CHAPTER XXV.

This great hurling match, although much spoken of before it came off, was so universally believed to be a mere amicable, a _bona-fide_ piece of holiday recreation, and not an ostensible excuse for the ulterior purposes of Ribbonism, or a fight, that no precautions had been deemed necessary by the police to detect the one or to prevent the other. The sub-inspector (then called chief constables) had merely reported the fact that it would take place to the _resident_ magistrate--_lucus à non_. But "in the absence of sworn informations" of an intended row, he would neither attend himself, nor give orders for the police to do so, leaving the responsibility, if such existed, entirely to the judgment and discretion of the chief in question; who, wishing to enjoy the day otherwise himself, was satisfied with the report he had made, and did not interfere by his own presence or that of his men with the game. Thus, as "in the absence of sworn informations" the resident magistrate would not attend, and in the absence of the resident magistrate the chief would not attend, Rathcash and Shanvilla had it all to themselves. Perhaps it was so best for the _denouement_ of this story; for had the police been present, the whole thing from that point might have ended very differently.

But although it had not been thought necessary that a police-party should put a stop to the day's sport on the common, it is not to be supposed that they could hear of a man "having been murdered" on the occasion without being instantly all zeal and activity. Like the three black crows, the real fact had been exaggerated, and so distorted as to frighten both the chief and the resident magistrate, but principally the latter, as the intended assembly had been reported to him. However, "better late than never." They heard that the man was not yet dead, and away they started on the same jarvey, to visit him, on the morning after the occurrence.

Their whole discussion during the drive--if an explanation by the magistrate could be called a discussion--was on the safest and the most legal method of taking a dying man's depositions, and wondering if he knew who struck the fatal blow in this instance, and if the police had him in custody, etc.

They soon arrived at the house, but saw no sign of a crowd, or of police, whom the chief would have backed at any odds to have met on the road with a prisoner.

"Is he still alive?" whispered the resident magistrate to the father, who came to the door.

"Oh yes, your honor, blessed be God! an' will soon be as well as ever," he replied. "It was a mere scratch, an' there won't be a haporth on him in a day or two. He wanted to go back to look at them dancin', but I kep' him lying on the bed."

"Does he know you?" said the magistrate, believing that the man wanted to make light of it, as is generally the case.

"Does he know me, is it? athen why wouldn't he know his own father?"

"Oh, he is sensible, then?"

"Arrah, why wouldn't he be sensible? the boy was never anything else."

{824}

"That's right. Does he know who struck the blow?"

"Ochone, doesn't every one know that, your honor? Sure, wasn't it Tom Murdock? an' isn't his heart bruck about it?"

Here the constable and two men of the nearest police station came up at the "double" wiping their faces, to make inquiries for report; so that they were not so remiss after all, for it was still early in the morning.

Old Lennon was annoyed at all this parade and show about the place, and continued, "Athen, your honor, what do ye's all want here, an' these gentlemen?" inclining his head toward the police; "sure there's nothing the matther."

"We heard the man was killed," said the chief.

"And we heard the same thing not an hour ago," said the constable.

"Arrah, God give ye sinse, gentlemen! Go home, an' don't be making a show of our little place. I tell you there's not a pin's-worth upon the boy, and the tip he did get was all accidents."

"I must see him nevertheless, my good man; and you need not be uncivil, at all events."

"I ax your honor's pardon; I didn't mane it. To be sure you can see him; but there's no harm done, and what harm was done was an accident. Sure Emon will tell you the whole thing how it was himself."

"That is the very thing I want Let me see him."

Lennon then led the way into the room where Emon was sitting up in the bed; for he had heard the buzz of the discussion outside, and caught some of its meaning.

Lennon took care "to draw" the police into the kitchen; for there was nothing annoyed him more--and that, he knew, would annoy his son--than that they should be seen about the place. He had taken his cue from Emon, who did not wish the matter to be made a blowing-horn of.

A very few words with the young man sufficed to show the magistrate and the chief that their discussion upon the subject of taking a dying man's deposition had been unnecessary in this instance, however profitable it might prove on some future occasion. Emon, except that his bead was still tied with a handkerchief, showed no symptom whatever of having received an injury. He cheerfully explained how the matter had happened, untied the handkerchief promptly at the request of the magistrate, and showed him "the tip," as he called it, he had received from Tom Murdock's hurl. There was no mystery or hesitation in Emon's manner of describing the matter. Murdock himself had been the very first to admit and to apologize for the accident; and they did not wish that any fuss should be made about it As to prosecuting him for the blow, which had been casually asked, he might as well think of prosecuting a man who had accidentally jostled him in the street.

All this was a great relief to the magistrate, who at once took the sensible view of the case, and said he was delighted to find that the whole matter had been exaggerated both as to facts and extent, and congratulated both himself and the police upon this happy termination to their zeal.

The magistrate then spoke of the propriety of "the doctor" seeing young Lennon, saying that these sort of "tips" sometimes, required medical care, and occasionally turned out more serious than might at first be anticipated. But Emon told him that Father Farrell, who was an experienced doctor himself, had examined the wound, and declared that it would not signify.

The fact was that the magistrate, in his justifiable fright, had on the first report of the "murder" sent off four miles for the dispensary doctor, in case "the man might not be yet dead," and he expected his arrival every moment, as the point at which his valuable aid would be required was plainly to be explained to him by the messenger.

{825}

Finding that matters were much less serious than rumor had made them, and perceiving that the Lennons were far from gratified at the exhibition already made, he was not anxious that it should appear he had sent for the doctor to raise, as it were, young Lennon from the dead. He was therefore determined to watch his approach, and to pretend he was passing by on other business, and that it was as well to bring him in. But the doctor had not been at home when the messenger called; he had been at a _real_ case--not of murder, but of birth; and the magistrate and chief could not now await his arrival without awkwardness for the delay.

The magistrate was annoyed; but the chief soon set him to rights by telling him that the doctor could not come there except by the road by which they should go home, and that if on his way they must meet him, and so they did--_powdhering_ on his pony, truly as if for life or death.

"I suppose it is all over, and that I am late," he said, pulling up.

"No, you are time enough," said the chief. "It is nothing but a scratch, and was a mere accident."

"And there is nothing then for me to do," said the doctor.

"Nothing but to go _'bock again'_ like the Scotchman."

"No trepanning, nor 'post-mortem,' doctor," added the R.M. He was a droll fellow, was the R.M.

It was a great satisfaction to each of these officials, as they secretly considered their positions in this affair, that no person had been seriously hurt, and that the slight injury which had really taken place was entirely accidental. The R.M. felt relieved upon the grounds that the intended assembly had been officially reported to him and that he had declined to attend, or to give any directions to the chief to use any precautions to preserve the peace. But then he reconciled himself with the burthen of his excuse upon all such occasions, that, "in the absence of sworn informations," he would have been safe under any circumstances. Still he was better pleased as it was.

The chief was relieved, because he had some idea that having reported the intended assembly to the resident magistrate might have been deemed insufficient, had a real homicide taken place, and that he should upon his own responsibility have had a party of police in attendance. These officials were therefore both ready to accept, without much suspicion, the statement of young Lennon, that the blow was purely accidental, and that the consequence would be of a trifling nature. But they were "dark" to each other as to the grounds upon which their satisfaction rested.

The doctor finding that there was no chance of earning a fee from the coroner, turned his horse's head round and followed the car at a much easier pace than he had met it. He of all the officials--for he was constab. doc--was least gratified with the favorable position of affairs. He had not only started without his own breakfast, but had brought his horse out without a feed; and they had galloped four miles upon two empty stomachs. No wonder that he was dissatisfied as compared with the magistrate and the chief. But we must recollect that there was no responsibility upon him, beyond his skill involved in the affair; with its origin, or the fact of its having been permitted to occur at all, he had nothing to do. There were, therefore, no points of congratulation for him to muse upon, and he was vexed accordingly. From his experience of himself in the treatment of broken heads in the district, he had no doubt that his attendance would have "ended in recovery," and that at least three pounds would have come down, "approved" by the government upon the chiefs report, which would be much better than the coroner's one-pound note. The disappointment had completely taken away his own hunger, but he forgot that his horse did not understand these things, so he grumbled slowly home.

{826}

A contemplative silence of some minutes ensued between the two executives on the car, which was ultimately broken by the magistrate. He, like the doctor, had had no breakfast, so certain was he of a murder; but the whole thing being a bottle of smoke, he was now both hungry and cross. It was the chiefs car they were on, and he was driving--the R.M. "knocked that much out of him, at all events"--so there was no driver to damp the familiarity of conversation.

"It was fortunate for you, my young friend, that nothing more serious occurred at this same hurling match," said the magistrate.

(Certainly he was no prig in his choice of language. He was of course much older than the chief and considered that he could carry a high hand with "a mere boy" without any experience.)

"I am extremely glad," replied the chief, "for _both_ our sakes, that it was a mere trifle and an accident."

"For both our sakes! Oh, you know, my dear young friend, that, in the absence of sworn informations, I was not concerned in the matter at all. I conceive that the whole responsibility--if there be any--in a mere casual meeting of the kind, where there is admittedly no apprehension of a breach of the peace, rests entirely upon your own judgment and discretion. To be plain with you, except where a breach of the peace may be fairly anticipated, and sworn informations lodged to that effect, I do not think the magistrate's time should be interfered with. I might have lost a petty-sessions to-day, inquiring into a mere accident."

"But it might not have been one; and we could not have known until we saw the injured man and made inquiries. But the absence of sworn informations, and the fact that there was no apprehension of a row, would have exonerated me from all blame as well as you. Beside, I so far took the precaution of reporting the intended assembly to you, with its professed object, and I took your instructions upon the subject."

"No, you didn't; for I did not give you any."

"Well, I reported the meeting to you, and asked for instructions."

"That is the very thing which I object to--making reports without sufficient grounds. I should decline to act again under similar circumstances."

"That you would do so, I have no doubt; but that you _should_ do so, I have some."

"I am right, young sir, as well in my grammar as in my view of the case; _ought_ is the word you _should_ have used, to have properly expressed what you intended."

The chief was nettled. He was not quite certain that the R.M. was not right, and merely replied:

"Perhaps so, sir; but it really was not of _Lindley Murray_ I was thinking at the time."

The magistrate was softened. He felt that he had been sparring rather sharply with a lad not much more than one-third of his age.

"Well, I really beg your pardon," he said; "I did not intend to be so sharp."

"Granted," said the chief, laughing; for he was not an ill-tempered fellow. "But here we are at my box; come in and have some breakfast, and I'll drive you to petty-sessions after."

"Thank you very much, I'll take breakfast; for I came away in a horrid fuss without saying a word as to when I should be back again. I will not trespass upon you, however, to do more than you have already done in the driving way. I had some fears when we started that we should have breakfasted at dinner, some time this evening, after a coroner's inquest. But this is better."

They then gave "the trap" to the "private orderly," and proceeded to punish the tea, toast, eggs, and cold ham in a most exemplary manner.

TO BE CONTINUED.

{827}

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

THE LAST EFFORT OF CHARLES II. FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND.

We have already seen what fruit grew from the mission of Father James Stuart to Whitehall; how the Duke of York and, in all probability, King Charles also, abjured the Protestant faith; and how the royal neophyte, in the presence of his brother and his trusty counsellors, Arundel, Clifford, and Arlington, declared his readiness to suffer anything, to undertake any enterprise, in order to secure liberty of worship for himself and his Catholic subjects.

The king knew that his conversion would arouse violent opposition, would perhaps become a signal for revolt and civil war. He felt that he could do nothing without the assistance of the King of France. To secure his aid he secretly dispatched to Versailles Lord Arundel of Wardour and Sir Richard Bellings, the same prudent ambassador whom he had formerly dispatched to Pope Alexander VII. Out of this embassy resulted the treaty of Dover and the offensive alliance of France and England against Holland. Up to the present time an impenetrable veil has concealed from us the real object of this treaty, and the details of the negotiations which led to it. Charles has been almost universally accused of submitting himself to a disgraceful vassalage to the French monarch, and of selling to the Bourbon for money the glory, the liberty, and the religion of his country. But the unexpected disclosures of the diplomatic archives now enable us to shed a new light upon this subject, and to ascertain whether Charles was really moved by religions impulse when he asked Louis XIV. for assistance in the reestablishment of Catholicism in England, or was, as Lingard says, all the while trying to deceive his royal ally.

