the French." My man instantly drew in his horns, stammering three or four syllables which I could not understand. "Magical effect of the mother tongue!" thought I; and ten yards further on, in order to perfect a good understanding between us, I began again to address him in French on any subject that presented itself. He looked at me with mouth and eyes open. Supposing that he had not heard what I said, I repeated it. He was then forced to confess that he did not know a word of French; that he was an Irishman, an old soldier. In short, he was an original, well known in the country by his eccentricity, and styling himself _the hero of 132 fights_. Now retired from the service, he is writing his exploits in a little diary full of fun and humor. He detests England, loves France in general, and attacks all Frenchmen in particular. Once at his ease, after his candid confession, he took to chatting, and talked so much and so well that we forgot the jolting of the carriage, and even the lofty and magnificent trees that, fringe the road.

After some winding about, and after passing a great number of Indian huts, and meeting hundreds of Hindoos loaded each with a great pitcher of water, here we are at last in a street. _Rue de Paris_, if you please: long and dirty, and ill aired; nothing remarkable; let us pass on. _Rue Neuve,_in ruins. _Rue des Grands Escaliers_, so narrow that the slightest staircase before a door would block it up completely. Let us go on, turn to the left, and here we are at the river side. Here all is large and wide--quay, river, houses, gardens. Without stopping now, let us go on immediately to the end of the quay, where we shall rest and refresh ourselves in a friendly house. It deserves that name in three ways, for, 1st, it was formerly the house of God, an ancient chapel of the Franciscans. An old plank yet to be seen there still bears the following inscription in French, nowise remarkable for good orthography: "_This church is dedicated to St. Francis of Assissium._" 2nd, It belongs to the venerable pastor, Father Chéroutre, who is now our neighbor at Bailloul. And, 3rd, It is occupied by M. Moyne of Lyons, one {395} of our old pupils, of whom I have already spoken to you. He stands on the threshold, and receives us with open arms.

The Franciscans were formerly pastors at Chandernagor; this chapel served as parish church; their convent is now converted into a hotel. From one of its windows there is a magnificent and extensive view, thanks to the river and the level character of the ground. That square tower to the left is the guard-house; for there is here a French army, composed of thirty Indians, commanded by a European lieutenant. They pretend, but erroneously, that these thirty soldiers have but twenty uniforms amongst them, and that often, when the guard is relieved, the new comers enter, not only into the functions, but also into the clothes, of their comrades. It is a calumny of "perfidious Albion;" my information is certain. I have it from the general-in-chief. Close by is the police station. With their white tunics, their red pantaloons, these Indian policemen have very much the look of altar-boys. This fine house to the left is the house of the administrator, or, as he is styled by courtesy, the governor. Let us go in. We shall see this governor, a fat little man, born in the colonies. He will speak a little on everything, but especially on honor and the happiness, to him so rare, of receiving a visit from a man of learning. It is very unlucky that his lady has the influenza at this moment; for she is an astronomer, and had ever so many questions to ask me whatever day I should have accepted their invitation. Another time will do as well. The governor himself is a horticulturist; he has his garden kept in perfect order by Indian convicts, who drag the cannon ball along his walks. [Footnote 58]

[Footnote 58: A military punishment.--TRANS. ]

The sun is setting; let us go home. We shall see in the streets of Calcutta what is seen there every evening; dogs, fireworks, and marriages.

The Bengal dog is a wretched and cowardly animal, long muzzled, red-haired; he barks little, but howls incessantly. Be very sure that he will assail us persistently in the lanes, as we pass now in the evening, distance being our only security against him. There are also in the country, and even in the city, a great number of _paria_ dogs, that prowl around, especially by night; a species of wild beasts; not very dangerous, however, because of their cowardice. It is said that dogs of European race gradually degenerate here.

Those rockets that you see going up from all points of the horizon are a daily amusement in which the Bengalese take much delight. There is scarcely ever a fire-work worth seeing; but there is fire, smoke, and crackers, and that suffices. Sometimes they send up little paper balloons, with a ball of lighted camphor, which burns a good quarter of an hour.

But look yonder: is not that a fire? A bright light flashes on the tree-tops and on the European houses. No, it is not a fire; it is a marriage. The procession is turning the comer of the street; a score of Indians carry each on his head a plank, on which some fifty candles are burning; others carry resinous wood burning on the top of a long pole; in the centre of the procession trumpets, drums, large and small, pots and saucepans, produce a frightful din, each musician having no other rule than that of making the greatest possible noise. Behind the orchestra come one or two open palanquins containing the brides, around whom "blue lights" are lit from time to time. I defy you to form any correct idea of this _cortège_, and especially of the music. They go about thus from street to street for several hours; then they will eat rice to satiety, gorge themselves with Indian pastry, and to-morrow will not have a single sou. We see that from our terrace several times in the week, and, at certain seasons, every day.

{396}

If I am not mistaken, I have said nothing yet of the character of these poor Indians. In this respect some reserve is necessary. I hear it said that there is very little resemblance between Bengal, Maduras, the Bombay territory, the Punjaub, etc. As for the Bengalese, all agree in regarding them as the most degraded; they are effeminate, idle, and cowardly by temperament; liars and thieves by education. They often dispute amongst themselves, but never fight. That cowardice encourages many Englishmen, who beat them at random when they have nothing else to do. My idea is that, unless miracles of grace be wrought for them, it is scarcely possible to make true Christians of these poor people. The only means of establishing Christianity amongst the race would be to buy their children, and bring them up, away from all contact with the others. There are Christians amongst them, who are oftenest found as cooks or _kansama_ amongst the Europeans; but they know not the first rudiments of their religion, go to church only on Good Friday and All Souls' Day, and are generally admitted to be worse than the pagan servants.

Our day is now ended. If you are fatigued, come and rest yourself on the college roof, constructed as a platform, like those of all the other houses in the country. There, evening and morning, but only then, the heat is bearable. I sometimes go and sit there to think of my friends. I look back into the past, forget the present, and, as I do everywhere else, laugh at what worldlings call _the future_. The future is heaven. It seems to me that I am nearer to it here than in Europe. May God grant us grace to gain it one day or another!

T. CARBONNNELLE.

THE ROUND OF THE WATERS.

BY ROBT. W. WEIR

"All thy works praise thee, O Lord."

Up, up on the mountains, high up near the sky. Where the earth gathers moisture from clouds passing by; Where the first drops of rain patter down full of glee, As they join hand in hand on their way to the sea;

There the rills, like young children, go prattling along. Full of life, full of joy, full of motion and song; And, swelling the brooks, with glad voices they raise, To him who made all things, their tribute of praise.

Then, as they dance onward, half hidden in spray, Like bands of young nymphs dress'd in bridal array, With shouts of wild laughter they leap the deep linn. Where the broad flowing river at once takes them in.

Now calm their rude mirth as they matronly glide, Bearing onward rich freight to the blue briny tide. Where the mist of the mountains once more joins the sea With its incense, O Lord, ever heaving to thee.

{397}

Translated from the German

THE BIBLE; OR, CHRISTMAS EVE,

Christmas Eve had come. The bells of the high towers in majestic and solemn tones were reminding the faithful that the advent of the Lord was near. Here and there through the gathering darkness already glimmered a solitary taper, casting a feeble light upon the streets, where a throng of people, large and small, young and old, were moving to and fro with joyful activity, impatiently awaiting the hour when the treasures and splendor of the Christmas market should be opened to them. Good mothers were engaged in quietly and secretly baking the cakes and adorning the Christmas-tree for the children, and shared beforehand in the delights and surprises of the little ones, while others, who had perhaps chosen the best part, were preparing themselves in still devotion and pious meditation for the great festival.

The young student of theology, Ernest Kuhn, was sitting in his little upper chamber, watching, with eyes full of deep affection and sympathy, his dear mother, who, after a confinement to her bed of several weeks, had been refreshed for the first time by a peaceful sleep. His countenance was lighted up with an expression of great interior joy, for on this day the physician had announced to him that his mother had safely passed through a perilous crisis, and that, with care, a speedy recovery might be expected.

But he turned his eyes from his dear mother and looked upon the bare walls, which gave a speaking proof of the poverty of the inmates, then a cloud of sadness passed over his countenance, his young breast heaved heavily, as if oppressed by a weight of sorrow. The house-rent was due, the fire-wood was reduced to a few sticks, hardly enough to last two days, his little sister needed a new dress, his mother good strengthening nourishment, the apothecary's bill was to be paid, and where were the means to be found?

Heavily and slowly he rose from his seat, as if standing would lighten his burdens, and cast his eyes thoughtfully around the apartment. "The tables and chairs," he said to himself in an under-tone, "are gone not to come back, the pictures too are sold, and the clock also; and now it is your turn, O my books! It cannot be helped; I have spared you for a long, long time." At these words he stood before the book-case and gazed on the few but good books by which he had so often been instructed and counselled, and which had remained with him in joy and in sorrow. Each of them was dear to him, associated with some dear remembrance either of joy or sorrow. Sad and wavering, he looked at them again and again, as if he could never part from them. At last, after long hesitation, he took down from the shelf a large bound volume; it was a Bible adorned with beautiful copper-plate engravings. "I can best spare you," he said sadly, "for I have two more in Greek and in Latin; I shall meet with the most ready sale and get the most money for you. My grandfather who is in heaven will forgive me this; I have other remembrances of him; Agnes will grieve and weep greatly for the beautiful Bible, but I think I can easily quiet her, and I can also give my mother a satisfactory explanation."

{398}

He cast a sorrowful glance at the beautiful book which had afforded him so much enjoyment in his boyhood, and which was so much dearer to him as a memorial of his pious grandfather, long since dead, whom he held in great veneration. Then he thought of earlier and better times, of the present, so full of trouble, and of the blessed future, and his heart was heavy and his youthful breast heaved painfully.

Then his eye fell as if by chance upon the open Bible, and he read: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

And he humbly kissed the consoling words, and a tear of sorrow but also of the firmest trust flowed down his cheek, and he turned his true and weeping eyes to heaven as if he would ask pardon of his Father for his faint-heartedness. He remembered how God had heard his earnest prayer, and restored his dear mother, how often he had helped him, and his heart became lighter, and hope once more began to dawn upon him.

II.

Suddenly the door opened, and his little sister Agnes, a child seven years old, ran in, joyfully holding up her little writing-book. "Look here, dear Ernest," she eagerly exclaimed, "only see how beautifully I have written to-day! That great A is very nice." "Softly, softly, you noisy little girl," said her brother, putting his hand over her mouth; "you will wake up mother!" Agnes hastened on tip-toe to her mother's bedside, softly kissed her white hand, and said beseechingly, as she watched her slumber, "Do not scold, dear brother, mother is sleeping so good!"

Ernest smiled and told her that while he attended to some necessary business she must stay with their mother, and be very quiet and silent that she might not wake her; but that if she did awake she was to give her the warm broth upon the stove, and that the bread and butter for herself was on the window ledge. "Now be very quiet," he added, "for you know what the doctor said."

The little girl assured him that he might trust her, but, added she, coaxingly, "When you come back, may I not go with dame Margaret to the Christmas market?" "That you shall," promised her brother. But Agnes clung to him, and full of pious simplicity, whispered in his ear: "If you meet the Christ-child in the street, tell him he must not forget me, but must look in here."

The brother embraced the little girl with a sad smile, and casting an affectionate glance upon his mother, left the room.

III.

Ernest had only to turn the corner of the little street to find the shop of Höss, the antiquary, who had before bought many a book of him, and to whom he intended to offer the Bible. With a beating heart (for Höss was a rough, purse-proud man) Ernest entered the shop, which was crowded with books, maps, and pictures. He greeted the antiquary, who was busy writing, in a friendly manner, but there was a pretty long pause before he took any notice of him.

"Ah! it is you, Master Studious," he exclaimed, raising his cap in a stately manner, "what good thing brings you to me?"

"Something beautiful and good indeed," replied Ernest "See here, you must buy this of me."

"Always buying," said the antiquary; "when will you begin to buy of me? I don't like to deal with you. Look at your pictures, that I bought of you three weeks ago, and for which I paid more than they were worth on account of your destitute condition; no one will buy them of me; my good nature played me a trick that time. It shall not happen again, Master Studious."

"How can you say this, Mr. Höss?" {399} replied Ernest, greatly disgusted; "did you not have them for a trifle, and was not I present eight days since when you refused double of what you gave for them, when it was offered you?"

"You heard wrong," replied the antiquary, displeased and ashamed, "let me see your articles."

With evident pleasure he turned over the leaves of the book, and looked at the beautiful and delicately executed engravings.

"Not so bad," thought he. "It is a pity that I have already more than enough of such trash, as you can see for yourself if you will look at those shelves. I will take it, however, on account of my regard for you and your mother, if you don't set your mark too high."

"Only give me," begged Ernest, "the fourth part of what it first cost."

"And what was that?"

"Six florins, Mr. Hoss."

"You are sharp indeed, young master! Six florins in these hard times! Such are our young people now-a-days," grumbled the old man.

"Only look at the beautiful pictures, so skilfully and clearly engraved; I am sure it would bring you double and treble the price you give for it."

"What do you know of all this, Master Studious? I will give you three florins and not a penny more, and this only out of pure kindness."

"If you have that, give me more," earnestly pleaded the young man; "think of my mother's sickness and our poverty."

"Is it my fault that your mother is poor and sick?" sneered the miser; "why have you not made yourself rich if poverty is so disagreeable to you? Take your book, or the three florins, whichever you please. Master Studious; only be quick, for I have something else to do beside listening to your whining."

It was as if a two-edged sword had pierced the heart of the deeply distressed young man. He suddenly seized the book; then he thought of his sick mother, and their extreme need at home, and he strongly checked the rising words of his just anger. "Take the book, then," he said, with a look and tone in which the indignation of his deeply wounded spirit spoke forth--"take it, but you have not dealt with me as a Christian should deal with a Christian; may God be more merciful to you in your dying hour than you are now to me." And with these words he hastened from the shop, and he heard a scornful laugh behind him.

IV.

He went forth into the street with burning sorrow rankling in his wounded breast. The December air blew sharp and cold over his glowing cheeks--he felt it not. People were talking loud and merrily as they moved up and down the lighted streets, but he heard them not. Sunk in despondency, he stood motionless in the night air, leaning against the corner of a house. Never before had he been so wretched. His spirit was stirred by an indescribable feeling of bitterness, which threatened to destroy the happiness of his life.

In mild solemn tones the bells sounded anew, and awakened in his soul the remembrance of him who brought, and is ever bringing to us all, redemption, help, and consolation; he called to mind the words of Christ which he a short time before had read, and which had so wonderfully cheered him; he thought of the resolution he had this day formed, of his dear mother, of whose entire recovery he had now so lively a hope. Then he took courage, walked down the street, and went to the shop of the apothecary Kremer.

V.

The apothecary, a kind, cordial-hearted man, greeted Ernest in a friendly way as he entered with a "God be with you. Master Theologus. You want the medicine for your {400} mother? Here it is; and how is the good woman?"

"Thanks be to God," replied Ernest joyfully, "she is out of danger; but dear Herr Kremer," added he in an under-tone, '"I cannot pay you this time; oh! be so good as to bear with me a little longer."

"Have I ever asked anything of you?" said the apothecary; "do not trouble yourself. I am right glad that your mother is better; I knew she would recover. But you yourself look so pale and weak! what has happened to you?"

Then Ernest, encouraged by the kindness of the cordial-hearted man, related to him how scornfully and hardly the antiquary had dealt with him.

"Yes, yes," said the apothecary angrily, "that is the way with this covetous man; I have known him from his youth; it was his pleasure as a schoolboy to torment us, and, whenever he could, to cheat us. But do not let this disturb you; sit down at the table out yonder near the stove," he continued kindly; "after this vexation a drop of wine will not harm you." Saying this he opened a cupboard, took down a bottle of wine and a tart, and with good-natured haste filled the glass.

Ernest hardly knew what all this meant. "Oh, sir," he exclaimed, greatly surprised, "how have I merited such great kindness?"

"You are a brave son, and have acted honorably toward your mother, and for that I esteem you highly; so drink, drink!" insisted the kind old man.

"I wish my mother was here in my place," said the good son; "the wine would do her good."

"Do not let that trouble you," answered the apothecary, deeply moved; "your mother shall not be forgotten, and your little sister shall not go without her share; and now eat and drink to your heart's desire."

The kindness of the cordial-hearted old man made Ernest's meal a happy one; new life flamed through his veins with the wine, his cares began to lessen, and he felt himself wonderfully refreshed. For a long time he had not been so light-hearted.

Meanwhile the old man, whose joy was heartfelt at seeing how much the young student relished his little repast, had taken down a second bottle of wine from the cupboard, and had made up a parcel of bonbons and candy for his little sister.

"The wine," said he to Ernest, "is for your mother, and this parcel for your little sister."

"How can I repay you for all your kindness to us?" asked Ernest, overpowered with joy and gratitude.

"Oh! that is of no importance," answered the apothecary laughing; "it is Christmas eve, when the Lord visits all his children, and you have been a very good child."

"May God reward you for the love you have shown us," said Ernest with emotion; "my mother and I have nothing but thanks and prayers to return you."

"Give me the last, dear young man," answered the apothecary, "and invite me to your first. Remember me to your mother, and freely ask me for whatever you need. Farewell."

With a heart full of gratitude Ernest pressed die offered hand of the old man to his heart, took the presents and hastened home.

VI.

Cheered and warmed, refreshed in body and spirit, he entirely forgot the hard-hearted antiquary. He entertained himself as he went along with the pleasing surprise he should give his mother and sister, when they saw the good things he brought them, and raising his eyes to heaven in gratitude he exclaimed, "Father, there are some good men still!" When he reached home he found his mother still asleep, his little sister trying to darn his old socks, but, as yet wholly unpractised in the art of patching, she {401} more than once pricked her little fingers till they bled.

"Is it you, dear brother?" she asked affectionately. "Mother has not waked yet; I have been very good and still."

"For this the little Christ-child has given me something for you," said her brother, as he came toward her smiling; "he sends you his kind greeting, and tells you to study well, never forget to pray, and love him always!"

Agnes quickly opened the parcel, and, surprised and delighted, beheld the bonbons, the sugared almonds, and the gingerbread. A flush of joy lighted up her pretty features, and for some time she could not find words to speak.

"Oh, brother, only see how good the Christ-child is! Yes, yes, I will indeed love him, and study and pray hard, that our Heavenly Father and the good infant Jesus may be pleased with me."

Her brother smiled, moved by her pious joy, but just at this moment dame Margaret, their good old neighbor, came in, who had shown every kindness and attention to Ernest's mother during her illness. With joy he told her the happy news of her recovery; the delighted little Agnes spread out her sugar-plums and gingerbread, and cordially invited her to take some. But Margaret thought her teeth were not good enough. "But come," said she, "when you are ready we will go to the Christmas market."

"May I go, brother?" asked Agnes. "Yes, indeed you may, only come home in time," said he; '"and be so good, dame Margaret, as to keep watch upon the little girl."

"Have no fear, Master Ernest," she replied, "for you know I love her as if she were my own child."

VII.

Dame Margaret took her way along the street leading to the Christmas market--holding the Agnes by hand, who every now and then urged her to make greater haste. From the deep blue sky the stars poured down their pale silver light upon the dazzling fresh-fallen snow. Crowds of people were hurrying up and down, talking merrily, or, divided into groups, stood gazing eagerly and curiously upon the bright display of the fair. Bright lights were burning in the stands and shops of the tradesmen, displaying all their treasures to the astonished eye. Here peeped out the pleasant, friendly faces of dolls with waxen heads, dressed after the newest fashion in little hoods or Florence hats, while others stood more retired, like ladies and gentlemen, splendidly wrapped in cloaks and furs, as if they feared the cold. A varied medley of hussars in rich embroidered uniform hung there; huntsmen with, rifle and pouch, chimney-sweeps and Tyrolese, hermits and friars, Greeks near their mortal enemies the Turks, and Moors, standing peacefully side by side. The plashing fish swam round in a glass panel, whilst close by stood a dark oak-wood case, in which leaden bears and stags were seized by hounds and hunters of the same metal. Elsewhere was a whole regiment of bearded grenadiers, arranged in stiff array, with Turkish music. A frightful fortress, with paper walls and wooden cannon, frowned next a kitchen where was to be seen the pretty sight of cook, hearth, pans, spits, plates, etc. Here sweetmeats, choice pastry, tarts, chocolate, almonds, gingerbread, etc., excited in many a dainty palate long desire and hard temptation. Golden apples gleamed forth from dark leaves, nuts rattled in silver bowls, while in another place low cribs, with water, mountain, and valley, herds and herdsmen, with angels in the air and on the earth, sweetly represented the new-born child lying in the cradle, carefully watched by Mary and Joseph.

Little Agnes gazed with delighted eyes upon all this splendor, and often laid her tender hand upon her youthful breast, as if to repress its longings {402} and sounds escaped her lips which only too plainly expressed the joy of her heart.

