CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIAL.

Inspector Keene's third point had been followed up and worked out: Francis Gilbert Thorneley, the lost heir was found; and the living evidence in favor of the will I had made was in our actual possession. That it should be so seemed a merciful interposition of Providence; for we had little doubt but that it had been intended I should, under the influence of the stupefying drug administered by Do Vos, be delayed on my journey, and so give time for him or the housekeeper, or both, to visit the Grange and effect whatever purpose they had in view. What had defeated them, or caused their failure, remained as yet a mystery. Equally mysterious was the way in which both the conspirators had managed to elude the vigilance of the police; and bitter seemed the Inspector's disappointment when, on arriving in London, he found no intelligence awaiting him of either man or woman. We brought up the poor idiot with us; and I took him to my own chambers, engaging a proper attendant to take charge of him, recommended by the physician whom I called in to examine him. He seemed to be perfectly harmless, and tractable as a child, but totally bereft of sense or reason, amusing himself with toys, picture-books, and other infantile diversions, by the hour. We tried to get some coherent account of himself from him, but to no purpose; he knew his name and the name of the old man and woman who had been his sole guardians and companions, apparently for years. But beyond that, no information could be elicited; and to all questions he would reply with some sort of childish babble or jabber. This was the heir to old Thorneley's immense wealth.

There now remained the two other points marked by the Inspector to follow up. Oh! how time was fast rushing on!--time that was so precious for life or death--and so little done as yet toward clearing away all that mountain of condemning evidence which would infallibly, in the eyes of any English jury, bring sentence of death upon the suspected murderer. The question forever rang in my ears, "_Who_ bought that grain of strychnine on the 23d of October?" Upon the discovery and identification of that person both Merrivale and myself, as also the counsel whom he had engaged for the defence, felt everything would hang. But up to the present moment, except in our own minds, not the shadow of a clue could be found. The 16th November, the day appointed for the trial of Hugh Atherton, approached with terrible nearness; and our confidence in all but God's mercy and justice was ebbing fast away. After finding and bringing the lost heir to London, I wrote to Atherton by Merrivale, detailing all that old Thorneley had confided to me, the contents of the will, and my journey into Lincolnshire. I wrote, entreating him to see me; to let no cloud come between us, who had been such close friends from boyhood, at such a moment; to turn a deaf ear to all influence that might suggest that I was acting otherwise than I had always done toward him. I wrote all the bitter sorrow of my heart at having been forced involuntarily to give evidence that might be turned against him; all the self-reproach I felt for not having yielded to his wish of returning home with me that terrible evening.

He answered me in cold distant words, that _under the circumstances_ it was best we should not meet; that Merrivale would act for him in all as he judged best; that he did not wish to be disturbed again before his trial. I showed the letter to Merrivale, and he told me he could not make it out, for that Hugh was quite unreserved with him on all points save this, and {752} to every suggestion he had made to him of seeing me, he had invariably given the same reply, and declined to enter upon the subject. Then I had recourse to Ada Leslie; but she only obtained the same result.

"I told him, guardian," she said, "how true you were to him, how earnest and indefatigable in doing all you could for him, how sure I was that you loved him better than any thing on earth. But all the answer I got was, 'No, Ada; not better than anything. Don't let us say anything more on the subject.' What can he mean? for I am sure he meant something particular."

Was it hard to look in her face, meet her clear trusting eyes, and answer back, "_You_ were right, Ada; he is laboring under some delusion?" Were they false words I spoke, my own heart giving them the lie? Thank God, no. I was true to her, true to him.

The time between my journey into Lincolnshire and the day of the trial seems, on looking back, to be one dead blank, inasmuch as, do what we would, we were no nearer the solution of the mystery after those three weeks of research and watchfulness than we were on the morning succeeding the murder. There were the prolonged conferences of lawyers with counsel, of counsel with prisoner, of both with the detectives; and day by day I saw Merrivale's face growing more careworn, stern, and anxious; I saw both Inspector Keene's and Jones's baffled looks; and--worse, far worse than all--I saw Ada Leslie wasting away before me, withering beneath the blighting sorrow that had fallen upon her young life. Oh! the terrible anguish written upon that wan, worn face that would be lifted up to mine each time I saw her, the unspeakably painful eagerness of her tones as she would ask, "is there any news?" and the touching calmness of her despairing look succeeding the answer which blasted the hopes that kept cruelly rising in her breast only to be crushed!

So the morning of the 16th of November dawned upon us. For the defence Merrivale had engaged two of the most acute lawyers and most eloquent pleaders then practising at the English bar, Sergeant Donaldson and Mr. Forster, Q.C. They were both personal friends of Hugh Atherton, both equally convinced of his innocence. On the part of the Crown the Solicitor-General, Sergeant Butler, and a Mr. Frost were retained--all eminent men. The judges sitting were the Lord Chief-Justice and Baron Watson. Although we arrived very early, the Court was crowded to suffocation; and it was only by help of the police-officers and authorities that we could find entrance, although engaged in the principal case coming on. Special reporters of the press, for London and the country, were eagerly clamoring for seats in the reporters' bench; and even foreign journals had sent over their "own correspondents," such a general stir and sensation had the murder of Gilbert Thorneley made far and near.

Two or three trivial cases of embezzlement and stealing came first before the Common Sergeant, whilst preparations for the one great trial were made, the witnesses collected, and the counsel on either side holding their final conferences. At a quarter to eleven the Chief-Justice, followed by his brother judge, entered amidst profound silence and took his seat. They were both men who had grown old and gray in the administration of justice, who had for years sat in judgment upon the guilty and the not guilty--men whose ears were familiar with the details of almost every misery and crime known to human nature--men who had had their own griefs and trials; and on the venerable face of the superior judge many a deep furrow had been left to tell its tale, whether engraven by private sorrow, or sympathy for the mass of woe and suffering which passed so constantly before his eyes. I had the honor of being personally acquainted {753} with his lordship. How well I remembered an evening, not so long ago, spent at his house with Hugh Atherton; when he, that eminent judge, that distinguished lawyer, had come up to me and talked of Hugh, of his talents, his eloquence, his growing reputation! I remembered the sad, wistful expression of his eye as it dwelt upon my friend, and the tone of his voice, as he said with a deep sigh, "If my boy had lived, I could have wished him to have been such a one as _he_." He remembered it also, if I might judge from the sorrowful gravity of his countenance. I was standing beside Merrivale beneath the prisoner's dock, facing the judge's chair; and in a few moments there was a rustle and stir throughout the court, and I saw the Chief-Justice pass his hand before his eyes for a brief second. Then was heard the loud harsh voice of the clerk of the court addressing some one before him:

"Philip Hugh Atherton, you stand there charged with the wilful murder of your uncle, Mr. Gilbert Thorneley. How say you, prisoner at the bar--are you guilty or not guilty?"

A voice, low, deep-toned, and thrilling in its distinctness, replied: "Not guilty, my lord; not guilty, so help me, O my God!" and turning round, once again my eyes met those of Hugh Atherton.

A great change had been wrought in him during the last three weeks, he had grown so thin and worn; and amongst the waving masses of his dark hair I could trace many and many a silver thread. Twenty years could not have aged him more than these twenty days passed in that felon's cell, beneath the imputation of that savage crime. Who could look at him and think him guilty; who could gaze upon his open, manly face, so noble in its expression of mingled firmness and gentleness, in its guileless innocence and conscious rectitude of purpose, and say, "That man has committed murder"? My heart went out to him, as I looked on his familiar face once more, with all the love and honor with which I had ever cherished his friendship.

A special jury were then sworn in. All passed unchallenged; and the Solicitor-General rose to open the case for the prosecution, and began by requesting that all the witnesses might be ordered to leave the court. It is needless to say that I had been subpoenaed by the crown to repeat the wretched evidence already given at the inquest; needless also to say that, not being personally present during the whole trial, I have drawn from the same sources as before for an account of it.

We had been given to understand that no other witnesses than those examined before the coroner would be called against the prisoner; why should they want more? They had enough evidence to bring down condemnation twice over. On the part of the defence I have before said up to that morning nothing fresh had been discovered that could in any way be used as a direct refutation of what had already been adduced, and would be brought forward again on this day.

After the examination of the medical men I was called into the witness-box, and examined by the Solicitor-General. To my former evidence I now added an account of what had passed between myself and the murdered man on the evening of the 23d, the contents of the will, my journey to the Grange, and the discovery of Thorneley's idiot son. I likewise gave an account of my visit with Jones to Blue-Anchor lane. I noticed that this was ill-received by the Crown counsel; but the judges overruled the Solicitor-General's attempt to squash my statements, and insisted upon my having a full hearing. At the end Sergeant Donaldson rose to cross-question me.

"Did Mr. Thorneley mention in whose favor his previous will had been made?"

"He did not. Simply that he intended the will drawn up then to cancel all others."

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"Can you remember the words in which he alluded to his wife and son?"

"Perfectly; I wrote them in the memorandum addressed to Mr. Atherton, and which Mr. Merrivale has communicated to you."

The Chief-Justice: "Read the extract, brother Donaldson."

Sergeant Donaldson read as follows: "'Five-and-twenty years ago I married one much younger than myself, an orphan living with an aunt, her only relative, and who died shortly after our marriage. My ruling passion was speculation; and I married her, not for love, but for her fortune, which was large; I coveted it for the indulgence of my passion. She was not happy with me, and I took no pains to make her happier. Few knew of our marriage. I kept her at the Grange till she died. Only _I_ and _one other person_ were with her at her death. She gave birth to one child, a boy. Ho grew up an idiot, and I hated him. But I wish to make reparation to my dead wife in the person of her son--not out of love to her memory, but to _defeat the plans of others, and in expiation of me wrong done to her_. I have never loved any one in my life but my twin-sister, Hugh Atherton's mother: and him for her sake and his own.' And then, my lord, follow the instructions for the will given to Mr. Kavanagh." To the witness: "Did Mr. Thorneley give you any clue to the '_other person_' who was with him at his wife's death?"

"None at all."

"When you met the prisoner in Vere street, did he say he was going to visit his uncle then?"

"No; on the contrary, he seemed anxious to come home with me. I should imagine it was an after-thought."

"Mr. Wilmot has stated that you _volunteered_ to give evidence against the prisoner: is it so?"

"No; it is most false. I was surprised by detective Jones into an admission; and when I found that it would be used against Mr. Atherton, I did all in my power to get off attending the inquest."

Reëxamined by the Solicitor-General: "It was against your consent that the prisoner was engaged to your ward Miss Leslie, was it not?"

"Against my consent! Assuredly not. She bad my consent from the beginning."

"You may go, Mr. Kavanagh."

The witness who succeeded me was the housekeeper. It was observed that she did not maintain the same calmness as at the inquest; but her evidence was perfectly consistent, given perhaps with more eagerness, but differing and varying in no essential point from her previous depositions.

Questioned as to whether she had been aware of Mr. Thorneley's marriage, replied she had not, having always been in charge of his house in town, first in the city and afterward in Wimpole street. He had often been from home for many weeks together, but she never knew where he went.

Cross-examined.--Could swear she had poured no ale out in the tumbler before taking it into the study--Barker had been with her all the time--nor yet in the room.

Sergeant Donaldson: "Now, Mrs. Haag, attend to me. How long have you been a widow?"

"Fifteen years."

"What was your husband?"

"A commercial traveller. He was not successful, and I went into service soon after I married."

"Had you any children?"

"One son. He died."

"When?"

"Years ago."

"How many years ago?"

"Twenty years ago."

"Is Haag your married name?"

"Yes."

"Did you bear the name of Bradley?"

"I never bore such a name. I am a Belgian; so was my husband."

{755}

A paper was here passed in to Sergeant Donaldson, and handed by him to the judges.

The Chief-Justice: "This is a certificate of marriage celebrated at Plymouth between Maria Haag, spinster, and Robert Bradley, bachelor, dated June, 1829, and witnessed in proper legal form."

Witness: "I know nothing of it. My name is Haag by marriage. I am very faint; let me go away."

A chair and glass of water were brought to the witness. In a few moments she had recovered and the cross-examination was renewed.

"How came it that you were met in the middle of Vere street, when, by your own showing, you must then have turned out of the street before Mr. Kavanagh could have overtaken you?"

"Mr. Kavanagh did not meet me. I have so said before. I went straight home after passing him and Mr. Atherton at the chemist's shop. He is mistaken."

"What took you to Peterborough on the 30th of last month?"

"I went to visit a friend at Spalding."

"How was it, then, that you returned to London by the twelve o'clock train the following day--I mean arrived in London at that hour?"

Witness hesitated for some time, and at last looked up defiantly.

"What right have you to ask me such a question?"