Lord Arundel had already been discussing the "Catholic project" for nine months with the French king before Louis' minister, Colbert, was let into the secret. Colbert de Croissy, the minister's brother and French ambassador to London, was now made acquainted with Arundel's propositions and Louis' answers to them, and on the 12th of November, 1669, had an interview with Charles, of which he gives the following account:

"The King of England was ready to assure me that he had no unwillingness to make me acquainted with the most important secret of his life. . . . In reading these papers, I could not help thinking that he and the persons to whom he had intrusted the conduct of this matter, were mad to think of re-establishing the Catholic religion in England. In fact, no one acquainted with the state of this kingdom and the disposition of the people could entertain a different opinion; but, in spite of all, he hoped that, with your majesty's assistance, the great enterprise would be successful. The Presbyterians and other dissenters are still more averse to the Anglican Church than to the Catholic. All that these sectaries want is the free exercise of their own form of worship; and provided they get that--and his majesty purposes to give it them--they will not oppose his change of religion. Moreover, he has good troops who are affectionately disposed toward him; and if the late king, his father, {828} had had as many, he would have stifled in their cradle the disturbances which prayed his ruin. He will increase the army on the best pretexts that he can find. The arsenals are all at his disposal and are well stocked. He is assured of the principal places of England and Scotland. The governor of Hull is a Catholic; those of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and many other places which he named to me--Windsor among the rest--would never depart from the obedience which they owe him. As for the troops in Ireland, he hopes that the Duke of Ormond, who has preserved great credit there, will always be faithful to him; and even should he fail in his duty, Lord Orrery, who is a Catholic at heart, and has still greater influence with that army, will lead the soldiers wherever he is ordered. . . . . Finally, he told me that he was driven to declare himself a Catholic both by his conscience and by the confusion which he saw daily increasing in his kingdom, to the detriment of his authority; and that, beside the spiritual benefit which he trusted to obtain, he believed that this was the only means of establishing the monarchy." (_Letter of Nov._13, 1669.)

But English writers maintain that, behind all this apparent zeal, Charles concealed an ulterior design, and wished to impose upon Louis for his own ends. There would be some plausibility in the supposition if the conversion of England had been a matter so near to the heart of the French king as is commonly imagined; but, unfortunately, it is now evident that "the Catholic project" filled only a secondary place in Louis XIV.'s policy. The object which then employed his chief desires was the humiliation of Holland; and the more eager he was to secure the cooperation of England in this enterprise, the less anxious was he for a sudden return of the royal family of Whitehall to the ancient faith--a change in which his penetrating eye saw grave danger to Charles and, by consequence, disappointment to himself. He writes in reply to Croissy's letter: "I will not commence a war with Holland, unless the King of England join me;" and the ambassador is instructed to look upon the Dutch question as the most important affair in hand. (_Letter of November_ 24, 1669.)

Charles, too, had his plan, and to our thinking a very good one. Colbert writes, December 5:

"Arlington tells me that the king his master, having weighed all the reasons for and against, has finally determined to begin by satisfying his conscience. He adds, nevertheless, that the king may change his mind; but I see plainly that he will not advise him to do so; for he is persuaded that his royal master, having Spain, Sweden, and Holland attached to his interests, and assured at the same time of your majesty's friendship by a secret treaty, will overpower all the seditions that might be excited in the kingdom by such a declaration much more easily than by the way your majesty advises. Moreover, I do not find him very hot against the Dutch; and I confess, sire, that I am still doubtful whether the proposition to attack them, conjointly with your majesty, after the declaration of Catholicism shall have been successfully made, is sincere, at all events on the minister's part."

A few days afterward the draft of a treaty was sent by Arlington to the Marquis de Croissy, in which occurred these words: "The King of Great Britain, after having declared himself a Catholic, . . . leaves to the most Christian king liberty to designate the time for making war, with their united forces, upon the States General."

Louis, on his part, ordered Colbert to stand firm: "It would be well for you not to allow Lord Arlington and the others to hope that I will ever consent to what you propose in the last place, that the treaty of war against Holland should be laid aside, {829} and that we should agree only upon the two other points; thus the desire which they feel for assistance in money and troops toward the declaration of Catholicism, which is what they are most anxious about, may induce them to further more zealously than they do now the project for a war against Holland." (_Letter of Feb_. 16, 1670.)

The negotiation dragged along slowly. Disputed points became more and more numerous; and the effect of all these difficulties and delays upon such a timid soul as Charles's may easily be imagined. As the time for openly breaking with Anglicanism drew near, the obstacles in his way seemed to grow more formidable than ever. His resolution was not shaken; but his religious ardor gradually cooled, and human prudence overcame his faith. This change of disposition was observed by Colbert de Croissy, but does not seem to have alarmed him. He writes, on the 15th of May, 1670:

"The king has not yet determined when to make his declaration, notwithstanding the urgency of those to whom he has confided his secret. M. Bellings informs me that the commissioners themselves are not agreed about the time; some advising that it be before the meeting of parliament, and others wishing the declaration to be made in full assembly of the two houses; that the King of England appears to favor the latter plan, because it affords more time for delay; and moreover that it cannot be later than October next, which is the time for the re-adjournment. I can see that the precautions which his majesty has taken are not sufficient. The troops in Scotland and Ireland are nearly all Presbyterians, with whom the concession of freedom of worship will weigh as nothing in the scale with their hatred of the Catholics. Even the captain of the royal guard, who belongs to this party, will probably be opposed to the execution of his royal master's design. In fine, those who are in the secret are greatly alarmed at all these dangers. _They cannot alter the kind's resolution_; but a sort of libertinism (if I may use the word) makes him procrastinate as much as he can."

But Louis XIV. was prepared with an instrument for overcoming all the difficulties which Charles threw in his way. The amiable Duchess of Orleans, the beloved sister of the English monarch, crossed the Channel for no other purpose than to bring her brother's hesitation to an end. "All the points of the treaty," says Mignet, "had been agreed upon by both sides before this interview. Madame had therefore no questions to negotiate with her brother; but Louis XIV. relied greatly upon her influence in inducing Charles II. to sign the treaty, to advance the exchange of ratifications, and, what was of the utmost consequence to him, to declare war against Holland before declaring himself a Catholic." On the 30th of May, five days after the arrival of Henrietta, the French ambassador wrote to his court: "Madame tells me that she has made an impression upon her brother's mind, and she can see that he is almost disposed to declare war against the Dutch before doing anything else." On the 1st of June, 1670, Arlington, Arundel, Clifford, and Bellings, on the part of England, and Colbert de Croissy on the part of France, affixed their signatures to the celebrated treaty of Dover. If the text contains no mention of the modification obtained by the young duchess, the reason undoubtedly is, that, to avoid the delay which would have ensued had a new draft been made out, the two sovereigns instructed their commissioners to sign it in its present form, with a verbal clause, guaranteed by Charles's word of honor, that the war against Holland should precede the formal acknowledgment of the king's conversion.

Such was the mysterious journey of Henrietta of England upon which Bossuet has conferred so much undeserved celebrity. {830} When, only twenty-seven days afterward, the unfortunate duchess in the midst of her vain triumph was overtaken by the pangs of death, it may be doubted whether the recollection of her zeal for the postponement of her brother's conversion soothed her conscience or alleviated for her the terrors of divine judgment.

The Duke of York always looked upon the war with Holland as an unfortunate complication which frustrated the re-establishment of the Catholic worship in England. In this part of the treaty of Dover he beheld the first and perhaps the most dangerous of the rocks among which the Stuart dynasty ultimately foundered and disappeared for ever. Charles at first looked at things from a more assuring point of view. A letter to his sister, the duchess, dated June 6, 1669, shows him full of hope, almost of enthusiasm, at the thought of this expedition. The English navy was to take a brilliant revenge for the insult received a short while before, when the Dutch flag waved insolently under the walls of affrighted London. He himself, associated with Louis in glory and good fortune, was finally to triumph over the disasters of his family, and to enjoy for the rest of his days the blessings he so ardently desired, liberty of conscience and peace upon the throne. But these alluring dreams were even then disturbed by presentiments and uneasiness too well founded to escape his penetrating mind. If he yielded after a year's resistance, it was through weakness and weariness, not through conviction.

In concluding this portion of our article, it is not amiss to inquire what purpose Charles could have had in view in attempting "to deceive the King of France." To be sure, surrounded as he was at home by difficulties and dangers without number, he was compelled to look abroad for assistance and protection. But if he had consulted only his worldly interests, if he had not been inspired by religious motives, where would he naturally have sought for aid? Certainly he would have turned toward the Protestant, not the Catholic, states. His natural allies would have been warlike Sweden and rich and powerful Holland, whose last stadtholder, William II., had espoused a princess of the house of Stuart, Charles's own sister Mary. Nothing was more popular at that time, throughout Great Britain, than the triple alliance. Why should he break it? Why should the son of Charles I., overcoming the unpleasant recollections of his former sojourn at Paris, have so far offended the instincts and prejudices of his people as to offer the hand of fellowship and brotherhood to Louis XIV., and intrust to him his destinies?

A parallel naturally suggests itself here between the two kings; and perhaps if we had to assign their respective places we should not give the preference to the abler or the more powerful. Louis, still young and engrossed, heart and soul, in his projects of greatness and magnificence, was guilty of the grave wrong of making religion entirely subordinate to politics. Charles, no doubt, shows himself through the course of these negotiations just what he always was. Too sagacious not to see the dangers into which each step conducted him, and too timid to confront them; now urged forward by the impatient zeal of the Duke of York, now drawn back by his minister and confidant Arlington--one hardly knows what he wanted to do. His frivolity, his inconstancy, his perpetual wavering, his disingenuousness, all the chief traits of his character, in fine, were displayed in these negotiations of Dover. We are not disposed to deny that he was sensible of the temporal advantages which the friendship of his brother of France seemed to promise him; but, taking all things into consideration, it is he that shows the greater heart, and with him the calculations of selfish humanity are sometimes at least forgotten in the sovereign importance of his eternal interests.

{831}

The treaty of Dover concluded, Charles secretly made preparations for the war with Holland, which had now been deferred to a more distant day; but there were other preparations in which he took a much more lively interest. He knew that a terrible storm would break forth whenever he should issue his bill of indulgence in favor of those who disagreed with the state Church. Both French and English writers have often said that the king hoped to accomplish his plans by means of abuse of the royal prerogatives, and unconstitutional measures taken under the protection of that ambitious neighbor across the channel whom the Stuarts had rashly allowed to interfere in the affairs of the United Kingdom. But this is a mistake. Without the slightest violence or transgression of the law, Charles might have anticipated by two hundred years the emancipation of the Catholics of England. The constitution gave him no right to change any of the existing laws; but it gave him power to dispense with the exaction of the penalties prescribed for their violation. Well, he proposed to make use of this prerogative in behalf of all dissenters without exception, whether Protestant sectaries or Catholics, and whenever a fitting opportunity arrived to lay before parliament a new bill of indulgence.

On the 15th of March, 1672, two days before the declaration of war with Holland, he issued a proclamation, in which, after remarking that the experience of twelve years had proved the inutility of coercive measures in matters of conscience, he declared his good pleasure that every penal law against nonconformists and recusants of every description should thenceforth be suspended. Dissenters were authorized to establish places of worship; but Catholics were not permitted to assemble for religious exercises except in private houses. This discrimination against the Catholics was the doing of the Secretary Bridgman, who stoutly refused to sign the document, and threatened to resign, if the same privileges granted to other recusants were also accorded to the Catholics. Bridgman's resignation would have given the alarm to the hostile parties; so, to avoid a greater evil, Charles had to submit to this odious restriction.