But at length dame Margaret thought it was time to go home. "Do let us first go to find Herr Höss," begged Agnes, "his crib is always the prettiest," and laughing good-naturedly she drew the obliging Margaret along with her to the antiquary. They found him occupied in attending upon an elderly lady. Did Agnes see aright? Did her eyes deceive her? "Yes, yes," she suddenly exclaimed in great distress, "it is my Bible, my dear picture-book!" and in a moment she released herself from Margaret and ran up to the lady.

"Oh, dear lady," cried she, eagerly, "do not buy it; you cannot, you must not buy it; that book belongs to me!" The lady looked at the little girl in great astonishment.

"What are you dreaming of, you silly little thing?" grumbled the antiquary, vexed at the unwelcome interruption. "It is mine; I bought it, and at a high price."

"That cannot be, dear sir," earnestly protested the little girl. "I beg you give me back my picture-book; I will give you all the money I have," and saying this she drew out her little purse, which contained, alas! only four pennies, her little savings. "Take it," said she, "only give me my picture-book."

"Oh! you little sharper," said the antiquary jeeringly, "that would be a great profit; I have paid more florins for it than you have pennies."

"I beg you, for heaven's sake," sobbed Agnes, with folded hands and tears streaming from her blue eyes. "I tell you, upon my honor, it belongs to me; only see, there is my name on the title-page, which my brother wrote there in Latin letters."

The lady turned the leaf over and read aloud, "Frederic Schein!"

"Frederic Schein?" exclaimed suddenly a loud voice, with evident emotion, and a slender, manly figure wrapped in a cloak, from beneath which glistened a richly embroidered huntsman's uniform, pressed through the circle which curiosity had formed around Agnes and the antiquary. "Frederic Schein?" again he exclaimed, and looked greatly agitated upon the book. "Permit me, noble lady?" he asked, and hastily seized the offered Bible. "Good heavens! my suspicions were right, it is my father's Bible!" and suddenly turning to the little girl: "What is thy family and baptismal name?"

"Agnes Kuhn," answered Agnes, greatly terrified.

"Is your mother's name Sophia?" he asked urgently and eagerly.

"Yes," answered the child, "my mother's name is Sophia, and my brother's Ernest."

"Thanks be to God, a thousand thanks!" fervently exclaimed the tall man, with deep emotion, and ardently pressed Agnes to his heart. "Agnes," he cried, "I am your uncle; your mother is my sister. Oh! take me to her."

Agnes, looking at him with astonishment, asked: "Are you my uncle Frank, of whom my mother has so often told me? Oh! if you are my uncle Frank," said she coaxingly, "do buy the Bible for me! and then I will take you to my mother." Her uncle kissed the little girl, and gave her the book. "I will take the book, sir," said he, "at any price;" and the antiquary made him a very low bow.

When the bargain was concluded, the tall huntsman moved quickly through the circle of astonished spectators, leading the little Agnes, who joyfully pressed the precious picture-book to her heart. Margaret followed, lost in astonishment.

VIII.

While these things were taking place at the fair, and Agnes unexpectedly had found the Bible and her uncle, Ernest sat by the bedside of his mother, enjoying her slumber, which was to him the sweet pledge of {403} her recovery. Before him lay open the histories of Holy Writ, and with deep emotion he was reading what the Lord in his infinite love and mercy had done for sinful men, and how he had sent them his only begotten Son to redeem and console them, whose birth-day was now to be joyfully celebrated throughout Christendom.

He had just looked at the fire in the stove, and poured fresh oil into the expiring lamp, when his mother awoke, and cast a kind, affectionate glance upon her good son.

"Oh, mother," cried he joyfully, "what a good sleep you have had; you have been asleep seven whole hours!"

"Yes, I have slept soundly," answered she, "and find myself greatly strengthened. But what has become of Agnes?"

"I let her go with dame Margaret to the Christmas fair; it is almost time for her to come back."

"Ah! it grieves me to the heart," sighed his mother, "that I cannot give you both a little Christmas gift, as I used to do."

"Don't be distressed on that account, dear mother," said Ernest, soothingly; "you are out of danger, and that is the most beautiful and best Christmas gift that could be bestowed on us. But the Christ-child has not forgotten us," and he handed his mother the bottle of wine and the biscuit.

"Where in all the world did this come from?" asked his astonished mother.

Ernest now related how he had sold the Bible to the antiquary (whose unkind treatment he concealed from his mother lest it should disturb her) for three florins, and how he had called on the apothecary, who had so hospitably received him, so kindly remembered his mother and little sister, and had promised not only a larger credit, but every kind of aid.

His mother could not find words to praise and thank their benefactor.

When Ernest wrapped up the biscuit again as his mother directed, he remarked upon the cover the hand-writing and name of the apothecary, and had the curiosity to open the whole paper.

Who can describe his surprise and emotion when he found the wrapper was a receipt in full, signed by the apothecary, for the eight florins and thirty pence due to him for medicines delivered.

"God bless our noble benefactor!" prayed his mother with folded hands.

But Ernest shouted, "Mother, we are now relieved of a great care!"

IX.

Dame Margaret just then entered with an unusually quick step, and with a countenance evidently announcing good tidings, but without little Agnes.

"Where have you left my Agnes?" inquired the mother anxiously.

"Do not trouble yourself about her; she will soon come, and not alone either. She is bringing an old acquaintance of yours with her!"

"An old, dear acquaintance?"

"Yes, and from your native place, too."

"From my native place?" asked the mother eagerly.

"He declares that he is very nearly related to you; and he does look very much like you."

"How does he look?" asked the mother urgently.

"He is tall and slender, with black eyes and black hair, and a scar over his brow; he looks to me like a huntsman."

"Great God! is it possible? can it be my brother?"

"Yes, it is he," cried the huntsman, as he entered and offered his hand to his astonished sister. From the arms of his sister he hastened to embrace his manly nephew, while the joyful Agnes, with the Bible in her arms, now ran up to her mother, now {404} to her uncle, and then to her brother, who beheld the book with astonishment, and began faintly to suspect what happened.

When the first tempest of delight had subsided, and given place to a more quiet though not less deep joy, question crowded upon question, and answer upon answer.

The uncle first related how after the marriage of his sister he had entered into the service of the Count of Maxenstein as upper game-keeper; how he had often tried to obtain intelligence of his dear sister; twice had taken a journey himself to their native place, and could learn nothing of her; how he had searched all the newspapers; and at length, when all means and efforts had failed, how be sorrowfully gave up the hope of ever seeing her again. Then he told her how he had come to this place on business for the count, his master; had visited the Christmas fair and the stall of the antiquary, and had there unexpectedly found his father's Bible and Agnes, and through them his sister and nephew.

Then affectionately clasping Ernest by the hand he begged his sister to relate her history.

"My history," she replied, "is short, and yet varied with many sorrows that the Lord has laid upon me. You knew that my husband left his native place to seek a better living in Eichstadt. But in this he was deceived. Then, in spite of my entreaties, he entered the French service as surgeon, and came to Saarlouis, where his regiment lay in garrison. Soon after his arrival a malignant fever broke out among the soldiers, which carried away great numbers, and among them my husband. God give him his kingdom," said she drying her tears. "His death was the more dreadful for me, because I was alone in a foreign land without friends or help, and had but just risen from my bed after the birth of Agnes. In my need I wrote several letters to you and to our relatives at Settenberg, but received no answer. At first I thought this was caused by irregularities of the post-route, which was everywhere embarrassed by the disturbances of the war; but I soon learned, to my great sorrow, that our Settenberg had been sacked and burned by the French. Imagine, my dear brother, my condition! What a happiness for me that, some months after the death of my husband, an old aunt of his made me the offer to go to her, and she would support me as well as she was able. I was not terrified by the length of the way, and received from her a cordial welcome. But, alas! this happiness was not long to last. My good aunt died, leaving me her heir, but she had other relations who disputed the will, and, after a law-suit of three years' continuance, an agreement was made by which most of the property fell into the hands of the judges and lawyers. Hardly a fourth part of it remained after the costs were paid. I had nothing now but care and trouble; but I ever found a firm support in my dear Ernest. May God reward him! But now, dear brother, now, if I only have you, again all care will be over." And the good woman, deeply affected, pressed his hand.

"Oh, my dear ones!" cried he, after listening to his sister's narrative with lively sympathy, "let us all thank our Heavenly Father that he has to-day brought us all together again, in so wonderful a manner, by means of this book; for I had already determined to leave this place in the morning."

Ernest related how hard it had been for him to part with the precious book, how he had been encouraged by the passage in Matthew, what mean treatment he had met with from the antiquary, and how he had almost made up his mind to take back the book with him.

Little Agnes, on her side, thought it had been no very easy matter to bring dame Margaret to the antiquary, and she had gone through trouble and {405} terror enough "until the Christ-child sent my uncle."

He pressed the little one to his heart, but she seized him fast by the hand, and coaxingly begging him, said: "Now uncle, you never will go away; you will stay with us?"

"How could I leave you so soon, my dear ones, just as I have found you again? No, no, we will never separate; we will always remain together," cried the uncle. "You must go with me to Peinegg, sister, where I am head-forester; it is a beautiful and splendid place there, and I have everything in abundance."

"With you and my children I would go to the ends of the earth," said she cheerfully.

Then Ernest, upon a hint from his mother, brought out the bottle of wine and the biscuit, and offered them to his uncle. A slight meal, prepared in haste by dame Margaret, seasoned with cheerful conversation, enlivened the evening, to which Ernest and his mother had looked forward only a few hours before with such pain and anxiety. Joy and deep satisfaction lighted every countenance, but the mother said with deep feeling: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

"Amen," responded the uncle, devoutly raising his eyes to heaven. Ernest and Agnes wept tears of joy and gratitude.

X.

It was not long before their mother was entirely recovered and accompanied her beloved brother to Peinegg, where he arranged everything in a manner to make her life agreeable. It may easily be imagined that the Bible was not forgotten. Every Christmas evening was passed with far more festivity and joy than the evening which united again the long separated. At the end of two years Ernest celebrated his first mass at Peinegg. The good apothecary was invited to be present, and esteemed this day as the happiest of his life. Sixteen years after, Ernest was established as parish priest at Peinegg, where he still exercises his holy office with extraordinary zeal.

From The Month.

THOUGHTS ON ST. GERTRUDE.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

When a voice from the thirteenth century comes to us amid the din of the nineteenth, it is difficult for those interested in the cause of human progress not to feel their attention strongly challenged. Such a voice appeals to us in a work which has now first appeared in an English version. [Footnote 59]

[Footnote 59: "The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, Virgin and Abbess." By a Religious of the Order of Poor Clares.]

We owe it to a religious of the order of Poor Clares; a daughter of St. Francis thus paying to St. Benedict a portion of that debt which all the religious orders of the West owe to their great patriarch. The book possesses a profound interest, and that of a character wholly apart from polemics. The thirteenth century, the noblest of those included in the "ages of faith," was a troubled time; but high as the contentions of rival princes and feudal chiefs swelled, we have here a proof that

"Birds of calm sat brooding on the charmèd wave."

Not less quieting is the influence of {406} such records in our own time. They make their way--music being more penetrating than mere sound--amid the storm of industrialism and its million wheels. Controversialists may here forget their strifes, and listen to the annals of that interior and spiritual life which is built up in peace and without the sound of the builder's hammer, much less of sword or axe. There is here no necessary or direct contest between rival forms of belief. Monasteries have been pulled down and sold in Catholic as well as in Protestant countries; and in the latter also are to be found men whose highest aspiration is to rebuild them, and restore the calm strength and sacred labors which they once protected. Such books are not so much a protest against any age as the assertion of those great and universal principles of truth and peace which can alone enable each successive age to correct its errors, supply its defects, and turn its special opportunities to account. It is not in a literary point of view that they interest us chiefly, although they include not a little which reminds us of Dante, and reveal to us one of the chief sources from which the great Christian poet drew his inspiration. Their interest is mainly human. They show us what the human being can reach, and by what personal influences, never more potent than when their touch is softest, society, in its rougher no less than in its milder periods, is capable of being moulded.

The "Revelations of St. Gertrude" were first translated into Latin, as is affirmed, by Lamberto Luscorino in 1390. This work was, however, apparently never published; and the first Latin version by which they became generally known was that put forth under the name of "_Insinuationes Divinae Pietatis_," by Lanspergius, who wrote at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. The work has appeared in several of the modern languages; but the French translation, by which it has hitherto been chiefly known among us, has many inaccuracies. The present English translation has been carefully made from the Latin of Lanspergius and the original is frequently quoted in the foot-notes. The "_Insinuationes_" consist of five books. Of these the second only came from the hand of the saint, the rest being compiled by a religious of her monastery, partly from personal knowledge and partly from the papers of St. Gertrude. Two works by the saint, her "Prayers" and her "Exercises," have lately appeared in an English version.

St. Gertrude was born at Eisleben, in the county of Mansfield, on the 6th of January, 1263, just sixty-nine years after the birth of St. Clare, the great Italian saint from whose convent at Assisi so many others had already sprung in all parts of Europe, and whose name had already become a living power in Germany and Poland, as well as in the sunny south. [Footnote 60] St. Gertrude was descended from an illustrious house, that of the Counts of Lackenborn. When but five years old she exchanged her paternal home for the Benedictine Abbey of Rodersdorf, where she was soon after joined by her sister, afterward the far-famed St. Mechtilde. When about twenty-six she first began to be visited by those visions which never afterward ceased for any considerable time. At thirty she was chosen abbess; and for forty years she ruled a sisterhood whom she loved as her children. The year after she became abbess she removed with her charge to another but neighboring convent, that of Heldelfs. No other change took place in her outward lot. Her life lay within. As her present biographer remarks, "she lived at home with her Spouse."

[Footnote 60: An interesting life of this saint and of her earlier companions has lately been published in English: "St. Clare, St. Colette, and the Poor Clares: by a Religions of the Order of Poor Clares." J. F. Fowler, Dublin.]

The visions of St. Gertrude are an endless parable of spiritual truths, as well as a record of wonderful graces. From the days when our divine Lord himself taught from the hillside and {407} the anchored ship, it has been largely through parables that divine lore has been communicated to man. Religious and symbolic art is a parable of truths that can only be expressed in types. The legends through which the earlier ages continue to swell the feebler veins of later times with the pure freshness of the Church's youth are for the most part facts which buried themselves deep in human sympathies and recollections, because in them the particular shadowed forth the universal. It is the same thing in philosophy itself; and that _Philosophia Prima_ which, as Bacon tells us, discerns a common law in things as remote as sounds are from colors, and thus traces the "same footsteps of nature" in the most widely separated regions of her domain, finds constantly in the visible and familiar a parable of the invisible and unknown. The very essence of poetry also consists in this, that not only in its metaphors and figures, but in its whole spirit, it is a parable, imparting to material objects at once their most beautiful expression and that one which reveals their spiritual meaning. So long as the imagination is a part of human intellect, it must have a place in all that interprets between the natural and the spiritual worlds.

The following characteristic passage, while it shows that St. Gertrude made no confusion between allegory and vision, yet suggests to us that so poetical a mind might, under peculiar circumstances, be more easily favored with visions than another:

"Whilst thou didst act so lovingly toward me, and didst not cease to draw my soul from vanity to thyself, it happened on a certain day, between the festival of the resurrection and the ascension, that I went into court before prime, and seated myself near the fountain; and I began to consider the beauty of the place, which charmed me on account of the clear and flowing stream, the verdure of the trees which surrounded it, and the flights of the birds, and particularly of the doves--above all, the sweet calm--apart from all, considering within myself what would make this place most useful to me, I thought it would be the friendship of a wise and intimate companion, who would sweeten my solitude or render it useful to others; when thou, my Lord and my God, who art a torrent of inestimable pleasures, after having inspired me with the first impulse of this desire, thou didst will also to be the end of it; inspiring me with the thought that if by my continual gratitude I return thy graces to thee, as a stream returns to its source; if, increasing in the love of virtue, I put forth, like the trees, the flowers of good works; furthermore, if, despising the things of earth, I fly upward, freely, like the birds, and thus free my senses from the distraction of exterior things, my soul would then be empty, and my heart would be an agreeable abode for thee" (p. 76).

If in this passage we see how the natural yearning for sympathy and companionship may rise into the heavenly aspirations from which mere nature would divert the heart, we find in the following one a type of that compensation which is made to unreserved loyalty. The religion of the incarnation gives back, in a human as well as a divine form, all that human instincts had renounced. "It was on that most sacred night in which the sweet dew of divine grace fell on all the world, and the heavens dropped sweetness, that my soul, exposed like a mystic fleece in the court of the sanctuary, having received in meditation this celestial rain, was prepared to assist at this divine birth, in which a Virgin brought forth a Son, true God and man, even as a star produces its ray. In this night, I say, my soul beheld before it suddenly a delicate child, but just born, in whom were concealed the greatest gifts of perfection. I imagined that I received this precious deposit in my bosom" (p. 85). One of the chief tests as to the divine origin of visions consists in their tending toward humility; for those {408} which come from a human or worse than human source tend to pride. The humility of St. Gertrude was profound as the purity of which humility is the guardian was spotless. "One day, after I had washed my hands, and was standing at the table with the community, perplexed in mind, considering the brightness of the sun, which was in its full strength, I said within myself, 'If the Lord who has created the sun, and whose beauty is said to be the admiration of the sun and moon; if he who is a consuming fire is as truly in me as he shows himself frequently before me, how is it possible that my heart continues like ice, and that I lead so evil a life?'" (p. 106).

There can be no stronger argument in favor of the supernatural origin of St. Gertrude's visions than their subjects. The highest of her flights, far from carrying her beyond the limits of sound belief, or substituting the fanciful for the fruitful, but bears her deeper into the heart of the great Christian verities. She soars to heaven to find there, in a resplendent form, the simplest of those truths which are our food upon earth. As the glorified bodies of the blessed will be the same bodies which they wore during their earthly pilgrimage, so the doctrines, "sun-clad," in her "Revelations" are still but the primary articles of the Creed. Her special gift was that of realization: what others admitted, she believed; what others believed, she saw. It was thus that she felt the co-presence of the supernatural with the natural, the kingdom of spirit not to her being a future world, but a wider circle clasping a smaller one. From this feeling followed her intense appreciation of the fact that all earthly things have immediate effect on high. If a prayer is said on earth, she sees the scepter in the hand of the heavenly King blossom with another flower; if a sacrament is worthily received, the glory on his face flashes lightning round all the armies of the blessed. That such things should be seen by us may well seem wonderful; that they should _exist_ can appear strange to no one who realizes the statement, that when a sinner repents there is joy among the angels in heaven.

A vision, from which we learn the belief of one of God's humblest creatures that something was lost to his honor by her compulsory absence from choir, but that he was more than compensated for the loss by the holy patience with which she submitted to illness (p. 180), is not more wonderful than the fact that God's glory should be our constant aim, or that God should have joy in those that love him. The marvel is, that the saint was always believing what we profess to believe. She lived in an everlasting jubilee of divine and human love: it was always to her what a beaming firmament might be to one who for the first time had walked up out of a cave. She was ever seeing in visible types the tokens of a transcendent union between God and man --a deification, so to speak, of man in heaven. Is this more wonderful than the words that bow the foreheads and bend the knees of the faithful, "He was made man?" If such things be true, the wonder is, not that a few saints realize them, living accordingly in contemplation and in acts of love, but that a whole world should stand upon such truths as its sole ground of hope, and yet practically ignore them.

Neither in ordinary Christian literature nor in the ordinary Christian life do we find what might have been anticipated eighteen centuries ago by those who then first received the doctrines of the incarnation and the communion of saints. How many have written as if Christianity were merely a regulative principle, introduced to correct the aberrations of natural instincts! Yet even under the old dispensation the sacred thirst of the creature for the Creator was confessed: "As longeth the hart for the water-springs, so longeth my soul after thee, O Lord." The royal son of the {409} great Psalmist had sang in the Book of Canticles the love of the Creator for the creature. What might not have been expected from Christian times!