Baron Watson: "You are bound to answer, Mrs. Haag."

Witness confusedly: "I did not find my friend at home."

Sergeant Donaldson: "Do you mean to say you took that journey with the chance of finding your friend away?"

"I did."

To the Chief-Justice: "My lord, I am informed by Inspector Keene, of the detective service, that Mrs. Haag never visited Spalding at all; that she took a ticket for Stixwould, at which station she got out, and from which station she returned the following day."

Baron Watson: "I don't see what you are trying to prove, brother Donaldson."

"I am trying to prove, my lord, that Mrs. Haag is not a witness upon whose veracity we can rely."

The Chief-Justice: "You must be well aware, Mrs. Haag, that the mystery of this second will, and discovery of your late master's son, bear direct influence upon the charge of which the prisoner is accused. I think it highly necessary that you should be able to give a clear account of that journey of yours on the 30th of last month. For your own sake, do you understand?"

Witness violently: "Of what do you suspect me? I have related the truth."

Sergeant Donaldson: "Excuse me, my lord, I shall call two witnesses presently who will throw some light upon this person's movements. I have no further questions to put to her now."

Barker the footman and the other servants were next examined, and deposed as before, with no additions nor variations.

Mr. Forster in cross-examination drew from the cook a yet more confident declaration that she had heard footsteps on the front-stairs leading from the third to the second floor on the night of the murder. Also that the housekeeper had "gone on awful at her for saying so; but she had stuck to her word and told Mrs. 'Aag as she wasn't a-going to be badgered nor bullied out of her convictions for any 'ousekeeper; and that afterwards Mrs. 'Aag had come to her quite soft and civil, your lordships, and said, 'Here's a suverin, cook, not to mention what you heerd; for if you says a word about them steps, why,' says she, 'you'll just go and put it into them lawyers' 'eads as some of us did it,' says she. But a oath's a oath, my lordships; and a being close and confined is what I could never abide or abear; and that's every bit the truth, and here's her suverin back again, which I never touched nor broke into."

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Baron Watson: "On your oath, then, you declare you heard a footstep on the front-stairs during the night of the 23d but you don't know at what hour?"

"As certain sure, my lord, as that you are a sittin' on your cheer."

After eliciting a few more confirmatory details, the witness was dismissed and Mr. Wilmot called. Nothing further was got out of him than what he had stated before the coroner. Either he was most thoroughly on his guard, or he really was, as he professed to be, ignorant of his cousin Thorneley's existence up to the day of the funeral; ignorant of the contents of his uncle's will, until it was opened at Smith and Walker's; totally unacquainted with the man Sullivan or De Vos; innocent of having written the note seized upon the boy in Blue-Anchor Lane by detective Jones, all knowledge of or complicity with which he absolutely and solemnly denied.

Questioned as to his motive for saying that Miss Leslie had been refused the consent of her guardian, Mr. Kavanagh, to her marriage, replied he had been distinctly told so by Mrs. Leslie, who had mentioned also that Mr. Kavanagh was attached to Miss Leslie himself, and had tried to make her break off the engagement.

Inspector Jackson and Thomas Davis, the chemist, next gave evidence. The latter was cross-questioned by Sergeant Donaldson. Could not swear he did not leave the shop on the evening of the 23d between the time when he had sold the camphor and nine o'clock, his supper-hour; had tried hard to recollect since attending at the inquest, and had spoken to his wife and his assistant. The former thought he had; that she had heard him go into the back-parlor whilst she was down in the kitchen; the latter had said he had not left the shop until nine o'clock. Could swear he had sold no strychnine himself that day. The entry was, however, in his own handwriting. He had talked over the matter repeatedly with James Ball, his assistant, but had gathered no light on the subject. The latter had been in a very odd state of mind since then. The murder seemed to have taken great effect upon him. He had become very nervous, forgetful, and absent; and he (Davis) had been obliged to admonish him several times of late, that if he went on so badly he must seek another situation.

James Ball replaced his master in the witness-box. He looked very haggard and excited, and answered the questions put to him, in an incoherent, unsatisfactory manner, very different from his conduct at the inquest. Admonished by the Chief-justice that he was upon his oath and giving evidence in a matter of life and death, had cried out passionately that he wished he had been dead before that wretched evening.--Ordered to explain what he meant, became confused, and said he had felt ill ever since the inquest.

Cross-questioned by Mr. Forester: "Does your master keep an errand-boy?"

"Yes."

"Was he in the shop on the evening of the 23d?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh! you don't remember! Do you remember receiving a letter on the afternoon of the 24th containing a Bank-of-England £10 note?"

"I did not receive any letter."

"But you received what is called an 'enclosure' of a £10 note, did you not?"

No answer.

"Did you hear my question, sir? Did you or did you not receive it?--on your oath, remember!"

No answer.

The Chief-Justice: "You must answer that gentleman, James Ball."

Still no answer.

The Chief-Justice: "Once more I repeat my learned brother's question. Did you or did you not receive that £10 note on the 24th of October last? If you do not answer, I shall commit you for contempt of court."

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Witness, defiantly: "Well, if I did, what's that to any one here? I suppose I can receive money from my own mother."

Mr. Forster: "You know very well that it did not come from your mother, but that it was _hush-money_ sent you by the person to whom you sold the grain of strychnine on the evening of the 23d." The Chief-Justice: "Is this so? Speak the truth, or it will be the worse for you."

Witness (in a very low voice): "It is."

Mr. Forster: "Who was the person?"

"I don't know--indeed I don't; but it wasn't _he_," (pointing to the prisoner.)

"Was it a man or a woman?"

"A woman."

"Was it the housekeeper?"

"I don't know."

The Chief-Justice: "Let Mrs. Haag be summoned into court."

The housekeeper was brought in and confronted with the witness. She was unveiled, and she looked Ball steadily in the face, the dangerous dark light in her eyes.

The Chief-Justice: "Is that the person?"

"No; I can't identify her." (The witness spoke with more firmness and assurance than he had done.)

Mr. Forster, to Mrs. Haag: "Is this your handwriting?" (A letter is passed to her.)

"No; it is not"

"On your oath?"

"On my oath."

"You can leave the court, Mrs. Haag."

"Now, witness, relate what took place about that strychnine."

"A lady came into the shop that evening, just before that gentleman came in for the camphor, and asked for a grain of strychnine. I refused to sell it. She said, 'It's for my husband; he's a doctor, and wants to try the effect on a dog.' I said, 'Who is he?' She said, 'He's Mr. Grainger, round the corner, at the top of Vere Street.' I knew Mr. Grainger lived there--a doctor. I thought it was all right, and gave her one grain of strychnine. I said, 'I shall run round presently and see if it's all right' She said, 'Very well; come now if you like.' I made sure now more than ever that it was all right. She paid me and left the shop. I told my master of selling it, along with a lot of other medicines. In the morning I heard that Mr. Thorneley had been poisoned by strychnine, and in the afternoon I received by post a ten-pound note and that letter."--(Letter read by Mr. Forster: "Say nothing, and identify no one. You shall receive this amount every month.")--"I guessed then it was from the person who had bought the strychnine, and that they had murdered old Thorneley. I am very poor, and my family needed the money. That is all."

Mr. Forster: "I have nothing further to ask."

The Chief-Justice: "Remove the witness, and let him be detained in custody for the present."

The Solicitor-General: "This, my lord, closes the evidence for the prosecution."

Sergeant Donaldson then rose to address the jury for the defence.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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[ORIGINAL.]

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.

VI.

THE TRINITY OF PERSONS INCLUDED IN THE ONE DIVINE ESSENCE.

The full explication of the First Article of the Creed requires us to anticipate two others, which are its complement and supply the two terms expressing distinctly the relations of the Second and Third Persons to the First Person or the Father, in the Trinity. "Credo in Unum Deum Patrem," gives us the doctrine of the Divine Unity, and the first term of the Trinity, viz., the person of the Father. "Et in Unum Dominum Jesum Christum Filium Dei Unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula; Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine; Deum Verum de Deo Vero; Genitum non Factum, consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt:" gives us the second term or the person of the Son. "Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et Vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, quicum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificacur:" gives us the third term or the person of the Holy Spirit. Both these are necessary to the explanation of the term "Patrem." The proper order is, therefore, to begin with the eternal, necessary relations of the Three Persons to each other in the unity of the Divine Essence, and then to proceed with the operations of each of the Three Persons in the creation and consummation of the Universe.

Our purpose is not to make a directly theological explanation of all that is contained in this mystery, but only of so much of it as relates to its credibility, and its position in regard to the sphere of intelligible truth. With this mystery begins that which is properly the objective matter of revelation, or the series of truths belonging to a super-intelligible order, that is, above the reach of our natural intelligence, proposed to our belief on the veracity of God. It is usually considered the most abstruse, mysterious, and incomprehensible of all the Christian dogmas, even by believers; though we may perhaps find that the dogma of the Incarnation is really farther removed than it from the grasp of our understanding. Be that as it may, the fact that it relates to the very first principle and the primary truth of all religion, and appears to confuse our apprehension of it, namely, the Unity of God--causes us to reflect more distinctly upon its incomprehensibility. Many persons, both nominal Christians and avowed unbelievers, declare openly, that in their view it is an absurdity so manifestly contrary to reason that it is absolutely unthinkable, and, of course, utterly incredible. How then is the relation between this mystery and the self-evident or demonstrable truths of reason adjusted in the act of faith elicited by the believer? What answer can be made to the rational objections of the unbeliever? If the doctrine be really unthinkable, it is just as really incredible, and there can be no act of faith terminated upon it as a revealed object. Of course, then, no inquiry could be made as to its relation with our knowledge, for that which is absurd and incapable of being intellectually conceived and apprehended cannot have any relation to knowledge. It is impossible for the human mind to believe at one and the same time that a proposition is {759} directly contrary to reason, and also revealed by God. No amount of extrinsic evidence will ever convince it. Human reason cannot say beforehand what the truths of revelation are or ought to be; but it can say in certain respects what they cannot be. They cannot be contradictory to known truths and first principles of reason and knowledge. Therefore, when they are presented in such a way to the mind, or are by it apprehended in such a way, as to involve a contradiction to these first truths and principles, they cannot be received until they are differently presented or apprehended, so that this apparent contradiction is removed. This is so constantly and clearly asserted by the ablest Catholic writers, men above all suspicion for soundness in the faith, that we will not waste time in proving it to be sound Catholic doctrine. [Footnote 183] Of course all rationalists, and most Protestants, hold it as an axiom already. If there are some Protestants who hold the contrary, they are beyond the reach of argument.

[Footnote 183: See among others, Archbishop Manning on the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost.]

The Catholic believer in the Trinity apprehends the dogma in such a way that it presents no contradiction to his intellect between itself and the first principles of reason or the primary doctrine of the unity of the divine nature. God, who is the Creator and the Light of reason, as well as the author of revelation, is bound by his own attributes of truth and justice, when he proposes a doctrine as obligatory on faith, to propose it in such a way that the mind is able to apprehend and accept it in a reasonable manner. This is done by the instruction given by the Catholic Church, with which the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit concurs. The Catholic believer is therefore free from those crude misapprehensions and misconceptions which create the difficulty in the unbelieving mind. He apprehends in some degree, although it may be implicitly and confusedly, the real sense and meaning of the mystery, as it is apprehensible by analogy with truths of the natural order. What it is he apprehends, and what are the analogies by which it can be made intelligible, will be explained more fully hereafter. It is enough here to note the fact. This apprehension makes the mystery to him thinkable, or capable of being thought. That is, it causes the proposition of the mystery in certain definite terms to convey a meaning to his mind, and not to be a mere collocation of words without any sense to him. It makes him apprehend what he is required to assent to, and puts before him an object of thought upon which an intellectual act can be elicited. It presents no contradiction to reason, and therefore there is no obstacle to his giving the full assent of faith on the authority of God.