There was a diversity of opinions about the declaration of the 15th of March, but at first there was nothing in the state of public opinion to excite alarm. As for the war, if the people looked upon it without much favor, at least no one could assert that it was contrary to the national interests. There were recent injuries to be avenged, glory and profit to be won; above all, immense advantages to accrue to English commerce from the crippling of one of its most formidable rivals: all these considerations kept the minds of the nation in suspense.

But unfortunately one naval engagement after another was fought with no decisive results; and while the French gained brilliant victories on land, the English seemed to be only humble, docile instruments in the hands of their allies. The Protestants eagerly seized upon these circumstances to arouse an undertone of discontent among the masses. The Duchess of York had just died a Catholic. The Duke of York, the heir presumptive to the throne, was strongly suspected of having embraced the Catholic religion. Then there was England in league with Catholic France against Protestant Holland; and the little army which Charles had sent to the continent, though placed under the command of Schomburg, a Calvinist (but for all that a Frenchman), had among its subordinate officers a major-general, Fitzgerald, and many other Catholics. All these things, they said, taken in connection with the recent declaration, boded nothing but evil to the Reformed churches.

Such was the state of public feeling when, after a recess of two years, parliament opened at the beginning of February, 1673. In the troubles {832} which he saw were coming, the king relied for assistance in the houses principally upon Clifford, whom he had appointed a lord of the treasury, and the Chancellor Ashley, recently created Earl of Shaftesbury, a man of no principle, but of great ability and value in critical emergencies. At the opening of the session Charles spoke of the French alliance, of the causes of his rupture with the States General, and of the declaration of indulgence, which he declared himself resolved to stand by.

The opposition had already matured their plan of campaign, and their first measure was to deprive the Catholics of their new allies by persuading the dissenting sects to renounce the precarious advantages of the declaration for the toleration, less complete, perhaps, but more assured, which they would infallibly obtain from the favorable dispositions of the Commons. The manoeuvre was perfectly successful. The Catholics were completely isolated. The "Country Party," as they called themselves, then opened fire with more confidence in Parliament. "The attack was made," says Macaulay, "not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific approaches. The Commons at first held out hopes that they would give support to the king's foreign policy, but insisted that he should purchase that support by abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their first object was to obtain the revocation of the declaration of indulgence. Of all the many unpopular steps taken by the government, the most unpopular was the publishing of this declaration." In fact, the annulment of the edict was a matter of life or death for the Protestants. They wanted, however, a constitutional argument, and they had not far to look for one. We quote Macaulay again:

"It must in candor be admitted that the constitutional question was not then quite free from obscurity. Our ancient kings had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws. The tribunals had recognized that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the crown, few even of the Country Party ventured, in the face of precedent and authority, to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this prerogative were without limit the English government could scarcely be distinguished from a pure despotism." A hypocritical fear of despotism and inviolable respect for the law were to be the standard under which the dissenters should fight, and it was agreed that the Anglicans should intrench themselves behind the ramparts of the constitution.

The opposition in parliament did not disapprove of toleration in itself; they only blamed the form of the edict. They were perfectly willing to alleviate the condition of the Protestant nonconformists, provided it could be done through the regular parliamentary channels. Even if the king could remit a penalty, he could not suspend a law in ecclesiastical, any more than in civil, matters. In support of this position they argued at great length, with a good deal of passion and obscurity and a great lack of common sense, for more than a month. The real strength of the party lay in its popularity, and in that irresistible power which the daring aggressors of a declining monarchy always possess, in every country. The partizans of the court, by their injudicious defence of the crown, did their best to aid the opposite party. Instead of defending the prerogative by the precedents afforded by previous reigns, they grounded its exercise upon the necessity for some _ad interim_ power which, during the recess of parliament, might act upon urgent cases, and, if need were, suspend the laws. "An exempting power," they said, "must of necessity exist somewhere; otherwise cases may arise, when parliament is not in session, in which the welfare and even the safety of the state would be sacrificed to impolitic and unreasonable {833} fears." This was playing directly into their adversaries' hands. After long discussions, several times interrupted by adjournments, the House of Commons, by a vote of 168 against 116, resolved "that the penal laws touching ecclesiastical matters could not be suspended except by an act of parliament."

In replying to the message of the Commons, Charles declared himself deeply concerned that they should question the ecclesiastical authority of the crown, which had never been contested during the reigns of his ancestors. He certainly pretended to no authority to suspend any law touching the property, rights, and liberties of his subjects. His only object in the exercise of his ecclesiastical power was the relief of the dissenters. He was not disposed to reject the advice of parliament, and would always be found ready to agree to any bill which might seem better adapted than his declaration to accomplish the chief object which he had in view--the welfare of all his subjects, and the tranquillity and stability of England. This moderate language did not satisfy the house. A second address admonished the sovereign that his counsellors had deceived him, and that none of his ancestors had ever claimed or exercised the power of suspending statutes touching ecclesiastical matters; and his faithful Commons implored his majesty to give them a more satisfactory and complete answer. The king felt the insult, and did not conceal his resentment. His course was chosen. He would dissolve parliament, rather than submit to the dictation of his enemies. But he hoped to subdue the opposition by exciting a conflict of opinion between the two houses. He went to the House of Lords, and in a short and spirited address complained that the Commons usurped the royal authority, laid before their lordships the two addresses from the lower house, with his replies, and concluded by asking the advice of the hereditary counsellors of the throne. Clifford followed, and pleaded with his accustomed fire and energy the cause of offended majesty. But the spirit of defection had spread even among the chiefs of the government. The chancellor went over to the enemy. "Shaftesbury," says Macaulay, "with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and that all things were tending toward a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determined that such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and acknowledged in the House of Lords that the declaration was illegal." A month had not passed since, in another place, Ashley had appealed to the justice of his fellow-subjects against the adversaries of the edict of toleration. The lords made haste to follow the example of the prudent chancellor. Ten years before they had solemnly declared their opinion that Charles II. had received from the English people a legitimate mission to establish liberty of conscience; to-day, after maturely considering the royal motion, they resolved "that the proposal of his majesty to settle the dispute by parliamentary ways was a good and gracious answer."

The disapprobation of the Upper House filled the timid monarch with consternation. Three days afterward Colbert presented himself* as the bearer of officious advice from Louis XIV. The King of France felt but little regret at the turn affairs were taking with his new allies; for the Commons, who, in order to overthrow more surely the royal plan, proposed to demolish it slowly, piece by piece, had not uttered a single murmur against the French alliance or the war. Not only that, but with a calculating shrewdness they had offered the king a compensation for the sacrifices which they demanded of him, and granted a subsidy of £1,260,000 sterling, destined to be expended in more vigorously pushing forward hostile operations on land and sea. Pleased with these favorable {834} dispositions, Louis XIV. represented to his brother of England the sad consequences of a rupture with parliament. The wisest course was to submit to necessity. At the return of peace, when Louis would have troops and money to spare, he would place both at the service of the Stuarts, and it would then be easy to repair these temporary misfortunes. Charles listened willingly to the ambassador. The offers of money he did not refuse; but as for the assistance of French troops, he declared that he would never use them against his subjects, unless a Second civil war should reduce him to the very last extremity, as it had reduced his father. The same day, in council with his ministers, he withdrew his edict of toleration; and the next morning, the 8th of March, he annulled it again, in presence of the Lords and Commons, promising that it should never serve as a precedent. The royal communication was received with acclamations of joy, and at night innumerable bonfires illuminated the streets and squares of the capital.

The opposition party had received an impetus in its course, and it needed a stronger arm than that of a Stuart to check it. The House of Commons was already discussing its famous test bill, by the provisions of which every Englishman holding any civil or military office was required to take an oath of allegiance and subscribe to the royal supremacy; he was to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Established Church, and to sign a declaration against transubstantiation; and the penalty for violation of this law was a fine of £500 sterling, and disqualification from filling any public function or dignity whatsoever, from prosecuting any cause before the courts, from acting as guardian or testamentary executor, or receiving any legacy or deed of gift. Together with the test bill another was introduced for the relief of the Protestant nonconformists. The former passed quickly through both houses, and became that odious law which England kept upon her statute-books until far into the present century. As for the other bill, all the well-known arts of parliamentary tricksters were brought to bear upon it. It was postponed; it was amended again and again; it was thrown out; it was brought in again. At last the end of the session found it effectually killed; and, despite the insidious promises which had effected a division among the several victims of the Anglican episcopacy, no new act was passed with regard to the dissenters.

In a single day the test act deprived the Catholic cause of all its defenders. The Duke of York, who, as lord high admiral, directed the operations of the combined fleets of England and France, resigned his command and his commission. Clifford, though a new convert, laid down the white rod. All the Catholic officials, governors, magistrates, naval and military officers, retired at once. One only--who had been bold enough to praise the bill in the House of Lords as a wise and opportune measure--was exempted from taking the test oath and branded with the disgrace of a national recompense. This was the same Earl of Bristol whom the Bishop of Salisbury had regarded as the inspirer of those popish tendencies which he boasted of having detected under Charles's dissimulation.

There was none of the cabinet whose fidelity Charles could now trust. Shaftesbury had betrayed him; and it seemed certain that Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale were secretly in league with the chief agitators. In return for their services parliament granted them complete impunity for the past by freely condoning all the offences committed previous to the 25th of March.

Thus the isolation of the king at home was complete. Louis XIV. was still left him, but he was soon to lose even this last support. At the beginning of 1674 the French alliance offered only very doubtful advantages. On the continent the war had assumed the proportions of a conflict of all Europe, and Montecuculli, seconded by {835} the Prince of Orange, what successfully against the genius of Turenne. On the sea, Prince Rupert, the successor of the Duke of York, with ninety-ships of the line, had gained not a single notable advantage, though he ought to have swept all the Dutch fleets before him. As Lingard says, he was too intimately allied with the opposition party to be very eager for a victory which would have given the ascendency to their adversaries. Finally, the Commons manifested, from the opening of the new session, a decided unwillingness to vote a subsidy. Charles listened, therefore, to the proposals of the allied powers, and, of his own accord, without asking the consent of "his suzerain" (as Macaulay charges), concluded a special peace on the most honorable conditions. "Necessity forbade him any longer to assist France as an ally," he said to Louis' ambassador; "but he hoped to be able to serve his good brother as a mediator between him and his enemies."

Thus all Charles's plans were overthrown, and England was delivered for two centuries from the twin misfortunes against which she struggled with equal energy--a French alliance and the inroads of Popery.

Under the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him the unhappy king, deserted by all his auxiliaries and all his friends, gave way, and tried to stifle the voice of conscience. No doubt he is gravely to blame when he receives the sacrament in the Protestant chapels of his palace, and urges the Duke of York to imitate his unworthy weakness, when he renews the protestations--which nobody believes--of his firm adhesion to Anglicanism. He is inexcusable for his apostacy. But that these criminal actions were not incompatible with a sincere resolve to return to the Roman Catholic Church, and that one can trace in Charles's conduct a plan seriously conceived and for three years perseveringly followed, to establish freedom of Catholic worship throughout the United Kingdom--these are the points which we have endeavored to prove. We are not without hope that we have shed some light upon an important series of events, which for two centuries have been enveloped, through the bad faith of historians, in an obscurity that until now the keenest glance has failed to pierce.

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

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

1. A careless brother said to Abbot Antony, "Pray for me."

The old man made answer: I shall not pity thee, nor will the Highest, unless thou hast pity on thyself, and makest prayer to God.

2. Abbot Arsenius used to say: I have often had to repent of speaking; never of keeping silence.

3. Abbot Theodore said: If God impute to us our negligences when we pray, and our distractions' when we sing, we cannot be saved.

4. Abbot Pastor said: One man is at rest and prays; another is sick and gives thanks; a third ministers cheerfully to them both.

They are three; but their work and their merit is one.

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5. A brother said to Abbot Sisoi: "What must I do to keep my heart?"

The old man made answer: Look to your tongue first, for it is nearest to the door.

6. Abbot Abraham said: Passions live even in the saints here below; but they are chained.

7. Abbot John said to his brother, "I do not like working; I wish to be in peace, and to serve God without break, like an angel;" and he set off to the desert.

In a week's time he returned, and knocked at his brother's door, saying, "I am John."