How much is not actually found in all those Christian writings the inspiration of which, in the highest sense of the word, is _de fide!_ How supernatural at once and familiar is that divine and human relationship set forth by our Lord in his parables! What closeness of union! what omnipotence of prayer! Some perhaps might say, "If our Lord were visibly on earth as he was during the thirty-three years, then indeed the closeness of intercourse between him and his own would be transcendent." But the exact contrary is the fact. The closest intercourse is in the spirit, and apart from all that is sensual; the sense is a hindrance to it. So long as he was visibly with them, the affection of the apostles themselves for their Lord was too material to be capable of its utmost closeness. Even earthly affections are perfected by absence, and crowned by death. Till they are purified by the immortalizing fire of suffering, sense clings to the best of them more than we know; not by necessity corrupting them, but limiting, dulling, depressing, and depriving them of penetration and buoyancy. While he was with them, the apostles sometimes could not understand their Master's teaching--where to the Christian now it seems plain--and replied to it by the words, "Be it far from thee!" When the feast of Pentecost was come, they loved him so that they did not fear to die for him; but they no longer so loved him as to see in him but the restorer of a visible Israel, and to lament his death. But this Pentecost has continued ever since in the Christian Church! What, then, was to be expected except a fulfilment of the earlier promises: "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;" and as a natural consequence of perfected love, the development of the spiritual sight: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions" (Joel ii. 28)? Such was the condition of that renewed world for which the apostles wrote, and to which they promised the spiritual gift and the hidden life. More plainly than the Jewish king they proclaimed that the union between the Creator and the creature was no dream, but that the servants of sense and pride were dreamers; and, in words like a musical echo from the canticle of Canticles, they affirmed that between Christ and his Church there exists a union, the nearest type of which is to be found in the bridal bond. This was the doctrine that made the world in which St. Gertrude lived. The clear-sighted will see that the charges brought against her and her Church are charges brought against the Bible no less.

But all is not said when it is affirmed that the ascetics, like the apostles, enjoyed a closer union with their Lord in his spirit because he had withdrawn his visible presence from the earth. Sense may separate those whom it seems to unite; but there is a nearness notwithstanding, which has no such paradoxical effect. No one can even approach the subject of the visions of the saints unless he duly appreciates the real presence, not only as a doctrine, but in its practical effects. The saints had a closeness to their Lord denied to the Jewish prophets. He was absent as regards visibility; but he was present in the blessed eucharist. If the absence made the love more reverential, the presence made it more vivid. A large proportion of the visions of the saints were connected with the blessed sacrament. In it the veil was not lifted; but the veiled nearness quickened that love which perfects faith. To sense all remained dark; but the spirit was no longer enthralled by sense, and it conversed with its deliverer.

There are those who could not be happy if they did not believe that the {410} world abounds in persona nobler than themselves. There are others who are affluent but in cavils. The visions of saints must, according to them, be illusory, because they are not demonstrably divine! But are the ordinary graces of Christians distinguished from illusions by demonstration? Is penitence, or humility, or simplicity demonstrable? Do we believe that nothing is an object of prayer, or an occasion for thanksgiving, till it is proved to be such? Those who know that religion has its vast theological region of certainty know also that there exists an outward region in which, though credulity is an evil, yet needless contentiousness is the note of a petty mind. Or the visions must be fabulous, because the caviller does not understand the mode of spiritual operation to which they are referable! But how much do we know as to the separate or joint action of our bodily, intellectual, and moral powers? We believe in results; but we understand little of processes.

The only visions received as _de fide_ are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures. Do we know by what process even these came to exist? Were they external manifestations, such as, if shown to two persons, must have worn for both the same semblance; or may they have had an existence only within the mind of the seer? Is not the real question this--whether or not they had a divine origin; not whether he who sent them worked on the mind from without, or stimulated its action from within? In this case the visions of some event--such as the crucifixion--possessed by two different saints, might not have been the less authentic although different from each other in some particulars. Who can say to what extent habitual grace may not determine the action of the imaginative faculty, as of other faculties, so as to produce vision in one man while it produces prudence or wisdom in another? That grace acts on the mind as well as on the heart no one will deny, since some of the gifts of the Holy Ghost are of an intellectual order, and it is through spiritual discernment that we understand religious truth. It seems, indeed, but natural to suppose that grace should operate on the imagination, and thus counterwork the seductions by which an evil power assails that faculty--a form of temptation often, but not consistently, insisted on by those who scoff at visions. If this be granted, then, as we can neither measure the different degrees in which grace is granted, and increased by co-operation, nor ascertain the intellectual shape and proportions of those to whom it is accorded, who can affect to determine to what extent that grace may not suffice, in some cases, to produce vision, even when accorded mainly for other purposes?

But this is not all. The imagination does not act by itself; the other faculties work along with it; by them also the vision is shaped in part; and as they are developed, directed, and harmonized in a large measure by grace, in the same degree the vision must, even when not miraculous, be affected by a supernatural influence. Once more: God works upon us through his providence as well as through his grace; and the color of our thoughts is constantly the result of some external trifle, apparently accidental. A dream is modified by a momentary sound; and a conclusion may be shaped not without aid from a flying gleam or the shadow of a cloud. Our thoughts are "fearfully and wonderfully made," partly for us and partly by us, and through influences internal and external, which we trace but in part. We can draw a line between the visions which command our acceptance and those which only invite it; but in dealing with the latter class, it seems impossible to determine _à priori_ how far they may or may not be accounted supernatural. It will depend upon their evidence, their consequences, their character, and the character of those to whom they belonged.

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"But," the caviller will object, "unassisted genius has visions of its own." What then? Does that circumstance discredit all visions that claim to be supernatural? Far from it; the visions of genius are elevated by virtue. They are not only purified thus, but edged with insight and enriched with wisdom. Has virtue, then, nothing of the supernatural? or would Dante have "seen" as much if, instead of following her voice, he had followed that of the siren? Again, simplicity of character, and what Holy Scripture calls "the single eye," have a close affinity with genius; for which reason the poor possess many characteristics of it denied to the rich--its honest apprehension of great ideas, for instance, and the inspiration of good sense; its power of realizing the essential and of ignoring the accidental; its freshness in impressions and loyalty in sentiment. But simplicity is a divine gift. Above all, faith communicates often what resembles genius to persons who would otherwise, perhaps, have narrow minds and wavering hearts. It appears, then, that the whole of our moral and spiritual being--which is of course under supernatural influence--admits of such a development as is favorable to genius, and may eminently promote that natural "vision" which belongs to it. Education and life may do the same. What disperses the faculties over a vast field of heterogeneous knowledge saps genius; what gives unity to the being strengthens it. It evaporates in vanity; it is deepened by humility. Society dissipates its energies and chills them; solitude concentrates and heats them. Indulgence relaxes it; severity invigorates it. It is dazzled by the importunate sunshine of the present; its eyes grow wider in the twilight of the past and the future. All the circumstances, exterior and interior, that favor genius are thus indirectly connected with grace or with providence. What, then, is not to be thought in a case like that of St. Gertrude, in which we find, not genius trained on toward sanctity, but sanctity enriched with genius?

It is, however, to be remembered that we in no degree disparage the claim to a divine character possessed by St. Gertrude's visions in admitting that some of them may not claim that character. In one favored with such high gifts, it is not unphilosophical to suppose that the natural qualities, as well as supernatural graces, which lend themselves to visions would probably exist in a marked decree. We have no reason, indeed, to conclude that the Hebrew prophets, to whom visions were sent by God, never possessed, when not thus honored, anything that resembled them--anything beyond what belongs to ordinary men. They, too, may have had unrecorded visions of a lower type, in which the loftiest of their thoughts and deepest of their experiences became visible to them; and if so, they had probably something ancillary to vision in their natural faculties and habits, independently of their supernatural gifts. Among the peculiar natural characteristics of St. Gertrude may be reckoned an extraordinary _literalness_ of mind, strangely ignited with a generalizing power. She had a value for everything as it was, as well as for the idea it included. There was a minuteness as well as a largeness about her. These qualities probably belonged to that pellucid simplicity which kept her all her life like a child. This childlike instinct would of itself have constantly stimulated her colloquies with him who was the end of all her thoughts. In the spiritual as in the intellectual life, the powers seem augmented through this dramatic process, as though fecundated from sources not their own. The thoughts thus originated seem to come half from the mind with which the colloquy is held, and half from native resources.

Let us now pass to another cavil. Devotions such as those of St. Gertrude have sometimes been censured because they are full of love. There {412} is here a strange confusion. Most justly might dislike be felt for devotions in which love is not supplemented by a proportionate veneration. Among the dissenting bodies devotions of this sort are to be found, though we should be sorry rudely to criticise what implies religious affection, and is a recoil from coldness. The fault is not wholly theirs. An age may be so characterized that it cannot be fervent, even in its prayers, without being earthly; but such an age is not religious, and may not judge those that were. In them reverence and love are inseparable. God reigns in man's heart through love and fear. True devotion must, therefore, have at once its fervid affection and its holy awe. Thus much will be conceded. It does not require much penetration to perceive also that the more it habitually possesses of awe, the more it admits of love. If the expression of divine resembles that of human affection, this results by necessity from the poverty of language. Those who object to the use of the word "worship" in connection with God's saints as well as with God (though of course used in a different sense) see nothing to surprise them in the circumstance that the terms "love" and "honor" possess equally this double application. Yet when expressions of real and zealous love are addressed to Almighty God, they are sometimes no less scandalized than when worship (that is, honor and veneration) is addressed in a subordinate sense to the saints! In both cases alike they labor under misconceptions which may easily be removed.

To abolish the resemblance between the expression of divine and human affections, it would be necessary to break down the whole of that glorious constitution of life by which human ties, far from being either arbitrary things or but animal relations improved upon, are types of divine ties. The fatherhood in heaven is admitted to be the antetype of human parentage; and the adoptive brotherhood with Christ, the second Adam, to be the antetype of the natural brotherhood. Can any other principle prevail in the case of that tie which is the fountain whence the other domestic charities flow? Not in the judgment of those who believe, with St. Paul, that marriage is a type of that union which subsists between him and his Church. If there be an analogy between divine and human ties, so there must be between the love that goes along with them and the blessedness that is inseparable from love.

In such cavils as we have referred to there is a latent error that belonged to the earliest times. The caviller assumes that an element of corruption must needs exist in religious affections which betray any analogy to human affections, whereas it is but a Manichean philosophy which affirms the necessary existence of corruption in the human relations themselves. Human relations are not corrupt in themselves either before or since the fall; but human beings are corrupt and weak, and do but little justice to those relations. Praise, both in heaven and on earth, is held out to us in Holy Scripture as one of the rewards of virtue. It may not be the less true, on that account, that few orators have listened to the acclamations that follow a successful speech without some alloy of self-love. Possessions are allowable; it may be, notwithstanding, that few have had "all things" as though they "had nothing." It is not in the human relations that the evil exists (for they retain the brightness left on them by the hand that created them), but in those who abuse them by excessive dependence on them, or by disproportion. It is mainly a question of due subordination. Where the higher part of our being is ruled by the lower, or where the lower works apart from and in contempt of the higher, there evil exists. Where the opposite takes place--where a flame enkindled in heaven feeds first upon the spiritual heights of our being and descends by due degrees through the {413} imagination and the affections--there the whole of our being works in a restored unity, and there proportionately the senses are glorified by the soul. This has ever been the teaching of that Church which encircles the whole of human life with its girdle of sacraments. It has naturally come to be forgotten in those communities which admit the legal substitution of divorce, and polygamy for the sanctity and inviolability of Christian marriage.

That those who do not understand the relation of human to divine ties should not understand the devotions of saints is far from strange. The expressions of the saints are bold because they are innocent. They have no part in that association of ideas which takes refuge in prudery. The language of St. Gertrude is that of one on whose brow the fillet had dropped when she was a child, and who had neither had any experience of earthly love nor wished for any. It is indeed the excellence of the domestic ties that they are indirect channels of communication with heaven. But in her case the communication was direct and immediate--a clear flame rising straight from the altar of perpetual sacrifice. The beautiful ascent of affections from grade to grade along the scale of life had in her been superseded by a yet diviner self-devotion. She had not built upon the things that are lawful within due measure, but upon those counsels the rewards of which are immeasurable. She had reaped immortal love in the fields of mortification. She had begun where others end. She had found the union of peace with joy. Had there been added to this whatever is best in the domestic ties, it could to her have been but a rehearsal, in a lower though blameless form, of affections which she had already known in that highest form in which alone they are capable of being realized in heaven.

Expressions associated with human affections are to be found in St. Gertrude's devotions, because she _had_ human affections. In the monastic renunciation the inmost essence of them is retained; for that essence, apart from its outward accidents, is spiritual. What is the meaning of the incarnation, if God is not to be loved as man? To what purpose, without this, the helpless childhood, the fields through which he moved, the parables so homely, the miracles of healing, the access given to sinners, the tears by the grave of him whom he was about to restore to life, the hunger and the weariness, the reproach for sympathy withheld? These domestic memories of the Church are intended to give the higher direction to human affections before they have strayed into the lower, in order that the lower may receive their interpretation from the higher. Nothing is more wonderful than to see the natural passing into the supernatural in actual life; nothing more instructive than to see this in devotions. It is not the presence of a human element in them, but the absence of a divine element, that should be deplored. The natural may be shunned where the supernatural is not realized. It can only be realized through love; and love is perfected through self-sacrifice, the strength and science of the saints.

It is easy to distinguish between devotions that are really too familiar and those of the saints. The latter, as has been remarked, are as full of awe as of love. Their familiarity implies the absence of a servile fear; but everywhere that filial fear, the seat of which is in the conscience, reveals itself. Again, if they regard our Lord in his character of lover of souls, they regard him proportionately in his other characters, as brother and as friend, as master and as Lord, as creator and as judge. The manhood in Christ is ever leading the heart on to his divinity; and the incarnation, as a picture of the divine character, is the strongest preacher of Theism. Again, the love that reveals itself in them has no pettiness, no narrowness; it exults in the thought of that great army of the elect, each member of {414} which is equally the object of the divine love, as a single drop reflects the firmament no less than the ocean of which it is a part. Once more: in such devotions the thirst after the divine purity is as strongly marked as that for the divine tenderness; and death is ever welcome, that God may be seen in the spirit.

"But in these devotions," it is said, "we trace the yearnings of a woman's heart." And why not? With what else is woman to love God? May not the devotion of a child be childlike, and of a man be manly? Why are female affections alone to strain themselves into the unnatural, instead of advancing to the supernatural? In such sneers there is as little philosophy as charity. The whole structure of our being--together not only with all its experiences, but with all its capacities--is that which, yielding to divine grace, constitutes the mould in which our devotion is cast. It is not religion alone, but everything--art, science, whatever we take in--that is colored by whatever is special to the faculties or the dispositions of the recipient. Religion is the only thing that holds its own in spite of such modification. It does so on account of its absolute simpleness. But it does much more than hold its own. It is enriched. Religion is as manifold as it is simple. The faculties and instincts of the mere isolated individual are too narrow to allow of his fully accepting the gifts which it extends to us. But fortunately our incapacities balance each other; the characteristics of religion least appreciated by one being often those which will most come home to another. Not only individuals but nations and ages, both by what they have in common and by what they have of unlike, unconsciously help to make up the general store. Christianity has become in one sense to each of us what it was to an à Kempis as well as what it was to an Aquinas; and why not also to what it was to a Gertrude or a Theresa? All things subserve this vast scheme. How much we are enriched by those different aspects of religion presented to us by the chief authentic architectures! In the Gothic, which is mystic, suggestive, infinite, it is chiefly the spirituality of religion that is affirmed. In the Roman basilica, orderly and massive, it is the "law" that is insisted on. In the Byzantine style, precious marble and beaming gold, and every device of rich color and fair form, preach the inexhaustibility of Christian charity and the beauty of the Eden it restores. These aspects of religion are all in harmony with each other. The mind that embraces them is not endeavoring to blend contradictions into a common confusion, but to reunite great ideas in the unity from which they started. Still more is the manifold vastness of religion illustrated by those diversities of the _religious sentiment_ which result from diversities in the human character.

All modern civilization rests on reverence for woman, both in her virginal and maternal character; the Mother of God, from whom that reverence sprang, being in both these relations alike its great type. In the restored, as in the first humanity, there is an Eve as well as an Adam; and it has been well remarked, that among the indirect benefits derived from this provision is the circumstance that there thus exists a double cord, by which the two great divisions of the human family are drawn to the contemplation of that true humanity. From the beginning woman found herself at home in Christianity; it was to her a native country, in which she fulfilled her happiest destinies, as paganism had been a foreign land, where she lived in bondage and degradation. In the days of martyrdom the virgins took their place beside the youths amid the wild beasts at the Coliseum. In the days of contemplative monasticism the convents of the nuns, no less than those of the monks, lifted their snowy standards on high, and, by the image of purity which they had there exalted, rendered intelligible the {415} Christian idea of marriage--thus refreshing with ethereal breath those charities of hut and hearth which flourished in the valleys far down. In those convents, too, the scholastic volume, and the psalm sustained by day and night, proved that the serious belonged to woman as well as the soft and bright. Since the devastations of later times womanhood has won a yet more conspicuous crown. Through the active orders religion has measured her strength with a world which boasts that at last it is alive and stirring. By nuns the sick have been nursed, the aged tended, the orphan reared, the rude instructed, the savage reclaimed, the revolutionary leader withstood, the revolutionary mob reduced to a sane mind. There are no better priests than those of France; yet they tell us that it has been in no small part through the Sisters of Charity that religion has been restored in their land. In how many an English alley is not the convent the last hope of purity and faith? On how many an Irish waste does not the last crust come from it?

The part of woman in Christianity might have been anticipated. For it she is strengthened even by all that makes her weak elsewhere. In the Christian scheme the law of strength is found in the words, "When I am weak, then I am strong." It is a creaturely, not self-asserting strength; it is not godlike, but consists in dependence on God. In proportion as self is obliterated, a Divine Presence takes its place, which could otherwise no more inhabit there than the music which belongs to the hollow shell could proceed from the solid rock. To woman, who in all the conditions of life occupies the place of the secondary or satellite, the attainment of this selflessness is perhaps more easy than to man. Obedience is the natural precursor of faith; and to those whose hands are clean the clearer vision is granted. Moreover, religion is mainly of the heart; and in woman the heart occupies a larger relative place than in man. Paganism, with the instinct of a clown, addressed but what was superficial in womanhood, and elicited but what was alluring and ignoble. Christianity addressed it at its depths, and elicited the true, the tender, and the spiritual. The one flattered, but with a coarse caress; the other controlled, but with a touch of air-like softness. In pagan times woman was a chaplet of faded flowers on a festive board; in Christian, it became a "sealed fountain," by which every flower, from the violet to the amaranth, might grow. Even the chosen people had forgotten her claims;--but "from the beginning it was not so." Christianity reaffirmed them; it could do no less. It addresses distinctively what is feminine in man, as well as what is manly. It challenges, at its first entrance, the passive, the susceptive, the recipient in our nature; and it ignores, as it is ignored by, the self-asserting and the self-included.

That which Christianity claims for woman is but the readjustment of a balance which, when all merit was measured by the test of bodily or intellectual strength, had no longer preserved its impartiality. Milton's line,

"He for God only: she for God in him,"

is more in harmony with the Mohammedan, or at least the Oriental, than with the Christian scheme of thought. It is as represented both by its stronger and its gentler half, that man's race pays its true tribute to the great Creator. The modern poet gives us his ideal of man in the form of a prophecy:

"Yet in the long years liker must they grow: The man he more of woman--she of man." [Footnote 61]

[Footnote 61: Tennyson's "Princess."]

Singularly enough, this ideal of humanity was fulfilled long since in the conventual life. The true nun has left behind the weakness of her {416} sex. The acceptance of her vocation, implying the renunciation of the tried for the untried, the seen for the unseen, is the highest known form of courage--

"A soft and tender heroine Vowed to severer discipline." [Footnote 62]

[Footnote 62: Wordsworth's "Ode to Enterprise," ]

Her vow is irrevocable; and thus free-will, the infinite in our nature, stands finally pledged to the "better part." In her life of mortification, and her indifference to worldly opinion, she reaches the utmost to which fortitude may aspire; yet she perfects in herself also the characteristic virtues of woman--love, humility, obedience.

The true monk also, while more of a man than other men, includes more of the virtues that belong least often to man. It is pre-eminently the soul within him that has received its utmost development, and become the expression of his being. The highest ideal of the antique world, _mens sana in corpore sano_, implied, not the subordination of the body to the mind, and of both to the soul, but the equal development of the former two, the soul being left wholly out of account. Such a formula, it is true, rises above that of the mere Epicurean, who subordinates the mind to the body, and makes pleasure the chief good. It leaves, however, no place for the spiritual. By the change which Christianity introduced, virtues which paganism overlooked or despised became the predominant elements in man's being. Purity, patience, and humility bear to Christian morals a relation analogous to that which faith, hope, and charity bear to theology. The former, like the latter, triad of virtues will ever present to the rationalist the character of mysticism, because they rest upon mysteries--that is, upon realities out of our sight, and hidden in the divine character. The earthly basis upon which they are sometimes placed by defenders that belong to the utilitarian school is as incapable of supporting them as the film of ice that covers a lake would be of supporting the mountains close by. These are Christian virtues exclusively, and it was to perfect them that the convents which nurtured saints were called into existence.