It is otherwise with one who has been brought up in Judaism, Unitarianism, or mere Rationalism; or whose merely traditional and imperfect apprehension of Christian dogmas has been so mixed up with heretical perversions that his mature reason has rejected it as absurd. There is an impediment in the way of his receiving the mystery of the Trinity as proposed by the Catholic Church, and believing it possible that God can have revealed it. He may conceive of the doctrine of the Trinity as affirming that an object can be one and three in the same identical sense, which destroys all mathematical truth. Or he may conceive of it, as dividing the divine substance into three parts, forming a unity of composition and not a unity of simplicity. Or he may conceive of it as multiplying the divine essence, or making three co-ordinate deities, who concur and co-operate with each other by mutual agreement. These conceptions are equally absurd with the first, although it requires more thought to discern their absurdity. It is necessary then to remove the apparent absurdity of the doctrine, before any evidence of its being a {760} revealed truth is admissible. The first misconception is so extremely crude, that it is easily removed by the simple explanation that unity and trinity are predicated of God in distinct and not identical senses. The second, which is hardly less crude is disposed of by pointing out the explicit statements in which the simplicity and indivisibility of the divine substance in all of the Three Persons is invariably affirmed. The third is the only real difficulty, the only one which can remain long in an educated and instructed mind. The objection urged on theological or philosophical grounds by really learned men against the dogma of the Trinity, is, that it implies Tritheism. The simplest and most ordinary method of removing this objection, is by presenting the explicit and positive affirmation of the church that there is but one eternal principle of self-existent, necessary being, one first cause, one infinite substance possessing all perfections. This is sufficient to show that the church denies and condemns Tritheism, and affirms the strict unity of God. But, the Unitarian replies, you hold a doctrine incompatible with this affirmation, viz., that there are three Divine Persons, really distinct and equal. This is met by putting forward the terms in which the church affirms that it is the one, eternal, and infinite essence of God which is in each of the Three Persons. The Unitarian is then obliged to demonstrate that this distinction of persons in the Godhead is unthinkable, and that unity of nature cannot be thought in connection with triplicity of person. This he cannot do. The relation of personality to nature is too abstruse, especially when we are reasoning about the infinite, which transcends all the analogies of our finite self-consciousness, to admit of a demonstration proving absolutely that unity of nature supposes unity of person, and _vice versa_, as its necessary correlative. The church affirms the unity of substance in the Godhead in the clearest manner, sweeping away all ground for gross misconceptions of a divided or multiplied deity; but affirms also trinity in the mode of subsistence, or the distinction of Three Persons, in each one of whom the same divine substance subsists completely. This affirmation is above the comprehension of reason, but not contrary to reason. Even Unitarians, in some instances, find no difficulty in accepting the statement of the doctrine of the trinity made by our great theologians, when it is distinctly presented to them; and in the beautiful Liturgical Book used in some Unitarian congregations, the orthodox doxology, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," has been restored.

The absurd misconception of what the church means by the word Trinity being once removed, the evidence that her doctrine is revealed, or that God affirms to us the eternal, necessary distinction of three subsistences in his infinite being, becomes intelligible and credible. Reason cannot affirm the intrinsic incompatibility of the proposition, God reveals himself as subsisting in three persons, with the proposition, there is one God; and therefore cannot reject conclusive evidence that he does so reveal himself through the Catholic Church. For aught reason can say, he may have so revealed himself. If satisfactory evidence is presented that he has done so, reason is obliged, in consistency with its principles, to examine and judge of the evidence, and assent to the conclusion that the Trinity is a revealed truth. This is enough for all practical purposes, and as much as the majority of persons are capable of. But is this the _ultimatum_ of reason? Is it not possible to go further in showing the conformity of the revealed truth with rational truths? Several eminent theologians have endeavored to take this further step, and to construct a metaphysical argument for the doctrine of the Trinity. Some of the great contemplatives of the church, who are really the most profound and sublime of her {761} theologians and philosophers, have also through divine illumination appeared to gain an insight into the depths of this mystery. For instance, St. Ignatius and St. Francis de Sales both affirm that the truth and the mutual harmony of all the divine mysteries were made evident to their intelligence in contemplation. In modern times, Bossuet, Lacordaire, and Dr. Brownson have reasoned profoundly on the rational evidence of the Trinity, and a Roman priest, the Abbate Mastrofini, has published a work entitled "Metaphysica Sublimior," in which he proposes as his thesis, Given divine revelation, to prove the truth of all its dogmas by reason. The learned and excellent German priest Günther attempted the same thing, but went too far, and fell into certain errors which were censured by the Roman tribunals, and which he himself retracted. It is necessary to tread cautiously and reverently, like Moses, for we are on holy ground, and near the burning bush. We will endeavor to do so, and, taking for our guide the decisions of the Church and the judgment of her greatest and wisest men, to do our best to state briefly what has been attempted in the way of eliciting an eminent act of reason on this great mystery, without trenching on the domain of faith.

First, then, it is certain that reason cannot discover the Trinity of itself. It must be first proposed to it by revelation, before it can apprehend its terms or gain anything to reason upon. Secondly, when proposed, its intrinsic necessity or reason cannot be directly or immediately apprehended. If it can be apprehended at all, it must be mediately, or through analogies existing in the created universe. Are there such analogies, that is, are there any reflections or representations of this divine truth in the physical or intellectual world from which reason can construct a theorem parallel in its own order with this divine theorem? Creation is a copy of the divine idea. It represents God as a mirror. Does it represent him, that is, so far as the human intellect is capable of reading it, not merely as he is one in essence, but also as he is three in persons? Assuming the Trinity as an hypothesis, which is all we can do in arguing with an unbeliever, can we point out analogies or representations in creation of which the Trinity is the ultimate reason and the infinite original? If we can, do these analogies simply accord and harmonize with the hypothesis that God must subsist in three persons, or do they indicate that this is the most adequate or the only conceivable hypothesis, or that it is the necessary, self-evident truth, without which the existence of these analogies would be unthinkable and impossible? Do these analogies, as we are able to discover them, represent an adequate image of the complete Catholic dogma of the Trinity, or only an inadequate image of a portion of it?

It is evident, in the first place, that some analogical representation of the Trinity must be made in order to give the mind any apprehension whatever of a real object of thought on which it can elicit an act of faith. The terms in which the doctrine is stated, as for instance. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, eternal generation, procession or spiration, person, etc., are analogical terms, representing ideas which are otherwise unspeakable, by images or symbols. It is impossible for the mind to perceive that a proposed idea is simply not absurd, without apprehending confusedly what the idea is, and possessing some positive apprehension of its conformity to the logical, that is, the real order. Every distinct act of belief in the Trinity, therefore, however rudimental and imperfectly evolved into reflective cognition, contains in it an apprehension of the analogy between it and creation. If we proceed, therefore, to explicate this confused, inchoate conception, we necessarily proceed by way of explicating the analogy spoken of, because we must proceed by explaining the terms in which the doctrine is stated, {762} which are analogical; and by pointing out what the analogy is which the terms designate. What is meant by calling God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why is the relation of the Son to the Father called filiation? Why is the relation of the Holy Spirit to both called procession? The Niceno-Constantinopolitan and Athanasian Creeds, all the other definitions of the church respecting the Trinity, and all Catholic theology deduced from these definitions and from Scripture and tradition by rational methods, are an explication of the significance of these analogical terms. The only question which can be raised then, is, in regard to the extent of the capacity of human reason to discern the analogy between inward necessary relations of the Godhead, and the outward manifestation of these relations in the creation. The hypothesis of the Trinity assumes that this analogy exists, and is to some extent apprehensible. We will now proceed to indicate the process by which Catholic theologians show this analogy, beginning with those terms of analogy which lie in the material order, and ascending to those which lie in the order of spirit and intelligence.

First, then, it is argued, that the law of generation in the physical world, by which like produces like, represents some divine and eternal principle. Ascending from the lower manifestation of this law to man, we find this physical relation of generation the basis of a higher filiation in which the soul participates. Man generates the image of himself, in his son, who is not merely his bodily offspring, but similar and equal to himself in his rational nature. As St. Paul says, the principal of this paternity must be in God, and must therefore be in him essential and eternal. But this principle of eternal, essential paternity, within the necessary being of God, is the very principle of distinct personal relations.

Again, the multiplicity of creation indicates that there is some principle in the Divine Nature, corresponding in an eminent sense and mode to this multiplicity. The relations of number are eternal truths, and have some infinite transcendental type in God. If there were no principle in the Divine Nature except pure, abstract unity, there would be no original idea, from which God could proceed to create a universe; which is necessarily multiplex and constituted in an infinitude of distinct relations, yet all radically one, as proceeding from one principle and tending to one end. Here is an analogy indicating that unity and multiplicity imply and presuppose one the other.

These two arguments combine when we consider the law of generation and the principle of multiplicity as constituting human society and building up the human race. Society, love, mutual communion, reciprocal relations, kind offices, diversity in equality, constitute the happiness and well being of man; they are an image and a participation of the divine beatitude. All the good of the creature, all the perfections of derived, contingent existences, have an eminent transcendental type in God. Love, friendship, society, represent something in the divine nature. If there were no personal relations in God, but a mere solitude of being existing in a unity and singularity exclusive of all plurality and society, it would seem that, supposing creation possible, the rational creature would copy his archetype, be single of his kind, and find his happiness in absolute solitude. It is otherwise, however, with the human race. The human individual is not single and solitary. Human nature is one in respect of origin and kind, derived from one principle which is communicated by generation and exists in plurality of persons. Society is necessary to the perpetuation, perfection, and happiness of the human race. This society is constituted primarily in a three-fold relation between the father, the mother, and {763} the child, which makes the family; and the family repeated and multiplied makes the tribe, the nation, and the race. Taking now the hypothesis of three persons in one nature as constituting the Godhead, it is plain that we have a clearer idea of that in God which is represented and imitated in human society, and which is the archetype of the life, the happiness, the love, existing in the communion of distinct persons in one common nature, than we can have in the hypothesis of an absolute singularity of person in the deity. That good which man enjoys by fellowship with his equal and his like, is a participation in the supreme good that is in God. In that supreme good, this participated good must exist in an eminent manner. God must have in himself infinite, all-sufficing society, fellowship, love. He must have it in his necessary and eternal being, for he cannot be dependent on that which is contingent and created. Supposing therefore that it is consistent with the unity of his nature to exist in three distinct and equal persons, not only is the analogy of his creation to himself more manifest, but the conception we can form of the perfection of his being is more complete and intelligible.

There is another analogy in the intellectual operation of the human mind. The intellective faculty generates what may be called the interior word, or image of the mind, the archetype of that which is outwardly expressed in a philosophical theory, a poem, a picture, a statue, or a work of architecture. Through this word, the great creative mind lives and attains to the completion and happiness of intellectual existence. It loves it as proceeding from and identical with itself. Through it, it acts upon other minds, controls and influences their thought and life; and thus the spirit proceeding from the creative mind, through its generated word, is the completion of its inward and outward operation. Thus, argue the theologians, the Father contemplating the infinitude of his divine essence generates by an infinite thought, the Word, or Son. Being infinite and uncreated, his necessary act is infinite and uncreated, in all respects equal to himself, and therefore the Word is equal to the Father; possesses the plenitude of the divine essence, intelligence and personality. The divine act of generation is not a purely intellectual cognition, but a contemplation in which love is joined with knowledge. The Father beholds the Son, and the Son looks back upon the Father, with infinite love, which is the spiration of the divine life. This spiration or spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is the consummating, completing term of their unity, and contains the divine being which is in the Father and the Son in all its plenitude; constituting a third person, equal to the first and second. The operation of a limited, finite, created soul presents only a faint, imperfect analogy of the Trinity, because it is itself limited, as being the operation of a soul participating in being only to a limited extent. Individual existences possess each one a limited portion of being. But in God, it is not so. There is no division in his nature, because the eternal, self-existing cause and principle of its unity is a simultaneous cause of its absolute plenitude by which it exhausts all possible being. This plenitude of being is in the eternal generation of the second person, and the eternal spiration of the third person in the Godhead, on account of the necessary perfection of the most pure act in which the being of God consists; wherefore personality is predicable, as one of the perfections of being, of each of the three terms of relation in God. The word of human reason and its spirit, are not equal to itself, or personal, because of the limited and imperfect nature of human reason, and its operations. The Word or Son of the Eternal Father, and the Holy Spirit, are equal to him and personal, because the Father is God, and his act is infinite.

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This prepares the way for a different method of presenting the argument from analogy, based on the conception of God as _actus purissimus_, or most pure act. This is clearly and succinctly stated by Dr. Brownson as follows:

"The one, or naked and empty unity, even in the Unitarian mind is not the equivalent of God. When he says one, he still asks, one what? The answer is, one God, which implies even with him something more than unity. It implies unity and its real and necessary contents as living or actual being. Unity is an abstract conception formed by the mind operating on the intuition of the concrete, and as abstract, has no existence out of the mind conceiving. Like all abstractions, it is in itself dead, unreal, null. God is not an abstraction, not a mere generalization, a creature, or a theorem of the human mind, but one living and true God, existing from and in himself, _ad se et se_. He is real being, being in its plenitude, eternal, independent, self-living, and complete in himself. To live is to act. To be eternally and infinitely living is to be eternally and infinitely acting, is to be all act; and hence philosophers and theologians term God, in scholastic language, most pure act, _actus purissimus_. But act, all act demands, as its essential conditions, principle, medium, and end. Unity, then, to be actual being, to be eternally and purely act in itself, must have in itself the three relations of principle, medium, and end, precisely the three relations termed in Christian theology Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consummation of the divine life. These three interior relations are essential to the conception of unity as one living and true God. Hence the radical conception of God as triune is essential to the conception of God as one God, or real, self-living, self-sufficing unity. There is nothing in this view of the Trinity that asserts that one is three, or that three are one; nor is there anything that breaks the divine unity, for the triplicity asserted is not three Gods, or three divine beings, but a threefold interior relation in the interior essence of the one God, by virtue of which he is one actual, living God. The relations are in the essence of the one God, and are so to speak the living contents of his unity, without which he would be an empty, unreal abstraction; one--nothing." [Footnote 184]

[Footnote 184: Brownson's Review, July, 1863, pp. 266, 267.]