His brother answered, "No, you are not; for John is an angel." He insisted, "Yes, but I am John."

His brother opened to him, saying, "If you are a man, why don't you work? If you are an angel, what do you knock for?"

From Chambers's Journal.

LITTLE THINGS.

Often, little things we hear, Often, little things we see. Waken thoughts that long have slept, Deep down in our memory.

Strangely slight the circumstance That has force to turn the mind, Backward on the path of years, To the loved scenes far behind!

'Tis the perfume of a flower. Or a quaint, old-fashioned tune; Or a song-bird 'mid the leaves. Singing in the sunny June.

'Tis the evening star, mayhap. In the gloaming silver bright; Or a gold and purple cloud Waning in the western light.

'Tis the rustling of a dress. Or a certain tone of voice, That can make the pulses throb. That can bid the heart rejoice.

Ah, my heart! But not of joy Must alone thy history tell. Sorrow, shame, and bitter tears Little things recall as well.

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From The Month.

THE POEMS OF ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. [Footnote 147]

[Footnote 147: "Legends and Lyrics." By Adelaide Anne Procter. With an Introduction by Charles Dickens. New edition, with additions. Illustrated by W.T.C. Dobson, A.B.A., Samuel Palmer, J. Tenniel, George H. Thomas, Lorenz Fröhlich, W. H. Millais, G. du Maurier. W.P. Burton, J.D. Watson, Charles Keene, J.M. Carrick, M.E. Edward, T. Morten. (Bell & Daldy.) "A Chaplet of Verses." (Longman.)]

The appearance of the beautiful edition of Miss Procter's poems lately issued among the Christmas gift-books of the season forms a fitting occasion for some remarks upon the special character and genius of the authoress whose verses are inscribed upon its delicately-toned pages. Of both the first and second series of Miss Procters "Legends and Lyrics" numerous editions have been called for by the public: they are now collected into a quarto, illustrated by many excellent artists, and are prefaced by a slight biographical introduction from the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, who, being intimately acquainted with Miss Procter's family, had known her from her early girlhood, and entertained for her the truest admiration and the most cordial esteem.

In attempting an analysis of Miss Procter's poetry, we may well preface it by a few words concerning her life and character, because these were the roots of her verse. To speak of the dead is at all times a sacred thing, demanding heedful words and careful justice. To speak of the beloved dead is always a doubly difficult task, requiring a specially sober modesty of expression, even while giving some scope to that instinctive power of true appreciation which affection best insures. The writer of these pages knew and loved her long and well; and in so far is qualified to speak of what she was: yet of a nature which was all womanly, and which retained to its last earthly moments a singular charm of childlike playfulness and innocence--having been, as it were, at all times sheltered from life's rougher experiences--it is not quite easy so to speak as to bring out a distinctive image to those who knew it not.

Adelaide Anne Procter was born in October, 1825, in Bedford Square, London; the eldest child, the "sweet beloved first-born," of Brian Waller Procter, best known to literature as Barry Cornwall. We have often heard her described as she was at three years old--"the prettiest little fairy ever seen," with fair delicate features and great blue eyes; always frail in health, but exceedingly intelligent. Mr. Dickens tells of a tiny album, made of note-paper, into which her favorite passages of poetry were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself could write; and she very soon began to acquire foreign languages, and even to learn geometry. One of her early accomplishments was drawing--she composed little figure pieces with grace and facility; and we remember hearing from a loving relative of Miss Procter's, many long years ago, of a certain set of sketches of the Seven Ages of Man, done by her in pencil when she was yet a little girl. Being at the time still younger, we heard of it with a sort of admiring awe, which it is now pathetic to remember; considering in our own mind what a wonderful and even alarming little girl this must be. Some five-and-twenty years later (since her death) those little sketches came to light; the sight of them smiting upon the heart with the memory of that long-ago conversation, so full of fond hope and pride.

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Miss Procter was very thoroughly educated, and from her youth went much into society, possessing in a marked degree the best characteristics of a woman of the world. Mr. Dickens says that she had nothing of the conventional poetess about her; was neither melancholy, nor affected, nor self-absorbed. What she _had_, was the ease, the polish, and the extreme readiness which we are taught to consider the traditionary charm of a Frenchwoman of the old school. To perfect self-possession she added a sort of feminine mastery of those about her. Single out any of the famous Parisians gifted with the power to win and to keep, and imagine this sort of power grafted on to a nature _au fond_ very simple and sterling; and thus the reader will attain to a conception of what she was in social life. She had deep and strong feeling, which she poured out in her poetry; but it did not come uppermost in her conversation. _That_ was always vivid and usually lively, and, moreover, edged with marvellous finesse. "Sweet-briar" one loving friend used to call her.

Her outward life was not very varied; but her conversion to the Catholic faith, which took place when she was about four-and-twenty, gave her a wide circle of intellectual interests beyond those of ordinary English minds. Two years later she went to Piedmont, and passed a year with a relative there. She always recalled this Italian experience with lively pleasure; and it colored many of her poems. Her letters home were very lively and pictorial, showing that she would have excelled in prose composition.

Of her first entrance into literature Mr. Dickens has given an amusing account: how she sent poems to _Household Words_ under the signature of Miss Berwick, and how at the office they all made up their minds she was a governess; and how Miss Berwick turned out, after all, to be the daughter of his old friend Barry Cornwall, who preferred to win her spurs with her visor down. When, some years later, she was with much difficulty induced to collect her poems into a volume, with her name, their success was immediate; both that volume and a second series passed through edition after edition, till she truly became a _household word_ in England.

There is not, alas! very much more to tell. Just when she became famous, and opportunities of literary exertion were opening on every side, her health began to fail. For three or four years before her declared illness she was very delicate, and, with the fatal animation of her peculiar temperament, always overworking herself. But that dread malady, consumption, the scourge of England, can rarely be averted when once it has marked its prey. In November, 1862, her increasing illness first confined her to her room, and very shortly to her bed. For fifteen long months she lay there, wasting gradually away; yet not only was she patient and thoroughly resigned, but up to the very last her bright cheerfulness never quite deserted her. When not actually in pain, she would enter into conversation with all her old zest, taking just the same interest in her friends and their affairs; lively, sympathetic, and helpful to the end. On the very last evening of all, one of her friends, thinking to interest her in the old pursuit, brought her a little poem in proof. It was a Catholic ballad for _The Lamp_, Miss Procter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows. She was too weak to speak any unnecessary word; but her large blue eyes roused into their wonted intelligence as she listened; and then, with the sweet sympathy which she at all times gave to others, she made a slight applauding motion with those slender wasted fingers, and smiled into the reader's face. It was such a very slight thing, and yet so utterly characteristic--courtesy and kindness and a sort of unselfish readiness surviving to the very end.

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That night, an hour after midnight, on the 2d of February, the summons came. She had been reading a little book--trying to read, rather--and as the clock was on the stroke of one she shut it up, and with some sudden mysterious rush of consciousness, having suffered greatly all the evening from oppressed breathing, she asked quietly of her mother, who was holding her in her arms:

"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"

"I think you are very, very ill tonight, my dear."

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold--lift me up."

Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: "It has come at last."

And then, with so soft a change that the anxious eyes bent upon those sunken features could hardly detect the moment of her ceasing to breathe, death came to the beloved of so many hearts. The prayers of the Church, of which she was so devoted a child, were audibly uplifted throughout that closing scene; they were the last earthly sounds that can have reached the dulling ear. Opposite to her, as she lay upon her little bed, was a photograph from that loveliest image by Francia of the dead Saviour lying upon his mother's knees. At all times ardently religious, the last days of her frail life were elevated and cheered by the holy rites of her faith. As she lay in her coffin, a crucifix upon her breast, and camellias and violets sprinkled over her fair white garments, she looked the loveliest image of peace which a pure and pious life could bequeath to perishable clay. The delicate face was but little changed. Up to the very last it had retained its bright spiritual expression, just as her voice had retained its musical inflections, and her smile its blended charm of affectionate sympathy and childlike gaiety. In death that smile had vanished for ever, but something of its sweetness still lingered about the brow and mouth. The tapers for which she had asked a little while previously (for the due keeping of Candlemas-day) burnt at the head of the coffin, and shed their soft light down upon that still face. When at length it was covered up from mortal sight, and all that remained of her laid in the grave at St. Mary's Cemetery, the sun shone out with the first cheerfulness of early spring. Coming from behind a little cloud, that sunshine lit up the white vestment of the priest, who, standing by her coffin in the little chapel, spoke of the joyful resurrection of the children of God. There is a little garden upon that simple grave, where fresh flowers bloom every spring; and beside it many prayers are offered up with each returning season of the year.

But we must linger no longer on memories and associations which are almost too sacred for more than a passing word. To the world at large Miss Procter is known through her genius only; but it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that through it she is also endeared in a singular degree to thousands who never looked upon her face. To some consideration of her poems we will therefore address ourselves; the less reluctantly that they were truly so much a revelation of her life.

If canons of criticism be based on something deeper than mere superficial rules in regard to the expression of the sublime and youthful, it must be doubly interesting to trace the causes of a wide-spread popularity attaching to any series of works from the same pen. Such an appreciation cannot be won by a trick of form, or by a deliberate appeal to well-known popular sympathies. It must arise from the touching of universal emotions; from a true correspondence with those thoughts and feelings which are the heritage of the race under its most general conditions, or which have become the common property of a people in all its various grades of culture.

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There are two theories regarding the nature of poetry and of that Genius which creates poetry, whether in literature or in the sphere of any art. They will never be harmonized; for, like many other opinions, doctrines, and theories, of which we are separately forced to acknowledge the truth, they are irreconcilable by any effort of the human understanding. One of these theories says that genius is rare, recondite, unusual; that its creations are, by the very nature of things, little likely to be appreciated; that, indeed, the higher and the deeper it is, the more likelihood there is that it will not be entered into by numbers. Such genius found its embodiment in the phantasmagoria of Blake, in the poetry of Shelley, in the profound insight of this or that thinker. It is the vivid but momentary flash of lightning irradiating a sombre sky; it is the gnarled and solitary pine; the deep still tarn upon the mountain-side; it is the vein of bright ore buried in the darkness of the mine; the electric thrill evoked from inert matter, interesting, delightful, and suggestive from the very strangeness of its apparition. Who shall deny this is _one_ definition of genius, one way of picturing the idea of high art?

But there is another theory, which says that genius is that which possesses the faculty of incarnating universal affections in a type readily and instinctively appropriated by the imagination; that it painted the Huguenots, and wrought out the image of Jeanie Deans; that it sung the simple melody of "Auld Robin Gray," and accumulated the massive choruses of Handel; that--putting aside those greatest men, the Shakespeares, Groethes, and Raphaels, regarding whom criticism or definition are alike exhaustless and for ever inconclusive--the most admirable genius is that which thrills in the ballads, the religions literature, and imitative art of a people, and which a whole nation "will not willingly let die." Such genius, such art, is like the fair sunshine upon corn-fields, the rippling of the running stream, the silver surface of the lake, the profuse luxuriance of spring and autumn woodlands. It embodies light, air, and the song of birds, the solemnity of the universal twilight, and the radiance of the universal dawn. Almost every one can see and feel it in _some_ wise, though the keenness of the appreciation will be in proportion to the sensitiveness of the eye and ear. Who shall deny that this is another and equally true description of the highest genius and the noblest art?

The poems we are now considering, and which have won such general admiration wherever they have become known, belong to the latter class of works of art. Their simple, delicate beauty appeals alike to men and women, and to the soul of the young child; their transparent clearness is that of an unusually lucid intellect; their profoundness is only that of a believing heart. She who wrote them would often say, with a certain characteristic simplicity, "I only write verses--I do not write poetry;" and would fasten upon the products of some powerful and mystic mind as an illustration of what genuine poetry ought to be. But the mis-estimate was great. The absolute absence of claptrap, of any appeal to the passions of the hour or the popular idols of the English people, showed that if these volumes lay on so many tables, and their contents were so often sung and quoted in public and in private, as expressing just that which everybody had wanted to say, the reason lay deeper than the ring of the verse-writer who knows how to play into the fancy of the multitude. They are popular because they are instinct with dainty feminine genius, and reach the hearts of others with the sure precise touch of slender fingers awakening the silver chords of a harp.