We know the hideous picture of monastic life with which a morbid imagination sometimes amuses or frightens itself. Let us frankly contrast with it the true ideal of a monastic saint. No ideal, of course, is fully realized; but still it is only when the ideal is understood that the actual character is appreciated. The monastic life is founded on the evangelical counsels, the portion of practical Christianity most plainly _peculiar_ to the Christian system. It is obedience, but the obedience of love. It is fear, but the fear of offending, far more than the fear of the penalty. It is dependence glorified. It is based on what is feminine as well as on what is masculine in our nature; on a being which has become recipient in a sacred passiveness. It lives by faith, which "comes by hearing;" and its attitude of mind is like that indicated by the sweet and serious, but submitted, face of one who listens to far-off music or a whisper close by. In the stillness of devout contemplation the soul, unhardened and unwrinkled, spreads itself forth like a vine-leaf to the beam of truth and the dews of grace. In this perfected Christian character we find, together with the strength of the stem, the flexibility of the tendril and the freshness of the shoot. For the same reason we find the consummate flower of sanctity--a Bernard or a Francis--and with the flower the fruit, and the seed which has sown Christianity in all lands; for monks have ever been the great missionaries. The soul of the monk who has done most for man has thus most included the womanly as well as the manly type of excellence. It has unity and devotedness. It has that purity which is not only {417} consistent with fervor, but in part proceeds from it. It shrinks not only from the forbidden, but from the disproportionate, the startling, and the abrupt. It is humble, and does not stray as far as its limit. It regards sin, not as a wild beast chained, but as a plague, and thinks that it cannot escape too far beyond the infection. It has a modesty which modulates every movement of the being. It has spontaneity, and finds itself at home among little things. It is cheerful and genial, with a momentary birth of good thoughts, wishes, and deeds, that ascend like angels to God, and are only visible to angels.

Nor is this all. It is in the conventual life that the third type of human character--that of the child--is found in conjunction with the other two. In the world even the partial preservation of the child in the man is one of the rare marks of genius. In the cloister the union is common. Where the character is thus _integrated_ by harmoniously blending the three human types--viz., man, woman, and child--then man has reached his best, and done most to reverse the fall. It is among those who have most bravely taken the second Adam for their example that this primal image is most nearly restored. We see it in such books as the "Imitation," and the "Confessions" of St. Augustine. We see it in the old pictures of the saints, where the venerable and the strong, the gracious and the lovely, the meek and the winning, are so subtly blended by the pencil of an Angelico or a Perugino. We see it within many a modern cloister. It has its place, to the discerning eye, among the evidences of religion.

In the north the world now finds it more difficult than in the south to appreciate such a character as St. Gertrude. If it is sceptical as to visions and raptures, still more is it scandalized by austerities and mortification. The temperament of the south tends too generally to pleasure; but the great natures of the south, perhaps for that reason, renounce the senses with a loftier strength. They throw themselves frankly on asceticism, leaving beneath them all that is soft, like the Italian mountains which frown from their marble ridges over the valleys of oranges and lemons. The same ardor which so often leads astray, ministers, when it chooses the soul for its residence, to great deeds, as fire does to the labors of material science. In the north, including the land of St. Gertrude, many of the virtues are themselves out of sympathy with the highest virtue. Men can there admire strength and industry; but they too often believe in no strength that is not visible, no industry that is not material. Mortification is to them unintelligible. Action they can admire; in suffering they see but a sad necessity, like the old Greeks, to whom all pain was an intrusion and a scandal.

Christianity first revealed the might of endurance. It was not the triumph over Satan at the temptation that restored man's race; though Milton, not without a deep, unintended significance, selected that victory as the subject of his "Paradise Regained." It was not preaching, nor miracle, but Calvary. Externally, endurance is passive; internally, it is the highest form of action--the action in which there is no self-will, the energy that is one with humility. The moment the Church began to live she began to endure. The apostles became ascetics, "keeping the body under," and proclaiming that between spirit and flesh, between watching and sloth, between fast and feast, there was not peace but war. While the fiery penance of persecution lasted, it was easy to "have all things as though one had nothing." There then was always a barrier against which virtue might push in its ceaseless desire to advance, and to discipline her strength by trial. When the three centuries of trial were over, monasticism rose. In it again was found a place for mortification-- for that detachment which is {418} attachment to God, and that exercise which makes Christians athletes. There silence matured divine love, and stillness generated strength. There was found the might of a spiritual motive; and a fulcrum was thus supplied like that by which Archimedes boasted that his lever could move the world.

It is difficult to contemplate such a character as that of St. Gertrude without straying from her to a kindred subject--that wonderful monastic life, with its rapturous visions and its as constant mortifications, to which we owe such characters. Without the cloister we should have had no Gertrudes; and without the mortification of the cloister the ceaseless chant and the incense would have degenerated into spiritual luxuries. It is time for us to return, and ask a practical question: What was this St. Gertrude, who found so fair a place among the wonders of the thirteenth century, and whom in the nineteenth so few hear of or understand? What was she even at the lowest, and such as the uninitiated might recognize? She was a being for whom nature had done all nature could do. She was a noble-minded woman, pure at once and passionate, more queenly and more truly at home in the poverty of her convent than she could have been in her father's palace. Secondly, she was a woman of extraordinary genius and force of character. Thirdly, she was one who, the child of an age when the dialectics of old Greece were laid on the altar of revealed truth, dwelt habitually in that region of thought which, in the days of antiquity, was inhabited by none, and occasionally approached but by the most aspiring votaries of the Platonic philosophy. This was the human instrumentality which sovereign grace took to itself, as the musician selects some fair-grained tree out of which to shape his lyre. There was in her no contradictory past to retrieve. Without a jar, and almost without consciousness, she passed with a movement of swanlike softness out of innocence into holiness. Some have fought their way to goodness, as others have to earthly greatness, and won the crown, though not without many a scar. But she was "born in the purple," and all her thoughts and feelings had ever walked with princely dignity and vestal grace, as in the court of the great King. Her path was arduous; but it stretched from good to better, not from bad to good. She did not graduate in the garden of Epicurus, nor amid the groves of Academus, nor amid the revel of that Greek society in which the glitter of the highest intelligence played above the rottenness of the most corrupt life. She had always lived by faith. The spiritual world had been hers before the natural one, and had interpreted it. Man's supernatural end had ever for her presented the clue to his destinies, and revealed the meaning of his earthly affections. Among these last she had made no sojourn. She had prolonged not the time, but done on earth what all aspire to do in heaven: she had risen above human ties, in order to possess them in their largest manifestations. The faith affirmed that we are to have all things in God, and in God she resolved to have them. Her heart rose as by a heavenward gravitation to the centre of all love. A creature, and knowing herself to be no more, her aspiration was to belong wholly to her Creator. To her the incarnation meant the union of the human race, and of the human soul, with God. Her devotions are the endless love-songs of this high bridal. They passed from her heart spontaneously, like the song of the bird; and they remain for ever the triumphant hymeneal chant of a clear, loving, intelligential spirit, which had renounced all things for him, and had found all things in him for whom all spirits are made.

{419}{420}

From The Lamp.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

BY BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.

Christmas comes, Christmas comes. Blessing wheresoe'er he roams; And he calls the little children Cluster'd in a thousand homes.

"Stand you still, my little children, For a moment while I sing, Wreath'd together in a ring, With your tiny hands embracing In a snowy interlacing. And your rich curls dropping down-- Golden, black, and auburn-brown-- Over bluest little eyes; Toss them back in sweet surprise While my pretty song I sing.

I have apples, I have cakes, Icicles, and snowy flakes. Hanging on each naked bough; Sugar strawberries and cherries, Mistletoe and holly-berries, Nail'd above the glorious show.

I have presents rich and rare. Beauties which I do not spare, For my little children dear; At my steps the casements lighten, Sourest human faces brighten. And the carols--music strange-- Float in their melodious change On the night-wind cold and drear.

Listen now, my little children: All these things I give to you, And you love me, dearly love me (Witness'd in your welcome true). Why do I thus yearly scatter. With retreating of the sun. Sweetmeats, holiday, and fun? There must be something much the matter Where my wine-streams do not run.

Once I was no more than might be Any season of the year; No kind tapers shone to light me On my way advancing here; No small children rush'd to meet me, Happy human smiles to greet me. True, it was a while ago; But I mind me it was so, Then believe me, children dear.

Till one foggy cold December, Eighteen hoary centuries past (Thereabouts as I remember), Came a voice upon the blast. And a strange star in the heaven; One said that unto us was given A Saviour and a Brother kind; The star upon my head shed down Of golden beams this living crown. The birthday gift of Jesus Christ, Whereby my glory might be known.

You all keep your little birthdays; Keep likewise your fathers', mothers', Little sisters', little brothers'; To commemorate _this_ birth, Sings aloud the exulting earth! Every age and all professions, In all distance--parted nations, Meet together at this time In spirit, while the church-bells chime. Little children, dance and play,-- We will join,--but likewise pray At morning, thinking of the day I have told you I remember In a bleak and cold December, Long ago and far away."

From The Popular Science Review.

EPIDEMICS, PAST AND PRESENT-- THEIR ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION.

Epidemics, derived from the two Greek words [Greek text], _among_, and [Greek text], _people_ are those diseases which for a time prevail widely among the people of any country or locality, and then, for a longer or shorter period, either entirely, or for the most part, disappear. There are few diseases to which the human race is liable that may not, under favorable circumstances, take on the epidemic form. For example, diseases of the organs of respiration are very apt to become epidemic in seasons characterized by extreme coldness or dampness of the atmosphere, or by great and sudden alternations of temperature. In a strict sense, however, the term {421} epidemics is not usually employed in reference to the diseases of individual organs of the body, but is restricted to those derangements of the entire system depending upon the absorption of some poison, or the action of some "influence," from without. In the latter class of maladies the individual organs may become diseased, and the derangement of their functions may modify the symptoms resulting from the primary poison or "influence;" but then the local diseases are the secondary result of the general disorder of the constitution, and not the source and origin of all the mischief.

Some epidemic diseases possess the power of self-propagation; that is to say, the poison or influence may be communicated by infected persons to persons in health, and the disease is then said to be contagious, [Footnote 63] while others are entirely destitute of any such property. Scarlet-fever and small-pox are familiar examples of the former class; ague and influenza of the latter.

[Footnote 63: The terms "contagion" and "contagious" are here used in their widest signification, and are applied in this essay to all diseases capable of propagation by infected individuals to persons in health.]

It is still a vexed question whether a disease that is capable of self-propagation can ever be generated _de novo_. It is maintained, on the one hand, that such an occurrence is as impossible as the spontaneous generation of plants or animals; while, on the other hand, it is argued that the poison of certain diseases capable of self-propagation may, under certain favorable conditions, be produced independently of any pre-existing cases of the disease. The comparison of a fever-poison with a spore or ovum is an ingenious, but a most delusive, argument. An epidemic disease springing up in a locality where it was before unknown, and where it is impossible to trace its introduction from without, is said to be not more extraordinary than the development of fungi in a putrid fluid. The argument, however, is founded on a pure assumption, for there is not a tittle of evidence to show that a fever-poison is of the nature of a spore or ovum. Air saturated with the poisons of various contagious diseases has been condensed and submitted to the highest powers of the microscope, but nothing approaching to a small-pox spore, or a typhus ovum, has yet been discovered. It is true that certain contagious diseases, such as scarlet-fever and smallpox, can in most instances be traced to contagion; but, with regard to others, such as typhoid or enteric fever, it is in most instances utterly impossible to account for the _first cases_ in any outbreak on the theory of contagion, while, at the same time, there is direct evidence that the contagious power of the disease is extremely. The question is no doubt beset with many difficulties, and constitutes one of the most intricate problems in medical science. It is one, however, which can never be solved by entering on the discussion with a preconceived theory as to the close analogy, if not identity, of a fever-poison with an animal or vegetable ovum, nor by assuming that the laws which regulate the propagation of one contagious disease are equally applicable to all. Nature's facts are too often interpreted by human laws, rather than by the laws of nature. In the case before us, the natural history of each disease must be studied independently, and our ideas as to its origin and mode of propagation must be founded on the evidence furnished by that study alone, and irrespective of the laws which seem to regulate the origin and propagation of other diseases with which it has no connection whatever, except in the human mind. At the present moment, when the subject of epidemics is attracting so much attention, it may be interesting to call attention to the more important diseases comprised under that head, and to point out some of the main facts connected with their origin and distribution. {422} The principal epidemic diseases, then, are: small-pox, scarlet-fever, measles, typhus, relapsing fever, Oriental plague, yellow fever, diarrhoea, typhoid or enteric fever, cholera, dysentery, ague and remittent fevers, influenza, the sweating sickness, and the dancing mania.

1. _Small-pox_ the most loathsome of all diseases, is believed to have prevailed in India and China from time immemorial. About the middle of the sixth century it is supposed to have been conveyed by trading vessels from India to Arabia, and the Arabian army at the siege of Mecca, in the year 569, was the first victim of its fury. From Arabia it was imported into Europe by the Saracens, and there is evidence of its existence in Britain before the ninth century. Before the introduction of vaccination, small-pox was one of the chief causes of mortality in all the countries where it prevailed, and even now it occupies a prominent place in our mortuary returns. During the twenty-four years 1838-61, 125,352 of the population of England and Wales, and 21,369 of the population of London, _died_ of small-pox; or, in other words, one in seventy-five of the total deaths in England and Wales, and one in sixty-three of the total deaths in London, were due to this disease. Small-pox is not confined to any race or quarter of the globe. At the present day its appearance can, in the great majority of instances, be traced to contagion. It is evident, however, that it must at one time have had an origin, and it is reasonable to infer that what happened once may happen again. Small-pox is known to attack many of the lower animals as well as man, and there are grounds for believing that it originated among the former, and by them was communicated to the human species. A careful study of epizootics--our ignorance of which has been disclosed by the present cattle plague --may ultimately reveal the mode of origin of the poison of small-pox. The disease varies greatly in its prevalence at different times. In other words, it is sometimes epidemic, at others not. Some of these epidemics are local; others are widely extended. All exhibit a gradual rise, culmination, and decline, the decline being always less rapid than the advance. It is difficult to account for the occurrence of these epidemics. They are independent of hygienic defects, season, temperature, or any meteorological conditions of which we are cognizant. They are probably due to causes tending to depress the general health of the population, and so to predispose it to the action of the poison. For nearly two centuries it has been a common observation that epidemics of small-pox have co-existed with epidemics of other contagious diseases. The gradual accumulation also in a district of unprotected persons, owing to the neglect of vaccination, will also predispose to the occurrence of an epidemic, after the introduction of the poison. In fact, to the neglect, or careless performance, of vaccination, is entirely due the occurrence of epidemics of small-pox at the present day.

2. _Scarlet Fever_.--The early history of scarlet fever is obscure, for the disease was long confounded with measles and small-pox, but it is generally supposed that, like small-pox, it came originally from Africa, and was imported into Europe by the Saracens. It has been known to prevail in Britain for the last two centuries; but although it is only of late years, from the reports of the Registrar-General, that we have been able to form an accurate idea of the extent of its prevalence, there can be no doubt that it has increased greatly during the present century, and that it now occupies that pre-eminence among the causes of mortality in childhood which was formerly held by small-pox. During twenty-four years (1838 to 1861 inclusive) 375,009 of the population of England and Wales, and 58,663 of the inhabitants of London, died of scarlet fever, or about one in every twenty-four deaths that occurred in England during the period in question {423} was due to this disease. The mortality from scarlet fever, in fact, exceeds the mortality from small-pox and measles taken together. Scarlet fever is known to prevail over the whole of the continents of Europe and America, but it is nowhere so common as in Britain. In France it is a rarer disease than either measles or small-pox. In India it is said never to occur. In most instances it is not difficult to trace the occurrence of scarlet fever to contagion; and from the remarkable indestructibility of the poison and its tendency to adhere to clothes, furniture, and even to the walls of houses, there can be little doubt that the disease has a similar origin in many instances, where the mode of transmission of the poison cannot be traced. How the poison first originated is yet a mystery; but there is some probability in the view, which has many able advocates, that it originated in horses or cattle, and by them was communicated to man. If this be so, it is reasonable to hope that investigations as to the occurrence of the disease in the lower animals may lead to a discovery productive of as great benefits to the human race as vaccination. At intervals of a few years scarlet fever spreads as an epidemic: but its ordinary prevalence, in this country is greater than is generally imagined. The causes of these epidemic outbursts are unknown. Many circumscribed outbreaks can no doubt be traced to the importation of the poison into a population of persons unprotected by a previous attack; but why the poison should be introduced into numerous localities at one time, and not at others, is difficult to determine. It is tolerably certain, however, that at all times the prevalence of the disease is independent of overcrowding, bad drainage, or of any appreciable hygienic or meteorological conditions.

3. _Measles_ was long confounded with scarlet fever, and, like it, is supposed to have been originally imported from the East. During twenty-four years (1838-1861) this disease destroyed 31,595 of the population of London, and 181,868 persons in England and Wales. It is known to occur in all parts of the world, and is highly contagious. There is no evidence that any hygienic defects or meteorological conditions can generate the poison of measles. Hildenbrand, a great authority, thought it might arise where numbers of men and cattle were confined together in close, unventilated buildings; and in later times American and Irish physicians have described a disease corresponding in every respect with the measles, which appeared to arise from sleeping on old musty straw, or from the inoculation of the fungi of wheat straw. Measles in England is much less of an epidemic disease than either small-pox or scarlet fever. The number of deaths which it causes in years when it is most prevalent, is rarely much more than double what it causes in years when it is at least prevalent. Although often most fatal in winter, there is no proof that its prevalence is influenced by season.

4. _Typhus Fever_ has been well known for upward of three centuries, and there are grounds for believing that from remote ages it has prevailed in most parts of the world under favorable conditions. It is impossible to estimate the precise extent of its prevalence, inasmuch as many other diseases are included under the designation "typhus," in the reports of the Registrar-General; but it is the acknowledged scourge of the poor inhabitants of our large towns. There is no evidence that typhus, such as we see it in this country, has as yet been observed in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, or the tropical parts of America. Even in Britain it is confined, for the most part, to the large towns, and to the poorest and most densely crowded parts of them. It is a disease almost unknown among the better classes, except in the case of clergymen and doctors who visit the infected poor. {424} It is undoubtedly contagious; but in a spacious dwelling with a free ventilation, it almost ceases to be so. There is also ample evidence that the poison may be generated _de novo_; and the circumstances under which this occurs are overcrowding, with defective ventilation and destitution. Hence it is that the disease was formerly so apt to show itself in prisons and ships, and that, even at the present day, it is so common an attendant on warfare and so prevalent in the wretched hovels of the poor. This was the disease that before the days of Howard was never absent from our prisons and hospitals, and that decimated the armies of the first Napoleon and of the allies in the Crimea. "If," says an able writer on fever in the last century, "any person will take the trouble to stand in the sun, and look at his own shadow on a white plastered wall, he will easily perceive that his whole body is a smoking dunghill, with a vapor exhaling from every part of it. This vapor is subtle, acrid, and offensive to the smell; if retained in the body, it becomes morbid; but if re-absorbed, highly deleterious. If a number of persons, therefore, are long confined in any close place not properly ventilated, so as to inspire and swallow with their spittle the vapors of each other, they must soon feel its bad effects. Bad provisions and gloomy thoughts will add to their misery, and soon breed the _seminium_ of a pestilential fever, dangerous not only to themselves, but also to every person who visits them or even communicates with them at second-hand. Hence it is so frequently bred in gaols, hospitals, ships, camps, and besieged towns. A _seminium_ once produced is easily spread by contagion." But if overcrowding produces typhus, why is it that the disease prevails in the epidemic form, and then in a great measure disappears? The explanation is in this way. All the great epidemics of typhus have occurred during seasons of famine or of unusual destitution. One of the most common consequences of general destitution is the congregation of several families in one house, in consequence of their inability to pay their rents, and of the concentration in the large towns of many of the inhabitants of country districts. Famine pre-disposes to typhus by weakening the constitution; and it also tends to produce it, in so far as it causes an unusual degree of overcrowding. It has been the custom with many writers to refer epidemics of typhus to some subtle "epidemic influence;" and thus, where a failure of the crops has been followed by typhus, both of these disasters have been ascribed to a common atmospheric cause. But of such atmospheric influences, capable of producing typhus, we know nothing; their very existence is doubtful, and the employment of the term has too often had the effect of cloaking human ignorance, or of stifling the search after truth. If typhus be due to any "epidemic influence," why does this influence select large towns and spare the country districts? why does it fall upon large towns in exact proportion to the degree of privation and overcrowding among the poor? in large towns, why does it indict the crowded dwellings of the poor and spare the habitations of the rich? and why did the varying prevalence of typhus among the French and English troops in the Crimea correspond, exactly to the varying degree of overcrowding in either army? Moreover, famine _artificially_ induced by warfare, by commercial failures, by strikes, or by any cause that throws large bodies of men out of employment, is equally efficacious in originating epidemics of typhus, as famine from failure of the crops.