There is still another way of stating the argument, founded on the necessary relation between subject and object. In the rational order, subject is that which apprehends and object that which is apprehended. Intelligence is subject and the intelligible is object. The mere power or capacity of intelligence, if it is conceived of in an abstract manner as existing alone without relation to its object, must be conceived of as not in actual exercise. Intelligence in act implies something intelligible which terminates the act of intelligence. Even supposing that the object of the intelligence is identical with the subject, that is, that the rational mind contemplates itself as a really existing substance, nevertheless there is a distinction between the mind considered as the subject which contemplates, and the mind considered as the object which is contemplated. The reason contemplated must be projected before itself and regarded as an object distinct from the contemplating reason in the act of contemplation. The eye which sees objects external to itself, does not actually see or bring its visual power into act until an object is presented before it; and the individual does not become conscious that he can see or is possessed of a visual faculty, except in the act of seeing an object. The eye cannot see itself immediately by the mere fact that it is a visual organ, but only sees itself as reflected in a mirror and made objective to itself. God is the absolute intelligence and the absolute intelligible, as has been proved in a previous chapter. He contemplates and comprehends himself, and in this consists his active being and life. Thus in the divine being there is the distinction of subject and object. God considered as infinite intelligence is subject, and considered as the infinite intelligible is his own adequate object. The hypothesis of the Trinity presents to us God as subject for intelligence in the person of the Father, as object, or the intelligible, in the person of the Son. The Son is the image of the Father, as the reflection of a man's form in the mirror is the image of himself. The eternal generation of the Son is the {765} eternal act of the Father contemplating his own being, and is terminated upon the person of the Son as its object. As this act is within the divine being, the image of the Father is not a merely phenomenal, apparent, unsubstantial reflection of his being, but real, living, and substantial. The Son is consubstantial with the Father. The being of God is in the act of intelligence or contemplation, whether we consider God as the subject or the object in this infinite act, that is, as intelligent and contemplating, or as intelligible and contemplated. The consummating principle of love, complacency, or beatitude, which completes this act, vivifies it, and unites the person of the Father with the person of the Son in one indivisible being, is the Holy Spirit, equal to the Father and the Son, and identical in being, because a necessary term of the most pure act in which the divine life and being consists. All that is within the circle of the necessary, essential being of God, as most pure, intelligent, living act, is uncaused, self-existent, infinite, eternal. By the hypothesis, we must conceive of God as subsisting in the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in order to conceive of him as _ens in actu_, or in the state of actual, living, concrete being, and not as a mere abstraction or possibility existing in thought only; as infinite intelligence, and the adequate object of his own intelligence, self sufficing and infinitely blessed in himself. Therefore the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. It is only by this triplicity of personal relations that the unity of God as a living, concrete unity, or the unity of one, absolute, perfect, infinite being, containing in himself the actual plenitude of all that is conceivable or possible, can subsist or be vividly apprehended. Therefore there cannot be, by the hypothesis, a separate and distinct Godhead in each of the three persons, since triplicity of person enters into the very essential idea of Godhead. The hypothesis of the Trinity, therefore, absolutely compels the mind to believe in the unity of God, and shuts out all possibility that there should be more Gods than one, because it shuts out all possibility of imagining any mode or form of necessary being which is not included in the three personal relations of the one God. Unity and plurality, singularity and society, capacity of knowing, loving, and enjoying the true, the beautiful, and the good, and the adequate object of this capacity, or the true, beautiful, and good _in se_, the subject and the object of intelligent and spiritual life and activity, intelligence and the intelligible, love and the loved, blessedness and beatitude, subsist in him in actual being, which is infinite and exhausts in its most pure act all that is in the uncreated, necessary, self-existent principle of being and first cause. The adequate reason and type of all contingent and created existences is demonstrated also to be in the three personal relations of the one divine essence, in such a way, that the hypothesis of the Trinity, as a theorem, satisfactorily takes up, accounts for, and explains all discoverable truths as well in regard to the universe as in regard to God.

This last statement indicates the answer which we think is the most correct one to the question proposed in the beginning of this chapter, as to the full logical force of the rational argument for the Trinity. That is, we regard it as a hypothesis which in the first place is completely insusceptible of rational refutation. In the second place, contains certain truths which are established by very strong probable arguments and analogies. In the third place, suggests a conception of God which harmonizes with all the truth we know, or can see to be probable, and at the same time is more perfect and sublime than any which can be made, excluding the hypothesis. We do not claim for it the character of a strict demonstration. To certain minds it seems to approach {766} very near a demonstration, probably because their intellectual power of vision is unusually acute. To others it appears nearly or quite unintelligible. Probably but few persons comparatively can grasp it in such a way as to attain a true intellectual insight into the relation between the doctrine of the Trinity and philosophy. Yet all those who have thought much on the doctrine, and who find their great difficulty in believing it to consist in a want of apparent connection with other truths, ought to be able to appreciate the philosophical argument by which the connection is shown. They must have an aptitude for apprehending arguments of this nature, otherwise they would not think on the subject so intently. All they can justly expect is that the impediment in their minds against believing that the doctrine is credible, or not incredible, supposing it revealed, should be removed. This is done by the arguments of Catholic theologians. If the doctrine be revealed, it is credible; that is, an intelligent person can in perfect consistency with the dictates of reason assent to the proposition that God has revealed it, and that it is therefore credible on his veracity. The ground of the positive and unwavering assent of the mind is in the veracity of God, and remains there, no matter how far the reasoning process may be carried; for without the revelation of God, the conception of the Trinity, supposing it once obtained, would for ever remain a mere hypothesis, though the most probable of all which could be conceived.

As already explained, it is only by a supernatural grace that the mind is elevated to a state in which it clearly and habitually contemplates the object of faith as revealed by God. By divine faith, the intellect believes without doubting the mystery of the three persons in one divine nature, and incorporates this belief into its life, as a vivifying truth and not a dead, inert, abstract speculation or theorem. When it is thus believed, and taken as a certain truth, the intellect, if it is capable of apprehending the argument from analogy, may be able to see that the Trinity is really that truth which is the archetype that has been copied in creation, and is indicated in the analogies already pointed out. It may see that one cannot think logically unless he is first instructed in the doctrine of the Trinity and proceeds from it as a given truth or datum of reasoning. Thus, he may by the light of faith attain an elevated kind of science, or eminent act of reason, which really rests on indubitable principles. Yet it will not be properly science or knowledge of the revealed mysteries, since one of these indubitable principles on which all the consequences depend, is revelation itself, which really constitutes the mind in a certitude of that which on merely rational principles remains always inevident. Probably this is what is meant by those who maintain that the Trinity can be rationally demonstrated. Given, that the Trinity is a revealed truth, it explains and harmonizes in the sphere of reason what is otherwise inexplicable. It is the same with other revealed truths, and to prove that it is so is the principal object of this essay. Presented in this light, the Catholic dogma of the Trinity vindicates its claim to be a necessary part of religious belief; an essential dogma of Christianity, revealed and made obligatory for an intelligible reason, and essential to the formation of a complete and adequate theology and philosophy. It is no longer regarded as a naked, speculative, isolated proposition; to which a merely intellectual assent is required by a precept of authority, and which has no living relation to other truths or to the practical, spiritual life of the soul. It is shown to be a universal and fundamental truth, the basis of all truth and of the entire real and logical order of the universe.

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This can be shown much more easily, and to the majority of minds more intelligibly, in relation to the other truths of Christianity, than to those truths which are more recondite and metaphysical. It is necessary to an adequate explication of the creation, of the destiny of rational existences, of the supernatural order, of the character and mission of Christ, of the regeneration of man through him, and of his final end or supreme and eternal beatitude and glorification in the future life, as will be shown hereafter. Deprived of this dogma, Christianity is baseless, unmeaning, and worthless; and is infallibly disintegrated and reduced to nihilism, by the necessary laws of thought. This is true also of theism, or natural theology. And this suggests a powerful subsidiary argument in a different line of reasoning, proving that the doctrine of the Trinity is necessary to the perfection and perpetuity of the doctrine of the unity of God.

The same universal tradition which has handed down the pure, theistic conception, and has instructed mankind in the true, adequate knowledge of God, has handed down the Trinity, and traces of it are even found in heathen theosophy and the more profound heathen philosophy. Wherever the doctrine of the Trinity has been preserved, there the clear conception of the one God and his attributes has been preserved. And where this doctrine has been corrupted or lost, the conception of God as one living being of infinite perfection, the first and final cause of all things, has passed away into polytheism or pantheism or scepticism. Wherever God is apprehended as the supreme creator and sovereign, the supreme object of worship, obedience, and love, in intimate personal relations to man, he is apprehended in the personal relations which subsist in himself, that is, in the Trinity. His interior personal relations are the foundation of all external personal relations to his creatures. This is even true of Unitarians, so long as they retain the Christian ethical and spiritual temper which connects them with the Christian world of thought and life, and do not slide into some form of infidelity. They retain some imperfect conception of the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in proportion as they become more positive in religion, they revive and renew this conception. The effort to make a system of living, practical theistic religion is feeble and futile, and what little consistency and force it has is derived from the conception of the fatherhood of God borrowed from Christian theology; but imperfect without the two additional terms which constitute the complete conception of the Trinity. All this is a powerful argument for a Theist or a Unitarian in favor of the divine origin and authority of the Catholic dogma. The instruction which completes the inward affirmation of God in the idea of reason, and is the complement of the creative act constituting the soul rational, must be from the Creator. He alone can complete his own work. It is contrary to all rational conceptions of the wisdom of God to suppose that he has permitted that the same instruction which teaches mankind to know, to worship, to love, and to aspire after himself, should hand down in inseparable connection with the eternal truth of the unity of his essence, the doctrine of the threefold personal relations within this unity, if this were an error diametrically its opposite, and not a truth equally necessary and eternal.

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From The Month.

CAIRO AND THE FRANCISCAN MISSIONS ON THE NILE.

On the 25th November, 186--, a small but crowded steamer was seen ploughing its way through the waves at the entrance to the port of Alexandria. Its living freight was of a motley description: there were the usual proportion of Indian passengers--Indian officers returning with their wives after sick-leave; engineer officers going out to lay down the electric telegraph--one of whom, young in years but old in knowledge, whose distinguished merit had already raised him to the first place in his profession, was never again destined to see his native shores. Then there were others seeking health, and about to exchange the damp, foggy climate of England for the warm, dry, invigorating air of Nubia and the Upper Nile. They had had a horrible passage, in a small and badly-appointed steamer, of which all the port-holes had to be closed on account of the gale, leaving the wretched inhabitants of the cabins in a state of suffocation difficult to describe. So that it was with intense joy that the jetty was at last reached; and in the midst of a noise and confusion impossible to describe, the passengers were landed on the dirty quay, and were dragged rather than led into the carriages which were to convey them to the hotel. It was the feast of St. Catharine, the patron saint of Alexandria, to whom the great cathedral is dedicated; and in consequence the town was more than usually gay. Towards evening a beautiful procession was formed, and Benediction sung in the cathedral, which is served by the Lazarist fathers. It was the best day to arrive at Alexandria, and the prayers of the virgin saint and martyr were earnestly invoked by some of the party for a blessing on their voyage and a safe and happy return.