Three volumes originally comprised the whole of Miss Procter's writings: a first and second series of legends and lyrics, and one of religious poems, published for a night-refuge {841} kept by Sisters of Mercy. The two former have now been printed in this rich quarto by Messrs. Bell & Daldy; and it may not be amiss to say that the whole _three_ have been republished in America in one small but excellently got-up volume, at once a casket and a shrine (Ticknor & Fields, Boston). Of the secular poems now brought before our English public in so beautiful a dress, we would attempt a slight analysis of contents. There are fourteen legends or stories, long and short--little tales in verse, of which the gist generally lies in some very subtle and pathetic situation of the human heart. Anything like violent wrong or the ravages of unruly passion seemed rarely to cross this gentle imagination; and yet the legends are nearly all sorrowful; but the sorrow seems to spring from nobody's fault and perhaps for that very reason it is all the more sorrowful, for repentance will not wash it away. Little dead children borne to heaven on the bosom of the angels while their mothers weep below; or a dying mother, dying amidst the splendors of an earl's home, and calling to her bedside the son of an earlier and humbler marriage, revealing herself to him at the last; or the history of a stepmother, long loved but late wedded, and who had given up the lover of her own youth to a younger friend, and afterward taken the charge of that friend's jealous and reluctant children; or the pitiful tale, since elaborately wrought out by Tennyson in his "Enoch Arden," of the sailor who returns home to find his wife the wife of another man. In one and all the pathos is wrought out and expressed with the most extraordinary delicacy of touch. The reader says to himself, "Nay, is it so sad after all?" And yet it is; sad and spiritually hopeful too; sad for this earth, hopeful for heaven. This seems the irresistible conclusion of almost every tale; even the story of the stepmother, supposed to come quite right at last, is made inexpressibly plaintive by being told by the first wife's nurse--she who "knew so much," and had lived with her young mistress from childhood, and would not call the cold husband unkind; "but she had been used to love and praise."

In others of these legends the telling of the tale is simpler, the pathos more direct, but almost always strangely subtle. In "Three Evenings of a Life" a sister sacrifices her own hopes of married life that she may devote herself to a young brother who needs her care. But the young brother marries--a catastrophe which she does not seem to have contemplated; and she finds too late that her sacrifice was useless; and, what was worse, that the bride is ill-fitted to sustain him in his life or in his art; and the unhappy sister

"----watched the daily failing Of all his nobler part; Low aims, weak purpose, telling In lower, weaker art.

And now, when he is dying, The last words she could hear Must not be hers, but given The bride of one short year. The last care is another's; The last prayer must not be The one they learnt together Beside their mother's knee."

Herbert sickens and dies, leaving the poor weak little Dora to Alice's care; and we are told how Alice cherishes her, and bears with her waywardness through sad weeks of depression, till news comes in spring that Leonard--the rejected lover--is returning from India. Now Alice is free! Now she may love Leonard and lean upon his strength. He comes; the little household smiles once more. Summer succeeds to spring; when one twilight hour Alice is aware of the perfume of flowers brought into their London home. She goes out into the passage, and through a half-opened door hears Leonard's voice:

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"His low voice--Dora's answers; His pleading;--yes, she knew The tone, the words, the accents; She once had heard them too. 'Would Alice blame her? Leonard's Low tender answer came. 'Alice was far too noble To think or dream of blame.' 'And wishes sure he loved her?' 'Yes, with the one love given Once in a lifetime only; With one soul and one heaven?'

Then came a plaintive murmur: 'Dora had once been told That he and Alice--' 'Dearest, Alice is far too cold To love: and I, my Dora, If once I fancied so, It was a brief delusion. And over long ago.'"

Very tender and touching is the description of the forlorn woman's recoil upon her brother's memory:

"Yes, they have once been parted; But this day shall restore The long-lost one; she claims him: 'My Herbert--mine once more!'"

One of the most highly finished of the legends is "A Tomb in Ghent," setting forth the life of a humble musician and his young daughter. It contains lovely touches of description both of music and architecture. How the youth knelt prayerfully in St. Bavon--

"While the great organ over all would roll, Speaking strange secrets to his innocent soul, Bearing on eagle-wings the great desire Of all the kneeling throng, and piercing higher Than aught but love and prayer can reach, until Only the silence seemed to listen still; Or, gathering like a sea still more and more. Break in melodious waves at heaven's door. And then fall, slow and soft, in tender rain, Upon the pleading, longing hearts again."

Not only what he heard, but what he saw, is thus exquisitely imaged in words:

"Then he would watch the rosy sunlight glow. That crept along the marble floor below, Passing, as life does with the passing hours. How by a shrine all rich with gems and flowers. Now on the brazen letters of a tomb; Then, again, leaving it to shade and gloom, And creeping on, to show distinct and quaint, The kneeling figure of some marble saint; Or lighting up the carvings strange and rare That told of patient toil and reverent care; Ivy that trembled on the spray, and ears Of heavy corn, and slender bulrush-spears. And all the thousand tangled weeds that grow In summer where the silver rivers flow: And demon heads grotesque that seemed to glare In impotent wrath on all the beauty there. Then the gold rays up pillared shaft would climb. And so be drawn to heaven at evening time; And deeper silence, darker shadows flowed On all around--only the windows glowed With blazoned glory, like the shields of light Archangels bear, who, armed with love and might, Watch upon heaven's battlements at night."

The second critical division of Miss Procter's poems comprises those beautiful lyrics, many of which have been set to music, and all of which are full of the melody of rhythms--inspired, as it were, by a delicate AEolian harmony, having its source in the fine intangible instinct of the poet's ear. Amidst more than a hundred of such short poems and songs, selection seems nearly impossible to the critic. Many of the little pieces and many of the separate verses are destined to float on the surface of English literature with the same secure buoyancy as Herrick's "Daffodils," or Lyttleton's verses to his fair wife Lucy, or Wordsworth's picture of the maid who dwelt by the banks of Dove. They have that short felicity of expression, that perfect finish in their parts, that cause such poems to abide in the memory, or, as the expression is, to "dwell in the imagination." In the six verses of "The Chain,"

"Which was not forged by mortal hands. Or clasped with golden bars and bands,

is one--the third--which exemplifies our assertion. It reads like one of those immemorial quotations we have known from infancy:

"Yet what no mortal hand could make. No mortal power can ever break; What words or vows could never do. No words or vows can make untrue; And if to other hearts unknown, The dearer and the more our own, Because too sacred and divine For other eyes save thine and mine."

Two songs, written in the quaint, irregular metre delighted in by the seventeenth-century poets, seem like forgotten scraps by one of the more elegant contemporaries of Milton; these are, "A Doubting Heart," and "A Lament for the Summer," of which the first and last verses are instinct with the feelings of October days:

"Moan, O ye Autumn winds-- Summer has fled; The flowers have closed their tender leaves, and die; The lily's gracious head All low must lie. Because the gentle Summer now is dead.

Mourn, mourn, O Autumn winds-- Lament and mourn; How many half-blown buds must close and die! Hopes, with the Summer born, All faded lie, And leave us desolate and earth forlorn."

{843}

Equally musical, but full of the more personal sentiment of our century, is that lovely song, "A Shadow," beginning,

"What lack the valleys and mountains That once were green and gay?"

Quite different in tone, full of ringing harmony, is the little poem of "Now?"

"Rise, for the day is passing, And you lie dreaming on; The others have buckled their armor, And forth to the fight are gone. A place in the ranks awaits you-- Each man has some part to play; The Past and the Future are nothing In the face of the stern To-day."

And so on, through four spirited verses. Something in these strikes the ear as peculiarly illustrative of the active pious spirit of her who wrote them, of the voice whose every tone was so dear, and of the smile whose arch intelligence conveyed the same expression of lively decision.

We must now bring our remarks to a close, having tried to indicate the different qualities of Miss Procter's verse. The permanent place which it will retain in English literature it is not for us to decide. She has had the power to strike the heart of her own generation by its simple pathos. That it is purely original of its kind can hardly be denied; but it is hard, if not impossible, so far to separate ourselves from the standard of our own generation as to judge where the limits of the _special_, and therefore the _transient_, elements of fame are passed. But we at least must not be wanting in gratitude to one of the sweetest singers of the day that was hers and our own.

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

THE ADVENTURE.

Sir Brian O'Brian McMurrough commenced life as possessor of a _nominal_ rent-roll of twelve thousand pounds sterling per annum, although in reality, between mortgages, and rent-charges, and incumbrances of every possible shape and hue, probably five would represent the net sum received by the proprietor. Still, it was not the age of economical reflection, nor was the young baronet either a financier or a philosopher. He had been cradled in luxury, and bowed down to with slavish senility; he had been educated at Cambridge, and, one way or other, his bills there had been met, though not always pleasantly, by his father. He had travelled over Europe, Asia, and a good part of America, for four years, and at last a letter had caught him at Vienna, telling him that his father, Sir Patrick, had died suddenly, "full of years and honors," and that he was now the representative of one of "the oldest and best families in Ireland," and possessor of its splendid estates, etc. On his return home he was surrounded by troops of friends and hordes of sycophants, and for some years was far too much engaged in pleasure not to let business attend to itself. His fathers had lived "like kings," and he had too much the spirit of an Irish, gentleman to let prudence or economy come "between the wind and his nobility." He married, too, and chose for his wife a far-descended and beautiful pauper, with tastes to the full as reckless and extravagant as his own. This lady had brought him a daughter, who lived, and in four years after {844} a son, who had died a few hours after his birth, and whose death preceded that of his mother by a single day. After her death Sir Brian became more careless and reckless than ever. His spirits sank as his debts mounted; he saw from the first that ruin was inevitable; section after section of his splendid estates were put up for sale and swept away; until at last all that remained to him was a half-ruined building, called "The Black Abbey," which he sometimes used as a shooting and fishing lodge in happier days, and a tract of mountain land, wild, and for the most part sterile and unprofitable, and for part of which he paid rent. In the present gloomy temper of his soul, however, it suited his humor. The building stood halfway up a mountain, the base of which was almost washed by the waters of a broad lake, or lough, and from which it was only separated by a slip of meadow. The lake itself was several miles in extent, and at least three miles and a half broad immediately opposite the abbey, to which the only access from the mainland was by a skiff or boat, except you chose to travel several miles round so as to head the lake. It was a romantic but utterly desolate retreat, made still more so, if possible, by the sullen gloom which had now taken possession of the fallen man. He had secured some remnants of a once splendid library, and sometimes amused himself by teaching his daughter Eva, although there were weeks at one time when a restless and morose spirit beset him, and then with a gun in his hand he wandered idly through the mountains, or with a boy, named Paudreèn, took to his yacht, and was never to be seen on shore, sometimes sleeping on board, or bivouacking on some of the many small islands which dotted the loch.