5. _Relapsing Fever_ is so called from the fact that after a week's illness there is an interval of good health for a week, followed by a second attack. It is contagious, and is epidemic in a stricter sense than even typhus. Although sometimes more prevalent in this country than any other fever, it may disappear for so many years that {425} on its return it has more than once been thought to be a new malady. For upwards of ten years not a case of it has been observed in Britain, but it has constitute the chief component of many of the greatest epidemics of fever which has devastated this country and Ireland, and it was one of the diseases composing the "Russian Plague," which in the spring of the present year caused such unnecessary alarm in this country. It usually prevails in the epidemic form in conjunction with typhus, and it is connected in its origin more directly with protracted starvation and the use of unwholesome food than even the latter disease. Hence, in this country, it is familiarly known as "Famine Fever," and in Germany as "_Hungerpest_."

6. _Oriental Plague_ is still met with in Egypt and in other eastern countries; but in the middle ages it frequently overran the whole of Europe and invaded England, and, from the extent of its ravages, it was known as the "_Black Death_," and the "_Great Mortality_." The Great Plague of London, of 1665, is a familiar fact in history. Since then the disease has not been met with in this country. But British typhus is merely a modified form of Oriental plague, or, in other words, plague is merely typhus complicated with numerous abscesses beneath the skin. Cases of typhus are occasionally met with in this country, corresponding in every respect with true plague. Both diseases appear under similar circumstances, but those which generate plague are of a more aggravated character than those which suffice to produce typhus. The disappearance of plague from London, notwithstanding our vastly increased communications with Egypt, has been chiefly due to the better construction of our dwellings since the "Great Fire" of 1666. "It is probable," says an able writer on the plague, "that if this country has been so long forsaken by the plague as almost to have forgotten, or at least to be unwilling to own, its natural offspring, it has been because the parent has been disgusted with the circumstances under which that hateful birth was brought to light, has removed the filth from her doors in which it was matured, and has adopted a system of cleanliness fatal to its nourishment at home. But if ever this favored country, now grown wise by experience, should relapse into former errors, and recur to her odious habits, as in past ages, it is not to be doubted that a mutual recognition will take place, and she will again be visited by her abandoned child, who has been wandering a fugitive among kindred associates, sometimes in the mud cots of Egypt, sometimes in the crowded tents of Barbary, and sometimes in the filthy kaisarias of Aleppo."

7. _Yellow Fever_ is a contagious fever with a limited geographical range. Its geographical limits, as regards the new world, are from about 43° N. lat. to 35° S. lat; and in the old world from 44° N. to 8° or 9° S. lat. It is a common disease on board our ships stationed in the West Indies and off the west coast of Africa. As in the case of typhus, overcrowded and defective ventilation are the main causes which favor its origin and propagation, and, indeed, it is still a subject for investigation whether yellow fever may not be typhus modified by climate and other circumstances. One of the most recent and best authorities [Footnote 64] on the disease thus writes: "Overcrowding in the between-decks of steamships seems to be the principal cause of the extreme fatality of the disease in the navy. What in this respect is true of typhus may with equal force be said of yellow fever. There is no such powerful adjuvant to the virulence of the poison, and to its power of propagation, as an unrenewed atmosphere, loaded with human exhalations."

[Footnote 64: Dr. Gavin Milroy, President of the Epidemiological Society.]

8. _Diarrhoea_ is always more or less prevalent in this country during the summer and autumn. There is no {426} reason to believe that epidemic diarrhoea is contagious, but there is a direct ratio between its prevalence and the temperature of the atmosphere and the absence of ozone. As the temperature rises the cases increase in number, and as it falls they diminish, and the disease is always most prevalent in very hot seasons. Diarrhoea may be due to many different causes, but its epidemic prevalence in autumn is chiefly accounted for by the absorption into the system of the products of putrefaction of organic matter, either in the form of gaseous effluvia or through the vehicle of drinking-water.

9. _Typhoid or Enteric Fever_ is very commonly confounded with typhus, with which, however, so far as its origin is concerned, it has nothing in common. It is not, like typhus, confined to the poor, but it prevails among rich and poor alike; and, indeed, there are some reasons for believing that the rich and well-fed are more prone to be attacked by it than the destitute. It is the fever by which Count Cavonr, several members of the royal family of Portugal, and our own Prince Consort, came to their untimely end. It differs also from typhus in the circumstances that its origin and propagation are quite independent of overcrowding with defective ventilation, and are so intimately connected with bad drainage that by some physicians the fever is now designated _pythogenic_, or fever born of putridity. It is asserted by some writers that the poison of enteric fever is never generated in obstructed drains, but that the drains are merely the vehicle of transmission of the poison from an infected person. But if this were so, enteric fever must needs be a most contagious disease, whereas all experience goes to show that it rarely spreads, even under the most favorable circumstances. The disease, in fact, is so slightly contagious that many excellent observers have doubted if it be so at all. It is probable that certain meteorological conditions, such as a high temperature, a defective supply of ozone, or a peculiar electrical state, may be necessary for the production of the poison of enteric fever; and thus, nuisances which are offensive to the senses may exist for a long time without producing the disease. The necessity of a high temperature is undoubted, and is itself a strong alignment against the view which makes drains merely the vehicle of transmission of the poison. It is well known that enteric fever, like ordinary diarrhoea, becomes epidemic in this country every autumn, and almost disappears in spring, while the autumnal epidemics are always greatest in seasons remarkable for their high temperature. Enteric fever is much later in commencing and in attaining the acme of its autumnal prevalence than diarrhoea, showing that a longer duration of hot weather is necessary for its production; but, when once produced, a more protracted duration of cold weather seems necessary for its destruction.

10. _Cholera_.--Epidemic cholera is generally described as having originated at Jessore, in the delta of the Ganges, in the year 1817, and as having spread thence over Hindostan, and ultimately to Europe. Since 1817 Europe has been visited by three great epidemics of cholera, viz.: in 1832, in 1848-9, and in 1854; and at the present moment it is threatened with a fourth. During the past autumn the disease has appeared at Ancona and Marseilles, and at many other places in the basin of the Mediterranean. In England and Wales cholera destroyed 53,273 lives in 1849, and 20,097 in 1854. Although the great epidemics of cholera have appeared to take their origin in India, and gradually to have spread to Europe, following often the lines of human intercourse, the evidence in favor of its being a very contagious malady is small. The attendants on the sick are rarely attacked; and, on the other hand, the disease has often appeared in isolated localities, where it was impossible to believe that it was imported. It is a remarkable {427} circumstance, also, that some of the greatest epidemics which have occurred in India, as that of 1861, have shown no tendency to travel to Europe, notwithstanding the constant communication that exists. Even on the supposition, then, that cholera is of necessity imported from India, there must be something as yet unknown to us that favors its transmission at one time and not at another. But it is very doubtful if the disease is imported in the manner generally believed. Unequivocal cases of "Asiatic cholera" have been met with almost every year in the intervals of the great epidemics; and, as Dr. Farr has observed, it is highly probable that true cholera has always existed in England. The researches of the late Dr. Snow render it highly probable that the disease often arises from drinking water impregnated with the _fermenting_ excreta of persons suffering from the disease; and if this be so, from what we know of other diseases, it is not unreasonable to infer that, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, the poison of cholera may be generated during the fermentation of the excreta of healthy persons. It can readily be conceived how the necessary meteorological conditions might originate in the East and gradually extend to this country, and thus lead to the supposition that the disease has been propagated by a specific poison.

11. _Dysentery_.--Epidemics of dysentery are confined to tropical countries, and need not occupy much attention at present. Atmospheric states which unduly or suddenly depress the temperature of the surface of the body are the most common exciting causes. They are most apt to take effect in the case of persons whose constitutions have been weakened by long exposure to extreme heat, to malaria, or to other debilitating causes. There is no positive evidence that dysentery is contagious.

12. _Agues and Remittent Fevers_ are now but little known, and scarcely ever fatal, in this country. Many years ago, however, they were among the most common and the most fatal diseases of Britain. James I. and Oliver Cromwell both died of ague in London. The disappearance of ague has been in direct relation to the drainage and cultivation of the soil, and this remark applies not only to England, but to all parts of the globe. The fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridge are almost the only parts of England where agues arc now known; but in many countries, and particularly in the tropics, where the vegetation is very rank, they are still the most common of all diseases. Agues are not contagious, but result from the _malaria_ given off during the evaporation from marshy uncultivated land. These malaria may be wafted to a considerable distance by the wind. A high temperature and rank vegetation seem to favor their production and to increase their virulence.

13. _Influenza_.--Severe and widespread epidemics of influenza have been observed in various parts of the world, from time immemorial. In the present century the disease has been epidemic in this country in 1803, 1831, 1833, 1837, and 1847. On each occasion it has been particularly fatal in aged and debilitated persons, and it has often been followed by an increased prevalence of other epidemic diseases. Influenza is not contagious, but depends on some unknown condition of the atmosphere. Sudden alternations of temperature have been thought to favor its origin.

14. _The Sweating Sickness_.--This remarkable and very fatal disease is happily now unknown in this country; but in the middle ages many great epidemics of it were observed, and nowhere were they more common than in England. Many of the epidemics were in fact confined to England. There are records of five distinct visitations of the disease during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, viz., in 1485, 1506, 1517, 1529, and 1551. The disease attacked all classes alike, and {428} was often fatal within a few hours. From the accounts handed down to us it is impossible to form any accurate idea as to the causes of its origin and extension; but the prevalent opinion at the time seems to have been that it was due in the first instance to atmospheric influences.

15. _The Dancing Mania_.--The present brief summary of the principal epidemic diseases would not be complete without alluding to the dancing mania of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The effects of the _Black Death_ of the fourteenth century had not yet subsided, and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when we are told by Hecker a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of the wildest superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whist performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighboring countries. While dancing, the infected persons were insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out. Some asserted that they felt as if immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high; while others saw the heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary. The accounts of the dancing mania collected by Hecker at first sight seem almost fabulous, but cease to be so when we recollect the practices of certain modern religious sects and the accounts of the so-called "revivals" in the middle of the nineteenth century.

From the preceding summary, it is obvious that epidemic diseases vary greatly in their nature.

1. First we have diseases, such as small-pox, scarlet fever, and measles, which at the present day can only be traced to contagion, and some of which probably took their origin in the lower animals.

2. There are diseases, such as typhus, relapsing fever, enteric fever, and probably also plague, yellow fever, and cholera, which are capable of propagation by contagion in varying degrees, but which may also originate from the neglect of sanitary laws, aided by certain meteorological conditions.

3. A third class, including agues, remittent fevers, and diarrhoea are not at all contagious, but arise from malarious exhalations.

4. A fourth class, including influenza, dysentery, and, perhaps, the sweating sickness, are also not contagious, and, arise from certain atmospheric conditions.

5. The dancing mania differed from all other epidemic diseases in being purely mental, and in depending on the mere sight of a disagreeable nervous malady.

{429}

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

ANGLICANISM AND THE GREEK SCHISM.

In a previous number we made our readers acquainted with a certain project of union between the Anglican and the Russo-Greek Churches. [Footnote 65] The Russian as well as the English journals have since spoken much of this project, and seemed to think that it was on the eve of ending. There is one difference, however, to be observed in the language held by the organs of the two countries. The Russian journals gave us to understand that the Anglicans would renounce the Protestant doctrines which form a prominent portion of their belief, to adopt purely and simply the orthodox faith such as it is expressed in the symbolical books of the Eastern Church. The Anglicans did not place themselves in the same point of view. They would not change belief; they admitted that both sides should remain as they now are, but that there would be _intercommunion_ between the two Churches; that is to say, that the Anglicans should be allowed to participate in the sacraments of the Greek Church, and reciprocally.

[Footnote 65: "_Etudes_" May, 1865. _Vide_ "CATHOLIC WORLD," Vol. I., No. 7, October, 1865. ]

A certain Mr. Denton, rector of one of the largest Anglican parishes in London, was especially animated by these thoughts. He went to Servia and asked Mgr. Michael, metropolitan of Belgrave, to admit him to communion in his quality of priest of the Church of England. Mgr. Michael refused; but Mr. Denton, nowise discouraged, betook himself to travelling all over Servia, and at last found an archimandrite who appeared to be more accommodating than the metropolitan. After having communicated in this way in the Servian Church, the Rev. Mr. Denton returns to England triumphantly announcing that the _intercommunion_ was an accomplished fact. Great rejoicings there were, to be sure, in the little coterie. There could be no doubt, whatever, that all was happily arranged.

But behold, Mgr. Michael, informed of what had taken place, removed the archimandrite and struck him with ecclesiastical censures. The joy that had prevailed in Mr. Denton's camp was changed to mourning. On the other hand, the Anglicans who form no part of the coterie, enjoy exceedingly the reverend gentleman's discomfiture.

As for us, we are well pleased to see that Mgr. Michael does not seem disposed to follow the footsteps of Cyril Lucar.

But another check was reserved for the famous project. The archpriest Joseph Wassilief, chaplain to the Russian embassy in Paris, after having shown himself rather favorable to the contemplated union, has just laid down, with as much wisdom as firmness, the conditions of the proposed treaty. "However much explanations may be avoided, they will forcibly recur, sooner or later," he justly observes in the _Christian Union_, 24th September, 1865. And, resting on this principle, he passes in review the three questions of the procession of the Holy Ghost, the invocation of saints, and prayer for the dead; he then shows that it is not possible to establish _intercommunion_ between the two Churches until they have come to an agreement on all these points; Among other things, he shows that the Church has always, been careful {430} to preserve the entire deposit of doctrine, and that she has not permitted herself to establish a difference between what is fundamental and what is secondary. He concludes with these wise words: "Charitable in our explanations, we are bound to be very candid one with the other. If rigorous discussions on all points of divergence appear to retard the final agreement, they secure its solidity and duration; whilst reservations, though accelerating the agreement, would leave therein a germ of weakness and instability."

We attach the more importance to this declaration because the authority of the archpriest Joseph Wassilief is enhanced by the consideration shown him by the synod. Latterly there was a vacancy in the ranks of that assembly, which forms the supreme council of the Russian Church. There was question of replacing the chaplain-general of the armies by land and sea. Three names were proposed to the sovereign's choice: that of M. Wassilief was one of the three. He has not been appointed; but, in proposing him, the synod sufficiently testified that it would have wished to see him seated in its midst, raised to the highest dignity to which, in Russia, a member of the secular clergy can pretend.

After the energetic act of the metropolitan of Belgrade and the words of the archpriest Wassilief, it remains for us to quote the _Levant Herald_ an English and Protestant journal published at Constantinople. In its number of the 20th September, 1865, that paper endeavors to make the Anglican clergy understand that they flatter themselves with a delusive hope if they believe in the possibility of a union, or even of an alliance, between the two communions.

It results from all we have just said that if the Anglo-Americans have entertained the project of Protestantizing the Greek Church, they must perceive that the enterprise is more arduous than they had supposed. The Russians, on their side, must see that it is not so easy to make the Anglican Church enter into the bosom of theirs. As to establishing the _intercommunion_ between the two churches without having come to an agreement on questions of faith, it is a dream which the archpriest Wassilief must have dispelled once and for ever.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

REASON IN RELIGION. By Frederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Company, 245 Washington St. 1863. pp. 458.

The author of this work, who is a professor in Harvard University, enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an accomplished scholar and writer, and is looked upon by numbers of intelligent and thoughtful persons, especially in Massachusetts, as their most revered and trusted guide in religious matters. On that account whatever he writes is worthy of consideration. In the work before us he has not attempted a systematic treatise on the topic indicated in his title, but has thrown together a series of essays touching on it and its kindred topics, indicating difficulties more than aiming at solving them, and suggesting a method by which anxious minds may separate a certain modicum of belief which is practically certain and safe from that which is doubtful, and wait patiently until they can get more truth by the slow progress of science.

Any one who looks in this work for metaphysical solutions which are satisfactory or plausible of the great theological problems will be disappointed. The author sees too clearly the want of sufficient data, and the want of a sufficient criterion in his system, to attempt to dogmatize much. We think this {431} course more sensible and honest than the opposite. At the same time, it lays open the defects of his system; but so much the better, and so much the more hope of getting at the truth. He cannot satisfy, however, either the consistent rationalist or the consistent believer in revelation. On the rationalistic side he has received a severe criticism from the _Christian Examiner_. To a Catholic the positively theological part of his work has but little interest. Some incidental topics are handled with considerable acuteness and ability, as, for instance, the quality of sin and evil, the relation between spirit and matter, the compensations of providence, etc. The impartial testimony of such a bold and subtle critic as the author in favor of certain facts and doctrines--_e.g._, miracles, the resurrection, future punishment, etc., is of value. There are half truths, incidental thoughts, scintillations of light, through the book, which show how much the author's merits are his own, and his defects those of the system he was trained in. The style in which he writes has many most admirable and peculiar qualities, fitting it to be the vehicle of the highest kind of thought. Nevertheless, although we do not question the author's scholarship in his own proper field of study, what he says of specially Catholic questions and matters appears to us commonplace, superficial, and sometimes quite gratuitously introduced. Through a want of care in studying up the Catholic question, he has made one or two quite remarkable mistakes. One of these is in speaking of the synod of Valentia as if it were a general council. Another is the statement that Pope Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII.) has not been canonized. These remarks are by the way, for we are not attempting to follow Dr. Hedge over the area covered by his essays for the purpose of controverting his positions.

The real point of interest it a work like this is the author's thesis respecting the source and criterion of religious truth. If we differ here, there is very little use in discussing the particular conclusions or inferences we draw respecting doctrine. While the difference continues, it is better to keep the discussion upon it; if we ever come to an agreement, it will be comparatively easy to proceed with the discussion of specific doctrines.

Although Dr. Hedge does not proceed by a formal analytic method, yet he has a thesis, and states it intelligibly in his chapter on "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." In philosophy he is a Kantian, and in theology he adopts the system condemned in the late encyclical of Pius IX. under the name of "moderate rationalism." According to him, we cannot get the idea of God, or of spiritual truths, from pure reason. All we know of these truths comes from revelation, and the truths of revelation are subject to the critical judgment of reason, which cannot originate, but can approve or reject, conceptions of spiritual truth.

There are two rather serious objections to this theory. The first is, that it destroys reason by denying to it either the original intuition of God, or the capacity of acquiring the idea of God by reflection; without which it has no capacity of apprehending or judging of the conception of God proposed to it by revelation. The second is, that it destroys revelation, making it identical with the conscience or moral sense; that is, individual and subjective. What is this revelation or inspiration in the spiritual nature of an individual? Is it his reason or intelligence elevated and illuminated? That cannot be; for then reason and revelation are identical, and the proposition that we know nothing of spiritual truths by reason would be subverted. What then is it? We can conceive of nothing in the spiritual nature of man which is not reducible to intelligence or will. It must be will, then. But will is a blind faculty. It is a maxim of philosophy, "Nil volitum, nisi prius cognitum." The will cannot choose the supreme good unless the intelligence furnishes it the idea of the supreme good. You cannot have a revelation without first establishing sound rationalism as a basis. Reason may be indebted for distinct conceptions even of those truths which it is able to demonstrate to an exterior instruction given immediately by Almighty God through inspiration. But it must have the original idea or intuition in itself which is explicated by this instruction and is its ultimate criterion of truth. If by revelation is understood merely the outward assistance given to the mind to develop its own idea and attain the full perfection of reason, there is no sense in distinguishing revelation from {432} philosophy, science, or the light of reason itself, since all alike come from God. A revelation, properly so called, is a manifestation of truths above the sphere of reason--truths which reason cannot demonstrate from their intrinsic contents. In this case, reason can only apprehend the evidence of the fact that they are revealed, that they are not contrary to any truths already known, and that they have certain analogies with truths perceived by reason. But they must be accepted as positively and absolutely true only on the authority of revelation. You must therefore be a pure rationalist, and maintain that we have no knowledge of any truth beyond that which the educated intelligence of man evolves from its own primitive and ultimate idea; or you must accept revelation in the Catholic sense, as proposed by an extrinsic authority. Dr. Hedge gives us no basis for either science or faith. There cannot be a basis for faith without one for science; and give us a basis sufficient for science, we will demonstrate from it the truth of revelation.

We conclude by quoting one or two remarkable passages, which show that the author instinctively thinks more soundly and justly than his theory will logically sustain him in doing:

"The mass of mankind must receive their religion at second-hand, and receive it on historical authority, as they receive the greater part of all their knowledge."

"We want a teacher conscious of God's inpresence, claiming attention as a voice out of the heavens. We want a doctrine which shall announce itself with divine authority; not a system of moral philosophy, but the word and kingdom of God. Without this stamp of divine legitimacy, without the witness and signature of the Eternal, Christianity would want that which alone gives it-weight with the mass of mankind, and the place it now holds in human things." (pp. 64, 242.)

Well spoken! spoken like a philosopher, like a Christian, like a Catholic! Apply now Kant's and Dr. Hedge's principle of _practical reason_. They say, Mankind feel the need of a God, therefore there is and has always been a God. So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive, dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic Church is the true Church of God.

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, ETC. Edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. London: Longmans & Company. 1864.