To one who has been for a long time in the East, Alexandria appears a motley collection of half European, half Arabian houses, and the refuse of the populations of each; but on first landing, everything appears new, beautiful, and strange. The long files of camels, the veiled women, the variety of the dresses are all striking; but the one thing which even the most hackneyed Nile traveller cannot fail to admire is the vegetation. Enormous groves of date-palms and bananas, with an underwood of poncettias, their scarlet leaves looking like red flamingos amid the dark-green leaves, and ipomeas of every shade-- lilac, yellow, and above all turquoise-blue--climbing over every ruined wall, and exquisite in color as in form, delight an eye accustomed to see such things carefully tended in hothouses only, or paid for at the rate of five shillings a spray in Covent Garden. The sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul have two very large establishments here--one a hospital, to which is attached a large dispensary, attended daily by hundreds of Arabs; the other a school and orphanage of upwards of 1000 children. There are thirty-seven sisters, and their work is bearing its fruit, not only among the Christian but the native population. To our English travellers the very sight of their white "cornettes" was an assurance of love and kindness and welcome in this strange land; and it was with a glad and thankful heart that they found themselves once more kneeling in their chapel, and felt that no bond is like that of charity, uniting as in one great family every nation upon earth.

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After a couple of days' rest, our English party started by the railroad for Cairo. This journey was not as commonplace as it sounds; for at each station the train was besieged by Arabs, clamoring for passages, between 300 and 400 at a time; so that it required all the efforts of the guards and their dragoman to prevent their carriage being taken from them by main force. The beauty of Cairo is the theme of every writer on Egypt and the Nile; but it would be impossible to exaggerate its extreme picturesqueness, the exquisite carving of its mosques and gateways; the oriental character of its narrow streets and bazaars and courts; the beauty of the costumes, and of the fretted lattice casements overhanging the streets; the gorgeous interior fittings of the mosques, one of which is entirely lined with oriental alabaster; the magnificent fountains in the outer courts of each; the graceful minarets--all seen in the clearness and beauty of this perfectly cloudless sky, leave a picture in one's mind which no subsequent travel can efface. Outside the town is a perfect "city of the dead;" all the pashas and their families are interred there, and people "live among the tombs," as described in the Gospels; while on Fridays the Mohammedans have services there for their dead, "that they may be loosed from their sins;" one of those curious fragments of Christianity which are continually cropping out of this strange Mohammedan worship.

One of the most interesting expeditions made by our travellers was to Heliopolis. They passed through a sandy plain full of cotton, date-palms, and bananas, and by a succession of miserable native huts, (which consist of mud walls, with a roof of Indian corn, and a hole left in the wall for light,) until they came to an obelisk, and from thence to a garden, in the centre of which is a sycamore tree, carefully preserved, under which the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph are said to have rested with the infant Saviour on their flight into Egypt. It is close to a well of pure water, and surrounded with the most beautiful roses and Egyptian jasmine. The Mohammedans have the greatest veneration for the "Sitt Miriam," as they call the Blessed Virgin. They proof her immaculate conception from the Koran, and keep a fast of fifteen days before the Assumption; therefore no surprise was felt at seeing the care with which this grand old tree is tended and watered by them.

Another expedition made by the travellers was to Old Cairo, where, near the famous Nilometer, is the Coptic convent and chapel built over the house of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, where they are said to have lived for two years with our Blessed Lord. There are some very beautiful ancient marble columns and fine olive-wood carvings, inlaid with ivory, in this church, and a staircase leads down to the Virgin's House, which is now partly under water from the rise of the Nile. It is curious how persistently all early tradition points to this spot as the site of our Saviour's Egyptian sojourn, and it was with a feeling of simple faith in its authenticity that one of the party knelt and strove to realize this portion of the sacred infancy.

There are three Catholic churches in Cairo, the cathedral being a fine large building. The sisters of "the Good Shepherd" have also a large convent near the cathedral, and an admirable day-school and orphanage. Many dark-eyed young girls whom our travellers saw kneeling at benediction there had been rescued by the kind Mother from worse than Egyptian slavery. The condition of the "fellahs," or lower orders, in Egypt, is appalling from its misery and degradation; and the good sisters have very uphill work to humanize as well as christianize these poor children. {770} Nothing can be more wretched than the position of the women, especially throughout Egypt. If at all good-looking, they are brought up for the harems; if not, they are kept as "hewers of wood and drawers of water;" and the idea of their having _souls_ seems as little believed by the Mohammedan as by the Chinese, whose incredulity on the subject the Abbé Hue mentions so amusingly in his missionary narrative.

Before leaving Cairo the English ladies were invited to spend an evening in the royal harem, and accordingly at eight o'clock found themselves in a beautiful garden, with fountains, lit by a multitude of variegated lamps, and conducted by black eunuchs through trellis-covered walks to a large marble-paved hall, where about forty Circassian slaves met them and escorted them to a saloon fitted up with divans, at the end of which reclined the pasha's wives. One of them was singularly beautiful, and exquisitely dressed, in pink velvet and ermine, with priceless jewels. Another very fine figure was that of the mother, a venerable old princess, looking exactly like a Rembrandt just come out of its frame. Great respect was paid to her, and when she came in, every one rose. The guests being seated, or rather squatted, on the divan, each was supplied with long pipes, coffee in exquisite jewelled cups, and sweetmeats, the one succeeding the other, without intermission, the whole night. The Circassian slaves, with folded hands and downcast eyes, stood before their mistresses, to supply their wants. Some of them were very pretty, and dressed with great richness and taste. Then began a concert of Turkish instruments, which sounded unpleasing to English ears, followed by a dance, which was graceful and pretty; but this again followed by a play, in which half the female slaves were dressed up as men, and the coarseness of which it is impossible to describe. The wife of the foreign minister kindly acted as interpreter for the English ladies, and through her means some kind of conversation was kept up. But the ignorance of the ladies in the harem is unbelievable. They can neither read nor write; their whole day is employed in dressing, bathing, eating, drinking, and smoking. The soirée lasted till two in the morning, when the royalty withdrew, and the English ladies returned home, feeling the whole time as if they had been seeing a play acted from a scene in the Arabian Nights, so difficult was it to realize that such a way of existence was possible in the present century.

The Sunday before they left, curiosity led them after mass to witness the gorgeous ceremonial of the Coptic Church. The men sat on the ground with bare feet, the women in galleries above the dome, behind screens. The patriarch--who calls himself the successor of St. Mark, and is the leader of a sect whose opinions are almost identical with those condemned by the council of Chalcedon as the Eutychian heresy--was gorgeously attired in a chasuble of green and gold, with a silver crosier in one hand, (St. George and the dragon being carved on the top,) and in the other a beautiful gold crucifix, richly jewelled, wrapped in a gold-colored handkerchief, which every one stooped to kiss, after the reading of the gospel and the creed, the people joined with great fervor in the litanies; and then began the consecration of the sacred species, which lasted a very long time. The holy eucharist was given in a spoon to each communicant, the bread being dipped in the wine, and the patriarch laying his hand on the forehead of each person while he gave the blessing. At the same time, blessed bread stamped with a cross, and with the name of Christ, was handed round to the rest of the congregation, like the _pain bénit_ in village churches in France. The Copts boast that there has never been the slightest alteration in their religious rites since the fourth century, and they are undoubtedly the only descendents of the ancient Egyptians.

{771}

The following morning a portion of our travellers started by train for Suez, across a waving, billowy-looking tract of interminable sand. Except the "half-way house," (a miserable shed,) there is no human habitation all the way, and nothing to be seen but long files of camels slowly wending their way across the desert. After enjoying for a few minutes the first sight of the Red Sea, the consul obligingly lent them horses to ride to the Lesseps Canal, which was then completed to within six miles of Suez. Upward of 5000 Arabs had been pressed into the service by the pasha, and the poor creatures were toiling under the burning sun, with no pay and wretched food, and, when night came, sleeping under the banks. The mortality among them was frightful; but it was in this way that the pasha paid for his shares! Our travellers tasted the water, the first that had ever been brought to Suez, except by camels, or, of late, by the _water-train_. It is difficult to realize the fact of a town of this size being entirely without fresh water until now, which accounts for the absence of the least kind of vegetation. The next morning a steamer took our party early to the wells of Moses, about nine miles up the gulf, where they landed, being carried through the surf by the Chinese rowers. Each of the wells is enclosed in a little fence, and belongs to a Suez merchant. It is a wonderful spot, so green and so lovely in the midst of such utter desolation. There are dates and banians, roses and pomegranates, salads and other vegetables, all growing in the greatest luxuriance. Long strings of camels filed across the sand on their way to Mount Sinai, and the coloring of the mountains was exquisite. The shore was covered with coral and shells. After spending an hour or two there, and reading the Bible account of the spot, our travellers returned to the ship, and went across the gulf to see the exact place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea when pursued by Pharaoh. The view was beautiful, and the Hill of Barda stood out brightly with its jagged points dear and purple against the glowing sky. The Catholics have a small church at Suez, but are building a larger one, as their mission is greatly on the increase.

Our travellers returned that evening to Cairo and for the first time slept on board their boats, or daha-biéh. The first sensation was of discomfort at the smallness of the cabins; but soon they got used to their floating homes, and the beauty of the weather enabled them to live all day long on the awning-covered poop; so that they soon ceased to feel cramped and uncomfortable. The following day, the wind being contrary, Latifa Pasha, the head of the Admiralty, gave them a steamer to tow them up to Gizeh, from whence they were to visit the Pyramids. The excessive depth of each stone makes the ascent an arduous one for women; but the view amply repays one for the exertion. On one side is the interminable desert; on the other, the fertile "Land of Goshen." Owing to the recent inundations, the party had continually to dismount from their donkeys and be carried across the water on men's backs. The next few days passed quickly, our travellers landing every morning to walk and sketch, while the men were "tracking" along the shore, and making acquaintance with all the people and places of interest as they passed. At El-Atfeh was a remarkable dervish of the tribe they had seen "dancing" in Cairo, who showed them his house, in the court of which was the tomb of his predecessor, hung with ostrich-eggs, canoes and other votive offerings, but hideously painted in bright green. At Bibbeh there was a very fine Coptic church, with a picture of St. George and the Dragon, who is the favorite saint throughout the East, and venerated alike by Christian and Moslem. Again, on their way to Minieh, they passed by a fine Coptic convent on the top of a {772} cliff, and two of the monks swam to the boats to ask for alms and offerings, which are never refused them. On the 20th December they reached Sawada, which is a village somewhat inland, but containing a large Coptic convent and church, served by six priests, and with a congregation of upwards of 1000 Christians. It was also an important burial-place, and there were multitudes of little domes looking like children's sand-basins reversed, but each surmounted with a cross. One of the ladies was sketching this picturesque village from a palm-grove at the entrance of the principal gateway, when a venerable priest approached her and made that sign which in the East is the freemasonry of brotherhood--the sign of the Cross. The lady instantly responded, and the old priest, joyfully clapping his hands, led her into the church, showing her all its carious carvings and decorations, and several very ancient MSS. There are some fine mountains at the back, in which the gentlemen of the party discovered some wolves. The next day brought them to Beni-Hassan. The caves, which are about three miles from the shore, were originally used as tombs by the ancient Egyptians, and are covered with paintings and hieroglyphics; but their chief interest arises from their having been the great hiding-place of the Christians during the persecutions, and also used as cells by St. Anthony, St. Macarius, and other anchorites. A little farther on, near Manfaloot, is the cave of St. John the Hermit, venerated to this hour as such by the natives. On Christmas-day our travellers arrived at Sioot, and found there a Catholic church served by the Franciscan mission, which is under the special protection of the Emperor of Austria, who has sent some very good pictures for the altars there. The mass was reverently and well sang, and about 150 Catholics were present. After mass, the Italian padre gave them coffee. He had been educated at the "Propaganda," but had been twenty-four years in Egypt; so that he had almost forgotten every language except Arabic. He said that they had now obtained a union with the Copts, and a Coptic mass followed the Latin one. The mission had been established at Sioot four years before, by the intervention of Said Pasha, but had encountered great opposition at first from the Moslems. Two bodies of Christian saints with all the signs of martyrdom had been lately discovered in the caves above the town; but the Mohammedans would not allow the Christians to have them. The good old Franciscan had studied medicine, and thus first made his way among the people. Now he seems to be universally respected and beloved.

Our party rode through the dirty bazaars of this so-called capital of Upper Egypt, and ascended to the caves. But the "City of the Dead", a little beyond the town, is mournfully beautiful and silent. It is composed of streets of tombs, of white stone or marble, the only sign of life being the jar of water left in front of each, to water the aloes planted in picturesque vases at the gate of each tomb. A whole poem might be written on the thoughts suggested by those silent streets. It was this "City of the Dead" which is said to have occasioned the valuable lesson given by St. Macarius to the young man who had asked him "how he could best learn indifference to the world's opinion?" He directed him to go to this place, and first upbraid and then flatter the dead. The young man did as he was bid. When he came back, the saint asked him "what answer they had made?" The young man replied, "None at all." Then said St. Macarius: "Go and learn from them neither to be moved by injuries or flatteries. If you thus die to the world and to yourself, you will begin to live to Christ."