At such times Eva was left in possession of the abbey, accompanied by old Deb Dermody and her husband Mogue (or Moses), who, of all his followers, had stuck steadily to Sir Brian, and would not be shaken off. Before utter ruin had come upon them, Eva had been for a year, or somewhat better, at a boarding school, the mistress of which had evidently done her duty by the child. The little girl, indeed, "showed blood" in more ways than one: she was small but hardy, and, without being critically beautiful, she was very lovely to look upon: her features were delicate but full of animation. Her temper was lively, but all her instincts were genial and generous, and she had, in a particular manner, the gift of conciliating the affectionate regards of all who came within the sphere of her innocent influence. True it was, her worshippers were neither numerous nor select. A few hands employed by the "steward" (as Mogue was magniloquently called) to till the ground and attend to the "stock," consisting of mountain sheep and Kerry cows, together with stray "cadgers," pedlars, and other wanderers who occasionally visited the neighborhood, and the "neighbors" on both banks of the lough (the hither and thither), consisting for the most part of an amphibious sort of population, who netted fish in the lake, or cultivated patches of ground to keep life and soul together. Beside these, now and then the "agent" of the estate, Mr. Redmond Hennessey, sometimes visited at the abbey, to look for or receive the rents paid by Sir Brian, and another more welcome occasional visitor was Father John Considine, the P.P. of a long, straggling parish, which extended over both sides of the mountain, and whose house and church lay in the valley which separated Ballintopher, on which Sir Brian lived, from Ballinteer, a higher hill which ran beyond. Sir Brian and his daughter belonged to the old faith, and as the priest was a large-minded, liberal man, with a well-cultivated mind, and a good-humored and even jovial temperament, his visits always enlivened the abbey, and sometimes won a smile from its proprietor. His literary tastes and recollections, also, were exceedingly {845} useful to the young girl, particularly as he sometimes ran up to Dublin, or even over to London or Paris, in the summer holidays, from whence he was sure to bring back the gossip for Sir Brian, and a budget of new books, periodicals, and songs for his favorite. Thus matters went on for some years--nothing better, nothing worse, apparently--until Eva was in her eighteenth year. The large estates originally owned by Sir Brian had, in a great measure, fallen into the hands of a single proprietor, Sir Adams Jessop, a rich London merchant and banker, who had purchased them by lots on speculation, because, in the first place, they were sold low (as at first all the Irish estates were under the Incumbered Estates Court), and because he had advanced large sums to the holders of the mortgages, etc., with which they were embarrassed, and thus sought to recoup himself. Since they came into his possession he had been over for a few days twice--once to look over the property, and again to appoint an agent recommended to him by some neighboring proprietors, who all spoke of Mr. Redmond Hennessey as a man of zeal and industry, who always had his employer's interest at heart, and detested a non-paying or dilatory tenant as he did a mad dog. Under this gentleman's supervision the estates put on a new aspect; rents were raised, and covenants insisted on, such as "the oldest inhabitant" had never even dreamed of; and as Mr. Hennessey was a solicitor as well as an agent, processes followed defalcations, and the only sure road to his friendly sympathy was punctuality in payment, and liberality (in the shape of gifts, such as fowl, butter, eggs, fish, socks, flannel, and so forth) from those who had favors to ask or bargains to make. Of course he was a thriving man, but it was remarked that illicit distillation, poaching, and illegal practices of all kinds were greatly on the increase; and when Sir Brian heard of all this, and saw that additional magistrates were sworn in, and a large draft of constabulary and preventive police sent into the new barracks specially constructed for them, he grimly triumphed in the change, and made no secret of his sympathy with the malcontents, since, as he said, "what better could be expected on the estate of an absentee?"

Neither did matters seem to mend when Sir Adams Jessop died somewhat suddenly, and was succeeded by his only son, now Sir William Jessop, who was understood to be a gay young man of indolent habits and roving propensities, and who seemed to have even less sympathy for his Irish tenants than his father--if, indeed, that were possible. Mr. Hennessey's power and authority were now unlimited, and stories were told of his rapacity and impatience of all control which appeared incredible. Whole townships were depopulated by his _fiat_; families were reduced to beggary and desperation by his determination to "make the estate pay;" and some said (for every man has his enemies) that when his new master informed him by letter of appeals being made and of his wish that they should be attended to and the appellants dealt more lightly with, his answer invariably was, that the accusers were established liars, who would be the first to shoot down Sir William himself should he ever be foolish enough to venture amongst them.

II.

Like all inland lakes of considerable extent, that which lay before the windows of the Black Abbey was subject to violent changes of temper on slight and sudden provocation. In the morning it would lie dimpling and smiling before you, as full of placid beauty and as incapable of a wrathful outburst as a ball-room belle; while at noon its aspect would become as terrible as that of a virago, whose whole family and neighborhood tremble and fly from the fearful storm which no submission can allay. On such occasions, considerable danger {846} menaced those who sailed on business or pleasure over the waters of the lake, and it so happened that on the eve of a September day, the yacht of Sir Brian McMurrough was caught in one of those sudden bursts which had swept down from the mountains, accompanied by torrents of rain and violent thunder and lightning, although in the morning, and until after midday, there had been no warning of a gale.

To make matters worse, Miss McMurrough was known to be on board the boat, as she had accompanied her father to a town at the other end of the lake to make household purchases for the coming winter; and the amount of agitation evidenced by a group of men who stood on the banks of the lough and witnessed the fearful struggles of the little craft, amounted gradually to extreme terror as they saw the principal sail give way and flutter in the wind like ribands, while the waves washed over the helpless vessel and threatened speedily to engulf her.

"It will never do, boys," at last said one of the men, "to stand idly by and see the best blood of the country die the death of a drowned dog without putting out a hand or an oar to save him. Run up, Patsy, and tell Mick Mackesy to come down at once, while we launch _Sheelah_, who never turned her back to the whitest horses that ever gallopped over any water that ever ran; and don't let grass grow to your heels, for a life may hang on every step you take. Away with you."

"Has he far to go?" asked another of the group.

"About a mile, sir," replied the man, touching his cap to the questioner, who had been a stranger to him until on hour or two before; "and the worst of it is Mick may be out, or drunk, and then we're done for."

"Don't send for him, then," said the stranger; "I have pulled an oar at college and elsewhere, and am pretty well up to the management of a boat. Where is your craft?"

"Yonder in the cove, sir; but it's a bad business."

"Then the sooner we get rid of it the better, my friend," said the energetic stranger. "Come, boys, I have a sovereign or two to spare, and I promise you that no man shall lose by his humanity. Now, my friend, lead on."

"May I never," said the first speaker, whose name was Andy Monahan, "but you've a stout heart in your bazzom, whoever you are, and it's a pity to baulk you!"

In an incredibly short space of time the boat was launched, and the gentle _Sheelah_ fled on her mission of mercy, impelled by four pair of hands who knew right well how to handle her. By this time the baronet's yacht was a sheer wreck, and although the owner and his boy struggled hard to keep her head to the wind, it was evident that if she did not fill and go down, she would drive bodily on the ragged rocks which shot perpendicularly up on that part of the shore toward which she was drifting. The boat reached her safely, however, and by the excellent management of the volunteer boatman mainly. Miss McMurrough was got into the shore-boat, and her father and the boy followed, while an anchor was let go in the yacht and she was then left to her fate.

In moments of great danger and excitement there is little room for ceremony or introduction, and on the present occasion only a few words, and those of direction, passed on any side. Sir Brian's main care was for his daughter, who, drenched and terrified as she must necessarily be, bore up wonderfully, and even managed to murmur a few words of gratitude to the stranger who so sedulously bore her into the boat, and, so far as he could, protected her. When all was done, the boat's head was again turned to the shore, and "in less than no time," as Andy promised, its wave-worn load was safely landed, wet, weary, and chilled, but otherwise unharmed. After a few words in private {847} with Andy, the boat-owner, Sir Brian turned to the stranger and addressed him.

"I am told by my friend here, sir," he said, "that it is to your dexterity and courage my own preservation and that of my daughter is mainly due. I trust that you will accompany me to my residence, and allow me, when I have regained my presence of mind, more suitably to thank you for the signal service you have done me than I can find words adequately to do now."

"You are very kind, sir," was the prompt and cordial reply, "and I shall be very happy to accept your hospitable offer, as I am altogether a stranger here, and the boatman tells me that I will have to cross the mountain before I can reach an inn."

In the meanwhile, the storm had lulled considerably, and half a score of women had come from the surrounding cottages, some with cloaks, blankets, and shawls for "Miss Eva," and some with "poteen" jars or bottles, to "warm the hearts" of the rescued mariners. But Sir Brian persisted in going home, and refused the proffers of profuse hospitality pressed on him, accepting a "wrap" for his daughter, and sanctioning the attendance of the stranger, on whose offered arm she leaned as they began their walk to the abbey. Before they set off, however, the stranger found time to thrust five sovereigns into Andy's hand, saying to him, in a low voice--

"Divide them among your brave comrades, my good friend, and say nothing to Sir Brian. I only wish I could make it ten times as much, since every man of them is worth--nay, don't refuse them, or I shall say that you are too proud to be obliged by a friend. You and I must become better acquainted hereafter."

He hastened away, and Andy pocketed the gratuity, which he had neither expected nor was at all anxious to receive.

"We'll drink his health anyway," he said, as he pocketed the money; "and if he stays in the country, we'll find a way to pay him back, if not in his own coin, maybe in one that'll please him as well. A brave chap he is, and feathers an oar as well as myself, who was born, I may say, with one in my right hand."

The stranger had requested that a small, neat knapsack, which he had flung down when he stripped for the lake, should be sent after him to the abbey, at which, on arriving at it, he was warmly welcomed by the master, and was ushered to a spare bed-chamber by Deb Dermody herself, who had been advertised of the coming of the party by a "runner," and had everything prepared to receive them.

When the stranger had dried his clothes and changed his linen by the huge turf fire which blazed in the room allotted him, he descended to the "refectory," of general dining and drawing-room, and so called from its use by the monks "lang syne." He found the baronet and his daughter ready to receive him, a large fire in the grate, a table ready laid for dinner, and a fresh arrival in the sturdy person of "Father John," who had come on one of his periodical visitations. Evidently the good priest had heard of the adventure, and of the gallant part which the stranger had performed in it, and, when presenting him his hand, had good-humoredly thanked him for helping to preserve two lives that were so precious to all who knew their worth. The young man, in his turn, found it necessary to introduce himself, and stated that he was an idle rover, with some taste for drawing, literature, and music, and who came on an exploratory expedition to see what he could pick up in the way of old airs or legends, or new scenery, to forward some speculations of his own. His name was Redland, and he considered himself fortunate in having been able to assist Sir Brian and Miss McMurrough in their difficulty, etc.

{848}

The dinner was good. Fish from the lake, game from the mountain, fowl from the stubble, and a capital ham, fed and cured by the "steward," who prided himself on fattening and killing swine. The night sped pleasantly by. Redland was evidently a gentleman, and both the baronet and the priest knew what that meant right well. He was light and cheerful without being frivolous, and seemed more inclined to ask for information from others than to obtrude his own. He spoke well without speaking too much, and greatly pleased Father John by the interest he took in Irish affairs. In the course of the evening the management of the "Jessop property" was spoken of, and incidentally the character of the agent was discussed.

"After all," said Sir Brian, "the devil is not so black as he is painted; Hennessey is not the worst among the bad. I for my own part have always found him civil and obliging, and not at all pressing for the rent of my miserable holding, which, as you well know, Father John, I never ought to be called on to pay a shilling for; but Hennessey's not to blame for that; no more, I dare say, than for other things laid to his charge. He sent Eva a whole chestful of books to read last week, and baskets of fruit from his hot-houses, although I dare say he was the first of his family that had any better sort of house than a mud cabin to rear pigs instead of grapes and peaches in."

"He is a confirmed scoundrel, however, and a curse to the country that holds him," ejaculated the priest, sternly and gravely.

"You ought to blame his absentee master rather than him," said Sir Brian.

"Under your pardon, Sir Brian, I ought to do no such thing," persisted the priest; "his master knows nothing of his doings, of that I am certain, or if he did, as an English merchant, as a man of humanity, he would be the first to reject and put down such intolerable tyranny, which is equally miserable and profitless. In fact, the fellow is true to no one or nothing but his own selfish interests, for he throws the blame of his own cruelties on his employer, and perpetrates enormities sufficient to draw down God's vengeance, under the plea of being driven to it by a man to whom such cheese-parings and petty gains can be of no possible account."

"I should think then, sir," said the stranger, "that it is high time for him to look to his interests and good name, if your account be true, and my only wonder is that he delays it so long."

"Poh! the present proprietor is a gay young fashionable fop, they were called dandies in my day, who well pockets his rents and only thinks of his Irish tenants when his purse runs, dry," said Sir Brian, bitterly.

"Is not that a harsh estimate, papa," said Eva, gently and timidly, "when you can only speak by surmise?"

"Then why is he not here?" asked Sir Brian; "why does he leave his tenantry to be ground to powder or driven to desperation, if he could cure it by his presence?"

"That question may be answered, too," said the priest; "it is Hennessey's interest to keep him away as long as he can, and you may be pretty sure that he has painted us in colors that would not waste a long journey to witness them. I, however, have taken upon myself the liberty of writing to Sir William Jessop, and it will not be my fault if he does not see reason in my statements to come and have a look at us himself."