This is the most superb work on spiritual subjects in our English Catholic literature. Mr. Lewis has made his translation in such a manner as to merit the highest encomium from the late Cardinal Wiseman, who has written the preface to the edition. The paper, typography, and mechanical execution are in the highest style of English typographical art. The fathers of St. Charles deserve the thanks of the entire English-speaking Catholic and literary world for this costly and noble enterprise which they have achieved.

It is needless to say that the works of St. John of the Cross are among the highest specimens of genius and spiritual wisdom to be found in the Spanish language or any other. St. John was a poet of the first order, and an equally great philosopher. In this view alone his works are worthy of profound study. The base of his doctrine is the deepest philosophy, and its summit is ever varied and enlightened by the glow of poetic fervor. It is philosophy and poetry, however, elevated, purified, and hallowed by sacred inspiration, and derived not merely from human but from divine contemplation. As a book for spiritual reading and direction, it is most proper for a certain class of minds only, who have difficulties and inward necessities for which they cannot find the requisite aid in the ordinary books of instruction. It is also the best guide for those who have the direction of persons of this character.

We learn that the Messrs. Appleton have in press, and will soon publish "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," by the Most Rev. H. E. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, which has just been issued by the Longmans, of London.

{433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 10--JANUARY, 1866.

----

Translated from Le Correspondant

LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET. [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: "_Oeuvres de Leibnitz, publiées pour la prémière fois d'après les Manuscrits's, avec des notes et une introduction,_" par A. Foucher de Carcil. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Tomes. I. et II.]

Every friend of letters must greet with sincere pleasure the literary enterprise of M. de Careil in undertaking a complete edition of the writings of Leibnitz, a large part of which has hitherto remained unpublished and even unknown, and especially to make that great genius live anew for us in all his fulness and integrity. No greater literary undertaking ever seduced the imagination of a young erudite, is better fitted to attract the sympathy of the European republic, or more difficult of execution. For it was precisely the peculiarity of Leibnitz that, while he labored to embrace with a firmness of grasp never equalled the whole of moral and physical nature, all things real, ideal, or possible, in one and the same system, he uniformly abstained from giving, in his writings, to that system its full and entire development. Possessing the amplest and most complete mind that ever lived, he took no care to give to any of his works the seal of completeness and perfection. The inventor of so many methods, mathematical and metaphysical, he never arranged his ideas in a methodical order. He leads his readers, with a rapid and firm step, through a labyrinth of abstract conceptions and boundless erudition, but he suffers no hand but his own to hold the guiding thread. He has left us numerous tracts and fragments of great value indeed, but no work that reveals the unity of his system, and gives us a summary of his doctrines. There is no _summa_ of the Leibnitzian science and philosophy. We might say that, by a sort of coquetry, while he sought to know and explain everything in nature, he took care that the secret of his own heart should not for a moment escape him.

Hence it becomes important to bring together and arrange in their natural order his scattered members, so as to give them the cohesion they lack, to combine his several personages, the philosopher, the moralist, the geometrician, the naturalist, the erudite, the diplomatist, and the courtier, in one living being, and present the giant armed at all points as he came forth from the hands of his Maker. Hence also the difficulty {434} of the task. It requires to accomplish it the universality of tastes, if not of faculties, possessed by the model to be reconstructed. It presents one of those cases in which to reproduce nature it is almost necessary to equal nature, and to resuscitate is hardly less difficult than to create. Only a Cuvier is able to collect and put in their place the gigantic bones and powerful fins of Leviathan.

_Ab Jove principium_. M. de Careil begins with theology. These two volumes placed at the head of his edition are taken up with writings some of which had already been printed, others had remained in manuscript, but all subjected to a careful revision and enriched by learned notes, which pertain exclusively to matters of religion. If the ancient classification, which gave to theology the precedence of all other matters, had not every claim to our respect, we might, perhaps, permit ourselves to find fault with this arrangement of the works of Leibnitz, which will cause, I am sure, some surprise to the learned public. His theological writings were his first neither in the order of time nor in the order of merit. He did not open his brilliant career with religious discussions, nor was it by them that he was chiefly distinguished, or left his deepest trace. He made in theology, no discoveries as fruitful as the infinitesimal calculus, and gave it no problems that have fetched so many and so distant echoes as his theories of optimism and monadology. Why, then, open the series with those writings which did not begin it, and which do not give us its summary, and give the precedence to works, merely accessory and of doubtful value, over so many others which earlier, more constantly, and more gloriously occupied his laborious life?

There is still another objection to this distribution of matters which M. de Careil has made. The theological writings of Leibnitz consist almost exclusively in his correspondence, and are parts of the negotiation for the reunion of the different Christian communions of which, for a brief time, he was the medium. Correspondences are admirable means of gaining an insight into the private and personal character of men whose public life and works are already known, but taken by themselves they are always obscure and difficult to be understood. The reason is, that people who correspond are usually mutual acquaintances, and understand each other by a hint or half a word. They are familiar with contemporary events, and waste no time in narrating them, or in explaining what each already knows. Facts and ideas are treated by simple allusions, intelligible enough to the correspondents, but unintelligible to a posterity that lacks their information. The correspondence of Leibnitz, which M. de Careil publishes, is far from being free from this grave inconvenience. Leibnitz appears in it in the maturity of his age, and the full splendor of his renown. He speaks with the authority of a philosopher in full credit, and of a counsellor enjoying the confidence of an important German court. His correspondents treat him with the respect due to an acknowledged celebrity, and even a power. In the course of the discussion he is carrying on he introduces many of his well known metaphysical principles, but briefly, as ideas familiar to those whom he addresses, and less for the purpose of teaching than of recalling them to the memory.

His manner of writing, of rushing, so to speak, _in medias res_, takes the inexperienced reader by surprise, and appears to conform to the adventurous habits of dramatic art much more than to the sound rules of erudition, which proceeds slowly, with measured step, marking in advance the place where it is to plant its foot. Few among us are sufficiently acquainted with the facts in detail of the life of Leibnitz, or know well enough the secret of his opinions, to be able to render an account to {435} ourselves of the part we see him--a lay-citizen--playing among emperors, kings, princes, and prelates, or the relation that subsists between his system of monads and scholastic theology. Hence it often happens that we neither know who is speaking, nor of what he is speaking. This frequently causes us an embarrassment to which M. de Careil is himself too much a stranger to be able sufficiently to compassionate it. He has lived ten years with Leibnitz in the Library of Hanover, his habitual residence, and he knows every lineament of the face of his hero, and--not the least of his merits--deciphers at a glance his formless and most illegible scrawl. We are not, therefore, astonished that in his learned introductions and his notes, full of matter, he makes no account of difficulties which we in our ignorance are utterly unable to overcome.

But we are convinced that the knowledge the editor has acquired by his invaluable labors would have been far more available to his readers if he had condensed it into a detailed biography, such as he only could write, than as he gives it, scattered at the beginning of each volume, or in a note at the foot of each page. An historical notice, comprising the history of the intellect as well as of the life of Leibnitz, an exposition of ideas as well as of facts, and the arrangement of the didactic works according to the order of their subjects and their importance, followed by the fragments and correspondence, the order adopted by nearly all collectors of great polygraphs, would, it seems to us, have been much better, and simply the dictate of reason and experience. Introduced by M. de Careil into the monument he erects not by the front, through the peristyle, but by a low, side door, we run at least great risk of not seizing the whole in its proportions.

I confess that I have also a personal reason for regretting the arrangement adopted by M. de Careil. I had occasion formerly, among the sins of my youth, to examine, with very little preparatory study I admit, and in documents by no means so abundant and so exact as those which are now placed within our reach, the negotiations pursued by Leibnitz for the union of Christian communions, which take up the whole of these two volumes. From that examination, along with that of a small tract naturally attached to it, I came, on the religious opinions of the great philosopher, to certain conclusions which I set forth in the 32d number of the first series of this periodical, which M. de Careil, even then deeply engaged in this study of Leibnitz, has felt it his duty, in a discussion marked by great urbanity, to combat. It is my misfortune to persist in those conclusions, and more strenuously than ever in consequence of the new light which seems to me to be furnished by this publication, and to which I cannot dispense myself from briefly recurring. In so doing I fear that I shall appear to some readers to have sought or to have accepted too readily an occasion for resuming a discussion of little importance, and which probably few except myself remember. M. de Careil, I hope, will do me the justice to acquit me of a thought so puerile. Nobody would have been more eager than myself to admire, in the picture he presents us, the figures which naturally occupy the foreground; but if the eye is forced to pause at first on some insignificant detail, it perhaps is not a defect of taste in the spectator; may it not be a defect of skill in the artist?

I.

These reserves made, we proceed to examine, with some care, the changes rendered necessary, by this new and complete edition, in the opinion previously adopted by the biographers of Leibnitz in regard to the religious negotiation of which he was for a moment the accredited medium, and in which we find mingled the great name of Bossuet. Several important {436} points are much modified by the documents now brought to light for the first time.

We learn, in the outset, that the negotiation for the union of the Protestant communions with the Holy See was far more important than is commonly thought, and was continued for a much longer time. The earliest documents in relation to it published by M. de Careil date from 1671, whilst the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet suppose that the first overtures were made only in the year 1690, a difference of twenty years; and it appears from these documents, hitherto perfectly unknown, that it was precisely during those twenty years that success came the nearest being obtained, and that the highest influences were employed to obtain it.

During this period, from 1670 to 1690, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century was at its apogee, and nearly all the German sovereigns were animated by a strong desire to effect the religious pacification of their subjects. The wounds caused by the Thirty Years' War were hardly closed by the peace of Westphalia, and every one felt the mortal blow which religious dissension had struck to the Germanic power by breaking the old unity of the empire. Beside, all eyes were turned toward France, where religion and royalty seemed to move on together in perfect harmony, and displayed an unequalled splendor. France, under her young monarch, Louis XIV., was at once the object of envy and of dread; and the re-establishment of religious unity in Germany, torn by mutually hostile communions, seemed to the sovereign princes the only means of resembling France, and at the same time of resisting her power.

When, therefore, Rogas Spinola, confessor to the empress, the wife of Leopold I., at first Bishop of Tina, afterward of Neustadt, a man of mild temperament and sound sense, became the intermediary agent of the general desire for peace, and after having sounded the leading Protestant theologians, went to Rome to ascertain the extent of the concessions to which the maternal authority of the Church could consent, he was warmly supported not only by his own sovereign, the emperor, but also by fourteen other reigning sovereigns of Germany, some of them Catholic and others Protestant. Such was the strange religious confusion in the German States that in more than one the sovereign was Catholic and the nation Protestant, or the sovereign was Protestant and the nation Catholic. In the former condition was the Elector of Hanover, John Frederic of Brunswick, of whom Leibnitz was librarian and private secretary. This prince could not fail to enter with zeal into a plan which promised to fill up the gulf between him and his Protestant subjects.

If the propositions of which Spinola was the bearer were warmly supported in Germany, they were no less warmly supported at Rome. The interest which the chief of the Church could not fail to take in the re-establishment of Catholic unity, was greatly enhanced at the time by the special need which that wise and prudent pontiff, Innocent XI., felt of creating in Europe allies for the Holy See against the offensive pretensions of France. At Rome as in Germany Louis XIV. was the target and the bugbear. That most Christian king, who consented to protect the faith in his own kingdom on the condition of tacitly subjecting it to his royal will, took strange liberties, as everybody knows, with the common Father of the faithful. Innocent XI., almost besieged in his palace by the arms of France, and seeing his bulls handed over, by magistrates sitting on _fleurs de lis_, to the common hangman to be publicly burned, was strongly tempted to seek in converted schismatics, and in prodigal sons returning to the fold, a support against the arrogant pretensions of the _elder_ son of the Church. {437} Spinola, therefore, was everywhere well received. Rome listened to him, entered into his views, even annotated the bases of the negotiation he was charged to transmit, and for several years the winds on both sides of the Alps blew in favor of peace.

Leibnitz, holding relations with both Spinola and the principal Protestant doctors, serving as the medium of intercommunication between them, and frequently taking his pen to give precision to their respective views, was already the king-bolt of the negotiation, and very early in its prosecution. Bossuet's name began to be mentioned. The controversies of this great prelate with the French Protestants, his writings, strongly marked by a doctrine at once so firm and enlightened, and which placed Catholic truth on so broad and so solid a foundation, were more than once used to smooth the way to reunion, either by solving difficulties or by reconciling differences. Twice he was even directly solicited to give his advice, and to put his own hand to the work; but he gave vague and embarrassed answers, and refused to accept the overtures made to him. Wherefore? Is it necessary to think, as M. Foucher de Careil leaves it to be understood, that the King of France viewed with an evil eye a reunion not likely to turn to his profit, or to strengthen his influence, and that as on other occasions the submission, a little blind, of the subject to his sovereign, arrested with Bossuet the accomplishment, I will not say of the duty, but of the desire of the Catholic bishop?

Such was the first phase of this remarkable negotiation, related, or more properly exhumed, with details very curious and perfectly new. The characters, the parts, the motives, of the various actors in the scene are fairly set forth and analyzed by M. de Careil, and we congratulate him on having added a new and piquant page to the diplomatic history of the seventeenth century. A single gap, however, very important and very easy to fill he has left, which renders his exposition a little obscure and uncertain. We nowhere find the text of the propositions, the instruments, to speak the language of cabinets, which made during twenty years the bases of the negotiation. They were in great number, M. de Careil informs us, drawn up under different circumstances, and by different authors. The Protestant theologians assembled at Hanover, and especially the most illustrious of them, Gerard Molanus, abbot of Lockum, drew up, collectively or individually, complete plans or _methods_, as they called them, of reunion, in which they expressed at the same time their views and their wishes, the sacrifices which they believed their communions would consent to make, and those which they expected from Rome in return for the re-establishment of unity. The Bishop of Neustadt, on his part, produced several compositions of the same kind, the titles of which, as given by M. de Careil, are, _Regulae circa Christianorum omnium eccesiasticam reunionem--Media conciliatoria incitantia, praestanda ad conciliationem._ And, in fine, under the name of _Propositiones novellorum discretiorum et praecipuorum_, he himself made a methodical abstract, in twenty-five propositions, or heads of chapters, of the views and wishes of Protestants, a capital document, which was discussed and corrected at Rome in a congregation of cardinals, and sent back to Germany with an approbatory brief of His Holiness. Leibnitz had it under his eye, and copied it with his own hand at Vienna, carefully marking the corrections and additions made by the Sacred College, and we understand M. Foucher de Careil to have had personal knowledge of the copy taken by Leibnitz.

It is difficult, therefore, to explain why M. de Careil has thought it necessary to subject our curiosity to the veritable punishment of Tantalus by simply mentioning the existence of a document of such great importance {438} without reproducing it. That he should believe it his duty not to swell his volume--though the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet did it--by inserting the private lucubrations of Protestant theologians, we can, in rigor, comprehend, but not approve. As in almost all the letters he has published, especially those of Molanus, these writings are discussed and commented on, it would, we think, have much facilitated the clear understanding of the subject, to have given at least the more important of them _in extenso._ But after all, the reformed doctors the most accredited spoke only in their own private names, for themselves alone, without any authority to bind their contemporary co-religionists, and _a fortiori_ without any authority to bind their Protestant posterity. Little imports it to know what Molanus or any other Protestant in 1680 thought of the points in controversy between the Church and the Reformation. But an act of the Court of Rome, discussed in a congregation, and clothed with the pontifical sign-manual--an official decision defining the maximum of concessions either as to language or practice which the Church could make to her separated children in order to bring them back to her bosom, Protestant propositions in their origin, indeed, but, as says M. de Careil--in a note written, I know not wherefore, in Italian--_accommodate secundo il gusto di Roma_(modified to suit the taste of Rome), is a document of a value very different, and yields in historical interest only to its dogmatic importance. It would be a document to place by the side of the most celebrated Professions of faith, and even above them, and to present, along with the excellent _Exposition_ by Bossuet, to all those troubled souls, so numerous in Protestant communions, who discern the truth only through the mists of prejudice, or misconceive it when stated to them in terms the real sense of which has for them been distorted or perverted from their childhood.

What Leibnitz in various places, and M. de Careil after him, show us of the propositions submitted to Rome, increases not a little our desire to know precisely what she replied to them. It seems from all that is told us, that the process or method of affecting reunion uniformly, or very nearly so, indicated by the Protestant doctors, was to place in two distinct categories the several points of difference which separate the Protestant communions from the Catholic Church; then place in the first category all the questions on which agreement may be hoped either by way of accommodation, if matters of simple disciplinary usage, if susceptible of modification; or by way of explanation, if points of dogmatic dispute turning on words rather than on ideas. On all these, agreement being easy, it should be immediately effected and proclaimed. In the second category must be placed all disputed questions too important, or on which minds are too embittered, to admit of their settlement by previous explanation. These must not be treated immediately, but be left in suspense, and reserved for discussion and final settlement in a future council. Meanwhile the Protestant doctors, pastors, ministers, and their flocks must be received into the Roman communion on the simple declaration that they acknowledge the infallibility of the Church in matters of dogma, and the promise, beforehand, that when she has freely decided with certainty, clearness, precision, and without ambiguity or equivocation, the several points reserved for adjudication, they will accept her decisions and offer no resistance to her decrees.

Such was the method proposed, which Leibnitz calls by turns the method of _mutual tolerance, abstraction, suspension,_and to which he reverts so frequently, and on which he insists with so much complaisance, under so many forms, and in so many different writings, that it is hardly possible not to regard him as its inventor. In his {439} view, this method has the merit of cutting off with a single stroke the interminable debates in which the sixteenth century was consumed, and of making the peace of nations no longer depend on the quibbling spirit of theologians. We shall soon briefly examine whether this abridgment of controversies might not have the inconvenience of leaving out the truth, or of spurning it aside; but for the moment we would simply remark that the method suggested or eagerly adopted by Leibnitz involved, with him, a grave consequence, so obvious that nobody can mistake it.

The questions proposed to be placed in the second category, or the points of controversy too important to be treated in advance, and to be reserved for discussion and settlement in a council to be convoked and held after reunion, had every one of them already been examined, one by one, discussed, and determined without appeal, in the celebrated assembly whose fame still filled all Europe, and whose decrees were read from the pulpits of more than half of Christendom. During twenty-five years, athwart the intrigues of courts, the ravages of war, and even the unchained plagues of heaven, three times interrupted, but as often resumed, the whole cause of the Reformation, dogmas and discipline, had been presented and argued at Trent. Judgment was there rendered on all the counts in the indictment, and the Reformation was henceforth _res judicata_. Consequently, to propose to reserve and open anew for discussion, were it only the least point of doctrine, was to forfeit the whole work of Trent, and to declare that great assembly illegal and all its decrees vacated. The Protestant proposition amounted, then, simply to this: Annul the Council of Trent, and convoke a new council in which Protestants _en masse_ will have the right to sit!

Under what form was such a proposition presented to Rome? What impression on Rome did it make? Was there really found a Catholic bishop to support it? Was it really discussed in a Congregation of Cardinals? Was it really included in the list of propositions admitted to discussion by the Papal brief whose existence is enigmatically revealed to us? If we understand certain phrases of M. de Careil, all these questions must be answered in the affirmative. He himself firmly believes that this project was accepted by the Bishop of Neustadt; he even believes that it was not discouraged at Rome; and that, the suspension of the Council of Trent was counted among the concessions which the bishop returned from Rome authorized to lead the Protestants, who had charged him with their interests, to hope would be granted.

It is certainly very embarrassing for us to question an assertion by M. de Careil, who seems to speak with the documents before him, while we, in the darkness in which he leaves us, can reason only from conjecture. We can only express our deep surprise, and ask him, if he is quite sure of having carefully read what he relates, or duly reflected on what he asserts? What, the Court of Rome authorized a bishop to promise Protestants, in its name, the suspension of the Council of Trent! Rome, with a stroke of the pen, pledged herself to permit the destruction of the work to which she had, during four glorious pontificates, devoted the persistent perseverance which she owed to the Holy Ghost, and all the traditional resources of her policy--the work which, in reaffirming the immovable foundations of the Christian faith, had at the same time drawn tighter, to the profit of the Holy See, the loosened bonds of the hierarchy! Rome exposed herself to see effaced, on the one hand, those dogmatic decrees in which the magnificence of the language rivals the depth of the ideas, and which have taken rank in the admiration of the world by the side of the Nicaean symbol, and on the other, those canons of discipline for which she had {440} maintained with the great Catholic powers a persistent struggle from which nothing could divert her, no, not even the fear of seeing France follow in the footsteps of England! And for what this condescension? For a negotiation of doubtful success, and the success of which, were it certain, would have restored to her communion only Germany, leaving outside of Catholic unity the Protestant centres of London, Geneva, and Amsterdam! Moreover, under what form would such a concession be made? By a confidential act, by a secret power given to an obscure agent! The Council of Trent would have been thus disavowed in the shade by one Congregation of Cardinals, whilst another, instituted expressly to give it vigor, continued, as it does still at Rome itself, to comment and develop it in public, and while at the foot of all altars the decisions of that great council received the solemn adhesion of all those whom the episcopal investiture raised to the rank of judges of the faith!