{773}

Here for the first time our travellers realized the horrors of an Egyptian conscription. A number of villagers coming in to the Sunday's market were at once seized, chained together, and thrown on the ground like so much "dead stock" to be packed off on board a government vessel, when the fall complement had been secured. The screams and howls of their wives and daughters, throwing dirt on their heads and tearing their hair, in token of despair, when their frantic efforts to release them from the recruiting-sergeants were found ineffectual, were most piteous to hear. The poor fellows rarely survive to return to their homes; and their pay and food are so miserably small and scanty, that to be made a soldier is looked upon as worse than death. They maim themselves in every way to escape it--cutting off their forefingers, putting out their eyes, and the like. Scarcely a man on board the boats is not mutilated in this manner. In the evening, being Christmas-day, all the boats were illuminated with Chinese lanterns and avenues of palms; while the sailors made crosses and stars of palm-leaves, to hang over the cabin-doors. A beautiful moon-light night added to the effect of these decorations, as the party rowed round the different _dahabièhs_, and the "Adeste fidelis" sounded softly across the water. The following morning, after early mass, a favorable wind carried them on to Ekhnim, where there is also a Catholic Franciscan missionary and church. The priest was a Neapolitan, and had begun his labors at Suez. His only companion was a native Copt, who had been educated at the Propaganda. They had about five hundred Catholics in their congregation, and a school of about fifty children. The church was of the fifteenth century, and under the protection of a Christian sheik, to whom our travellers were introduced, and who courteously invited them into his house. The courtyard of the Catholic church was crowded with native Christians who had escaped from the conscription, and were safe under the roof of the priest. The sheik conducted his guests to his house, the only good one in Ekhnim, and furnished more or less in European style, as he had been at Cairo, and attached to the household of the late viceroy. They sat on the divan, with pipes and coffee, talking Italian with the priest, when the sheik, as a great honor, allowed them to see his wife, and afterward his daughter, a bride of thirteen, married to the son of the Copt bishop. She was dressed in red, as a bride, with a red veil and a profusion of gold ornaments and coins strung round her neck and arms. The sheik and the whole population escorted our travellers back to their boats with every demonstration of respect, and then the principal chiefs with the priests were invited to come on board and have coffee, which they accepted. The Franciscan father had been for seven years at Castellamare, and felt the change terribly, but said that the climate was good, and that the comfort of feeling he was working for God strengthened his hands when he was inclined to despond. He complained of the lamentable ignorance of the Coptic priests, who knew nothing of the history of their interesting old churches and convents, and only tell you "they were built before their fathers were born!" The two large Coptic convents formerly existing in the mountains above the town are deserted; but their church at Ekhnim is the oldest now remaining in Egypt, and full of curious carving and very ancient pillars.

On New Year's day our travellers arrived at Denderah, and spent it in the wonderful temple of Athor. The heat was very great, and it required some courage to attempt to sketch. At five the following morning the boats arrived at Keneh, and some of the party went on shore to mass, that being also a Franciscan station. The church is small, but very nicely kept; the place is, however, unhealthy, and the good Franciscan father was very low at the mortality among his comrades. He has lately started a school and has about twenty children; but his life is a very desolate one, having {774} no European to speak to, or any one to sympathize in his work. After mass he took our travellers to see the making of the _goolehs_, or water-bottles, which are so famous throughout Egypt, and are made solely in this place, of the peculiar clay of the district, mixed with the ashes of the halfeh grass. They are beautiful in form, and keep the water deliciously cool. After a breakfast of coffee and excellent dates at the sheik's house, the party reëmbarked, and arrived that evening at Negaddi. Here again they found a Catholic mission. The superior, Padre Samuele, had been laboring there for twenty-three years. He was of the Lyons mission, and was the only one who had survived the climate. Four of his brethren had died within the last twelvemonth, and he had just dug a grave for the last. They had a large and devout congregation, and a school of one hundred and fifty children, and had been building a new church of very fine and good proportions. But now the good father has to labor and live alone. He said, however, that he had written to Europe for fresh workers, whom he was anxiously expecting. Negaddi is remarkable for its turreted pigeon-houses, painted white and red, which form an amusing contrast to the miserable mudholes in which the inhabitants live. The following evening found our travellers at Thebes. The town itself is a surprise and disappointment. There are literally no shops, no bazaar, no houses but the two or three belonging to the consuls, and built in the midst of the temples. But the said temples are unrivalled for interest and beauty. Karnac, either by daylight or moonlight, is a thing apart from all others in the world for vastness of conception and magnificence of design. "There were giants in those days." The same may be said of the Tombs of the Kings, of the Vocal Memnon, of the Memnouium, of Medemet Haboo, and the rest. The marvel is, what has become of the people who created such things; who had brought civilization, arts, and manufactures to such perfection that nothing modern can surpass them. Is it not a lesson to our pride and our materialism, when we think of them and of ourselves, and then see the degraded state of the modern Egyptian, the utter extinction of the commonest art or even handicraft among them, so that it is scarcely possible, even in Cairo, to get an ordinary deal table made with a drawer in it? There is no Catholic mission at Thebes, but a Coptic bishop, who received our travellers very kindly, showed them his church, and gave them coffee on a terrace overlooking the Nile. This evening was "twelfth-night," and the boats were again illuminated and decorated with palms, the whole having a beautiful effect reflected in the water.

After spending a week at Thebes, Our travellers sailed on to Assouan, visiting the temples of Esneh, Edfoo, and Komom-Boo on their way, and coming into the region of crocodiles and pelicans, and of the Theban or dom palm--less graceful than the date palm, but still beautiful, and bearing a large, nut-like fruit in fine hanging clusters. Between Edfoo and Thebes are shown some caves, in one of which St. Paul, the first hermit, passed so many years of penitence and prayer. He was discovered by St. Antony in his old age, when tempted to vain-glory, God having revealed to him that there was a recluse more perfect than himself, whom he was to go into the desert and seek. A beautiful picture in the gallery at Madrid by Velasquez represents the meeting of the two venerable saints, the dinner brought to them by the raven, and the final interment of St. Paul by St. Antony in the cloak of St. Athanasius, the lions assisting to dig the grave!

Assouan is, as it were, the gate of the Cataracts, and is on the borders of Nubia, the great desert of Syene being to the left of the village. The Nubian caravans were tented on the shore, and tempting the Europeans with daggers, knives, {775} ostrich-eggs, poisoned arrows, rhinoceros hide shields, lances and monkeys. The climate was delicious. There is no country in the world to be compared with Egypt at this time of the year, because, in spite of the heat, there is a lightness and exhilaration in the air which makes every one well and hungry. To an artist the coloring is equally perfect. No one who has not been there can imagine what the sunrises and sunsets are, especially the after-glow at sunset. No artificial red, orange, or purple can approach it. Then the gracefulness of the palms on the banks, the rosy color of the mountains, the picturesque sakeels or water-wheels, and the still prettier shadoof, with its mournful sound, which seems as the wail of the patient slave who works it day and night, and thereby produces the exquisite tender green vegetation on the banks of the river, due to this artificial irrigation alone--all are a continual feast to the eye of the painter. And if all this is felt below Assouan, what can be said of Philae--beautiful Philae--that "dream of loveliness," as a modern writer justly calls it?

Our travellers, while waiting for the interminable arrangements with the Reis of the Cataracts, took the road along the shore; and after passing through a succession of curious and picturesque villages, arrived at one called Mahatta, where they hired a little boat to take them across to the beautiful island. Rocks of the most fantastic shapes are piled up on both sides of the shore; but when once you have emerged from these into the deep water, "Pharaoh's Bed" and the other temples stand out against the sky in all their wonderful beauty. Philae was the burial-place of Osiris, and "By him who sleeps in Philae" was the common oath of the old Egyptians. The temples are too well known by drawings to need description; but what is less often mentioned by travellers is that the larger one, originally dedicated to the sun, was used for a long time by the Christians as a church. Consecration crosses are deeply engraved on every one of these grand old pillars; and at one end is an altar, with a cross in the centre, in white marble, and a piscina at the side, with a niche for the sacred elements; and above this recess is a beautiful cross deeply cut in the stone, together with the emblem of the vine. The cross is also let into the principal gateways. There was an Italian inscription commemorating the arrival of the first Roman mission sent by Gregory XVI., and a tablet in French recording the arrival of the French army there under Napoleon in 1799, signed by General Davoust.

The gentlemen of the party decided to pitch their tents in the island till the question of the passing of the Cataracts was decided; and while this operation was going on, one of the ladies sat down to sketch. She was quietly painting, luxuriating in the beauty and silence around her, and watching the sun setting gloriously behind the temple, when all of a sudden a deep bell boomed across the water and was repeated half-a-dozen times. It was the "Angelus." Even the least Catholic of the party was struck and impressed by this unexpected sound, so unusual in a country where bells are unknown, and the only call for prayer is from the minaret top. Instinctively they knelt, and then arose the question "Where could the bell come from?" There was no sign of habitation or human beings either on the island itself or on the opposite shores, and the dragoman himself was equally at fault. At last, on questioning the boatmen, they found that behind some hills a short distance off was a convent--sort of "convalescent home" for the sick monks of the Barri mission. The English lady decided at once to go and see it, and on arriving at the long low stone building, found that the Franciscan father, who was almost its solitary occupant, had just returned from the White Nile, being one of a mission to the blacks in the Barri country, a month's journey south of Khartoun. {776} He had been at death's door from fever; and on leaving Khartoun for Philae, an eighteen days' ride on camels, had been attacked by dysentery, and left for dead in the burning desert by the caravan; only a faithful black convert remained by his side, and he felt that his last hour was come; when the arrival of poor Captain Speke, on his way home from one of his last explorations, changed the state of things. With true Christian charity our countryman at once ordered a halt, and devoted himself to the nursing and doctoring of the dying monk; so that in a few days he was so far recovered as to be able to resume his journey, and arrived safely at Philae. He said he owed his life, under God, entirely to the kindness of this Englishman; and his only anxiety seemed to be to show his gratitude by doing everything he could for those of his nation. He invited our travellers to take up their abode in the convent, and gave them a most interesting account of the missionary work of his order. They have chartered a small vessel, which they have called the "Stella Matutina," and which plies up and down the river, and enables them to visit their stations on each bank. But they have every kind of hardship to encounter from the treachery or stupidity or positive hostility of the different tribes, from the intense heat, and above all, from the deadly malaria which had carried off seventy of their brothers in three years. But there are ever fresh soldiers of this noble army ready and eager to fill up the ranks.

The ladies rode home by the way of the desert, and reached their boats in safety. The next morning, at five o'clock, the same road was resumed by two of the party who were anxious to to reach the convent in time for the early mass. They met nothing on their seven-miles' ride but a hyaena, who was devouring a camel which they had left dying the night before. The little convent chapel was very nice; and among the vestments sent by the _oeuvre apostolique_ and worked by the ladies of the Leopoldstadt mission, one of the party recognized a court-dress which had been presented for the purpose by a Hungarian friend of hers at Rome. It was strange to find it again in the depths of Nubia. The mass was served by two little woolly-haired negro boys from the good old father's school, whose attachment to him was like that of a dog to its master. He was in some trouble as to finding clothes for them. The Nubians dispense with every thing of the kind except a fringed leathern girdle round the loins, decorated with shells. The children have not even that. However, in the _dahabièh_ a piece of rhododendron-patterned chintz was found, carefully sent from England for the covering of the divans; and with that, certain articles of dress were manufactured, gorgeous in coloring, and therefore perfect in native eyes, however ludicrous and incongruous they might appear to Europeans. The following day was fixed for one of the boats to go up the cataracts, and the party started early for what is called the "first gate," to see the operation. No one who has not lived for some months with this "peuple criard," as Lamartine calls them, can imagine the din and screaming of the Arabs as each dangerous rapid is passed; the Reis all the time shouting and storming and leaping from one stone to the other like one possessed. But the ascent is child's play compared to the descent. So many accidents have happened in the latter, and so many boats have been swamped, that the captains now insist on the passengers landing on an island near, while their boats rush down the rapids. It is a beautiful sight, the way those apparently unwieldy vessels are steered, and clear the rocks as it were with a bound, amidst the frantic yells and cheers of the whole population. A number of men, for a trifling baksheesh, swam down the current on logs; one with his little child before him; but an Englishman, attempting {777} to do it a year or two ago, was caught in the whirlpool and instantly drowned. After watching this exciting operation, the party dined together at Philae in their tent, and then rowed round and round the island by moonlight, which exceeded in loveliness all they had hitherto seen; the vividness of the reflections were beyond belief; and reading or writing was easy in the brilliant light.