"You will get into a mess with Hennessey if that comes to his ears," said the baronet, laughing.

"He knows right well I don't care a farthing for either his friendship or his enmity," replied Father John. "'Be just, and fear not,' is my motto, and if it please God to let him injure me, I will bow to the chastisement, since it will be in a good cause."

{849}

"I think that your act was both justifiable and merciful," said the stranger; "and I should say that Sir William will be little better than a heartless fool if he should not respond to your application as he ought."

"He'll never do it," said the obstinate host; "he'll be thinking of his tallow and cotton, and molasses, as matters infinitely superior in his estimation to Irish kernes and their wrongs."

"Ought we not to hope and pray that he will take a more considerate view of Father John's application to him, papa?" said Eva. "He is an English gentleman, and they are always alive to the interests of humanity--at least I have always heard so."

"And you have heard right, my dear Miss Eva, so we'll hope for the best," replied the priest. "So now let us have one cup of tea, and afterward we'll trouble you for 'Love's Young Dream,' or 'The Minstrel Boy,' or 'Silent, O Moyle!' or 'The Young May Moon,' and I'll grumble a bass in 'St. Senanus and the Lady,' if Mr. Redland will help us out."

The tea was drunk, and the songs sung to the accompaniment of a wild Irish harp, which made excellent music in Eva's fair hands. A light supper followed, and then to bed, after various arrangements for the following days, which Sir Brian insisted Redland should give to them; while Father John, whose time was his own, as he had a curate, promised to remain at the abbey also for a few days.

Near to midnight Redland found himself in a very tidy and comfortable room with a blazing fire, and as he undressed his thoughts took the form of soliloquy.

"Pleasant enough all this," he said, as he sat before the fire, "and not a bad beginning, at all events. Sir Brian is a gentleman certainly, although his prejudices--natural, too--master him; the priest, however, is my strong card, and I must stick to him; while as to Eva--Miss McMurrough--who in the world could have thought of finding such a choice and beautiful blossom in such a site? She is equally Rich in blood and beauty, and no mistake, and her soprano has a great deal of the Jenny Lind fine _timbre_ about it. I'm in luck, at any rate, so here goes to enjoy and make the most of it." Thus saying he went to bed.

For the next few days a great deal was done. The yacht was recovered and made available; fish were caught, birds shot, views taken, cottages visited, histories detailed, dinners eaten, songs sung, and conversations enjoyed, in all which the stranger took part, making himself both useful and agreeable; putting Sir Brian in mind of "the good days," charming the priest by his humane and liberal philosophy, and gradually stealing into Eva's good graces so far, that when one evening he said to her he must think of going, she sighed, and said plaintively--

"Yes, that's the worst of your coming, Mr. Redland, for when you leave us how shall we ever get over your loss? Though of course one ought to be always prepared for misfortune, and no one who wished you well would think of detaining you in so dreary a place."

"Dreary! it has been a paradise to me, I assure you. Miss McMurrough, and when duty demands my presence elsewhere, inclination will be sure to draw me back by the hair of the head, and--and by the cords of the heart as well."

The latter part of the sentence was spoken partly to himself and escaped Eva's ear.

It so chanced that, the next morning, Father John left them, after a hearty invitation to Redland to visit his cottage at the side of the mountain; but it was doomed that his place was supplied about mid-day, or rather toward dinner-time, by no less a person than the formidable "agent," Mr. Redmond Hennessey, himself who announced to his "friend," Sir Brian, that, having a day to spare, he came to tax his hospitality.

{850}

"Beside," he said, as he and Sir Brian sat in conclave, while Redland and Eva were wandering on the banks of the lough--"beside, Sir Brian, a report has reached me that a stranger has intruded himself on your hospitality whom I think you ought to beware of."

"He is a fine young fellow, and saved my life," replied the baronet.

"Specious, I dare say; flippant, but anything but safe company, I should say, if my information be correct," said Mr. Hennessey.

"What has he done?" demanded Sir Brian.

"A great deal that he should have left undone," was the reply. "I have heard of the goings on of him and that confounded priest, whose finger is in every man's dish; of their visitings to tenants, and their bribes for information; in point of fact, I look upon him as a dangerous person--one of those English radicals who, driven from their own country, come to ours to plunge it into convulsion and confusion."

"I think you are mistaken in your estimate," replied Sir Brian.

"You will change your opinion by-and-bye," said Hennessey; "the proof of the pudding is the eating of it; I have received three threatening letters since he has been here, short as it is, and I mean, after dinner, to draw him out a bit, and make him show his true colors, if possible."

"You had better not, perhaps," was the reply; "he is an outspoken young fellow, and seems to fear no man, no matter how potential he may think himself. Better let him alone, for your detectives have tracked the wrong man this time, Mr. Hennessey, I assure you."

"We shall see, however," said the agent, made more obstinate by opposition.

The young people did not return until dinner was ready, and then Redland and Hennessey were introduced to each other. The agent was superciliously cold, and Redland hardly civil, so reserved was his demeanor. It seemed to be "hate at first sight on both sides." Under these circumstances, conversation was slow and restrained; Mr. Hennessey talked of himself a good deal; of the improvements in his house, his grounds, and gardens, and of his associations with the aristocracy of the district; while Redland conversed with Eva in a low voice, mercilessly inattentive to the utterings of the great man, which were frequently interrupted by the ill-repressed laughter of Eva at what her companion was saying. At last, however, dinner was done, and when Eva left the room, Mr. Hennessey began his "drawing-out" system by a point-blank question addressed to Redland.

"I understand, Mr. Redland," he said, "that you have been very particularly anxious in your inquiries about the state of Sir William Jessop's extensive property. I presume you are an author, and mean to publish your travels in a neat volume, with wood-cut illustrations?"

"No, no; you are altogether mistaken," was the chilly reply; "I am content to read books, without having the ambition to write them."

"Well, then, the greater compliment to us poor Irish that such an independent inquirer should come amongst us," said Hennessey. "I hope you are satisfied with what you have observed."

"I do not wish to answer your question, sir, since, without intending it, I might give you offence," was the guarded reply.

"Pray don't spare me, young gentleman," sneered the agent, "as I am used to misconstruction, and have shoulders broad enough to bear it. You find fault with my management, of course?"

"Not of course, sir," replied Redland, "but if you insist on having my opinion, I think that Sir William Jessop's estates are very wretchedly managed indeed."

{851}

"Hah! that is candor with a vengeance!" said the agent, startled out of his self-possession; "you must be a disinterested observer to jump at once to so decided a conclusion."

"I had my eyes and ears, sir, and made use of them," answered the composed stranger; "where everything is miserable, and everybody wretched, on an estate which pays eight or ten thousand a year to its owner, somebody must be to blame, since there can be no possible cause for it."

"Go on, sir, go on," said the agent, winking at Sir Brian.

"At your invitation, I will, sir," was the cool reply. "Seeing what I have seen, and hearing what I have heard, I do not wonder that discontent and disaffection should prevail amongst men whom no industry can raise, and no good conduct can protect. It is the skeletons of a population that I have been among, and not men and women of flesh and blood; and as to their homes, I profess that the snow-hut of an Esquimaux would be less inhabitable. I shall call Sir William Jessop a bad Englishman, and a worse Christian, if he shall persist in sanctioning a state of things, which, of course, must be out of your control, since I presume you act according to your orders, and cannot help witnessing the terrible miseries which you are every day compelled to increase."

"You have been in America, sir, I suppose?" was the irrelevant reply of Hennessey.

"I have--both North and South."

"And have been a practitioner of 'stump' oratory? I thought so," replied Hennessey, with a coarse laugh. "Here's to your health, young Cicero, and a better way of thinking to you!"

"To both of us, sir, if you please," replied Redland, touching his glass, and then leaving the room.

"A dangerous fellow, just what I thought him," said Hennessey, when the door closed. "But now that I see his game, I am prepared for him; we'll have no stump orators--no Captain Rocks or Sergeant Starlights amongst us here, if we can help it, Sir Brian. But let it rest--let it rest; we have not quite done with him yet. And now, Sir Brian, to turn to a pleasanter theme; the last time I was here I did myself the honor of making known to you my ardent good wishes for a closer connection with you, through the medium of Miss McMurrough, whose humble slave I have long been."

"I have trusted the matter to my daughter, Mr. Hennessey, and find that her objections are insuperable; she would not listen to me, except at the risk of tears and hysterics," said Sir Brian. "I am obliged to you, but we will speak no more of it, if you please."

"I am sorry for it," 'replied Hennessey, "as I thought that, under such circumstances I might find means to allow your arrears, and the fifty borrowed from myself, to stand over. I fear I can't promise anything of the sort now, but I suppose you are prepared to back up, and the sooner the better, as Sir William is pressing hard for money and must have it. Let me have all, if possible, before Saturday, and so save trouble to both of us. With thanks for your hospitality, and wishing you a safer guest under your roof, I bid yon good-night."

In three minutes more he had left the house, and Sir Brian felt that he had an enemy for life. He said nothing to his guest or his daughter, however, save that Mr. Hennessey had been obliged to leave--on business, he supposed.

The next day, Mogue, who had been at the other side of the lake, brought back word that there was "great ructions" in the town of Ballinlough, as Mr. Hennessey had been fired at early that morning, on riding to one of his farms, and that "a whole pound of bullets had lodged in his hat." Everything was in commotion; the "peelers" were out, and "a whole bunch (bench?) of magistrates were to meet immediately." So that day passed over; but the next morning a new state of affairs occurred. About {852} ten o'clock, half a dozen policemen, with an officer at their head, arrived at the abbey and showed a warrant of arrest for Mr. William Redland, as a suspicious person, etc., with a civil intimation that his body was to be produced before the bench of magistrates now sitting at Ballinlough. Of course, to hear was to obey.

"My accuser will make nothing of it, sir," said Redland to the officer, "and if I really wished him evil he has now afforded me an opportunity of doing it."

"You may require bail, however," said Sir Brian, "so I have dispatched a messenger for Father John, although we can easily defeat him by an _alibi_."

"Or by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," said Redland, with a smile.

When they arrived at the courthouse of Ballinlough, they found at least a dozen magistrates in full conclave, who all scowled on "the prisoner," as Hennessey was their friend.

Redland at once confronted this august assembly, and without waiting for his accuser to begin, thus commenced:

"In order to save time and trouble, gentlemen," he said, "I think it necessary to make a confession for which you may be unprepared.**

"Too late, my fine fellow," said Hennessey; "you should have thought of what you were about before. I heard you myself at Sir Brian's table spout as much treason as would set all Ireland in a flame. I do not wish to prosecute you vindictively, however, although I was near losing my life by your preaching and teaching, so if you will undertake to leave the country, after telling us who and what you are, I will give up the prosecution, and you may go about your business."

"You are very considerate, sir, and I accept your offer," said the undismayed prisoner. "I acknowledge, therefore, that both my name and my occupation have been assumed----"

"I knew it--I could swear it from the first moment I laid eyes upon you," said the triumphant agent; "but go on; you have told us who and what you are not, now oblige us with similar information as to whom and what you are."

"Willingly, sir," replied the young man. "My real name is not Redland, but Jessop--a baronet by rank, an Englishman by birth, and your employer, I think, into the bargain. I am called, then, Sir William Jessop, and my occupation here has been quietly to supervise my estates--and a very wretched supervision it was, as I had the honor to tell you in Sir Brian McMurrough's house. I am willing to remain under arrest until I am fully identified, and as you are not vindictively influenced, I trust you will accept bail for my appearance when called upon."

Hennessey was foiled and defeated by his employer's ruse, and he saw it. He was crestfallen, too, for his warmest friends crowded round "Sir William," and left him in the lurch, although his employer was more merciful.