M. de Careil must not think us too difficult, if we hesitate to admit on his bare word, or even on that of Leibnitz, the reality of so strange a fact. Leibnitz was a party interested, and very deeply interested, in the success of a project for which he had a paternal affection, and his testimony is here too open to suspicion of at least involuntary illusion for us to receive it as conclusive proof. Leibnitz, beside, whatever was his intimacy with the Bishop of Neustadt, doubtless did not know thoroughly the confidential instructions of the plenipotentiary with whom he negotiated. The slightest affirmation of the bishop himself would have incomparably more weight with us, but that prelate, from whom M. de Careil publishes several documents, so far from ever mentioning any such engagement, takes special care, on the contrary, to avoid giving any personal opinion of his own on any of the plans presented to him. He takes care to remark to Leibnitz, in a special letter, that in the whole matter he acts only as a simple reporter, guards himself from supporting any proposition made to him, and simply promises the Protestant theologians to labor to secure a favorable reception to any overtures they might make consistent with Catholic principles. _Ego_, says he, _nullibi causae susceptae agam doctorem, sed simplicem apud utramque partem solicitatorum. . . Nihil aliud polliceor quam quod . . ego theologicam et tam favorabilem ac principia nostra patiantur, approbationem procurare laborabo_. Such a promise, which lends itself indeed to everything, engages assuredly to nothing, and if it in some measure explains the hopes which Leibnitz cherished, it is far from sufficing to remove our doubts.

Till a contrary proof--and I mean by a contrary proof an authentic and official document, not such or such an allusion, or _it is said_, collected at random from a private correspondence--I shall continue to believe that the suspension of the Council of Trent, all though making an essential part, and constituting, as it were, the keystone of the Protestant plan of pacification, was never conceded in principle at Rome, probably was never entertained; that Bishop Spinola was never authorized to treat on that basis, and that if he did not wholly refuse to converse on that point, it was in order not to discourage benevolent dispositions which he judged it wise to manage. He also may have hoped that when the Protestants had taken the great step of admitting the infallibility of Catholic authority, they would be led easily, by means of some historical explanations, to agree that the aid of the Holy Ghost did not fail the sessions of Trent, any more than any of the grand assizes of the Christian Church. If I am deceived in this negative conclusion, nothing would have been more easy for M. de Careil than to prevent my error by a more complete publication.

The sequel of events will show why I attach so much importance to the {441} establishment of the truth on this point. Let us resume, therefore, with M. de Careil the thread of the narrative. In spite of the general desire in 1670 to effect an understanding between Protestants and Catholics, and perhaps because of the ardor of that desire, all parties avoided explaining themselves fully on delicate points, and the negotiation and the _irénique_, as M. de Careil calls it, dragged itself along and reached no result. Twenty years after it continued still, languishing, indeed, but not abandoned. The Bishop of Neustadt was still living, hoping, laboring, and travelling constantly, intent on effecting peace; the Protestant doctors continued to pile up notes upon notes, and blackened any quantity of paper; but if in the theological world the affair remained on foot, though not advancing, in the political world the favor which had sustained it was singularly cooled. The spirit of resistance to the preponderating influence of Louis XIV., more determined than ever, had suddenly changed its course, and sought no longer its support in Catholicity, but, on the contrary, in the most advanced party of the Reformation, which suddenly raised up a champion of European independence. The Protestant chief of a petty maritime republic, elevated by a daring movement to the throne of a great monarchy--the grandson of William the Taciturn, became master of the heritage of the Stuarts, rallied around his standard all the hopes of national freedom and all the animosities caused by oppression. Beside, from the fatal edict of 1685, which brutally thrust out of France a whole peaceable people, brought up under the shelter of the laws in the ignorance of an hereditary error, the armies, the councils, and the large industrial towns of all Europe became gorged with French exiles, who united in the same execration Louis XIV. and the Church in which they saw only the bloody image of her implacable minister. On this stormy sea of excited passion and intense hatred the humble project of union, which Spinola and Leibnitz had so much difficulty in keeping afloat in calm weather, had little chance of surviving.

The princes abandoned it as no longer serving their political interests. But other auxiliaries, however, offered themselves, endowed with less power indeed, but hardly less brilliancy. These were no other than great ladies, delighting in the commerce of the learned, and retaining in their convents or the interior paths of piety the habits of a cultivated education, and sometimes pretensions to political ability. In the seventeenth century, especially in France after the Fronde, it is well known that theology often became the refuge of those high-born beauties whom scruples or repentance kept aloof from the pleasures of the court, whilst the jealous despotism of the sovereign would no longer permit them to make a figure on the theatre of public affairs. Several of these elegant, noble, and even royal lady-theologians were attracted by the report of the negotiation in which Leibnitz took part, and perhaps by the renown of that negotiator himself, and in the hope either of aiding in dressing the wounds of Europe, or at least of securing so precious a conquest in the net of faith, opened communications and displayed in their correspondence with him those severe graces of which their piety had not despoiled them. The Abbess of Maubuisson; Louise Hollandine, sister of the palatiness, Anne of Gonzaga; that celebrated princess herself; the sprightly Madame de Brinon, for a long time the confidant of Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr, but whose enterprising spirit could not be anywhere contented with a subordinate part; in fine, the queen of the _Précieuses_, Mademoiselle Scudéry, who neglected no opportunity of shining in an epistolary correspondence, and who was by no means sorry to show that her merit could surpass the limits of the Carte de him, such are the {442} unexpected figures which M. de Careil makes pass before us, and in painting them he borrows some colors from the palette of the great philosopher of our days, M. Cousin, who has devoted himself to the good fame of the ladies of the seventeenth century. In the train of the ladies appear the literary gentlemen of their society, accustomed to make with them, in courteous jousts, the assaults of wit. As the friend of Madame de Brinon, for instance, we see intervene the historian of the French Academy, the best pen of the royal cabinet, the celebrated Pellisson. All these epistles, very numerous, in which the variety of tone relieves the monotony of subject, form the most agreeable part of the new publication--too agreeable, indeed, for seriousness is sadly wanting, and more still in Leibnitz himself than in his graceful correspondents. A tone of subtle badinage, a mistimed display of literary and philosophical erudition, the pleasure of discussing without care to conclude, are, unhappily, but too apparent in everything that emanates from his pen during this second period. We might say that he took pleasure in prolonging a situation which procured him advances so flattering, and in which, without pledging himself to any one, he could let himself be lulled by sweet compliments from the most beautiful mouths in the world.

However that might be, this slumber, sustained by such sweet words, was all at once rudely broken. Madame de Brinon, the most active brain of the feminine congress, seeing that after all they talked much and said nothing, and that, by a supple and undulating argumentation, Leibnitz always escaped at the decisive moment, and retarded more than he advanced a solution, formed the project of calling to her aid a more vigorous athlete, who could grapple with him body to body. She addressed herself to Bossuet, and this time the Bishop of Meaux found more leisure and more freedom of action. The political situation had changed. Coming out from that cold distrust in which he intrenched himself in the beginning, he requested to have communicated to him the documents of the negotiation, especially the writings of Molanus, and made it his duty to give his own views of the matter. The entrance of this great man upon the scene, a long time announced, a long time expected, and who appeared, as in certain tragedies, as the hero of the third act, has, in M. de Careil's publication, all the effect of a theatrical surprise.

No sooner, in fact, has he opened his mouth, than a puff of his stiff, strong speech tumbles down the frail scaffolding on which Leibnitz had placed his hopes of the peace of Christendom. Placing his finger at once on the weak spot in the system, he has no difficulty in showing that, however disguised, the real proposition returns always to the demand that the Church shall suffer to be called in question points already adjudicated, and tolerate doubt where she has already defined the faith. Now, if such condescension is possible in the order of human decrees, which, providing for local and transitory interests, may and ought to yield to differences of time and place, it would be absurd to suppose it possible in the order of eternal truths, proclaimed by an authority conceded to be infallible. Infallibility carries with it immutability as a necessary consequence. The mirror of an unalterable truth can reflect only a single image; the echo can repeat only a single sound. Comment, explain, as much as you please, clothe the old faith with new forms if you will, smooth the paths which conduct to it by removing all offensive terms which are a stumbling-block to the weak, save self-love the humiliation of a position disavowed by treating error as a misunderstanding which is now enlightened, even charity exacts in this respect all that dignity permits; but to alter, attenuate, or {443} merely to debate the truth transmitted can in no sense be permitted without killing with the same blow both the Church and the truth, without either denying the truth or that the Church has always been its interpreter.

Such was the reasoning, perfectly simple, and the principle of the infallibility of the Church once admitted, unanswerable, which Bossuet with his well known majesty, and from the height of his episcopal dignity, urged in reply to the method supported by Leibnitz. Was Leibnitz taken by surprise? Had he seriously thought of becoming a Catholic without submitting in the process to this consequence? Such a defect of logic in a rival of Newton is not supposable. But he was neither accustomed to be treated so loftily, nor in a humor to march so directly to the point. A cry of astonishment and despite involuntarily escaped him, sharp complaints of _the haughtiness of M. de Meaux, of the tone of superiority which eloquence and authority give to great men,_and bitter denunciations of the exclusive spirit and obstinacy of theologians, betray this sentiment, very natural, and as it would seem even in some measure contagious, for M. de Careil, now and then making himself one with his hero, suffers himself to be gained by it. All good Catholic as he would be, he himself also in his two introductions regrets that the conciliating spirit and eclectic methods of Leibnitz were not accepted. Conciliation is an excellent thing, and pleases me much, some say, pleases me too much, and I have been more than once accused of carrying in religious matters my love for it a little too far; but there are limits fixed in the very nature of things, and which a little common sense will always, I hope, prevent me from transgressing. Who says _Church_, says permanence in the truths of faith; and who says _Catholics_, says a union of men who think alike of those truths. Now what, stripped of all ambiguity of language, would have been the practical effect of the proposition of Leibnitz, if it had been carried into execution? The points of doctrine (and what points! the most important not only for faith but also for reason, affecting the basis as the supreme destiny of the soul) touching the accord of grace and free will, the conditions of eternal salvation, the mysterious operations of the sacraments, taught in the Christian pulpit from the very cradle of Christian antiquity, and for more than a hundred years clothed in new and more precise forms, would have been at a single dash erased from the catechism and suspended in doubt till the uncertain action of a future council! The Church would have suffered an interrogation point to be placed indefinitely before affirmations which she had only the day before imposed on the faithful under sanction of an anathema! Meanwhile, the faithful, divided on the very foundations of their belief, would have met before the same altar to repeat the same prayers while understanding them in contradictory senses, and to receive the same sacraments while holding entirely different views of their value and efficacy! What in this strange _interim_ would have become of the dignity and stability of Catholic doctrine? And what were the utility of an external and nominal union which could only cover a real internal difference?

To sustain himself, if not his firm and piercing genius, in an illusion which held him captive and would not relax its grasp, Leibnitz had two, only two, arguments in his repertory; but he had the art to make them take so many different forms, and to make with these two arms so many passes and counter-passes of logic and erudition, that more than an entire volume is taken up by M. de Careil with the writings which contain them, and which may be read even now without other fatigue than that produced by their continual dazzle. Faithful to our task of reporter, we must strip these two arguments of the brilliant garments with which his luxurious {444} eloquence adorns them. Divested of their flesh, so to speak, stripped naked, and subjected to the treatment to which the scholastics subject all arguments to ascertain their value, these two arguments are very simple and easily comprehended. In the first place, they consist in denying the antiquity, and therefore the authority, of the Council of Trent. Leibnitz in this respect only repeats the allegations of all Protestant doctors, and which were old even in his time. The number of prelates present at that assembly was relatively small, and were taken almost exclusively from the churches of Spain and Italy, and as several Catholic sovereigns refused to publish the council in their respective states, because some of its disciplinary canons appeared to strike at their temporal rights, there had been no opportunity to heal its original defect by the assent of the Church dispersed.

In the second place, granting that the Council of Trent had the character and authority which are questioned, it was in good faith and in the sincerity of their hearts that Protestants refused to acknowledge them. They in whose names Leibnitz was charged to negotiate gave manifest proofs of that good faith in adhering beforehand to the decision of a future council, and consequently in rendering full homage to the principle of ecclesiastical authority. Now error, if sincere, is not heresy, and has only its appearance. It is only voluntary, deliberate, and obstinate rebellion that makes the heretic. A man who submits in advance to the authority of truth, and waits only a knowledge of it to arrange himself under its banner, counts from that moment among those to whom the Church may open her maternal bosom.

These few sentences embrace--every attentive reader will be convinced of it--the substance of the whole argumentation, extended by Leibnitz, enriched and enlivened by a thousand piquant expressions, through many years, in a series of more than a hundred letters. It needs fewer words still, after Bossuet, to expose in its poverty and nakedness the ground-work concealed by the richness and splendor of the ornaments.

What mattered it, in reality, to examine whether the Council of Trent in its origin or at any moment of its duration had united a full representation of the universal Church? To what good to seek if it had received in its text and in every part official promulgation by the political power in each sovereign state? One fact was certain, and that was enough. At the time when Leibnitz was writing, the doctrine defined by the Fathers of Trent on all the points controverted between Catholics and Protestants was, without a single exception, the law in all the churches of the Catholic world. From the basilica of Michael Angelo to the humblest village church, under the purple as under the serge soutane, every pontiff, every cardinal, every bishop, every parish priest, in the confessional as in the pulpit, scrupulously conformed to its language. If the consent of the Church is not recognizable by such signs, by what signs could it be recognized? Only they whom Trent condemned persisted in withholding their adhesion to its decrees. But Arius protested also against Nicaea, and it has never depended on a few voices raised by spite or chagrin to disturb the harmony of symbols with which the concert of nations makes resound the vaults of the universal Church.

What, again, avails it to allege the good faith, the involuntary ignorance, of Protestants in resisting the Council of Trent? That good faith, if real, may excuse them in the eyes of God, who reads the heart; it opens not the doors of the visible Church, which can admit to her external communion only those who make an explicit profession of her doctrine. Where, in fact, should we be, what chimera would be the authority of the {445} Church, and in what smoke would vanish the obedience of the faithful, if every man could at pleasure retrench this or that article from the _Credo_, under the pretext that he could not in his conscience recognize in it the marks of divine revelation? Certainly it is obstinacy in error that makes the heretic, for a just God can punish only the adhesion of the will to error. So in that terrible and solemn day which will rend the veil which covers the inmost human conscience, not only of those in separated Christian communions, but even those in the darkness of paganism and idolatry, many souls may be discovered who for their constant fidelity to the feeble gleams of light vouchsafed them, will have deserved to have applied to them the merits of the sacrifice of the Son of God. More than one Queen of Saba will come up from the desert to accuse the children of Abraham of a want of faith, and in that supreme moment the Church will recognize more than one

"Enfant qu'en sol sein elle n'a point porté." (Child which she has not brought forth.)

But it is given to no one to anticipate that hour of mystery and revelation, and so long as here below, and knowing one another only by words and external acts, it is, by our beliefs that we must, at least externally, as to the body, if not to the soul, separate ourselves. Sole certain guide to salvation, sole confidant of the mysteries of grace, the Church damns not in advance all those whom she excludes, any more than she saves all those whom she admits; but she can relinquish to nobody a single one of the articles of faith, nor knowingly allow a single farthing to be subtracted from the deposit confided to her keeping.

Against these two fixed points, imperturbably sustained by the hand of Bossuet, the inexhaustible dialectics of Leibnitz, always repulsed, ever returning anew to the charge, beats and breaks, without relaxation, precisely as the waves of the ocean against the rock. The contrast between the flexibility of one of the adversaries and the immobility of the other is about all the interest that, in the midst of continual repetitions, is offered by this interminable debate. We subjoin, however, to conclude our analysis, the recital of two inventions of doubtful loyalty imagined by Leibnitz to give the change to his adversary, and which out of respect for the memory of so great a man we will call not artifices, but with M. Foucher de Careil simply expedients.

The first consisted in passing over the head of Bossuet, in order to crush him with the heavy hand of his sovereign, Louis XIV.

Europe knew, or at least believed that it knew, both Bossuet and Louis XIV. It knew that the one suffered from temperament, and the other from principle, hardly any limit to the royal authority. The susceptibility of the monarch and the conscience of the subject being of one accord, Leibnitz thought that by disquieting the monarch he could easily bring the subject to reason. So in a note, ably and skilfully drawn up, addressed to the Duke of Brunswick, who was to send it to the French king, he represented that the work of peace at the point reached was arrested by an obstacle in reality more political than religious; that the Council of Trent, which was the real stumbling-block, interested Rome in her struggle with the temporal powers far more than in her controversies with heresy. Hence an intervention of the royal authority to remove that obstacle, so far from being an invasion of the domain of faith, would be only a very proper act defensive of the legitimate attributes of the temporal authority, only a continuation and a consequence of the struggle against ultramontane pretensions instituted and sustained by all the parliaments of France, and for the clergy something like a supplementary article to the declaration of 1682. Let the king make felt in this languishing {446} negotiation that hand which nothing in Europe can resist. Let him pronounce one of those sovereign words which have so often fetched an echo even in the sanctuary, or let him simply join to the theologians and bishops, too submissive by their quality to the spiritual authority, an ordinary representative of the regalian rights--a lawyer, a statesman, or a magistrate, and all will speedily return to order, and march rapidly toward a solution. Numerous adulations of the wisdom of the king, and even of his theological knowledge, followed by honeyed insinuations against the Bishop of Meaux, terminate this singular appeal to the secular arm, the discovery of which will hardly count among the titles to glory of philosophy, and which, moreover, was no more successful than estimable.

The king, old, weary of those religious discussions which were the plague of his reign, and even to his last days the chastisement of his intolerable despotism, communicated the note to Bossuet without comment, perhaps even without having paid it the least attention. Bossuet, strong in the solidity of his arguments, declared himself perfectly willing to receive such lay associate as should be chosen, and Leibnitz, having no reason after that to desire what Bossuet so little dreaded, the proposition fell through, and left no trace.

The other snare was not less adroit, but more innocent. In his attachment to his favorite plan, Leibnitz could not persuade himself that it could possibly be resisted by any reasons drawn from conscience alone. The party taken, the point of honor, scholastic obstinacy, were, it seemed to him, the principal reasons for rejecting his plan. It was with Catholics a matter of vanity not to yield to demands made by Protestants. But what they refused from the hand of a stranger, they would, perhaps, accept more willingly from the hand of a friend, a member of their own communion. A pious fraud would relieve the plan of all suspicion of heresy. A consultation, for example, of a supposed Catholic doctor, who should show himself favorable to it, would, perhaps, be all that was required to disarm prejudice, and the flag would pass the merchandise. The great philosopher, therefore, set himself at work. Assuming the paternal tone and authoritative air of a Catholic priest, taking care that no expression smacking of heresy should escape his lips, playing a part, so to say, with all the gravity in the world, and, without a single smile, produced in eight or ten pages that little document which he entitled _Judicium Doctoris Catholici_, and which, proceeding from principles in appearance the most Catholic, and advancing in ways the most orthodox, arrived at the foot of the Council of Trent itself, to mine in silence its very foundation. If M. de Careil had not this time conscientiously printed the entire text of this discovery, we should find it very hard to believe that a mind so great could descend to such a puerile game, and of which we seek in vain the fruit he evidently hoped. With whom, then, did Leibnitz imagine he had to do? Do people disguise their ideas, as they counterfeit their voices? Is the Church a citadel so poorly guarded that one can enter it by stratagem, by simply turning his cockade or dissembling his uniform? Took he Bossuet for an imbecile sentinel who could be imposed upon by passports so evidently forged?

For the honor of Leibnitz and of philosophy we would pass over in silence this crotchet of misplaced gaiety, if M. de Careil did not force us to pause on it for a moment longer before including, by attaching to it an undue importance, by pretending to see in it the solution of a literary problem, which we formerly made a subject of some observations. A few words will dispose of this incident, which beside is not wholly foreign to the principal object of our present reflections.

{447}

Beyond the controversy with Bossuet, which, during the lifetime of Leibnitz, made, in fact, very little noise, and the partial publication of which was already ancient, there exists, as is known, wholly in the handwriting of that great man, a small work on religious questions, which remained unknown up to his death and even for a long time after, and which was discovered and published only at the beginning of the present century. When this little work, baptized, I know not by whom, _Systema Theologicum_, for the first time saw the light, it was perceived, not without surprise, that on all the points, even those on which in his known writings Leibnitz was the furthest removed from the doctrines of the Church, his conclusions conformed to the purest Catholic teaching. From that arose a great discussion among the learned, all astonished, some agreeably, some disagreeably, to find in Leibnitz this posthumous and unexpected evidence of orthodoxy. Commentaries, conjectures, explanations, were called forth in abundance, often ingenious, but rarely impartial, each writer interpreting the tract after his own manner--Protestants anxious to keep Leibnitz in their ranks, and Catholics intent on conquering him for theirs. I myself hazarded some conjectures on the subject, but timidly, as was proper on such a matter, and without much expectation of making them prevail, the first to acknowledge their insufficiency, and persuaded that the existence of the _Systema Theologicum_, like the birth-place of Homer, and the name of the author of the _Imitatione Christi_, would remain a sort of biblical quadrature of the circle, destined to supply for ever to the learned a subject of discussion, and to students a thesis.