Our traveller availed herself of the kind Father Michael Angelo's proposal, and slept at the convent. He gave them some curious arms, and hippopotamus-teeth from the White Nile, and some ostrich-eggs arranged as drinking-vessels, with shells and leather strips: his sole furniture in his native tent. The English, in return, gave him a quantity of medicines, which he eagerly accepted for his mission, to which he was hoping to return. After early mass the next day, he escorted them to see the Island of Biggeh with its picturesque temple, and then to the quarries of Syene, where an uncut obelisk of great size still remains embedded in the sand. Some idea was entertained in England of using it for Prince Albert's monument; but the difficulty of carriage and the distance from the river would make its transfer almost impossible. Far simpler would be the proposal of taking the Luxor obelisk, already given to the English by Mehemet Ali, the sister one to that successfully transported to Paris by the French. It is a thousand pities to leave it where it is, and to miss the occasion of adding so unique and valuable a monument to our art-treasures.

This, the last day of our traveller's stay at Assouan, was spent in making a few last purchases, visiting the old castle overlooking the river, and exploring the island of Elephantine, which offers beautiful sketching. But the inhabitants are even more importunate as beggars than their confraternity at Thebes; and it required all the eloquence of the good priest to prevent their appropriating the contents of the traveller's paint-box. She purchased from them many strings of bright beads, which constitute their sole idea of female dress. A curious funeral took place in the evening, an empty boat being carried for the dead man, who was buried with his arms and his spear; while a funeral dirge was sung over him by his tribe. It was curious, as being identical with the hieroglyphics of similar scenes in the tombs of the kings. Many of the customs of these people are purely pagan; for instance, when an Arab makes his coffee, he pours out the first three cups on the ground as a libation to the sheik, who first invented the beverage. The slave-trade, though nominally abolished by the viceroy, is carried on vigorously at Assouan. The governor goes through the form of confiscating the cargo and arresting the owners of the ship; but, after a few days, a handsome baksheesh on the part of the slave-owner and captain settles the matter; and their live cargo is transported to Cairo, there to be disposed of in the harems or elsewhere.

To the Catholic traveller in this country nothing can be more melancholy than the utterly degraded condition of the people, who are really very little removed from the brute creation. Years of ill-usage, hardship, and wrong have ground down the Fellah to the abject condition of a slave; and the utter extinction of Christianity among them seems to preclude all hope of their rising again. Yet Egypt was once the home of saints. From Alexandria, the seat of all that was most learned and refined, the see of St. Athanasius, and St. Alexander, and St. Cyril, and St. John the Almoner, and a whole string of holy patriarchs, bishops, and martyrs, up to the very desert of Syene, peopled with anchorites, the whole land teemed with saints. And now, the little handful of Franciscan fathers, scattered here and there, sowing once more the good seed at the cost of their lives, is all that remains to bear witness to the truth.

{778}

[ORIGINAL.]

THY WILL BE DONE

I.

My soul a little kingdom is, Where God's most holy will Shall reign in undivided sway, Potent and grand and still.

I'll kneel before the crystal throne, And kiss the golden rod; O peace unspeakable, to bow Before the will of God!

What though my weary feet should fail. My tongue refuse to praise, God knows my soul will steadfastly Still follow in his ways.

II.

The time has come, my soul, the time has come To prove the depth of thy oft-vaunted love; A sullen gloom hangs round us like a fog, And lowering clouds are drooping from above.

Would it were light, or dark, not this grey gloom; Would that the terror of some sudden crash Might break this stifling, dumb monotony! O for some deafening peal or blinding flash!

Weary and old and sick, like ancient Job, I crouch in haggard woe and scan the past, Or drag the leaden moments at my heels, Mocking wise fools who say that life runs fast.

{779}

Nothing to conquer now--no call for strength; Naught to contend with--only to wait and bear, And see my withering powers and blighted gifts-- No room to act--nothing to do or dare: Speak now, my soul, if thou hast aught to say If thou seest light or any hope of day.

III.

Fret not this holy stillness with thy cries-- Patience, perturbed clay! Lest thou should'st drown the voice of the All-wise With clamorous dismay.

Thinkest thou that clouds and mists are less God's work, Than sun or moon or stars? His will is good, whether it bind the free Or sunder prison bars.

His hand has measured out each feather's weight Of this most grievous load; He bore the cross we bear, his heart, like ours, Once in life's furnace glowed.

We shall in heaven sing a psalm of joy For every earth-wrung moan; One little hour more, the work well done. And we are all God's own.

CONTRASTS

There is no sound of anguish in the air, Bees hum, birds sing, the breeze is balmy-sweet And from the blooming hawthorn overhead A rosy shower droppeth at my feet.

No matter! God be praised--some untried heart, Sweet with the dewy freshness of life's dawn, Is gathering a glad presage of success From this bright, pitiless, resplendent morn.

{780}

[From the Irish Industrial Magazine.]

THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF OUR ANCESTORS.

BY M. HAVERTY, ESQ.

ARTS OF CONSTRUCTION.

In considering the building arts, as practised by the inhabitants of this country in past ages, we must necessarily divide the subject according to epochs. The ethnologist would of course begin with his favorite scientific classification of the Stone, the Bronze and the Iron periods; but this division is, to say the least of it, a very arbitrary, very indefinite, and very doubtful one. It leaves much too wide a scope for imagination, and offers no satisfactory explanation of social development; and the following obvious and natural order of periods, in the present instance, will answer our purpose, namely:

1. The Pre-Christian period, extending from some indefinite epoch of the pre-historic ages, down to the establishment of Christianity in Ireland, in the fifth century; 2. The early Christian period, extending from the last-mentioned epoch to the commencement of the Danish wars, in the beginning of the ninth century; 3. The period of obscurity and barbarism into which this country was plunged by those fierce and long-protracted wars, and from which it began to emerge in the reign of Brian, and after the battle of Clontarf, in 1014; 4. The period which followed that just mentioned, and which extends beyond the Anglo-Norman invasion until the native Irish ceased to act as a distinct people; and, [sic--no 5.] 6. The period which was inaugurated by the aforesaid Anglo-Norman epoch, and descended to modern times, embracing the ages, first of noble Gothic abbeys, and feudal keeps of Norman barons, and walled towns; and then of the fortified bawns and strong solitary towers of new proprietors, in the Tudor, Stuart, and Williamite times.

In the first of these periods there was no stone and mortar masonry known in Ireland, nor was there any knowledge of the arch. Of cyclopean masonry--masonry in which huge stones were frequently employed, but never any cement--some stupendous and wonderful examples belonging to this first period still remain; but there was no cemented work. This we may take as absolutely certain, notwithstanding the notions of some modern antiquaries about the supposed pre-Christian origin of the round towers. This pagan theory of the round towers is a pure creation of what we may call the conjectural school of Irish antiquaries. The ancient Irish never dreamt of it. It was suggested at a time when scarcely anything was known of the original native source of Irish history; and it has seldom been advocated except by those who are either still unacquainted with these sources of our history, or else who are carried away by false ideas of early Irish civilization, and visionary theories of ancient Irish fire-worship and Orientalism; for all which there is not the slightest foundation in the actual history of the country. It is right that this should be distinctly understood: without entering into lengthened arguments on the subject, which would be out of place here, it ought to be quite sufficient for any rational person to know, that the character of all the remains of undoubted pagan buildings in Ireland is utterly inconsistent with the {781} supposition that the same people who built them also built the round towers; and that such knowledge as we actually possess of the manners and customs of the pagan Irish shows the absurdity of the notion that the round towers were built by them. The passages of ancient Irish writings which may be adduced to show that the round towers were built by Christians are extremely numerous, while there is not one single iota of evidence in the written monuments of Irish history, either printed or MS., for their pagan origin--nothing, in fact, but wild, unsupported conjecture and imagination. And such being the case, and all the writings and researches of such distinguished Irish historical scholars as Petrie, O'Donovan, and O'Curry, who have passed away, and of Wilde and Todd, and Graves and Reeves, and Ferguson, etc., tending to overturn the visionary theories of Irish antiquities, of which the round tower phantasy has been the most noted, it is time to abandon this last remnant of a false and exploded system.

What, then, are the remains which we have of the buildings or structures of the ancient Irish belonging to the first, or pagan, period? They are various, and exceedingly numerous. In the first place, there are the _raths_, or earthen forts, with which the whole face of the country is still absolutely dotted. These raths were the dwelling-places of the Irish, not only indeed, in pagan times, but much more recently. They were originally rather steep earthworks, surrounded by a ditch, and topped by a strong paling or stockade; sometimes there was a double or treble line of intrenchment, and within the inner fence the family or families of the occupants dwelt in timber or hurdle houses, of which, from the perishable nature of the materials, no traces of course remain. The cattle, too, were driven for safety within the inclosure, when it was known that an enemy was abroad; and it is probable that the position of a great many of the raths on a sloping surface was selected for purposes of drainage, seeing that the cattle were so frequently to be inclosed. It is also worthy of note, that these earthen forts were always polygonal, generally octagonal, and we have never seen one of them actually round; although it would have been much easier to describe the plain circle than the regular polygonal figure adopted.

When the inclosures were constructed of stone; they were called _cahirs_ or _cashels_. It has been stated by antiquaries that the stone forts were built by the early Irish colonists, called Firbolgs, and the earthen forts by the subsequent colony of Tuath de Danaans; but it is probable that each colony built their strongholds of the materials which they found most convenient. In the rich plains of Meath, where there are very few surface stones that could have been employed for the purpose, we find none but earthen forts; and in the Isles of Arran, where there is little indeed besides solid rock, the Firbolgs necessarily constructed their famous duns of stone. These vast Firbolg duns of Arran must have been impregnable in those days, if defended by sufficient garrison; and their size and number in a place so small and barren show that almost the whole remnant of the race must have been compelled by hard necessity to seek shelter there against their pressing foes. It would also appear that the abundant supply of stone induced the occupants of those Arran forts to substitute stone houses in their interior for the habitations of timber and wattles used elsewhere; as we here find numerous remains of the small beehive houses, called _cloghanes_, formed by the overlapping of flat stones, laid horizontally, until they meet at top, thus roofing in the house without an arch. Both cloghanes and forts are built, of course, without cement; and no one could for a moment imagine that the Round Tower, of which a portion still {782} remains in the largest island, could possibly have been the work of the same masons.

The style of building is the same in the Duns of Aran; in Staig Fort, in Kerry; in the Greenan of Aileach, in Donegal; and in general in any of the primitive _cahirs_ or _cashels_, wherever they exist in Ireland; nor is there any material difference between these and the similar structures to be found in Wales--such as the Castell-Caeron over Dolbenmaen, in Caernarvonshire.

The same Irish word, Saor, (pronounced Seer,) originally signified both a carpenter and a mason; and in an Irish poem, at least eight hundred and fifty years old, we have a list of the ancient builders, who erected the principal strongholds of pagan times in Ireland: such as--"Casruba, the high-priced cashel-builder, who employed quick axes to smoothen stones;" and "Rigriu and Garvon, son of Ugarv, the cashel-builders of Aileach," and "Troiglethan, who sculptured images, and was the rath-builder of the Hill of Tara;" while every one familiar with the native Irish traditions has heard the name of Grubban-Saor, to whose skill half the ancient castles of Ireland were, without any reference to chronology, supposed to owe their strength.

An Irish antiquary of the seventeenth century, who enjoyed the friendship of Sir James Ware, writes as if he believed that the ancient pagan Irish understood the use of cement, although, as he confesses, no vestige of stone and mortar work by them remained in his day. But his mode of arguing, as it will be perceived, is very inconclusive. After enumerating several of the ancient raths and cashels of Ireland, he writes: "We have evidence of their having been built like the edifices of other kingdoms of the times in which they were built; and why should they not? for there came no colony into Erin but from the eastern world, as from Spain, etc.; and it would be strange if such a deficiency of intellect should mark the parties who came into Ireland, as that they should not have the sense to form their residences and dwellings after the manner of the countries from which they went forth, or through which they travelled." [See Introduction to Dudley Mac Firbis's great "Book of Genealogies," translated in "O'Curry's Lectures," pp. 222, etc.] It is quite certain that the early colonizers of Ireland, to whom Mac Firbis thus alludes, were a portion of that great Celtic wave of population which passed from East to West over Europe, leaving the same earthern mounds and cyclopean stone structures behind as monuments wherever they went; but it is equally certain, that if these ancient colonies visited Assyria, and Egypt, and Greece in their peregrinations, as Mac Firbis believed they did, they did not carry with them Assyrian, or Egyptian, or Grecian masonry or architecture into Ireland. The raths and cashels which they constructed were exceedingly simple in their character, and in very few indeed of the former is there the slightest grace of stonework to be discovered. Caves were very often formed under the raths; and Mac Firbis states that under the rath of Bally O Dowda, in Tireragh, he himself had seen "nine smooth stone cellars," and that its walls were still of the height of "a good cow-keep." Nor were the contents of the ancient Irish dwellings less simple than the buildings themselves; for we find by the Brehon Laws that "the Seven valuables of the house of a chieftain were--a caldron, vat, goblet, mug, reins, horse-bridle, and pin;" the first-mentioned articles indicating clearly the usages of hospitality, which always formed the predominating institution of the Irish. The same book of Brehon Laws refers to "a house with four doors, and a stream through the centre, to be provided for the sick"--such, apparently, being the ideas at that time of what a hospital should be.