"I, and my father before me," he said, "have been to blame for not sufficiently making ourselves acquainted with the serious responsibility we had undertaken. I have seen with my own eyes that my estates are sadly mismanaged, and I have reason to complain that your conduct has been both selfish and unjust; selfish, in thinking solely of your own interests--and unjust, in saddling me with your faults. We cannot act longer together, Mr. Hennessey, and you will be good enough to prepare your accounts, so as that they may be duly audited as soon as possible. I will remain the guest of Sir Brian McMurrough, at whose house I am for some little time to be found."

Hennessey left the court-house, degraded and dismissed, leaving with him "his hat with the pound of bullets in it." "I always knew it was Miles Casidy the driver put them m {853} it by Hennessey's order," said Andy Monahan, "and more be token be hinted as much himself yesterday after the seventh glass."

Sir William Jessop went back to the Black Abbey in triumph; and never left it until he had made Eva McMurrough his bride, so that the estates still run with the "auld stock," and Sir Brian and Father John, who is almoner-general to Sir William, are as happy as kings.

MISCELLANY.

_The Source of the Nile_.--Mr. S. W. Baker read a paper before the "Royal Geographical Society," London, giving an "Account of the Discovery of Lake Albert Nyanza." The author commenced by saying that he began in 1861 the preparation of an expedition, in the hope of meeting Speke and Grant at the sources of the Nile. He employed the first year in exploring the tributaries of the Atbara, and afterward proceeded to Khartoum, to organize his party for the great White Nile. In December, 1862, he started from Khartoum with a powerful force, embarked on board three vessels, and including twenty-nine animals of transport, camels, horses, and asses. Pursuing his course, he entered upon a dreary waste of water and reedy banks, where he soon lost his only European attendant, who was killed by fever. The remainder of the party safely reached Gondokoro, which is a wretched place, occupied only occasionally by traders seeking for slaves and ivory. After fifteen days the firing of guns announced some new arrivals, and a party arrived, among whom were two Englishmen, who proved to be Captains Speke and Grant, clothed in humble rags, but with the glory of success upon them. Captain Speke told him the natives declared that a large lake existed to the westward, which he believed would turn out to be a second source of the Nile, and that he himself had traced the river up to 2° 20' N., when it diverged to the west, and he was obliged to leave it. Mr. Baker undertook to follow up the stream, and made his arrangements to join a trading party going southward. The trade along the White Nile really consisted of cattle-stealing, slave-catching, and murder, and the men whom he was obliged to engage at Khartoum were the vilest characters. He had applied through the British consul at Alexandria to the Egyptian government for a few troops to escort him; but the request was refused, although an escort was granted to the Dutch ladies upon the request of the French consul. After Speke and Grant had left him, his men mutinied and tried to prevent his proceeding into the interior. His forty armed men threatened to fire upon him, and the Turkish traders whom he intended to accompany set off without him, and forbade him to follow in their track. At that time, beside his wife, he had but one faithful follower. But he managed to get back the arms from the recalcitrants, and induced seventeen of the men to go with him to the eastward, although none would undertake to go to the south. It was imperative that he should advance, and he followed the trading party who had threatened to attack him, and to excite the Ellyria tribe, through whom he must pass, against him. However, the chief of the trading party was brought over, and on the 17th of March, 1862, they safely arrived in the Latooka country, 110 miles east of Gondokoro. That country was one of the finest he had ever seen, producing ample supplies of grain and supporting large herds. The towns are large and thickly populated, and the inhabitants are a warlike but friendly race, who go naked, and whose chief distinction is their hair, which they train into a kind of natural helmet. The bodies of those of the tribe who are killed in fight are not buried, but those who die naturally are buried in front of the house in which they had dwelt, and at the expiration of a fortnight the bodies are exhumed, the flesh removed, and the bones put in earthen {854} pots, which are placed at the entrance of the towns. Like all the tribes of the White Nile, the Latookas seemed entirely devoid of any idea of a Supreme Being. Indeed, the only difference between them and the beasts is that they can cook and light a fire. There are forests abounding with elephants, but cattle cannot live there on account of the "tsetse" fly. The chief was an old man, who was held to possess the power of producing or restraining rain by a magic whistle; but one day Mr. Baker happening to whistle upon his fingers in a loud key, the natives assumed that he had a power to control the elements, and frequently called upon him to exercise it. From Latooka he proceeded to Kamrasi's country, across an elevated region, the water-shed of the Sobat and White Nile rivers. From the ridge he descended into the valley of the Asua, which river Captain Burton regarded as the main stream of the White Nile, but which, when Mr. Baker crossed it in January, did not contain enough water to cover his boots. On arriving at Shooa, a large number of the porters deserted him, but he pushed on for Enora. He crossed Karuma Falls in the same boat which had carried Captain Speke across, but he was detained for some days by the disinclination of the King Kamrasi to allow strangers to pass over, and it was only when Mr. Baker had exhibited himself on an elevated spot in full European costume that he received the desired permission. It appeared that a trading party, headed by one Debono, a Maltese, who had escorted Speke and Grant, had made a foray upon Kamrasi's country, and Mr. Baker was therefore looked upon with suspicion. From Karuma Falls the Nile flows due west, a rapid stream, bordered with fine trees. King Kamrasi, who was a well-dressed and cleanly person, although a great coward, was very suspicious, and sought to prevent Mr. Baker continuing his journey by representing that the great lake was six month's journey--a statement which Mr. Baker, himself ill, with his wife prostrate from fever, and his attendants refractory, received as a fatal blow to all his hopes. Learning, however, from a native salt-dealer that the lake could be reached in something like ten days, he induced Kamrasi, by the present of his sword, to drink blood with his head man, and to allow them to depart. In crossing the Karan river on the way to the lake Mrs. Baker was struck down by a sunstroke, and remained almost insensible for seven days, during which time the rain poured down in torrents. On the eighteenth day after leaving Kamrasi they came in sight of the looked-for lake, a limitless sheet of blue water sunk low in a vast depression of the country. He descended the steep cliffs, 1,500 feet in height, leading Mrs. Baker by the hand, and, reaching the clean sandy beach, drank of the sweet waters. The western shore, sixty miles distant, consisted of ranges of mountains 7,000 feet in height. Upon achieving the object of their journeys, Mr. Baker named the lake Albert Nyanza. That lake, together with that of Victoria Nyanza, may be accepted as the great reservoir of the Nile. Embarking in canoes upon the lake, the party proceeded for thirteen days to the point where the upper river from Karuma Falls enters the lake by a scarcely perceptible current, while the lake itself suddenly turned westward; but its boundaries in that direction, as well as those of its southern termination, are unknown. The Nile issued from the lake precisely as the natives had reported to Speke and Grant, and from its exit the river is navigable as far as the narrows near the junction of the Asua. The author saw altogether from elevations three-fourths of the course of the Nile between its issue from the lake to Miani's Tree. Mr. Baker's progress up the Upper or Karuma river was stopped, at fifteen miles distance, by a grand waterfall, which had been named Murchison Falls, in honor of the distinguished president of the Geographical Society. Upon their return to Kamrasi's country the travellers were detained nearly twelve months, the king being so impressed with the skill and knowledge of his European visitors that he could not be persuaded to let them leave him. Ultimately the travellers managed to get free, and, after a variety of difficulties with their attendants and the traders, arrived safely at Alexandria.

{855}

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LIFE OF SAINT TERESA. Edited by the Archbishop of Westminster. London: Hurst & Blackett. 1865.

St. Philip Neri, that gentle and wise guide of souls, advised those under his direction to read frequently the "Lives of the Saints." Experience teaches how very profitable this is as an incitement to virtue. As we get a better idea of a person, a place, or an event by an accurate representation than by the most graphic description, so the detailed account of the workings of grace in a faithful soul oftentimes captivates the heart for God which frequent and fervent exhortation has failed to reach. But the amount of good which even the most striking example will produce upon the mind of the reader, will depend very materially upon the way in which the incidents in the life are presented. In the work before us we have the varied experience of one of the very noblest and most courageous souls, through a long and eventful life, related in language which charms while it inspires. St. Teresa's spirit was peculiarly one of chivalry and honor. She was a true child of her native Spain, that land of romance, the mother of so large a proportion of the more distinguished of the canonized saints of the Church. Avila, her birthplace, was known as the "City of Knights." She tells us herself how in youth and early womanhood she had revelled in stories of hazardous adventure, of deeds of valor, and acts of self-devotion, to a degree which, on reflection in after years, she thought had been very perilous to her fidelity to virtue. But grace led captive that warm and impassioned heart, and stimulated her to do for God what many a brave knight is said to have done for the object of his love. As St. Paul said, "I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me." So, the more rough and jagged the front of the obstacles she had to oppose, the more invincible she proved herself to be. "No, my Lord!" she said on one occasion, "it is no fault of thine that those who love thee do not great things for thee; the fault is in our own cowardice and fears, because we never do anything without mingling with it a thousand apprehensions and human considerations." The Holy Ghost had infused into her energetic soul a holy restlessness, and work, ceaseless work, hard work, alone could satisfy its cravings. While the foundations of Valentia and Burgos were in contemplation, so many difficulties came up, one after another, and among them ill health and the feebleness natural to a life now in its decline, that it seemed impossible that they could be effected. In speaking of this particular time she says: "It seems to me that one of the greatest troubles and miseries of life is the want of noble courage to bring the body into subjection; for though pain and sickness be troublesome, yet I account this as nothing when the soul can rise above them in the might of her love, praising God for them, and receiving them as gifts from his hand. But on the one hand to be suffering, and on the other to be able to do nothing, is a terrible thing, especially for a soul that has an ardent desire to find no rest, either interior or exterior, on earth, but to employ herself entirely in the service of her great God." She was in this unsettled state, her mind oppressed with doubt, when she begged light of our Lord at communion. He answered her interiorly: "Of what art thou afraid? When have I been wanting to thee? I am the same now that I have ever been. Do not neglect to make these two foundations." She then adds, "O great God! how different are thy words from those of men! I became so resolute and courageous that all the world would not have been able to hinder me." Here we have the key to her whole life. Her stimulus, as well as strength, was personal love for our Lord. When circumstances threw her back for a moment upon her own feebleness, she was powerless; but let her only hear an encouraging word from him, for which she instinctively listened, and in a moment she was fearless and unconquerable. Spiritual cowardice is the great obstacle which lies between numberless well-disposed {856} souls, nowadays, and perfection. How valuable, then, and how opportune, this life of the great-hearted St. Teresa! We offer our thanks and gratitude to the devout and active Archbishop of Westminster, under whose editorship this useful life appears. From private authority we learn that its authoress is a religious of a convent of Poor Clares under the direction of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles, in London. We are tempted to envy this good religious the satisfaction and pleasure she must feel at having been instrumental in giving her Catholic brethren so welcome and powerful an aid to lead a holy life. Although the name of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles does not appear in connection with this work, their very recent connection with Dr. Manning, and their existing relation to the convent from which this work has issued, compels us before closing this notice to thank them for the share which we suspect them to have had in its publication. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that from their hands we have received that perfect specimen of a beautiful book, "The Works of St. John of the Cross;" in unity of labor, as in spirit, the twin-brother of St. Teresa.

THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF ANDREW JOHNSON, SEVENTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, including his State Papers and Public Speeches. By John Savage, author of "Our Living Presidents," etc. Derby & Miller. 8vo, pp. 408.

The life of a man like Andrew Johnson must command the profound attention of every one who wishes to understand the age and country. It is deeply interesting to ourselves, who have raised him from obscurity to the highest position in the nation, and are prepared to give him, without reference to party or opinion, our cordial and loyal support in his efforts to carry out the organic idea of national life.

The biography of Andrew Johnson is a history of the epoch. He is a representative man of his class and age. It illustrates the power of will to conquer and bring to its support a vast amount of coeval will, making itself the controlling and representative _will_. Few men are elected who are not in intrinsic as well as extrinsic harmony with the power electing. Fraud, chicanery, and deception have less to do with the results of our popular elections than is generally and flippantly asserted. The great characteristics of President Johnson are strong natural ability, invincible determination, courage, ambition, loyalty to the Union, fidelity to his own convictions, and contempt for privilege and prescription.

Mr. Savage has written the text well and carefully, and interwoven the coincident history with more than ordinary correctness. There is one little point to which we would call attention, in, the contents of