If we believe M. de Careil, the mystery is now unveiled; the new discovery explains the old; the _Judicium Doctoris Catholici_ is the key to the _Systema Theologicum_, of which it is substantially only a rough sketch, and the first edition. In the one as in the other, Catholicity is only a borrowed vestment, momentarily worn by Leibnitz to disguise his uniform of a negotiator. It was a _ruse_ not of war but of diplomacy. On the plan of pacification the success of which he was bent on securing, Leibnitz, in order to beguile the malevolent, by a premeditated design impressed pressed on it the Catholic seal instead of the Protestant stamp. He was no more a Catholic when he wrote the _Systema Theologicum_ than he was when he prepared, to deceive the vigilant eye of Bossuet, the _Judicium Doctoris Catholici_; he only wished to appear one in order to secure a full hearing for the conditions on which he could become a Catholic. [Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: A similar view, in some respects, to this is taken and urged with much plausibility by Dr. Guhrauer In his German work which formed the basis of J. M. Mackie's "Life of Godfrey William von Leibnitz," published at Boston by Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1845; and the refutation of it, indirectly given by the Prince de Broglie in the text, is by no means unwelcome.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

The natural consequence of such a supposition has been for M. de Careil to make the _Systema Theologicum_ figure by the side of the _Judicium Doctoris,_at such a date as he judged the most convenient, for example, among the documents of the negotiation of which he was drawing up a statement (_procès verbal_). But since one of these documents was, in his view, only the detailed reproduction of the other, it seems to us he should have placed them in face of each other, so as to facilitate their comparison. We regret that he has not so placed them, for we are convinced that even he himself, in re-reading them in connection for the press, would have had no difficulty in perceiving that the assimilation imagined has not the least foundation in fact. Although signed by the same hand, the two documents, which he would confound, do not in any manner whatever bear witness to the same state of mind, or to having been both designed to aid a common object. Everything in them differs, not merely in tone, which in one is {448} grave and full of emotion, subtle and light in the other, but, above all, in the plan and very substance of the argument. The _Judicium_ is a series of arguments, very brief, which tend directly to a foregone conclusion, namely, the pacification of the schism, and as the means of effecting it, the suspension of the Council of Trent. Not an idea, not a word, that does not tend directly to this conclusion, nor the slightest effort to dissemble it. It is a skilful, but adroit pleading against the Council of Trent. The _Systema_, on the contrary, is a detailed exposition, often eloquent, of the entire Catholic faith, point by point, dogma after dogma, of those which Protestants reject as well as of those which they admit with the Church. And what authority does this dogmatic exposition appeal to as its support? The oftenest is to the Council of Trent itself, openly invoked, on the ground that the voice of the universal Church is the invariable rule of faith. The Council of Trent in every line is called holy, venerable, and sometimes even _the Council_, by way of eminence. After this, what place would M. de Careil give to this writing in a negotiation, the precise object of which was to efface that council from the memory of the faithful, and the annals of the Church? A singular pleasure assuredly Leibnitz must have found in belying himself, in playing a ridiculous farce, and of doubtful morality, only to end in yielding to his opponent the ground disputed between them!

Till M. de Careil responds to this difficulty, to which we had previously invited his attention, we must continue to guard ourselves against confounding works so dissimilar in their tone, design, and substance as the _Judicium_ and the _Systema_, and continue also to see in the one only a pastime without value, which ought not to have occupied even the waste moments of a great man, and still less cause the loss of that time so well filled by his editor; and in the other, on the contrary, the expression of a sincere conviction, very proper to throw light on the nature of the beliefs of the soul that conceived it. It is of the state of that soul, and of those beliefs, that it remains for us to say a few words, by attempting to enlighten the confused impressions produced by the voluminous papers of which we have just finished the analysis.

II.

Three things, I think, must have struck those who have had the patience to follow me in this long exposition: 1. The singularly narrow ground on which Leibnitz consented to place the negotiation; 2. This perseverance in pursuing it; 3. This resistance to bringing it to a conclusion. Cantoned in very narrow quarters, he maintained himself there with obstinacy, reanimating the combat whenever it slackened, but escaping from every solution whenever it approached.

They, for example, who, attracted by the antithesis of the two great names, should imagine that they were about to hear debated between the last of the Fathers and the ancestor of modern philosophy the great question everywhere agitated in the sixteenth century, and on which the future of society depends--they who should expect to see a mortal struggle in the listed field between a champion of free inquiry and a representative of authority, would, I fear, be greatly disappointed. Not a word of the mutual relations of faith and reason, of the rights of private judgment, or of the principle of authority, is, I think, met with in the whole twelve hundred pages comprised in these two volumes; and for the very simple reason, that the terms to which the discussion was restricted raised no question of the sort between the two opponents. Faithful to the constant traditions of the Church, and imbued with the rules of the Cartesian method, Bossuet contested none of the prerogatives of {449} reason in the order of our natural powers; Christian by profession, Leibnitz recognized in faith the right to reveal and to impose on man knowledge superior to nature--pretending to become and even to be a Catholic _in potentia_ and _in voto_, Leibnitz declared himself ready to seek the rule of faith, not in the mute text of a book, but in the living voice of an organized Church, and this Church he distinctly acknowledged to be in the hierarchy of pastors whose head is the Roman Pontiff. Consequently there was and could be no debate either on the existence or the composition, the mode of action or the seat, of the ecclesiastical authority. There was between them only a simple and humble question of fact--of history. Certainly the Church has the plenary right to be heard and obeyed when she speaks; but did she speak in the Council of Trent? The contest Leibnitz sustained went no further than this, and rose no higher. Persons in our day, curious in theology and metaphysics, those who take an interest in reconciling free will with grace, or the foreknowledge of God, those who like to carry either the torch of dogma or the scalpel of analysis into the very depths of the soul, will find very little satisfaction in reading them. None of the psychological or moral problems raised by the Reformation, and with which it had troubled men's minds, and filled the schools with the _serf_-will of Luther, nor the foreordination of Calvin, nor the subtle distinctions in regard to the intrinsic nature of moral evil and the effects of original sin, obtained from Leibnitz, from first to last, even so much as a simple allusion. On the concurrence of the divine action and that of the human will in the work of moral progress and the hope of eternal salvation, he thought and spoke as the Church. His criticisms affect the form of the Council of Trent rather than the substance of its decisions. It is the competency of the court to which he pleads, rather than its decrees. Aside from the canon of the Scriptures, which, for the Old Testament, he would restrict to the Hebrew books properly so-called, and exclude therefrom the books in Greek transmitted only by the Septuagint, I am aware of no dogmatic point, defined at Trent, which creates with him any serious difficulty. And even on this subject of the canonicity of the sacred books, he has nothing that resembles that audacious criticism to which Richard Simon, in the seventeenth century, opened the way, and which, a very few years after, all Germany was to rush into and level and broaden. It was not the criticism of our days, which pretends to an imprescriptible right over the entire text of the Scriptures, and to serve as the ground of all certainty, moral and philosophical. The criticism of Leibnitz takes not such lofty airs. It is restricted to some accessory parts of the Old Testament, and presumes not to go beyond. And when Bossuet, adopting a method familiar to logicians (though not always prudently employed), would push it to the extreme, to absurdity even, and prove that its principles logically carried out would ruin entirely the Holy Scriptures, Leibnitz recoils, frightened at the last word of his own logic.

Leibnitz, having never been accused of a narrow or timid mind, of any lack of boldness in his principles or of force in deducing from them their logical consequences, it is necessary to believe that if he avoided the debate between the Reformation and the Church under its grander aspects, it was solely because he was separated from Catholic beliefs only by the narrow trench which he himself has traced, and because his own Protestantism, so to speak, was neither longer nor broader. Certainly he can be very little of a Protestant who acknowledges all the councils _less_ one alone, and even all the decrees of that one save a single exception--who speaks as a Catholic of the Church, of tradition, of the priesthood, and of the sacraments. That to these sentiments, so near to those of a Catholic, {450} Leibnitz joined the sincere desire to take the final step; that, having reached the threshold, he was strongly pressed to cross it, we must believe, in order not only not to throw doubt on his often repeated protestations, which have every appearance of being made in good faith, but to account for his perseverance, meritoriously displayed on more than one occasion to sustain or revive, against all hope, the flickering flame of the languishing negotiation. Neither the growing coldness of the powers of the earth, who after having started it abandoned it midway, nor the haughtiness of Bossuet, a little contemptuous, which exposed without any mercy the vanity of his projects, succeeded in discouraging him. He was proof against all disgusts; he knocked at every door, and the crooked methods he adopted to open or turn them, not according to the rules of loyal warfare, attest at least an ardent desire to enter the place. Yet, in spite of this agreement on principles, this heartfelt desire for union, and the feeble distance which remained for him to traverse to become a Catholic, Leibnitz never in his life traversed it. The end of the discussion found him just where he was at its beginning, always debating, never advancing. When the reasoning of Bossuet became urgent and victorious (and it will be admitted that with the choice of ground, and the advantages conceded him, one needs not to be a Bossuet to conquer)--whenever it took a turn _ad hominem_, and passed from the general interests of Protestantism to the particular duties of individual conscience--whenever the question was no longer of concluding a treaty of peace between two hostile powers, but of articulating the submission of a believer, Leibnitz drew back, and escaped. The tone becomes sharp and sour, recriminations are mingled with reasoning, subterfuges retract the concessions. Broad and easy in regard to principles, he haggles at consequences. What are we to think of that alternation, of those constant advances followed by as constant retreats? What was the after-thought back of the exterior motives of that intermittent resistance? For no one can be persuaded that a man of a serious character, and a mind which stops not at trifles, admitting in the outset the necessity and the right of an infallible authority in matters of faith, could remain a Protestant, that is, a rebel to that acknowledged authority, because the bishops, united at Trent, admitted _Ecclesiasticus_ and _Macchabees_ into the canon of the Scriptures.

The moral problem being curious and complex, every one has a right to offer his own solution. I formerly, in this periodical, offered mine, and I shall hold to it till a better and a more satisfactory solution is discovered. In my judgment, all is explained, if we suppose that Leibnitz became a Catholic in intellect and by study, yet remained a Protestant by force of habit, interest, and self-love. The first part is not even a supposition, but a fact. For, waiving the disputed value of the _Systema Theologicum_, the documents which we have before us contain alone avowals amply sufficient to prove it. When one admits the concurrence of free will and the divine will in the work of salvation, the mysterious virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, the transubstantiation of the elements in the eucharist--when one recognizes the sacred character of the priesthood, the Primacy by divine right of the bishops of Rome, and, above all, the infallibility of the Church (and Leibnitz accords all this to Bossuet, always by implication, and often under the form of explicit concession), one is willingly or unwillingly a Catholic, or at least has lost all right not to be one. In such a case the defect is in the will, not the intellect. Let nothing be said here of invincible ignorance, for never was there ignorance more vincible, more completely conquered, subjected, drowned in floods of light, than in the case of Leibnitz.

{451}

Remains, then, only the second part of the hypothesis, which I confess is less clearly demonstrated, as well as less charitable; but it perfectly meets the facts in the case, and perhaps, when the first part is once conceded, it, better than any other explanation, saves the dignity and loyalty of Leibnitz.

If it was true, as we hold, that Leibnitz, agreeing with the Church in all the fundamental principles of the Catholic faith, was retained outside of her communion by the fear of losing the high position which he had gained in the ranks of Protestants and with their princes, nothing more simple than that, to satisfy at the same time his conscience and his interests, he should labor earnestly and perseveringly to effect a reconciliation of his party and his protectors with the Church. If it was true that he felt himself bound by strong and respectable ties which attach men to the monuments, and to the forms of worship, which received their first vows and dictated their first prayers, it is very natural that he should hesitate to go alone, to take his seat in churches unknown to his childhood, and that he should, instead, seek at first to reconstruct the broken down altars of the temples of the middle ages which had seen his birth. If finally the _proud weakness_ attached to the royalty of science as to every other royalty, made him dread to change the part of an accredited doctor of one party for that of a penitent and neophyte of another, who can be astonished that, to spare himself the painful transition, he should wish to pass out with arms, baggage, and all the honors of war, instead of submitting to conditions, and enter into the Church with head erect, followed by a retinue of nations, and have therefore a right to as much gratitude as he gave of submission?

The persistence of Leibnitz in a forlorn negotiation finds in this at least a probable explanation. His insistence on points of little importance is less easy to understand. These points, of which he knew well what to think, are those without which, according to his knowledge of the Protestant courts and schools, no peace was possible either to be concluded or even proposed. He knew how completely and irrevocably Protestant princes and doctors were pledged by their word and their self-love (_amour-propre_) against the Council of Trent, from which they fancied they had been unjustly excluded. Many of them were on the point of reaching by their own reason and study dogmatic conclusions analogous to those of Trent; but the date and seal of that council affixed to any formulary presented for their signature made them instinctively recoil. It was in their name much more than in his own, or rather to manage their pretensions much more than to tranquillize his own conscience, as he allows us in more than one place to perceive, that he insisted with invincible obstinacy that this obstacle to peace must be removed. He acted as a negotiator who follows his instructions and speaks for others, much more than as a doctor who decides, or a philosopher who discusses, on his own account. In the new council whose convocation he called for, he thought all low in himself, the dogmas of Trent, after an apparent discussion, would be re-established on the more solid basis of a more general agreement, and not having that quick sense of the dignity of the Church which belongs only to her children, he felt no repugnance to the adoption of expedients borrowed from political prudence, and wholly out of place in the Church of God.

Thus may be resolved, it seems to me, in the most simple manner in the world, the apparent contradictions in the conduct of Leibnitz, and be discovered the secret of his obstinacy in protracting a fruitless discussion, instead of either candidly breaking it off or boldly bringing it to its logical conclusion. He had postponed the day of his personal conversion to the day constantly hoped, constantly announced as near, of a general reconciliation. {452} It would have cost him too much to move before that day came; but it cost him hardly less to own to himself that come it would not. Hence, with him, a prolonged state of indecision, which, as human life is short, and death always takes us by surprise, had naturally no termination but that of his life itself. We in this have, I think, explained that other problem presented by the _Systema Theologicum_. If we have rightly seized his state of mind, nothing was more natural than that we should find among the papers of Leibnitz a profession of Catholic faith, and there can be nothing astonishing in the fact that it remained unfinished and unpublished. From the moment in which the doctrines contained in that tract became his real belief, it was very natural that he should reduce them to writing, and, from the moment when he had subjected the publication of his conversion to a condition always hoped for, but never realized, it was more natural still that he should keep the writing by him as the witness of the fact of his conversion. At what point of his life, therefore, did he confide to paper the interior state of his mind? It is impossible, but at the same time wholly unimportant, to determine. Probably it was in one of those moments of sincerity and recollection in which the soul, detaching herself from all worldly considerations, places herself face to face with the problems of her eternal destiny; or, indeed, may have been at a time when, in the vein of hope, and believing that he was on the eve of concluding ecclesiastical peace, he wished to draw up before-hand, in readiness for the event, its manifesto and programme. Little imports it. As soon as he thought as a Catholic, there were a thousand circumstances in his life in which he must have spoken and written as he thought. The moment in which he would have expressed himself with the least frankness was most likely that in which, being made the plenipotentiary of the Protestants, and charged to treat for them, he felt it his duty to put forth in their name pretensions to which in his own heart he attached no importance. Leibnitz the negotiator must necessarily have been more difficult, and set a higher price on his submission, than Leibnitz the philosopher, so that, in opposition to the assertion of M. de Careil, his sincere work would be the _Systema Theologicum:_ his diplomatic work would be the correspondence of which we have made the analysis.

The advantage of Bossuet in the debate is that in his case no such questions can be raised, and no such subtle distinctions be called for. Bossuet the bishop and Bossuet the diplomatist are one and the same person, and speak one and the same language. Knowing perfectly whence he starts, whither he can go, what he is permitted to abandon, and what he must hold fast; very liberal in the part which he gives to reason, very precise in what he asserts in the name of authority; marking with a steady hand the limits of what can be changed in the Church, and what is as immutable as she herself, he has no occasion, when he has once laid down his principles, to withdraw any concession, or to shrink from any logical consequence; possessing an erudition less varied, an argumentative ability less flexible than that of Leibnitz, Bossuet, in his letters, carries the day by his rectitude and precision. We say, however, and without wrong to the great prelate, that his cause was too nearly gained in advance. All the principles are conceded him in the outset, and the slightest logical pressure suffices to force out the necessary conclusions. Leibnitz found at times his hand heavy, and complained of it; but he himself armed that powerful hand with the instrument which it set at work, without management indeed, but also without forcing its action.

This privileged situation, which gives to Bossuet his preponderance in the struggle, takes, however, from that struggle a large part of the interest which otherwise it might have had for {453} us, and deprives us of the instruction that might have been derived from it. We assuredly have little chance of seeing pitted against each other combatants of their stature, and less still, if it be possible, of seeing a debate carried on under like conditions. There is no longer a Bossuet in the Church; but still less, perhaps, are there Protestants and philosophers who, like Leibnitz, recognize infallibility in principle, and the inspiration of three-fourths of the canon of Scripture. That kind of enemies is gone, and left no heirs. Those whom we now encounter make to our forces a less stiff resistance. The very image and shadow of authority have disappeared from the Protestantism of our age, each day more and more dissipated in the thousand shades of private judgment. With unbounded free inquiry and unbridled criticism, controversy can no longer find a starting-point in any dogma or in any text, and, in fact, has ceased to be possible. The enemy escapes by the want of a body to be grappled with. Happily, another sort of combat can be waged, another sort of victory be hoped for. Doctrines, remote from one another, to be disputed in their principles, may still be compared in their effects. It is henceforth by their respective fruits, rather than by arguments, by their respective action on society and on souls, that, before an uncertain public, must be judged the principle of authority in matters of faith and that of private judgment. On this new soil, as on that of pure intelligence, God permits the efforts of man to concur in the triumph of his cause. If he wills, then, for the honor of his Church, to raise up Bossuets to take his cause in hand, there ought to be, for the honor of her nature, Leibnitzes to meet them, and measure themselves with them.

PRINCE ALBERT DE BROGLIE.

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.

1. Abbot Antony said: I saw the nets of the enemy lying spread out over the earth; and I cried out, "Alas, who shall escape these?" And a voice answered, "Humility."

2. It is told of Blessed Arsenius, that on Saturday evening he turned his back on the setting sun, and, stretching out his arms toward heaven, did not cease to pray till the sun rose before his face in the morning.

3. Abbot Agatho was zealous to fulfil every duty.

If he crossed a ferry, he was the first to take an oar.

If he had a visit from his brethren, his hand was first, after prayer, to set out the table.

For he was full of divine love.

4. The novice of Abbot Sisoi often had to say to him, "Rise, father; let us eat." He used to make answer, "Are you sure we did not eat just now, my son?"

The novice replied, "Quite sure, my father." Then the old man said, "Well, if we did not eat, come, let us eat."

5. A president came to see Abbot Simon; and some clerks, who got to him first, said to him, "Now, father, get ready! Here comes the president for your blessing; he has heard a great deal about you."

"_I_ will get ready," said the abbot. So he took some bread and cheese, and began munching at the door of his cell.

"So _this_ is your solitary!" said the president, and went away again.

{454}

From St. James's Magazine.

'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

Has sorrow cast thy spirit down, And crush'd thy hopes Elysian? Be not disheartened by her frown. Nor heedless of thy mission. But go forth gaily on thy way-- The bonds of care dissever, And pluck the roses while you may; 'Tis better late than never!

Doth love consume with pensive woe Thy heart whence hope has fleeted-- As sunbeams melt away the snow They never could have heated? Come, wreathe thy brow with laurel-leaf-- Be wise as well as clever, And learn a nobler lore than grief; 'Tis better late than never!

For life's a stand-up fight, I ween. With poverty and labor, And many a hero there has been Who never drew a sabre. So buckle bravely to the strife. How perilous soever. And win some glory for thy life; 'Tis better late than never!

Or hast thou, worn in folly's wars, Forgot the land that bloometh Beyond the cedars and the stars. Where sorrow never cometh? Oh, do not for a phantom fly From Paradise for ever, But turn thy trusting eyes on high; 'Tis better late than never!

GREAT LORD OF HEAVEN! CREATION'S KING! Whose vineyard open lies, Thou deemest not a worthless thing Man's tardy sacrifice; Still sanctify the work we've wrought, And every fond endeavor. This blessed creed thyself hast taught-- 'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!

{455}

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.