{783}

It is hard to say when the popular notion originated which attributes the ancient raths and mounds to the Danes. It is quite dear that Mac Firbis knew very well they were not Danish, though the idea must have prevailed when he wrote, (A.D. 1650;) for his contemporary, Lord Castlehaven, speaks of withdrawing his troops, during the civil war of 1645, within one of the "Danish forts," which were so numerous in the country; and such was the fashion of attributing all our antiquities to a people who had impressed the memory of the nation with such terrible and indelible traditions of themselves, that even Archdeacon Lynch, the author of "Cambrensis Eversus," supposes the Danes to have been the builders of the round towers. Dr. Molyneux, who wrote toward the close of the same century, treats us to a whole book about "the Danish Forts and Mounds;" but we know perfectly well that the Danes of Ireland resided only in the seaport towns and their vicinities, and had no dwellings, and consequently no raths or mounds in the interior of the country.

Besides the earthen and stone forts, which, it must be remembered, were inhabited in the early Christian as well as in the pagan times, and down to a period which it is impossible now to define, we have several remains of the early Irish habitations, called _cranogues_. These were small stockaded and generally artificial islands, in the smaller lakes, and were only accessible by means of boats, ancient specimens of which, hewn out of a single tree, have been found in the vicinity of the cranogues in recent times. Some of these cranogues are known to have been occupied in comparatively modern times; and the strong timber stakes by which they were generally surrounded are, in a few instances, still found singularly fresh, and with indications of having been connected by a strong framework.

Of the state of the building arts in Ireland during the early Christian period we are enabled to form a tolerably accurate idea, both by the large number of remains still existing, and by the notices on the subject which we find in historical documents. Many of the very earliest Christian edifices devoted to religion in Ireland were built of stone; but it is clear, nevertheless, that the national fashion was to construct them of timber; and this fashion the Irish had in common with the Britons, or, we should rather say, with the Celtic nations generally. Strabo says the houses of the Gauls were constructed of poles and wattle work; and we learn from Bede, that among the Britons building with stone was regarded as a characteristic Roman practice. We know that both in Ireland and Britain there was a national prejudice in favor of the custom of employing timber to construct their churches. The first three churches erected in Ireland--those, namely, constructed by St. Palladius in his unsuccessful mission immediately before St Patrick--were of oak. Long after this time, in the sixth century, St. Columba lived in a wooden cell in the island of Hy, as his biographer, St. Adamnan, relates; and the use of timber for their religious edifices was much in favor with the Columbian monks wherever they settled. So late as the year 1142, when St. Malachy was building the church of the famous Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont, in Louth, he received some opposition from one of the local magnates, because he had undertaken to erect it in an expensive and solid manner of stone; the argument of this person being, that "they were Scots, not Frenchmen," and that a wooden oratory in the old Irish fashion would have sufficed.

It is a curious circumstance connected with this Abbey of Mellifont, that it is the only Irish edifice of a date older than the Anglo-Norman period in the ruins of which Dr. Petrie discovered any bricks to have been used; and we know that it was erected by monks whom St. Malachy had sent to study in the monastery of St. Bernard, in France; whence the allusion to {784} Frenchmen made by the Irishman who had objected to the style of the building. Still it is plain that the ecclesiastical edifices of stone were very numerous in the country at that very time; for a few years after St. Gelasius, the Archbishop of Armagh, caused a limekiln of vast dimensions to be constructed, in order, as the annalists say, to make lime for the repairs of the churches of Armagh which had been allowed to fall into decay.

The primitive wooden churches were, at least in some instances, constructed of planed boards, and were thatched with reeds, the walls being also frequently protected by a covering of reeds, for which, in later times, a sheeting of lead was sometimes substituted. This use of lead sheeting became very general in England; but we may presume that it was employed in comparatively few cases in Ireland. Sometimes, instead of boards or hewn timber, wattles were employed, and these were plastered with mud, the wattles being formed of strong twigs interlaced. We shall presently see that the use of wattles for building purposes was in vogue in Ireland up to comparatively modern times. It is stated in the life of St. Patrick, that when that apostle visited Tyrawley, in the county of Sligo, finding that timber was not abundant, he erected a church of mud--so ancient is the custom of employing that material for building in Ireland--a material, however, which never could be rendered as suitable for the purpose in our moist climate, as it is found to be in some of the southern portions of Europe.

From the very introduction of Christianity, we repeat, stone and mortar were frequently employed for the building of churches in Ireland. A building of this description was always called in Irish _Damhliag_, a word literally signifying "stone church." This term is still preserved in the name of Duleek in the county of Meath, where the old stone church so called, and which is supposed, on good authority, to have been the very first such edifice erected in Ireland, is still in good preservation; it was built by St. Kienan, a disciple of St. Patrick, who died in 490; and its age is thus established beyond any doubt. The stone building, or _Damhliag_, as Dr. Petrie has remarked, is always latinized by the old Irish writers _templum, ecclesia_, or _basilica_; while the wooden building is simply called oratorium.

The ancient Irish churches are almost invariably small, seldom exceeding 80 feet in length, and not usually being more than 60 feet. The great church or cathedral of Armagh was originally 140 feet long; but this was almost a solitary exception. The smaller churches are simple oblong quadrangles, while in the larger ones there is a second and smaller quadrangle at the east end, which was the chancel or sanctuary, and which is separated from the nave by a large semicircular arch. The entrance door was always originally in the west end, and square-headed, the top lintel being generally formed of a single very large flat stone; but in every instance the square-headed western doorway was in process of time built up, and another doorway, in the pointed style, opened in the south wall, near its western extremity. The windows are extremely small, and very few, generally not more than three, two of which are in the sanctuary, and all being in the south wall; they are frequently triangular-headed, formed by two flat stones leaning against each other; and it is probable that in many cases they were never glazed. The sides of the doorways and windows are inclined, in the manner of the cyclopean buildings--a style of architecture with which they have more than one point in common; for enormous stones are frequently used, the single stone being made to form both faces of the wall. Polygonal stones are employed, without any attempt to build in courses; and even flat stones are often placed at angles, when, with the aid of very little skill, they might have {785} been placed horizontally; while another singular feature often to be observed in the oldest Irish stone churches is, that the side walls and ends are built up independently, and not bound together at the corners by any interlapping stones. All these peculiarities are to be found, in a very marked degree, in the extremely curious specimens of seventh and eighth century buildings in the South Islands of Arran; and, with the exception of some Christian _cloghanes_, and some stone-roofed oratories like those near Dingle, all these early Christian edifices have been built with lime cement.

From the rudeness of the masonry in the buildings of the early Christian period, a very curious argument has been adduced in favor of the Pagan origin of the Round Towers. Some persons, in fact, do not hesitate to argue that, as the Round Towers frequently exhibit a better style of masonry than the ruined churches in their neighborhood, they must have been erected by some _earlier_ race of builders, thus adopting the very opposite to the correct and natural conclusion which the premises would suggest. Such persons must have a very misty idea of Irish history; they do not appear to be aware that there is no country in Europe, except Greece and Rome, of which the ancient history can boast of such a clear and consecutive series of written and traditional annals as that of Ireland. This is the acknowledged opinion of the most learned investigators. There is, then, no room whatever for any such conjectural race or epoch as that which the theory in question would suppose in Irish history; there is no room for such wild hypotheses as may be framed, for instance, to account for the remains of extinct civilized races in the interior of North America. Any one who has the singularly distinct chain of ancient Irish chronicles present to his mind must be aware of this fact, and must know perfectly well that there was no mysterious unknown race in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity who could have built the round towers--even if it were probable that such a race would have built these, and left no other fragment of stone and mortar work in the land! As to the disparity sometimes to be observed in the masonry of the towers and the ancient churches beside them, it can be explained without any such absurd hypothesis. It is clear from the mouldings of the windows, and other architectural details, and even from the statements of our annalists, that some of the Round Towers are not older than the eleventh or twelfth century, and consequently their masonry might well be superior to that of churches built some four or five hundred years before them. But, even when the builders were contemporary, they were not such dull craftsmen as not to have understood perfectly well that a more careful style of workmanship was required in an edifice which they should carry to a height of 120 or 130 feet than in one of which the walls would not exceed 10 or 14 feet in elevation. In fact, a little consideration must show any enlightened man that the theory to which we have referred is utterly untenable.

Mr. Parker, a high authority on questions of architectural antiquity, has, in his valuable series of papers on the subject in the "Gentleman's Magazine," thrown considerable light on Irish mediaeval architecture. One point, of which he has been decidedly the first observer, is, that all the details of an ancient building in Ireland seldom or never belong to the period at which the building was, according to record, erected. This is an extremely carious fact; and there can be no doubt of Mr. Parker's accuracy on the point; but it appears to us that he invariably finds his remark verified in castles and abbeys of the Anglo-Norman period in Ireland. To what, then, is the peculiarity to be attributed? Could the architects have been Irish, and could they have adopted their principles from the study of older edifices {786} in England? On this point we are not aware that he comes to any conclusion; but, in describing the interesting details of Cormac's Chapel, on the Rock of Cashel--one of the most valuable remains of mediaeval architecture in the empire, and which was built some fifty years before the Anglo-Norman invasion--he says, "It is neither earlier nor later in style than buildings of the same date in England; and with the exception of a few particulars, agrees in detail with them." From this we may conclude, that before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans the Irish architects were fully up to the contemporary state of their art, though subsequently the Anglo-Irish fell into the anachronisms which Mr. Parker so frequently points out.

When Henry II. resolved on spending the Christmas of 1171 in Dublin, there was no building in that old capital of the Ostmen sufficiently spacious to accommodate his court; and a pavilion was accordingly constructed for the purpose of plastered wattles, in the Irish fashion, on a site at the south side of the present Dame street This mode of constructing houses must have been very convenient in times when the face of a country was liable every other year to be devastated by war, and when it would have been folly to erect a habitation intended to be permanent. The destruction of all the dwellings in a territory at that time, was not quite so ruinous a catastrophe as it might seem to us, especially as it was a very usual thing to have the granaries under ground.

The employment of wattles for one purpose or other, in the construction of buildings, appears to have been very long retained in Ireland; and they seem to have been constantly used by the masons as centering in the building of arches, as may be seen from an examination of any of the ruined abbeys or castles throughout the country, where the impression of the interwoven twigs will always be found in the mortar of the vaulted roofs and arches. Mr. Parker appears to have been particularly struck by this circumstance, which, however, is familiar to every Irish antiquary; but he tells us that he has found the same thing in a few instances in England.

A French gentleman, who travelled through Ireland in 1644, has left us a curious account of the mode of constructing their habitations employed at that time by the rural population. He writes: "The towns are built in the English fashion, but the houses in the country are in this manner: two stakes are fixed in the ground, across which is a transverse pole, to support two rows of rafters on the two sides, which are covered with leaves and straw. The cabins are of another fashion. There are four walls the height of a man, supporting rafters, over which they thatch with straw and leaves; they are without chimneys, and make the fire in the middle of the hut, which greatly incommodes those who are not fond of smoke."

The writer goes on to describe the fortified domiciles of the gentry. He says: "The castles or houses of the nobility consist of four walls extremely high, thatched with straw; but, to tell the truth, they are nothing but square towers without windows, or, at least, having such small apertures as to give no more light than there is in a prison; they have little furniture, and cover their room with rushes, of which they make their beds in summer, and of straw in winter; they put the rushes a foot deep on their floors, and on their windows, and many of them ornament the ceilings with branches." (The Tour of M. De la Boullaye le Gouz.)

This description is applicable to those numerous, solitary, and gloomy buildings called castles, the ruins of which are so conspicuous in every part of the country, and a considerable number of which were erected by the Undertakers, in the reign of James I.; while it must be confessed that the mode of constructing the hovels of the peasantry, as described in the preceding extract, has not undergone much improvement, up to the present day, in many parts of Ireland.

{787}

Translated from the Spanish.

PERICO THE SAD; OR, THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.